Think Service First eBook Series
On January 1, 2014, I’ll be releasing an eBook series called “Think Service First.”
Update: Released on Jan 4 2014.
It’s something I’ve been working on for months and it has become the driver for everything I’m doing now as an Ops Manager.
The first eBook in the series is “Why is my App running slow on VMware” and will be available on Amazon – New Year’s Day, Free for everyone who has a Prime account (or $2.99).
The series picks up where my first eBook “VCP for Hire” left off, understanding why you need talented people who can see the bigger picture.
Here’s a sample from the introduction:
Epiphany, I get it now.
It’s taken me 16 years to get here.
All these years it was always right in front of me.
Do you know what I am talking about…do you see it?
It’s right there, in front of you too.
Let me explain.
When I started my IT career in the 90s, like most IT professionals I was taught to approach problems with the best technical solution possible and using the least amount of work.
But over the years I have learned the best technical solution isn’t always the most useful or user-friendly solution. Nor is it the easiest. Thus, the reason I am writing this series of “Think Service First” eBooks.
Think about what I am going to tell you next.
Way back when VMware first came along with GSX and ESX there was no talk of “The Cloud.”
It’s true.
The problem VMware was solving was server utilization.
Back then nearly 80% of memory and CPU resources were wasted on most physical servers crowding up data centers.
Think about my last statement for a moment. The problem was utilization, not a need for cloud.
OK, let’s move on.
So with this in mind, I learned, like many other system engineers how to cram as many VMs as I could on a host.
As I said, VM server quantity came “first” and everything else including how many users could log into the application and work came next.
Why?
I already explained why, because that was the problem we were solving.
It wasn’t easy to do.
The beginning was rocky for most admins and it turned into DEV versus IT because developers started complaining about slow VMs. But who cared because our mission was to increase ROI.
After all, that was the goal and we were achieving it.
Not many admins at the time considered if the VM was too slow for a developer then it was probably going to be slow for the users, too. We thought developers just wanted more power because they felt privileged.
We became the CPU and memory police.
So the battle raged on for a few years. And over the years many of us admins became masters at loading up ESX with VMs.
I recall one of my first blog posts in 2007 was about how many VMs you can get per physical CPU and it’s still one of my most popular posts. (Read about VMs per cores)
So here I am today: many hundreds of P2Vs later and nearly a thousand ESXi hosts deployed. Blink, the light has finally come on. Epiphany, SERVICE comes first!
Read the rest in January…
Why the name – Think Service First?
Because so many technical people miss this very important factor. It’s about the milkshake (product or service), and not about the blenders (servers)…does that make sense?
I hope the title of this post isn’t missing leading for some visitors who came want answers now. But it will all come together once the eBook is available on Jan 1.
I get it!
There’s a reason why more and more applications are beginning to have performance issues months or years after the original servers were virtualized.
In “Why is My App Slow on VMware” I’ll cover four key contributors and what your next steps need to be to solve these problems. Get the eBook!
Let learn how to setup and administer vSphere, check out my guide on the best vSphere training for beginners.
