Solarwinds; Rebel forces or the Empire…

I often get hit up about various campaigns of stuff like, “Hey check this thing out! Share it with your readers” yada yada yada. However.. this is actually pretty cool. Solarwinds is getting behind all of the Star Wars hype and has some pretty cool looking shirts available, so in this case.. I am sharing it with ya’ll :)

Check out more details here at the It Is your Destiny link!

Screen Shot 2015-11-24 at 3.17.18 PM

Log Data: You will never find a more wretched hive of faults and dialogs

I find your lack of backups disturbing.

Help me SysAdmin, you’re my only hope.

These aren’t the OIDs you’re looking for

I’m doing this using the raw editor instead of Live Writer, so this post PROBABLY will look horrible, and for that I do apologize :)

I won Best of IT Transformation at EMC World for “Ten ways to reduce cost while modernizing your IT” #EMCElect

I’ll tell you, easily one of my LONGEST subject lines ever! But subject length aside, this is actually pretty awesome!

For those of you who missed this, here’s the low down from a blog post I published last October.  EMC Proven Knowledge Sharing Competition – Join Now! Abstracts Due 12NOV #EMCElect

And for what its worth, my marketing director has done an AWESOME coverage of events here Christopher Kusek earns EMC 2015 Knowledge Sharing Award!

So that got it all started… OMG A CONTEST! Well, not even so much as a contest, as it was a raw and heated COMPETITION! What it’d entail initially was submitting an abstract.   And from the Abstract alone you’d be informed whether you’d even be entitled to be ALLOWED to enter the competition.   In my case, my abstract was accepted, awesome.  But then it came down to, “Hey, it’s time to submit your paper!” Well, so there I was… writing my paper, and write it I did!   One thing in particular which was *very* cool, is the fact that the “Judges” of the papers have no idea who the authors are.  No, it’s not like they’re secluded and don’t stay in touch with industry, quite the opposite… They’re SHIELDED from who the submitters are, any type of information is shielded from them, and instead they’re judging the papers based upon the content and not the character of the authors!

Which ultimately is what brought me to this years 2015 EMC World!   I had been informed that I was a “finalist” which means, I’d be 1st, 2nd, 3rd or one of the Best of Tracks… All very secretive, all I knew was, “I WAS IN” I just didn’t know what position or place!

CK EMC Award

That is when it all fell into place! My name called, giving me the absolute honor of “Best of IT Transformation” it was an absolute blast to all happen at once!   Due to the power of… VideoLinkFail you can skip ahead to 16:45 and get to my part of the video :)  Otherwise watch it all the way through, it gives an interesting take and shares information on the EMC Proven Education Ecosystem!

That wasn’t even the half of it though! When I wasn’t on stage wearing horribly uncomfortably shoes (which looked great mind you!) and receiving an award… LOOK AT THAT THING! ITS 8LBS OF CRYSTAL!

Best of IT Transformation

I was spending the bulk of my time ON CAMERA giving individual interviews or group interviews or this and that!

Christopher Kusek - Best of IT Transformation EMC World 2015

But some of you are saying, “You know what? I don’t give a damn about any of that! Show me the money! err, Paper, I MEAN THE PAPER!”

That’s cool, totally respect that… :) Well, here are some links and copies of the paper!

Because I’m obviously a marketing whore (go me, right! :)) There’s also the Xiologix branded version which I actually like how it is formatted better… (Primarily because… I formatted it to make sure data presents on pages the way I prefer from having written a thing or two here and there!) so here are some links to BOTH versions! <3

Read Xiologix Version: Ten ways to reduce cost while modernizing your IT

Ten Ways to Reduce Cost While Modernizing your IT - Xiologix Version

Read EMC Version: Ten ways to reduce cost while modernizing your IT

To follow-up on updates to this presentation and other information around be sure to check out the updated page at our Xiologix site where we’re keeping it updated and current! Christopher Kusek earns EMC 2015 Knowledge Sharing Award!

