Dennis Faucher's Blog

This is my second post on Azure Functions, but this function was much harder for me to write, and I learned more, so I thought I would share that learning in a new post. My goal was to create a function that could be called via URL that returned a

It has been a busy few weeks in IT. Not surprisingly, many cloud developments, but also some interesting development in SDN and collaboration. Please let me know if you would like to discuss any of these topics in further detail. Enjoy. Cloud * VMware Cloud on AWS Hands-On Lab * Why this

Well, KRACK has dominated much of the blogosphere this last week. Beyond WPA2 vulnerabilities, there were many other interesting developments in IT. Please let me know if you would like to discuss any of these topics in more detail. Cloud * The Pairing of Hyperconverged Vendors and Cloud Providers * Why this

Lots to catch up with since my last post. In fact, I have about 10 additional topics that I am going to save until my last post.  Enjoy and feel to provide feedback or questions. Cloud * Connecting vRealize Automation to AWS & Azure How To * Why this is interesting: The

I hope you enjoyed my first summary which was all about VMworld 2017.  For this summary, I am covering many different topics that are of interest to my customers and to me that I spent time researching this week.  I hope you find this interesting and helpful. * Virtualization * VMworld 2017

I try to read a few news sites and blogs each day to keep up with IT for my customers and colleagues.  I thought posting what I found to be the most educational articles each week might be helpful.  This past week, I mostly read deeply about the announcements at

Private Cloud Hands-On (aka My First Vlog) Apparently, blogs are dead, vlogs are cool and SnapChat Discover videos are where the real action is 😊.  Well, I still love blogs, and I don’t think I can compete with the Kardashians on SnapChat, so I will mix things up with a

Goodbye HPE Discover 2016 Day 3 was just as packed as days 1 and 2.  The highlights of Day 3 for me were more CDA, a meeting with the VP of the HPE Central Region, Sitescope monitoring of CloudSystem, NVDIMM performance testing, and composable programming.  Here are the previous posts

So, my awesome kids gave me an Amazon Echo Dot for Christmas.  I love it!  Echo has so many fantastic built-in skills and an entire marketplace of third party skills.  One of my favorite third party skills is the Plex skill.  “Alexa, ask Plex to play Blade Runner.”  The one

In my last post, I explained how to use Veeam to backup to Azure using the Azure Veeam Cloud Connect appliance.  Having an off-site backup is an important piece of a complete recovery strategy.  Being able to recover at a second site is also important.  What if you could recover

For the past few months, I have been working with a customer to develop their three-year strategic IT plan to support the growth of their business as well as to simplify IT.  Data protection is one of the many areas my team has developed an actionable strategy for.  I am

Serverless computing.  An interesting term that is getting quite a bit of press.  My guess is because of its name.  How can computing be serverless?  Just like cloud computing, there is a server somewhere.  The serverless part comes from your not needed to maintain nor pay for a server nor

Microsoft predicts that the three forces driving advancements in IT today are IoT (Internet of Things), AI (Artificial Intelligence) and Bots (human-computer interaction).  As a member of the Cloud Team at work, I try to keep up with the advancements of the major cloud providers on a daily basis.  Microsoft

I noticed the other day in the Azure blog that the Analysis Service was just released.  I was interested in trying this out for a few reasons: 1. Data isn’t much good without information 2. This would be a good way to spend some more time with Azure, Visual

I have been working with many customers over the last 12-24 months to define their 3-year cloud strategy.  The conversation always begins with applications and the applications’ required business characteristics. Then the correct home for each application can be chosen and a strategy that supports the business. Public cloud, private

Hello again.  I hope you found some interest in my blog posts from Day 0 and Day 1 of HPE Discover 2016.  Feel free to provide feedback on any of the posts. Day 2 for me began with a breakfast meeting with HPE Software followed by Meg’s Day 2

Good morning.  I have found that morning is the best time for me to write in Vegas.  I am still on East Coast time, so I awake around 4 or 5 AM Vegas time and catch up on the previous day.  If the 20 hour days don’t kill me,

This week, I am honored to represent my customers and my employer, Rolta AdvizeX, at HPE Discover 2016.  This is the first HPE Discover event post-company split.  I am going to do my best to add daily blog entries to an already packed 16-hour meeting schedule each day.  I will

Review: In this four part blog series, I am focusing on the breadth and ease of use of four leading cloud platforms: AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Azure and vCloud Air.  In Part 1, I focused on the market in general and Amazon AWS.  For Part 2, we will take a

I have been busy helping customers build Enterprise Cloud Strategies lately.  The first step is always taking an inventory of critical applications and determining the correct future location for those applications – in house, colocation, IaaS, SaaS, retirement.  Security, compliance and cost are three important factors, but so are management, automation

Offsite backup is a key component to any company’s D/R strategy. Most companies contract the services of a media storage and retrieval company or have a second D/R location where they replicate their backups to. Many of my customers do not have a second site and are

VMware was nice enough to add a D/R cloud region to the AdvizeX vCHS instance, so naturally, I wanted to try the D/R region out.  Many of our customers either do not have a D/R site or would like a more flexible, cost-effective D/R site.  I

No IT in context today, just something helpful that won’t fit in 140 characters.  We have a non-SSD MacBook Pro at home in the kitchen that gets a lot of use by the entire family.  Lately, Internet browsing has been a little slow and not because of Internet speeds.

5 Steps to Dedup Performance Testing with HP StoreOnce VSA Now that I have the HP StoreOnce VSA installed in my Lab using the instructions from my last post, it is time to see how well the target- and source-based reduplication works.  Target for storage savings and source for faster

Storage Virtual Machine appliances are not Software-Defined Storage in the strictest sense of the word as they do not separate control plane from data plane  I like to think of these appliances as Software-Virtualized Storage.  Recently, a customer asked to try out the HP StoreOnce VSA appliance for a few