Ben Thomas and I launched the vOpenData project exactly 1 week ago and we really had no idea what to expect. We were completely blown away with the amount of interest and support from the awesome VMware community! In one weeks time we had contributions from over 30+ countries from around the world and we are approaching 70,000 virtual machines! Below is a quick screenshot on some of the impressive statistics. This has been a huge community effort and we wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who has contributed and thanks to all the bloggers who have written awesome articles to help us get the word out! Let's continue the momentum!
There have been a few requests for showing the top 5 hardware vendors instead of the top 3. To be honest, this was done to have a symmetrical looking dashboard and all the tiles just fitted when we designed it. We will see if we can adjust a few things to accommodate for this, but I do want to note that Ben is currently on travel for work and modifications to the site may take some time. This also includes the Contributors dashboard which we are hoping to have a prototype in the coming weeks, so please be patient as we work on that.
We have also received many questions and comments about requesting to see certain statistics, ability to filter, what information is collected, etc. and I wanted to put together a quick FAQ to help answer some of these questions for existing vOpenData users as well as new and potential prospects. If there are other things we can help clarify, feel free to leave a comment.
vOpenData FAQs
What is vOpenData?
Please take a look at these two blog articles for more details about vOpenData:
What information are you collecting?
You can find the complete list of anonymized data we are collecting in the Data FAQ page here. You can also view the raw contents of the zip file after executing the script. They are just plain CSV files and we highly encourage ever user to take a look before submitting.
What is a vOpenData Infrastructure?
This is just a logical container/view for your data. Once the Contributor's dashboard is available, you will be able to view and filter by various properties within a given vOpenData Infrastructure. This also means that you can either map a single vCenter Server upload to single vOpenData Infrastructure or you can have multiple vCenter Server uploads to a single vOpenData Infrastructure. If you wish to have fine grain filters, it is recommended that you have one vOpenData Infrastructure for each of your vCenter Server.
I still do not see my data reflected in the public dashboard?
It can take some time for both the processing and display of the data after upload. Please be patient and it can take up to an hour depending on the number of users and submissions.
What happens if my vCenter Server environment changes?
As your environment changes, you can periodically run the script and upload your data. If an existing object exists and it has changed, then we will update the record or add a new record if it is new. If there are no changes, then no updates are made.
What browsers are supported for the vOpenData Dashboard?
We are using Dashing for the dashboard application for vOpenData. From their site, it looks like it has only been tested on Chrome, Safari 6+ and Firefox 15+. We have also heard from a few folks that both IE9/10 does not work with the dashboard, so please use one of the supported browsers.
Is vOpenData supported on mobile browsers?
Yes, it should work on all mobile devices including the iPad, iPhone, Nexus, etc.
Can you display statistic X?
The public dashboard is just a tiny percentage of the information we have collected so far. We will provide more statistics as well as methods of filtering when the Contributor's dashboard is released. By looking at the data we currently collect in the Data FAQ page here, you can kind of guess on the types of statistics we will be able to provide.
Difference between vOpenData Public and Contributors Dashboard?
The public dashboard is just an aggregate of all the datasets submitted by the community and it only contains a very tiny percentage of the information we have collected. It is available to everyone and you do not need to sign up to view it. For those who have contributed, there will be a Contributor's dashboard that will be available when it is released and will contain all the statistics we collect. You will also be able to apply various filters on the total aggregated community data as well as your own vOpenData Infrastructures. As you can see, there is a huge benefit to those that submit their data and once the Contributors dashboard is released, you will be able to view all the data in totally new manner.
Can I see specific type of Infrastructure (e.g. server vs VDI)?
This will be available when the Contributor's dashboard is released.
Is the data submitted mainly lab environments?
Actually, more than 75%+ of the contributed data in the vOpenData database are non-lab environments. This includes Server, VDI, Cloud and Combination environment types. Hopefully we can continue to increase this number even more as we have more contributions from the community.
Why is Windows 2012 not part of the top 10 Operating System or why is Cisco UCS not listed in the top 3 Hardware Vendors/etc?
I was pretty surprised to see these type of questions. The results are all from all the data that has been submitted by the community. If folks feel that this is not correct, then I highly encourage you submit your infrastructures or talk to your customers/clients to submit their infrastructure and let the data speak for itself.
Thanks for the comment!