Also there is a Presentation version of this paper which has been delivered to standing room only audiences across the Pacific Northwest (also regular sitting rooms of folks :)) So if you’re interested definitely reach out <3 :)

Keep on keeping on!

OMG OMG WIN TWO TICKETS TO VMWORLD FROM @VMTURBO!!!

VMturbo VMworld 2015 Sweepstakes!!!

Wow, scream much mr mc screamy?

Hey what can I say, I’m excited… For you, the potential win ners of this contest! And Yes, yes I did apply to this contest too, but hey I’m not some evil bastard who is going to hoard something just so I minimize my odds, you should share it too!   So what’s the deal?

Well, you know how every year various companies which are integral to virtualization tend to give away free passes to VMworld?  This year, we kick it off with VMTurbo providing not one, not two, but THREE possibilities to win, not one, but TWO passes! Wow that’s a lot of math!

OMG WHEN ARE THE DRAWINGS?!

The drawings are MAY 29th, JUNE 19th, and JULY 10TH!!!

This is only for VMworld San Francisco, and of course go read the rules, but click the picture above, the drawings, THIS LINK, there’s a lot of places to ensure that you are ENTERED!

One week left to nominate a Non-Profit in the Nutanix DataCenter Makeover! (Closes 21NOV2014)

Nutanix Web-Scale Wish - Non-Profit DataCenter Makeover!

You ever been like, “Man, I wish more organizations would help out non-profits” Well, guess what. Nutanix is. :)

So let’s break it down a bit! in the event that you find yourself too busy to actually click on their site and want the details!

Submission Period (October 15 – November 21, 2014)

  • Anyone can nominate a non-profit to participate! To qualify, the organization must:
    • Be a non-profit, non-partisan organization located in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, or the United Kingdom
    • Have a currently working datacenter that could benefit from web-scale converged infrastructure
    • Be able to complete and meet Environment Assessment criteria. Read the full terms & conditions

Judging Period (November 21 – December 10, 2014)

  • A panel of community judges will select the top three finalists.

Voting Day (December 10, 2014)

  • Watch the virtual event on December 10th to hear from the three finalists and cast your vote to determine the winner!
  • Voting will be open to the public for 24 hours.

Winner Announced! (December 11, 2014)

  • The Grand Prize winner will receive a Web-Scale Datacenter Makeover, implemented in 48 hours by a Nutanix team!

Prizes!

The Grand Prize Package

  • NX-3350
  • 3 Ultimate Software Licenses
  • 3 Years of Support
  • 2-Day Installation Services
  • One organization will receive a 48-Hour Web-Scale Datacenter Makeover, implemented by a Nutanix team!

Two Finalist Packages

  • NX-1350
  • 3 Ultimate Software Licenses
  • 3 Years of Support

Nominate & Get a T-Shirt!

  • Exclusively for Web-Scale Wish participants

So get out there, with this last week left and sign up, nominate, win a shirt and help out a non-profit! <3

Hey APJ / APAC did you know that you get 50% off on VMware Certification (VCP/VCAP) until 19DEC2014?!?! (Including Australia, NZ and China!)

Whoa whoa whoa, wait a minute. You just put out a blog post for 15% off Microsoft Exams and 25% off VMware Exams and countless OTHER forms of free training and certification and now you’re telling me we can get 50% off on VMware Certifications?!?!

Well, no.

What I am saying is that if you’re in APJ / APAC, or more specifically the following countries;

  • Australia, New Zealand, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan and Korea

THEN you get 50% off Certification. Those of us in the US, Canada, LATAM and Europe… not so much. But hey, at least SOMEONE is getting a discount, right? (I wish it were me! :))

The full scoop of details can be found here at Save 50% off All VMware exams but the really important parts you can get here…

One nice thing is this is Multi-Use and Multi-Person, so if you’ve been planning to knock out your VCP-NV or update to add Cloud, you can!

And there you go! Go out there and enjoy something which the rest of us cannot. :)