Professional VMware's vBrownBag End-Of-Year Community Give Away 2015 Edition is bigger than ever, sign up by Dec 16

Posted by Paul Braren on Dec 14 2015 (updated on Dec 15 2015) in

I'm delighted to share that I've gotten to know super nice and super smart community guy Jonathan Frappier over the past few years, and I even got to hang out with him in a session at last week's Boston VMUG, which included the presenters Emad Younis (who I also know) and Kyle Ruddy. They all had a bit of fun, at Jonathan's expense, go see the pic and links to their sites. We learned, we shared, we had fun. What an awesome community, where we try to help each other, and always enjoy each other's company. Hopefully, next year, TinkerTry will be able to pitch in and provide a give-away to vBrownBag. See also my vBrownBag TechTalk topic here. Nevermind hoping, providing a give-away is now my plan, my promise. So there you go Jonathan, my 2016 New Year's resolution, now in writing!

community — Can you name those guys?

Again this year, Jonathan has somehow managed to pull together quite the list of give-away items that any self-respecting virtualization enthusiast would love, it's pretty amazing. Make note of these companies that care, and give back to the community. The give-away items even include Mastering VMware vSphere 6, that book I kind of helped with, along with the every home lab's favorite VMUG Advantage that includes EVALExperience. There's even a 4 bay Synology DS414J provided by Infinio, see also my First look at Infinio Accelerator with SuperServer cluster shared Synology iSCSI datastore.

Enough with the links already, go sign-up here:

vBrownBag End-Of-Year Community Give Away 2015 Edition

professionalvmware.com/2015/12/vbrownbag-end-of-year-community-give-away-2015-edition

vbrownbaggifts

See also at TinkerTry

More good times with @jfrappier:

@jfrappier @mjbrender @stu @csharney @NE_VTUG #VTUG Jonathan Frappier, his stature in the community sure is growing! pic.twitter.com/mrVoURLPtA
— Paul Braren (@paulbraren) October 24, 2014

Necessity to sunset SuperServer Bundles

These systems still work great for many even 9+ years later, mine included, even with (unsupported) vSphere 8 and Windows 11 Version 21H2. But unless you added the optional TPM module, it may be the end of the line as far as repurposing them for running the latest Windows 11 Version 24H2 and beyond.

After 6 successful years testing then shipping well over 1,000 Xeon D Bundles, Wiredzone had to stop SuperServer bundles in mid-2021 due to cost, supply, and logistics challenges. Bare bones system sales continued for years longer.

What's next in 2025? I don't yet have my answer for my home lab, especially now that VCF certification is required to keep non-production home lab licenses going, even as a vExpert and VMUG Advantage EVALExperience customer.

As for a SuperServer follow-on, the Xeon D-1700/2700 (Ice Lake D) was a minor refresh for 2023, with Xeon D-1800/2800 (Granite Rapids D) refresh slightly better in 2024, and hopefully Xeon 6 (Granite Rapids-D) much better in 2025 featuring PCIe Gen5, MCRDIMMs, and 100GbE networking, wow! Feb. 27 2025 update update looks promising, but pricey. Infortunately, it's become clear to me that Supermicro is less focuses on the mini-tower form factor these days.

As for the CPU industry, it's unfortunate that Pat Gelsinger was apparently ousted from Intel's helm in these challenging times, but I'm also grateful to have had the honor of working at VMware when he was the CIO there. I'll leave it at that, given the whole Broadcom thing.