This idea comes from one of the awesome engineers I work with, Chris Tester. We’ve recently updated our laptops to Windows 8.1 and Microsoft in their infinite wisdom have removed the old Windows Experience Index page. Not that WEI was anything fantastic but it did give a nice easy way to compare computers without having to go through installing a third-party testing package. I can only speculate that they thought it would be a bad idea to show this on tablets? Or did the OEMs not like it?

• Cisco have announced their Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) initiative. Over at the Cisco Data Center and Cloud blog they have a post that details where it fits into their overall strategy.

• Still at the Data Center and Cloud blog there is another post that details some of the partners that Cisco have lined up for ACI. I’m guessing these are all companies that don’t compete with Cisco directly (e.g. now that ACE is dead f5 are free to partner).

• Hard to believe it but yes, people are still using Windows XP (it is pretty popular in industrial applications). The SANS ISC has a good post on why you should move away and some metrics on the Swiss cheese security of the OS.

• Sometimes I think Brian Madden lives in the cloud but his post on the use of storage quotas in modern enterprises really got me thinking about how end user perceptions of IT services really have changed. Forward looking IT services should provide not only the documented requirements but to the user perception of how IT should work, to me anyway.

• Anthony Burke over at Cisco Inferno has a good blog post on what he believes the current state of play is with NSX. After reading it I have to agree. I believe that to reach any kind of scale we need tech like NSX. Overlays are here to stay.
• Scott Lowe has a great blog series on NSX (was NVP when it was Nicira) that I believe is a must read. Don’t worry about skipping ahead to part 7, it has links back to the previous articles.
• I have to admit that when NSX was talked about at VMworld the marketing message put me offside, the belief that decades of evolving network “art” should be thrown out the window because a single company said so looked pretty delusional. Thankfully the strength of the product and some blog posts by credible networking professionals allowed me to see through the marketing fog to see the “next generation” product that NSX really is. With that in mind Paul Fries talks about the alienation of networking that I believe is purely a function of poor marketing. I would like to differ on one point however, the networking industry has been in a constant state of change for a long time, it just doesn’t come in a 2.0 release nor for the whole industry at once.
• I can’t really add anything to this one. James over at Digerati has a must read post on NSX, SDN and SDDC.
• If you are up for a bit of listening that I would highly recommend the Packet Pushers NSX sponsored podcast. They have Scott Lowe and Brad Hedlund on so you know it is going to be great. There is even a companion PDF!

When PowerShell 3.0 was released one of the little “surprises” was that the help included in the download was a short stub. If you wanted the full help available in your PowerShell session then you need to use the cmdlet Update-Help. While i’ve now gotten over the shock (I’ve adapted to just using Google) it is still important to find out what is changing in the documentation.

With that in mind I suggest you pop on down to Richard Siddaway’s blog and use the link provided to put into your RSS reader of choice. It never hurts to keep an eye on what they are up to over at MSHQ.