Top vBlog 2015 – Check it Out!

Here we go. 2015 and Top vBlog voting. Once again, Eric Siebert from vSphere-Land.com is organizing the Top Virtualization Blog. This year with Infinio as an official sponsor.

Not all blogs are equal. Not all of them are updated all year long, so as a result they are less known, they get less traffic, and perhaps they just die. Nothing more sad than a dead blog.

I blog with passion since 2008 when I discovered this awesome WordPress tool. Daily. It's a job! Only few dozens of blogs can really pretend to be on the Top positions in the final. I and ESX Virtualization, we have made it last year to the top 15! Without cheating! How it started? One day I needed to bookmark a configuration steps. I thought, why not try some of the bookmarking tools out there? But then I thought. Why not create my own space out there? The blog was born!

My blog – ESX Virtualization is an Independent source of daily virtualization content. I'm not working for a vendor or major hardware manufacturer. I’m writing posts mostly oriented for SMBs and for IT teams or professionals working as admins, to share my own experience, thoughts, news, publish some videos and tutorials. My blogging preference is obviously for VMware virtualization and vSphere, but I also started doing some posting about Hyper-V and general IT posts which I found useful.

I'm not specialized in storage as my background is a general IT. I grew up within a small IT company, not in a corporate multi-million $$$ business. -:) I stay humble.

For me, 2014 was a good year. I continue to progress with both VMware VCAP exams at the beginning of the year. Then again, Barcelona and VMworld 2014. Awesome time, coupled with TechField Day event organized by Steven Fosket where I participated. New experience and new technology I learned about there from Diablo technologies and Veeam. Really cool stuff!

But the 2014 year has started rather cool way. Imagine that you go from -10 to + 33°Celsius…  I moved back from France (continental) to Reunion Island – roughly beginning of February 2014 when the winter is very cold in Europe.  So I do some consulting work here on the Island and I also become a trainer. (you need official papers for that in France – if you speak french check this page). Not an official VCI, but rather I'm teaching (clients who needs) virtualization and IT. Mostly at the client's site directly with examples on real environment.

Which posts were the ones most visited in 2014 at ESX Virtualization?

• Best Practices for Virtualizing AD on VMware vSphere
• How to install Android KitKat in VMware Workstation
• Infinio Accelerator 1.2 now with vSphere 5.5 compatibility
• WIMBoot in Windows 8.1 allows saving storage and memory
• My VSAN journey – all done!
• Trust Relationship Between Workstation and Domain Fails – fix without double reboot
• ESXi 5 Unresponsive VM – How to Power Off
• DNS name does not display as FQDN on the Summary tab of a virtual machine

Later this year I also build a powerful workstation running W8.1 with VMware workstation. This 64 Gb RAM Lab box is mainly the workstation I’m blogging from. I also use it to do some video editing/gaming.

Some of the latest vSphere 6.0 content:

Major release of VMware vSphere platform has been announced.

• vSphere 6 Features – New Config Maximums, Long Distance vMotion and FT for 4vCPUs [Detailed]
• vSphere 6 Features – vCenter Server 6 Details, (VCSA and Windows) [Detailed]
• vSphere 6 Features – vSphere Client (FAT and Web Client)
• vSphere 6 Features – VSAN 6.0 Technical Details [Detailed]
• ESXi 6.0 Security and Password Complexity Changes
• vSphere Data Protection 6.0 is “Advanced” by default
• vSphere Replication 6.0 What’s New?
• What’s new in NSX for vSphere 6.1 [Detailed]

Some Recent Homelab Content!

I currently started to rebuild my lab.

• Efficient Home Server – Start with an Efficient Power Supply
• ESXi Home lab – Get a quality and comfortable case
• Supermicro Single CPU Board for ESXi Homelab – X10SRH-CLN4F – this post…
• Energy Efficient ESXi Lab Host (upcoming post…)

I provide unique content with my own screenshots. Most of the time I protect them with the ESX Virtualization logo. There are tons of screenshots since I started blogging. Tons of screenshots, some good number of videos on my YouTube channel (www.vladan.fr/youtube), where I know that my french accent isn't the best one, but hey, it's my own work and it's mean to help out for installs, configs and troubleshooting.

If I quote part of other’s article, there is always the source link. If I’m getting inspired by someone’s work and you feel that I should give credit, don’t hesitate to get in touch. Scrapers and copiers are people who I don’t like. Unfortunately there are still some… It's really no fair that people grabbing your full RSS feed without permission….

What I'm proud of for 2014?

Consider frequency, quality, longevity and accuracy of informations!

Talking quality, I'm trying to vary the subjects and find topics that interests VMware admins and or IT teams.

The event is sponsored by Infinio. Go and vote!  

The voting will run from 1st of March – Results the 19th of March LIVE !!!

This year, Eric Siebert does it in classy style -:)

This year I thought I would do something different and designed a custom commemorative coin that each of the top 50 bloggers will receive. I had wanted to do separate coins for Top 10, Top 25 and Top 50 but that would of required paying for a separate die mold for each which gets costly. So instead I put Top 50 on the coin and am using different metal finishes to signify this. The Top 10 will get a Shiny Gold coin, 11-25 will get a Antique Silver coin and 26-50 will get a Antique Copper coin.