In true personal fashion I am always posting these prediction posts about 2-3 months into the new year. We are well under way for the 2016 year and already kicked off some milestones that I had in my initial plan. The reason for this post really is to put across what I already have planned and have done from a work perspective as well as some tech industry predictions that I believe will continue to grow, fall or begin this year. Veeam V9 January 12th 2016 saw the release of the long awaited Veeam Backup & Replication version 9, along with its monitoring and reportingRead More →

2015 – A Year in Review My first post of 2016 is going to have a quick look back over 2015, from my own career perspective and also the industry as a whole. Starting with Veeam At the end of March 2015 I joined the Veeam team and I have not looked back, just short of a year now and I have to say I love it. Vendor land, Pre Sales and systems engineering a year ago was a little unknown to me, having worked in a predominantly post sales capacity it was a big step into the unknown but I knew I wanted toRead More →

2015 was a busy year for me, but I did make more of an effort around posting on the vZilla site. It’s seems my content was viewed a lot more as well compared to previous years so much so I decided to summarise the key areas and focus points on the vZilla website. How many posts??? The majority of my posts in 2015 were around my key technologies VMware, NetApp, Cisco and Veeam. As I said in the introduction I have made an extra effort to contribute within the community and using my blog as well as my twitter and LinkedIn accounts to reach theRead More →

Last year I was really intrigued in participating in the #vDM30in30 but there was very little chance of me hitting anywhere near enough posts, plus not hearing or knowing anything about it till we were pretty much already in November meant there was no chance of getting involved. Firstly what is #vDM30in30? Well during the month of November on each of the 30 days a new blog post is created, there is no fix on what these should be about there can be and have been a range of personal and technical posts come out during the month. If you want to know more thenRead More →

NetApp Insight 2015 – EMEA – Berlin Introduction In just 4 days the NetApp EMEA contingent of both Technical Insiders, Partners and Customers will descend on Berlin, Germany for the second year running. 4 days of intense long hours but very informative days. I am very lucky I have stated in previous posts that I get to attend both the US and EMEA event, I have attended the EMEA event for the past 3 years and last 2 years in the US. This year will be a little different for me though as I will be representing Veeam on the Sapphire stand we have there.Read More →

For those that do not know what NetApp Insight is, it is NetApp’s annual technical conference that is ran in Las Vegas to cover the Americas and  in Berlin to cover EMEA. I am extremely fortunate to be able to attend both conferences. As part of the NetApp A-Team, in Las Vegas not only were we able to get to the General Sessions or the Technical breakouts but we were also  able to network with some of our peers, within NetApp, that we may only get to communicate over email with that are. Alongside this we got to take part in certain press events andRead More →

The fact that i am writing this means i have completed the 90 day challenge, at the start of 2015 i decided to kick the year off with a challenge for January, this also included the infamous Dry January where no booze is drank… that was the easy bit, i also challenged myself to complete at least 1 mile of running every day for the full 31 days. I completed this and i have a post regarding this challenge here – https://vzilla.co.uk/1/post/2015/01/january-2015-challenge-completed.html At the end of that first month i decided that i would carry this on and challenge myself for February as well asRead More →

This post takes a high-level look at the FlexPod solutions NetApp offers today and provides the basic fundamentals:  what comprises a FlexPod, the unique benefits FlexPod delivers, how to identify a FlexPod opportunity, standard configurations, etc. If you’re new to FlexPod, this should get you off to a great start. FlexPod Architecture What is FlexPod? Shared infrastructure for a wide range of environments and applications. •       Validated, standardised, shared infrastructure •       Flexibility and scalability within a single rack •       Centralised management of pooled resources •       Deployment guides with step-by-step instructions •       Solution guides pre-define multiple workloads •       Multiple sizing tools Minimum requirements for a “FlexPod”Read More →

My challenge set for February was to complete 50 miles over the course of the 28 days. At the beginning of the month after completing the whole of January which totalled 43.86 Miles I thought I had set a milestone just that little too far to reach. I was very proud of myself for maintaining the routine for the first 31 days of 2015 that was my biggest challenge and not really the 1 mile a day at least target. As I have said in previous posts relating to these personal challenges I am quite an active person and have played a very good standardRead More →

I sent an email out this morning to the team containing some NetApp & VMware updates, although I don’t write too much on my own site I do try and update the team with as much interesting stuff that is happening out in our little world as possible. This may be things I have picked up during the course of the week over twitter, other blog sites or fellow advocate program emails. Which tend to actually promote me into sending the info out? NetApp Some news on ADP which was released with 8.3 and very much focused around the SMB market namely the FAS25** seriesRead More →