I can’t say this will fix it for everyone, or will even be the cause of your 500 error. Earlier today an epic battle played out between Windows Live Writer and the WordPress install this site sits on. More specifically, I was greeted with a “500 Server Error”.

In my server logs I found the following:

[25-Apr-2011 17:43:30] PHP Fatal error:  Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 122880 bytes) in /wp-includes/class-wp-xmlrpc-server.php on line 2769

Out of memory? What? After some searching I came across this article by Asif Rahman which listed 4 possible solutions, of which #1 fixed it for me:

Add the following line to the wp-config.php file:

define(‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ’64M’);

With luck and judging by the number of posts asking for help when I Google’d around this should help some others out.

I’ve been suffering from a bit of what I’ll call blogger block lately. In that, I’ve been having some trouble coming up with good and/or interesting posts. With that said, I know how creative y’all are as a community, and thought I’d put together a guest post contest.

A contest?

Sure, the contest is this:

Submit an idea (or complete post) to guestpost (at) professionalvmware.com or with the hashtag #ProVMwarePost on twitter. If I use your idea in an upcoming post, I’ll contact you for an address to send some schwag to.

Prizes:

Prizes for post ideas that get used, will be either a shirt or coffee mug from: http://www.cafepress.com/vsensei

Like this one:

Grand Prize:

One post, randomly chosen, will receive TrainSignal “VMware vSphere Pro Series Training Vol. 2”

There has to be some finite deadline, so we’ll shoot for the end of January for submissions.

Sean’s vFail.net came to my attention because of some trackbacks on my VCAP-DCA posts. However, in addition to VCAP Study guides (which are quite good), he’s covered PowerCLI (another of my favorite areas) and some other great topics. If you aren’t already, add this series of virtual failures to your RSS reader or bookmarks and check back regularly.

It is time to empty my RSS reader and Firefox tabs yet again. Basically this week has been much like drinking from a firehose, so I’ve not had as much time to read. That said, here are some of the posts from this week that I found particularly interesting:

vscsiStats Into Excel – Gabes Virtual World

VMware Technical Resource Center – TechHead

The Resource Pool Priority-Pie Paradox – Yellow Bricks

VIJava Browser – Double Cloud  

Resource Pools and Slot Sizing – Frank Denneman

VMTN Podcast 83 Links – Yellow Bricks

HA Deepdive Overhaul – Yellow Bricks

Each of these posts is well worth the time to read. If you’ve any others you would recommend, drop them in the comments.

Perhaps they’re not new, exactly. They are new to me, however. They’re also good enough that you should be reading them as well! With that said, onto the blogs!

• VMDEV.info – http://www.vmdev.info/
  This is put together by Keshav Attrey, a software dev with VMware. The blog concentrates on the vSphere APIs and automation around virtual desktops. My kinda blog!
• B3rg.nl – http://www.b3rg.nl/index.php
  This was a more than awesome find that came up during the last VCP4 Brown Bag. Not sure how I missed it in fact. Matthijs van den Berg covers esxtop, VCP prep, VCDX Prep and more. Good stuff.
• Double Cloud – http://www.doublecloud.org/
  This is put together by Steve Jin. The author of the vSphere Java SDK, and the book: VMware VI and vSphere SDK: http://bit.ly/5I10nn (Affiliate Link). Basically, if you are going to do vSphere API work, this is the place to start.

I’ve been reluctant to post anything on this thus far, as well… I’m included in the list, and feel honored just being mentioned amongst some of the other names listed there. That said, I feel that with the bits of pure, unadulterated awesome each of the folks listed there contribute to the virtualization community, it would do them a disservice not to get out and vote. So without further adieu, here is the link. Go Go Go!

Note: This is a post written by Pancil. Pancil normally sits quietly in a dark corner of the blog sanity/spell checking my posts. He is also a Sr. Virtualizaiton Engineer at Rackspace, where he and I work side by side, making the "Private Cloud" Awesome.

