latoga labs » Tech Industry http://www.latogalabs.com Virtualization, Cloud Computing, Technology of Business & Business of Technology Fri, 09 Sep 2011 15:15:10 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Virtualization Round Up 20100608 http://www.latogalabs.com/2010/06/virtualization-20100608/ http://www.latogalabs.com/2010/06/virtualization-20100608/#comments Tue, 08 Jun 2010 20:58:51 +0000 latoga http://www.latogalabs.com/?p=1062

I know it’s been a long drought of round ups out here on the range…which means I have a rather larger backlog of items to share, some of these might be items you came across earlier but I thought were worth repeating.

With all the projects and activities I have going on (and unfortunately for the blog, too many VMware related ones being the kind I can’t talk about…yet), I’ve found it more difficult to post these Virtualization Round Up’s on a regular basis.  I anticipate it will only get more difficult moving forward, especially with the arrival of Baby Mini-G in about 3 months.

So, this will be the last regular round up for the foreseeable future (I may sneak one in now and again when big things happen).

To get more regular pointers to virtualization items of interest, follow me on Twitter as I will be switching to posting these types of links there during working hours with the hashtag “VRU”.  Note: I am crossing the streams in my twitter feed…

VMware Specific Links

General Virtualization & Cloud Links

  • Massimo Re Ferre’ recently talked about the Public Cloud adoption curve and how history repeats.
  • It may come as not surprise that EMC’s IT team is working toward 100% virtualization (VMware’s IT team is at about 98%  ;-) ).  But did you know that EMC’s IT team is blogging about their Journey to the Private Cloud?
  • Vittorio Viarengo has some More Best Practices for running IT Production virtualized.
]]> http://www.latogalabs.com/2010/06/virtualization-20100608/feed/ 0 iPad For Consumers http://www.latogalabs.com/2010/05/ipad-consumers/ http://www.latogalabs.com/2010/05/ipad-consumers/#comments Mon, 03 May 2010 16:02:20 +0000 latoga http://www.latogalabs.com/?p=1036

Lounging on the Couch with iPad and Dog

Lounging on the Couch with iPad and Dog

Part 3 of my iPad (32GB, WIFI, iPhone OS 3.2) review:

(9/29 Update: Parental preparation and then adaptation has kept me from finishing this series on the iPad.  Once home life stabilizes in a few months I may try to wrap it up in some fashion…)

It is no secrete that Apple produces products for consumers (Steve Job indirectly admits this in the first paragraph of his Thoughts on Flash letter).  And the iPad is a wonderful consumer based computing platform.

Notice I didn’t say computer but rather computing platform.  It’s different enough from your current desktop/laptop that you can’t really compare the two (though we try because this is our current point of reference).   For the consumer, the person who primarily needs or wants to consume information/entertainment, the iPad is a great platform in which to do it.

It fits in your hands, you use your hands to interact with it, and applications are only starting to take advantage of the user interface.  It truly makes the information on the Internet more personable to you.  Each week there are more iPad specific information consumption applications that become available.  Whether your reading email or a book, browsing the web or the current news, watching a movie or a streamed TV show the iPad makes consuming content more enjoyable.

The iPad is an application platform, which means that the best way to consume content on it is through applications that take advantage of it’s unique capabilities.  Luckily, for content providers, these applications essentially pull data from their existing websites and just display it in a new, more personal, context of the iPad application.  So all a company like ABC, BBC, NPR, or the Wall Street Journal needs to do is build an App that talks to their existing websites.

This is why the issue of Flash not running within the iPad’s web browser becomes a less important topic.  Viewing content through the existing web sites of these content providers gives the consumer a less than optimal viewing experience on the iPad.  Most websites aren’t designed to truly take advantage of the iPad’s unique interface.  Over time they may eventually be able to take advantage of the interface, but not yet.  While supporting flash would give the iPad users more content options, Apple would rather have those content providers build an App for their content.  That’s the trick of any new platform, they only become successful if the platform provider can convince, or force through fear of lost potential market of consumers, others to build on top of it.

