A conversation I wish I could have, Bill Loeffler a Microsoft Cloud Architect passed away Sept 2014

A friend forwarded the news that Bill Loeffler passed away from melanoma this month at the age of 54.

The friend asked if I knew Bill, and yes I had many conversations on the concept of Infrastructure Patterns for IT in my Microsoft days.  Bill and I connected on LinkedIn 5 years ago, but he was based in NYC, so it didn’t seem convenient to chat about his work and mine.  

Bill has posted some good content on building a Cloud Infrastructure.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/5711.private-cloud-infrastructure-as-a-service-self-service.aspx

Private Cloud Infrastructure as a Service Self Service

Self Service capability is a characteristic of private cloud computing and must be present in any implementation. The intent is to permit users to approach a self-service capability and be presented with options available for provisioning in an organization. The capability may be basic provisioning of a virtual machine with a pre-defined configuration or may be more advanced allowing configuration options to the base configuration and leading up to a platform capability or service.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/4633.what-is-infrastructure-as-a-service.aspx 

What is Infrastructure as a Service?

In defining Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), we need to drill into specific characteristics that a cloud platform provider must provide to be considered Infrastructure as a Service. This has been no easy task as nearly every cloud platform provider has recently promoted features and services designed to address the IaaS and cloud computing market. Fortunately, as the technology has evolved, a definition of cloud computing has emerged from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) that is composed of five essential characteristics, three service models, and four deployment models.

I looked up some of our shared connections on LinkedIn and I should set some time aside to chat about Bill.

Google Expands to 5 Data Center Locations in Europe, 5 is a magic number

Google posted on data center expansion on Tues Sept 23.  It is late Weds Sept 24 so the announcement is old news.  There are two paragraphs that are interesting.

There will be 5 Google data centers operating in Europe.  5 is a minimum to have extremely high availability.  Some my think 2 or 3 is the right number.  When you think through operations 5 is a much better number than three.  The Five are Dublin, Hamina, St Ghislain, Eemshaven (rented) and Eemshaven (owned).

This will be Google’s fourth hyper efficient facility in Europe. Importantly, demand for Internet services remains so strong that the new building does not mean a reduction in expansion elsewhere. Our expansion will continue in Dublin in Ireland, in Hamina in Finland, and in St. Ghislain in Belgium. Our existing rented datacenter facility in Eemshaven also will continue to operate.

Google makes the statement there is expansion in all the owned facilities - Dublin, Hamina, and St. Ghislain.

The other paragraph says that Google has new data centers designs it is building.

The new Dutch data centre will benefit from the latest designs in cooling and electrical technology. It will be free-cooled - taking advantage of natural assets like cool air and grey water to keep our servers cool. Our data centers use 50% less energy than a typical datacenter - and our intention is to run this new facility on renewable energy.

Intent is to run the facility on renewable energy.  Yippeee!!!  Go Green Data Centers

Any more details?  Nope.  Google is growing fast.  Is it growing faster than the rest?  I would say yes.

7 things wrong with Technology Conferences/tradeshows

I’ve gone to lots of data center events and a lot of technology events.  It is time for some changes.  Before change it is good to know what is frustrating to so many of us.

Here is list of 7 things that I find occur more often than I would like.

#1)  Public Relations staff at the event and companies limit what is presented, therefore discussed.

#2)  Event schedule is too dense.

#3)  Venue is not set up for discussions, so the best place to meet is the bar.

#4)  Too many presentations are not that good.

#5)  What is called a presentation is a sales pitch.

#6)  Conference is organized to service sponsors, not the attendees.

#7)  The event is boring.

Now imagine an industry event that tries to address all 7 of these issues.  That would be an event worth attending.

Jacket for your iPhone 6 Plus or Samsung Galaxy Note 3/4, Arc'Teryx Gamma Jacket

I have an iPhone 6 (well it is on the Fedex truck now) and a Galaxy Note 3.  As fall weather arrives in Seattle, wearing  light weight jacket is the daily routine.  What jacket works?  Being able to quickly reach the phone for either left or right handed is nice.  Must be zippered pocket as accidental drops are too often disastrous from chest height.  

The jacket I have found that works well is the Arc’Teryx Gamma Jacket.  It has two chest pockets.  Both big enough for an iPhone 6 Plus or Galaxy Note.  You can put the phone in either pocket if you are left or right handed.  I often carry both the iPhone and Galaxy Note.  Why? Because I work on mobile solutions and each has its strengths.

REI customers give it 5 out of 5 stars.

I use this jacket al the time when skiing.  The shoulder pocket is convenient for the RFID ticket card which if you place in the same pocket as your phone almost never works.

With the popularity of the iPhone 6 Plus more and more people are going to be looking for what pocket to put their phone in.  I like having the phone at chest height.  Seems better ergonomically.  May not be the most fashion conscious way to carry a device, but given how ofter you are using the phone I vote for ergonomics vs. looks.  Guess that is what makes me an engineer. :-)

Learning from when things break, Seattle Tunnel-Boring Machine Repairs

You ever notice how some of the so called experts rarely talk about the things that went wrong on their projects.  They make it seem like they are perfect in their execution and anything that goes wrong is an easy fix given how smart they are.  I don’t know about you but I know of some really bad data centers out there that have been the vision of some experts.  :-)  In general, their way of getting out of accountability is they say the operations crew is to blame. 

The real experts know mistakes are made and they need to learn from them.  In Seattle is the largest tunnel-boring machine in the world and it broke.  The media went wild pointing the fingers of blame at politicians as if they know how to design and operate a tunnel-boring project.  The politician is going to say whatever they think they can to benefit their goals.  This is the mistake the so-called experts make as well, to think they can say whatever they think they can to benefit their goals.

Well when you dig a big tunnel, things go wrong.  In the case of the Seattle tunnel-boring, they went really bad requiring repair work over the cost of the boring machine.  Popular Mechanics post on the repair project and the author jumps on the media.

What do you do when the world's largest tunneling machine is, essentially, stuck in the mud? Bertha is 60 feet under the earth, and you're on the surface watching a squirmy public swap rumors of cost and delay on the $1.35 billion tunnel component of an even larger transportation project, and the naysayers are howling: Just you watch, Bertha will be abandoned like an overheated mole, boondoggle to end all boondoggles. Because, don't forget, when you're boring the world's largest tunnel, everything is bigger—not just the machine and the hole and the outsize hopes but the worries too. The cynicism. 

What do you do? 

Here's what you do: You try to tune out the media. You shrug off the peanut gallery's spitballs. You put off the finger-pointing and the lawsuits for now; that's what the lawyers are paid for afterward. You do the only thing you can do. You put your head down and you think big, one more time. You figure out how to reach Bertha and get her moving again.

The post tells the engineering story of trying to repair the tunnel-boring machine.  

The YouTube video embedded in the article is available here.