VMware fixes 'split brain' caused by 'stubbed toe' of botched NSX update VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger has characterised the decision to pull a version of NSX as “a stubbed toe” while defending VMware's engineering culture. VMware releases updates to many of its products about once every four months, mixing bug fixes and small feature upgrades. NSX 6.2.3 was just such a release but it quickly proved to …
VMware are the reason people are going to the cloud. They're crazy if they think we'll drag their sorry asses with us. Amazon and Microsoft don't have a perfect record in AWS and Azure but it's a hell of a lot better than VMware and their dodgy patches that kill customer data centres.
At least when Amazon kill a tiny part of AWS I'm not the schmuck losing a weekend and sleep to get everything back without overtime!
I've been a vmware customer for almost 17 years now (1999), never had a vmware patch or product kill my data centers, only have had a handful of PSODs (hardware failures) in the past 10 years of vSphere usage.
Though I have stayed away from the fancier datacenter automation toolsets(like NSX), as I don't need them.
I run only about 1000 VMs though.
but the adoption of agile much more a of a red flag. break early, break often is bad for something you want to be very stable.
But at least they've said they are on 4 month release cycles, so customers who care more about stability can stay 2-3 releases behind the curve for more stability.
Nate, you seem to be misunderstanding Agile there. Break early, break often is there to improve stability by stressing things to show the cracks. Agile and DevOps also include "test thoroughly" which is often missed - unit testing catches many issues before release. Stability by obscurity (i.e. not looking for broken things) is akin to security by obscurity - it simply doesn't work.
The old adage of being a few versions behind has been demonstrated as ineffective over and over again. Certainly no sane admin will roll into production third party software on release day other than security patches, but whether you install today or in 3 months time the bugs will still be there. The bugs are what get fixed in the next version so the only way to get around them is to install that newer version. Waiting until there's a release you're comfortable with is the reason there is still so much NT4, 2000 and 2003 running in the industry!
Real stability is gained from good practices. VMware seem to fail often here, but others such as Amazon (AWS) show that you can move fast while remaining stable and trustworthy. Through the use of careful roll outs of new software and features they are able to constantly change and update while not affecting the platform.
I wouldn't consider a 4 month release cycle as particularly agile (or Agile, for that matter). It missed the entire point of smaller releases and shorter feedback loops. 2 weeks is considered the norm, while those who have perfected the practice release multiple times a day (sometimes thousands of times a day).
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