So, while reading another blog Cody suggested that the ideas fit virtualization (and my evil ideas) quite well. I took this as an opportunity to extend on my primary focus at work, ‘Virtualization Zen’, and give everyone an idea to the theories that we employ day to day. Mostly they’re principles that we (Cody and I) hold in our design and architecture group, (I spend most of my time thinking about stuff, and convincing Cody it’s a good idea) so here goes:

1. Agile Systems Design
2. KISS – Keep It Simple Stupid
3. Whiteboard IT
   
4. Focus on ‘process’, not progress (at least for a while)
5. Proactive is the destination
6. Aim for small changes
7. Increase your view
8. Count on things you can control
9. Know your subject
10. It’s OK to give up control
    

Each of these principles has a baring on the way we do things, and each has a reason. I’ll try explain each one, and feel free to ask questions in the comments section. Sorry about the length of the post in advance, but it’s just how we roll – I’ll try keep it short.

1. Agile Systems Design

This is the fundamental principle when designing a solution with virtualization. It’s very easy to get locked into a single design, or technology (especially when you consider the price of some of the networking and storage gear). As the technology has so much scope, and there are so many options (even without spending additional money – LACP Bundles, Data Deduplication, VLAN Tagging, etc…), you have to be mindful that there really shouldn’t ever be a ‘final design’ it should be a evolution of design to design, with simple points between. We’ve taken to giving our milestones a version and sub version – 3.0 is our current infrastructure. Think of the version as a point to work to

2. KISS – Keep It Simple Stupid

Every design, no matter how big, no matter how complex, can be simplified, yes really… A lot of complex designs have been created because of simply no more than age, and the never ending – ‘that’s how we used to do it’ (or line of DOOM as I call it). With age comes change, and a lot of these changes are done to simply achieve a single requirement (Accounting needed another network? Sound familiar…). Very few people look back at an infrastructure and look at where they can redesign and improve either a section of, or the entire infrastructure.

Mostly this choice is made due to the standard day to day bustle that keeps us away from what we could be doing. Remember that every small complexity you remove allows you to better manage, and support your infrastructure. KISS should be a driving force in your daily design thoughts. A good idea is to set either a quarterly, or yearly target to review your infrastructure (a good time could be shortly before your budget needs to be defined)

3. Whiteboard IT

If you can’t draw it, you shouldn’t do it. If your whiteboard is a real whiteboard, that’s great (we love them, we have entire walls that are painted with this magical paint that lets you write on it, and then wipe it off – You can get some here : Marquee Dry-Erase Paint). If it’s Microsoft Visio, or even a notepad and some writing tool, that’s great too! What ever you use, get a friend, or friends, draw it, explain it… The more you talk about it, the better you’ll understand it, and you’ll find yourself changing things each and every time… always for the better

Don’t be afraid to change it when you get a new idea, that’s what this is all about

4. Focus on ‘process’, not progress (at least for a while)

No matter how amazing, how awesome, or how fantastical your design is. You need processes (if you knew me 5 years ago, you’d be amazed, if not flabbergasted, that I’m saying this), you need a way for things to keep going. Be they processes on documentation, or processes on change management, or anything else for that matter, you need them to ensure that you’re able to do your job in the long run. By keeping everything in line, you’re able to then focus on progress, it’ll come with time, be patient

* Beware of rigid processes that cannot be changed *

A common misconception is that when you create a process, it’s a rule. A great example of this is the internet RFC’s that you see talked about often. RFC stands for ‘request for comment’, however in many cases these great processes are treated as rules. You need rules, and you need processes, they don’t have to be the same thing.

5. Proactive is the destination

You’re going to spend the majority of your time putting fires out if you don’t aim for ‘Proactive Nirvana’. Spend your time focused on changes that will make it easier to spot the future fires, the less fires you have to put out, the more time you have for doing your job – Making things better. Some of these changes may come in the form of monitoring, or simple scripts to check over things on a periodic basis. No matter how small the fix (like checking for disk space) may save you HOURS in the future.

6. Aim for small changes

You will never win, if all you have is the big picture. Don’t get me wrong, the ‘Big Picture’ is where you want to head to (or agile milestones), but the small changes get the job done, it revolves around ‘Agile Systems Design’ once more. You’ll know you’re getting closer to the big picture, when you have less small changes to make.