The fact that the interface is intuitive and hands on makes a more ideal platform for new or hesitant computer users…like elderly parents.  The self-contained nature of the iPad means less plugs and wires to go wrong and confuse a less savvy user.  I’ve heard of many iPad users who let their parents use it and had a hard time getting it back.  I honestly think that my mother, who currently doesn’t use the computer at all, would actually use the iPad (next time I’m home for a visit we’ll find out…).

The only downside to the iPad for consumers is that need for a another computer to activate and backup the device.  This should really be an optional step for syncing media to the device only.  If this was the case, I think there would be more people possibly using the iPad as their only computer…like my Parents.

A case for the iPad is a must.  After using my iPad for 3 weeks without a case, I finally got my back ordered Apple iPad Case and it makes a huge difference.  The ability to stand the iPad upright to watch a video or to prop it more upright in your lap is a must.  The non-slip surface also helps keep the iPad in the right spot on our lap for the most comfortable use, not to mention protects the iPad.  I recently also came across the Moleskine inspired DodoCase which I found really appealing.  The hand made DodoCase is made like a book and contains all natural materials to encase the iPad in a cover that looks more like a journal than. It was either my penchant for Moleskine journals or the thought of wrapping my high tech iPad in all natural materials that made me order one.  Check back in 4-6 weeks for a review.

]]> http://www.latogalabs.com/2010/05/ipad-consumers/feed/ 2 iPad Review Areas for Improvement http://www.latogalabs.com/2010/05/ipad-review-areas-improvement/ http://www.latogalabs.com/2010/05/ipad-review-areas-improvement/#comments Sun, 02 May 2010 01:39:22 +0000 latoga http://www.latogalabs.com/?p=1021

Part 2 of my iPad (32GB, WIFI, iPhone OS 3.2) Review:

So while working on the iPad, there are a number of small gotchas and issues that I found and have documented here.  The hope is that these items may help other iPad users/prospective customers as well as (ideally) be found by Apple and corrected in the future…thought I’m not holding my breath on the latter.  I may add to this list over the next few weeks as I continue to find additional stragglers; I’ll add a date to the items I add after the original post.

(May 7th, 2010 Update:  I added to my list based upon my time using the iPad at a 3 day technical conference…)

