Monthly Archives: January 2017

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Interview – Dave Kawula – MVP, Consultant, Author

2017 is kicking off with my third interview blog post, this time focusing on Dave Kawula, MVP and author focusing on Microsoft Technologies. Let’s kick off straight into the interview itself, Dave likes to type! Longest interview yet, but its a great read.

davekawula Clint

(Dave is the one on the left, little known fact, but there is more pictures of Dave and Clint Wyckoff together on twitter than Dave and his wife 🙂 )

The interview is split into three area’s of discussion;

  • Life and Worklife
  • Thoughts on the industry
  • Thoughts for those working in IT, and those wanting to work in IT
Lets kick off with a brief introduction of yourself

I’m a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) with over 20 years of experience in the IT industry. My background includes data communications networks within multi-server environments, led architecture teams for virtualization, System Center, Exchange, Active Directory, and Internet gateways. Very active within the Microsoft technical and consulting teams, providing deep-dive technical knowledge and subject matter expertise on various System Center and operating system topics. Continue reading Interview – Dave Kawula – MVP, Consultant, Author

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Nimble Storage – The life of a failed disk

Today I found out a disk had failed in a production SAN. Oh no!!!

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But like previous experiences, this is different. And my support experience is pretty darn good. So I thought lets write this up. Because you always here about the terrible failures and pain in the arse experiences, never the good.

Note:  This post is about the support experience, but it must be noted, there was performance or end user impact during this failure either!

The notifications

So the first notification came in, telling me the disk was unhealthy and that it was being inspected by the array, the main thing is;

  • Informed me of the issue
  • Informed me of the actions

Nimble Storage Disk failed Notification 1

Second notification, confirmation the RAID was in a degraded state.

Nimble Storage Disk failed Notification 2

Third notification,  confirmation the disk had failed.

Nimble Storage Disk failed Notification 2

The support call

Or rather the lack of support call, I logged onto Nimble Infosight. Continue reading Nimble Storage – The life of a failed disk

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Interview – Matt Crape – Community Blogger & IT Manager

In the second interview, Matt Crape of 42u.ca a blog around everything IT, is the person answering the questions. I’d personally been following Matt after his website went live and had the fortune of spending some time with him in London as part of the Veeam Vanguard program.

matt crape vBrownbag talk

(Matt is the guy on the right, seen here undertaking a vBrownbag Meet the Expert chat)

So Matt, you’ve made a big impact on the community in a short time, congrats, but tell us a bit about yourself?
Thanks for that compliment 🙂 I’m an IT Manager by day at an SMB in the Kitchener-Waterloo region, in Canada. I do all the typical managerial stuff like budgets, handling vendor contracts, personnel, etc. But, I also try to stay somewhat technical. I still find myself routinely tinkering around in vSphere, maybe some networking, or just looking at things from a higher level (e.g. reviewing backup and disaster recovery plans).
Outside of my day job, I’m also a first-time vExpert for 2016, a Veeam Vanguard, and I run my own local Veeam User Group. I’m somewhat active on Twitter (@MattThatITGuy), and when 140 characters aren’t enough, you can find a selection of my ramblings at 42u.ca.
What is the biggest challenge you have in your job day to day at the moment?

Continue reading Interview – Matt Crape – Community Blogger & IT Manager