If you’re anything like me (or Cody for that matter), you need to see progress or you get frustrated. The easiest way to show progress is to make the small changes and keep track of what’s left to do, and what you’ve done. Another side effect of keeping the changes small is that you are able to do things in parallel in a lot of cases. If one task stalls, move to another.

7. Increase your view

You’re probably thinking that we’re talking about monitoring, or something similar, however as an IT person, it’s easy to forget that you have more to look at than just systems. You have people (yes, really) you need to service, tasks you need to have completed for those people. The more you see, the better you can do your job… Take some time out to sit with the people that want tasks or systems from you, you’ll learn more about what your design needs to include.

8. Count on things you can control

You cannot control everything. It’s very simple, you may want to force a team or group to work between certain hours, you may want to force a choice, but you can’t, it doesn’t work. You need to focus on things you can control, and things you can affect. You’d be surprised as to how the other things fit in when you stop fighting the process

9. Know your subject

Never EVER implement a first design and when you see a need, fill that need. List some problems that you need to have resolved in your infrastructure, make them broad problems, and work out how to solve the problem. Using this method you’ll learn more about your subject and come closer to being a great architect.

10. It’s OK to give up control

You may work with other teams, we definitely do, and it’s something we’ve run into a few times (if not every day actually). Giving up control, and working with another group doesn’t have to be a punishment. How much time do you spend doing something in your ‘silo’ that you could ask another group or person to do for you. That time can be better spent, and when the time comes that things fail YOU are not the only person who can help solve a problem. Hippie drum circles of IT love save the day. This is probably the hardest of the 10 to do, and probably one of the easiest too.

Let me know what you think of our principles, we’re always happy to hear from you. Have an awesome vZen day

- Patrick

Photo by quinet

The first, and likely most obvious change is the theme. I figure this one is a bit cleaner and more readable overall. I’m not sure what may have broken, but if there is anything ‘off’ drop me a line in the comments. The second, and less obvious of the two is that the backend has also had some dusting off and upgrading, that is, I’ve upgraded WordPress, so again if anything is broken, let me know.

A third bit of change is an upcoming maintenance:

The Rackspace Cloud’s system engineering team will be performing upgrades to our storage infrastructure in our Dallas – Fort Worth (DFW) data center, in order to increase capacity for our customers.  The maintenance is scheduled to last five (5) hours – beginning on July 18 at 23:00 CDT and ending on July 19 at 04:00 CDT.

If access goes weird, figure that is why. As always, any questions or comments can be dropped into the comments section or dropped on Twitter.

Mr. Siebert of vSphere-land is updating his top 20 VMware Blog list, and is looking for some help deciding what his Top 5 should be. You can see the current list on his vLaunchPad, and then vote here. From the original post:

I have a hard time picking the top blogs from the many great ones that are out there. I initially started with a top 10 and recently expanded it to the top 20 as more and more blogs have started. In this post I outline my blog selection criteria for the top 20 and it’s no easy task for me to pick them and rate them in order. Well here’s the chance for you to pick the top 5 of my top 20 blog list using this new survey form that I created. You can pick from the current top 20 which you can see on my vLaunchpad,or choose other and add one that is not on the list. The survey will be open for 2 weeks, afterwords I’ll announce the results and update my vLaunchpad accordingly.  Duncan Epping from http://yellow-bricks.com has been the reigning number #1 for a while now and is a tough one to beat. So head on over to my survey and cast your vote, each position will have a weight assigned with it and they will be added up accordingly for the final results.

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First, Meet our newest “Staff” member at ProfessionalVMware. Not sure what to call him yet, but he’s the smallest of the bunch, as you can see from the pictures.

Second, and likely just as important. ProfessionalVMware expanded recently and welcomes “ThePowerShellTalk.com” to our family of sites. ThePowerShellTalk, is the official site for the presentation & code examples that Pancil and I gave at Virtualization Congress 2009. We’ll continue to keep the site updated, and open to the community, as there is a strong need for PowerShell knowledge across all hypervisor platforms.

That’s all I have for the moment. As always, you can follow me on Twitter or drop us a note in the comments.