Just a quick post to wish all my TechHead readers a “HAPPY NEW YEAR!”  Well, it’s been a mixed year for me this year and for no doubt many of you with the state of the global economy featuring largely.  My partner was unexpectedly laid off towards the start of the year and although being a shock and negative thing at the time it has actually ended up working out for the better as she is now running her own business and is much happier than before.  This year will also offer some exciting challenges for me this year as I look at starting my own virtualization consultancy here in London.  I look forward to the challenges this will no doubt offer and enthused at the prospect of having more time to focus solely on virtualization and its associated areas.

I have continued to really enjoy writing blog posts, corresponding with and assisting where possible my TechHead readers.  The amount of daily visits to the site has tripled in the last 12 months which has been excellent and has made me more motivated than ever to continue writing articles which isn’t particularly hard since I love computer based technologies.  I usually find that there just isn’t enough spare hours in the evenings and weekends to cover and write about topics on my ever increasing ‘interesting things to write about’ list so if anyone does discover how to achieve/buy a 30 hour day please let me know. 

Above:  You know you’ve had a busy year when your man-cave/home office is in a state such as this and you can barely climb into the room – time for a New Year tidy!

The past year (2009) has been exceptional for meeting TechHead readers, fellow techs and virtualization bloggers.  There’s nothing I enjoy more than meeting and talking with other like-minded individuals with a passion for IT technology though this did come at the price of consuming two and half weeks of my annual leave and holiday money to travel to the various events such as VMworld in San Francisco – though it was all well worth it.  I intend to do the same in 2010 so hope to meet more of you during the year.

At the start of 2009 I was fortunate enough to be nominated and become a VMware vExpert for my contribution to the virtualization community – a title that I have enjoyed and appreciated having.  Thanks to John Troyer for doing such a good job in running the vExpert programme.  This is a year long title which is due to expire soon – I will have to see if VMware consider me worthy for another year.  Fingers crossed.

This year is going to be massive for virtualization in my opinion.  Businesses of all sizes have held off refreshing hardware and starting new IT based projects waiting for the dust from the worldwide recession to settle (hopefully it has) before opening up the cheque book again.  These businesses can only hold off from investing and updating their IT infrastructure for so long before running the risk of competitors, who have invested in IT gaining advantages in the areas which IT can bring to the running of a business.  Obviously the extent of this competitive advantage is somewhat determined by the sector in which a business operates and its reliance on IT to function and/or offer services.  Since virtualization is now an established and widely accepted enabler for the cost reduction and increased efficiency of running IT systems I can’t see any reason why companies won’t start or continue to embrace this great technology.

A new thing for TechHead this year has been the start of offering advertising in the form of 125×125 pixel adverts down the right hand side of the screen.  The money I receive from this advertising assists in covering my monthly web hosting costs for the site where I am currently shifting 136GB of traffic of per month and growing. A massive thanks for my sponsors as this extra cash certainly does help in relieving the financial burden in running TechHead (in alphabetical order):

 Some of my more popular postings have been around running a VMware home or work lab on affordable hardware with emphasis on the HP Proliant ML110/ML115 range of servers.  My reason for selecting these great little servers is their price, form factor, specification and increased compatibility with VMware ESX – albeit the servers not actually being on VMware’s hardware compatibility list.   The days of picking up a brand new ML110 or ML115 G5 for £90 are well and truly gone though with the ML115 G5 quad core still being available for £240 (approx) it still offers good bang-for-buck.  The new HP Proliant ML110 G6 is currently sitting at the £400 (approx) price tag which is ok though it is now a relatively small jump up to a 300 series Proliant and is comparable in price to entry level servers of a similar specification from other server vendors.  The HP stock levels of available ML115 G5 quad cores is currently low which points to the likelihood of a G6 model being released in the not so distant future.  At a guess I would say that a new ML115 G6 server will come in at a price close to that of the new ML110 G6 model so if you are considering buying one of the ML115 G5’s for your home or work now may be a good time to get in and order one whilst they are still available and at this lower price.

I have continued to recommend ServersPlus to UK and European based readers for their server requirements as they still, in my opinion, offer some of the most competitive prices and best after sales service I have come across.  The free delivery arrangement I have managed to put together for TechHead readers has hopefully enabled some of you to save some extra money.  Just to clarify again I in no way receive any financial benefit in recommending ServersPlus or from servers sales – I’m just happy to have a good company I can recommend to others as it can be quite a minefield dealing with web-based suppliers sometimes. 

I just want to make a special mention and thanks to James Pearce who has been a guest contributor to the TechHead site this past year and has produced some really interesting articles.  Hopefully we will continue to see more posts from James this coming year.  If any of you fancy writing a post for the site please feel free to drop me a line.

As always I really appreciate any feedback on the site that you may have – anything from suggestions for improvement through to forwarding ideas on the types or topics of posts you’d like to see.

Thanks for reading TechHead and Happy New Year to you and your family.

All the best for 2010!

Simon