Weird FedEx wonk

FedEx has ‘First Overnight’, which is delivery by 8-10 am, depending on Zip code (not all Zip codes apply). Here’s the fun part: you can get it to Alix, AR but not to Altus, AR. You, for any practical purpose, must get the box through Altus to get to Alix (unless you do heavy back/dirt roads).

Just thought that was funny…

9 year old gets a MCP

From Gizmodo: 9 year old girl in India passes a MCP exam. Now she may not be any normal 9-year-old, but the point remains: a 9-year-old passed a MCP exam with a bit of studying. I now wonder how many 13 year old CCIEs or RHCAs there are floating around the world?

Tools I live by: VMware

As part of a (semi-)regular posting series, I’m going to detail the tools I use and why:

First up: VMware.  Not just one product, but most of their free products (VMware Server, etc), and at home Fusion for my Mac, and their Virtual Infrastructure stuff at work.  Now I’m technically late to the virtualization game – lots of people have been doing this for a while (IBM did this back in the System-360 days – System-360/67 was the first computer designed for virtualization in 1966), but it still makes me giddy.

First up: what is VMware?  VMware is a tool that lets you virtualize servers/desktops/whatever. Instead of setting up a machine to test, I simply create a VM, do whatever crap I want to try (FreeNAS + OS X to find a use for an old desktop for example), then when I’m done: delete it. Non destructive to machines: if I don’t like something then oh well, what am I out: a few minutes. If I replace a desktop, I can virtualize it to a VM, then if I ever need anything off of it, I simply fire it up, get what I need, and I’m done (there are some issues around OEM versions of Windows here however – blame Microsoft).

In the data center, it is much more powerful: many of today’s servers are much more powerful than the applications executed on them, leaving room to virtualize and reduce server count (which has a large number of benefits unless your name is say Dell, but then again, they get to sell beefier servers instead of a bunch of lower end items: 10 beefy boxes are probably more profitable than 40-50 low end boxes – marketing is going to want to keep the low end equipment cheap enough to snag price sensitive customers, and the high end stuff is well, high end).  

Just one final note – I work for EMC, who has a majority ownership stake in VMware. That said, I use what I find is best, which is VMware.  There are some free software alternatives to this out there from a variety of firms (Sun, Oracle, etc)