My favorite virtualization blogs – oh, and go vote yourself!

So I just finished voting for my favorite blogs on Eric Siebert’s vSphere-land.com.  This was my second time voting and I’d like to thank Eric for hosting and TrainSignal for their support of Eric’s work.  The VMware army of bloggers is definitely strong, having added dozens of new bloggers this past year as well as the best bloggers posting great new content.  What I’d like to do here is run down the list of how I voted just to say thanks to those who’ve contributed so much to my personal success these past 12 months.

Before I get too far into this post, here’s a shameless plug for a friend of mine who blogs over at http://mikeasaservice.com/.  Mike has been my technical mentor and friend since we worked together in the ‘stan a couple years ago.  I highly respect his gifted knowledge, humor, and willingness to share with those of us who, by fortune or spite, weren’t so well endowed. Mike’s not listed on the vLaunchPad, but he no less deserves your visit to his site. He’s pretty much awesome 🙂

I use Google Reader as my RSS feed aggregator and I subscribe to one blog in particular.  I get enough emails every day so I want to limit my incoming mail to what’s important.  There’re two bloggers that put out so much good content relevant to me that I don’t want to miss a thing (cue Aerosmith, right?).  Unfortunately, only one of those bloggers was on Eric’s list so he definitely got my number one vote – two number one votes, actually.  I voted for Chris Wahl’s blog, The Wahl Network as my favorite virtualization blog and favorite independent blogger.  You probably already know of Chris’ home on the interwebs, but if not, you can find him here:

1. http://wahlnetwork.com/

Of course, there’s a reason Duncan Epping’s Yellow-Bricks.com has been on top of the charts for who knows how long. He’s got the inside scoop at the mothership and he shares an absolute wealth of knowledge.

2. http://www.yellow-bricks.com/

Number two could have just as easily been Frank Denneman’s blog.  Frank has a Visio wand I wish I could emulate.

3. http://frankdenneman.nl/

I’m so glad Cormac Hogan decided to share with us mere mortals the innards of his braincase.  If you want to understand storage in vSphere, his is the blog to follow. 

Another dude to follow would be Mostafa Kahlil, author of VMware Press’ Storage Implementation in vSphere 5.0, if he were present in the blogosphere.  Since he’s not, you may just want to follow him on the twitters @MostafaVMW: https://twitter.com/MostafaVMW

4. http://cormachogan.com/

I’ve enjoyed Kendrick Coleman’s stuff since I started my journey with VMware.  He has aggregated a great resource with the VM Advanced ISO for years as well as publishing great content.  This past year, I became a fan of his vSphere 5 Host NIC Designs and vSwitch Configurations.  This post has awesome Visios and good discussions in the comment thread.  After reading it once, I’ve remembered it and referenced it several times.  I also enjoyed Kendrick’s video series that came out soon after vSphere 5.1 was released.

5. http://kendrickcoleman.com/

Matt Liebowitz’s blog over at The Lower Case W has been useful to me this past year because I’ve been involved with many instances of large and small virtualized SQL and Exchange boxes.  Matt’s posts have helped get me up to speed on the ins-and-outs of virtualizing these apps.  I also remember when I jumped on him on the twitters for giving Chris Wahl a hard time for his shameless self-advertising.  To be clear, I jumped in the middle of their conversation and missed the fact that these two are vBuddies and go back and forth all the time.  So I politely excused myself from the conversation and continued painting my WarCraft figurines.

6. http://www.thelowercasew.com/

A new blogger who also received my vote for the Best New Blogger is Eric Shanks over at The IT Hollow.  Eric also shared with me the contact info for the folks that designed his blog logo.  I hope to have something new myself from these talented folks.  Eric has put out a lot this past year and I’ve enjoyed reading it.  It was probably Eric’s post about his home routing with the Vyatta virtual router that piqued my interest enough to implement it in my home lab.

7. http://theithollow.com/

Of course, I try to attend the #vBrownBags when I can and there’s a topic interesting to me.  I enjoy learning as much as I can about the specialties surrounding virtualization and IT in general, but I don’t want to use too much valuable brain real estate on topics too far outside my current focus – so I admittedly haven’t attended a few recently.  I can say I’ve downloaded and viewed offline nearly all of the VCAP-DCA and VCAP-DCD sessions. I also enjoyed the live VCDX bootcamp sessions with VCDX #1, John Arrasjid.  From what I understand, ProfessionalVMware.com is Cody Bunch’s brainchild, but he has since handed the day-to-day and hosting responsibilities to two other virtualization evangelists Damian Karlson and Josh Atwell.

8. http://professionalvmware.com/

Taking the advice and lessons learned from a someone that has reached the pinnacle of their career is rarely the wrong thing to do.  One of the earliest VCDXs is Jason Boche.  It’s interesting to read his blog because he’s been sharing from some of the earliest days of virtualization so one can see the evolution of the industry as well as the awesomeness that is now VMware vSphere.

9. http://www.boche.net/blog/

Finally, one of the blogs that I must mention is Bob Plankers’ The Lone SysAdmin.  Before I became a VMware enthusiast, when I was a wee Systems Administrator dabbling in virtualization, it seemed Bob’s blog kept appearing in my Google searches.  Little did I know that I had found a treasure trove of good info to which I would refer many times in the years to come.  So Bob, thanks for sharing and keep’em coming.

10. http://lonesysadmin.net/

Also, I should mention the additional categories I voted in and whose blog received my vote.  The best storage blog went to Cormac Hogan, but I do read Chad Sakac, Nick Howell, and Vaughn Stewart.

My vote for best scripting blog went to William Lam at http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/. Of course, Alan Renouf rocks at http://virtu-al.net/, too.  To be honest, I’ve barely visited Luc Dekens’ blog, but I see him all over the VMTN Communities.  He’s definitely a guru to follow: http://lucd.info/.

I hope you enjoyed my ranting here.  Perhaps I talked about a blog you hadn’t been to yet.  If so, I hope you found it as useful as I did.  Again, if you haven’t voted yourself, go to Eric Siebert’s site to do so.  Happy voting!

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