Today I received an email with something that I found very moving - and I was also able to project onto the subject of virtualization. Here is the original text (slightly altered).

The Scope of Gratitude

Someone I know described a self-improvement group in which he participated. In order to improve their sense of gratitude, everyone in the group was to select one thing that they do frequently - and then think for 10 minutes about its ramifications.

My friend drank one cup of coffee every morning, and he chose this cup of coffee as his subject. He felt it would be easier to work on the assignment if he wrote his thoughts on paper. To his surprise, the 10 minutes quickly turned into 35. He wrote about how the coffee beans grew in Brazil. Someone planted the trees and took care of them until the coffee reached maturity. Then workers picked the beans from the trees. The beans were roasted and ground, and packed for shipping. He described all the work involved in the shipping industry which allowed the coffee to reach the United States. This alone required hundreds of people. Finally, the coffee arrived at the port in Haifa from where it was taken to his grocery story in Jerusalem.

He wrote about the gas range that boiled the water, and the match he used. (And how much easier it is to use a match rather than have to rub two sticks together!) He wrote about how the gas reached his home and what was necessary to build his stove. He wrote about the water kettle that whistled to let him know that the water had boiled. The milk he added required the work of many people from the time it left the cow until it reached his coffee cup.

At the end of 35 minutes, he saw he had not even begun to write about the actual cup, saucer, or teaspoon nor the table he placed it on, or the chair he sat on!!

Through this exercise, he became aware of so many things he'd been taking for granted.

Would you like to have a similar experience? Try it today: Pick something that you enjoy doing, and write as much as you can about what there is to appreciate.

So how is this connected to virtualization?

Someone requests a virtual machine, and with todays technology - this can be deployed within a matter hours if not minutes. But do people actually think about what actually goes into this magical ability of being able to receive the reply to their request?

• The ability to actually request something without even to have to speak with someone - perhaps on the other side of the globe.
• That the process can be almost instantaneous - some years ago in order to communicate you needed to send a letter by sea which took months.
• We can with the click of a button deploy a server, install all the software and configure the application and settings. This used to be a tedious task not less than 4 years ago.
• The underlying platform provides the storage, the network, the resilience without you even to have to worry about "all that jazz".
• The vendors who have provided the software and the technology - that allows us to provide this service.
• Someone spent a large number of hours designing the environment on which this all magically works
• Many people actually spend countless hours maintaining this environment - to keep it functional and working properly.

I could go on and on for a lot longer than 35 minutes.

We have a whole lot of things to be thankful for. Every now and again it is good to look back and reflect on what things used to be like, how they are now and how far we have come.

That makes you appreciate it all even more.

Man I love virtualization!!