Issues & Areas for Improvement

  • Mail Doesn’t Cache: If you are not online there is no way to do things like delete or move email since the mail app doesn’t cache changes locally, tries to connect to server to do change in real time. (exchange/does cache for imap, though it complains about not finding server later).
  • Mail Has No Setting to Auto Download Attachments: this would be nice to have especially when you are using the iPad offline while traveling.  We can only hope that there will be a setting for this in OS4 to do this in the background.
  • No Airplane Mode: Unlike the iPhone, there is no simple switch for an airplane mode to disable the wireless. This mode should start to force caching and cancel all network related warning messages.  Blame here can also fall on the applications as well, they shouldn’t always assume a network connection and throw error messages when you launch the app.  Lack of this mode is even more confusing considering the 3G version of iPad.
  • No System Usage Data:  was planning on monitoring a full battery drain by resetting the usage stats, but realized that there weren’t any.  Not critical but it would have been nice to have (especially for the 3G version). I hope to see this get added in any updates for the 3G version.
  • Notes App: not sure why, but I always had a problen activating the keyboard when I would jump into notes and the keyboard was hidden.  Touching the note to edit it didn’t always seem to bring up the keyboard…
  • Pop Up Menus: This is a very nice usability enhancement to the OS.  There are many more places where it needs to be used for easier access to applications and there are times when data entry pop ups become unusable when the keyboard is visible and you are filtering a list (try clicking on an address or phone number in an email and then try adding it to an existing contact that you need to look up…)
  • Numeric Lock Code Keypad Need to Randomize: unlike an iPhone’s small screen, the large screen on the iPad can make it easy for someone to see your lock code if it’s only numeric (the iPad pops up a numeric keypad automatically when you set a numeric lock code).  Making the keys change their layout randomly would be a nice added security measure to prevent someone from seeing your number pattern.  NOTE:  I recommend everyone to set a lock code on their iPads for security; my employer requires this and once configured exchange to connect to their email system I was forced to set a code.
  • No Way to Sync clock on iPad with Internet Time Sources: I quickly noticed that my iPad and my Mac/iPhone clocks were off when alerts from iPad would go off just a minute or two later than my other devices.  Sadly, no way to automatically set the clock using an internet based time source.
  • Email Still Doesn’t Support Meeting Invite Standards: This is 2010 already!  Anyone who has spent a few days working for a company who uses Exchange and deals with conference calls knows that the location field often contains a phone number or web meeting address (except apparently Apple Engineers).  Yet the iPad OS still doesn’t automatically turn those fields into clickable links. This has been infuriating on the iPhone and sadly the iPad doesn’t do any better.  This is another item that I hope gets changed in the OS4.
  • Calendar Invites Don’t Cancel Meetings Correctly:  Another modern day business use case that is glaringly not handled.  When you get an meeting cancellation (and you click “cancel”) the iPad’s calendar doesn’t actually delete the meeting. This can be very confusing for busy people who depend on their electronic calendar to run their lives (or allow others to schedule meetings in their lives).
  • Email Synchronization issues to IMAP Accounts: I still have problems (just like with the iPhone) of IMAP email accounts syncronizing correctly.  I’ll read eamil on the iPad/iPhone and delete messages, etc.  When I go back to my main computer and check that IMAP account, the messages are still there (even when they are gone from the iPad/iPhone).
  • Alert Pop-up Messages are Disruptive: It would be nice to have a less disruptive alert message when you get a calendar invite or have a meeting alert go off.  The dialog in the middle of the screen is frustrating when you are engage in some other application (like watching a movie!).  It would be much nicer if there was an option to have a small message in the title bar or a self canceling alert in a corner.
  • Web Sites Incorrectly send you to Mobile Version of their Site: I’m not sure if the iPad’s web browser can be differentiated by websites from the iPhone browser (I assume yes), but a number of sites default to their less functional mobile version of their site when I connect.  This is frustrating now that I have a larger screen to view the site.  Once of the biggest annoyances I found was with Google Reader and not being able to do certain things thru the mobile version of their site that I can do on the full version (like manage RSS subscriptions); even though I prefer using Google Reader using the mobile version on the iPad.
  • There is No Front Facing Camera: While this is an obvious item, I feel this is so important that it’s worth mentioning.  For as revolutionary as the iPad is, it would have been even more so if it had a front facing camera to do video chat/video conferencing.  I honestly don’t see the value in a rear facing camera as the iPad is too big to be used as camera.  I find it hard to believe that the processor in the iPad couldn’t handle video capture (it does a great job with video playback).  I think it was a combination of legal agreements with the cellular companies and a product marketing strategy on Apple’s part.  I’m sure the AT&T can’t handle the iPhone data explosion still 3 years after it’s launch, and the added bandwidth consumption of video must scare them (as I think ahead to June release of new iPhone…).  But if there was a video camera, then how would Apple sell the next generation of iPads?  By putting the video camera in the next generation of iPads (based upon iPhone product releases, expected in 1 year), they have a second wave of customers who will swoop back in for more iPads.
  • iPhone OS Really Needs a Centralized File System (at least on iPad): Currently all data and “files” can be stored at application level which makes sharing of files between apps and between iPad and other devices harder than it should be.  A OS based file system, ideally one that could be synchronized to the cloud (via mobileMe perhaps?) is such an obvious omission. (20100505)
  • Quick Access to Key Settings:  there are a number of key settings on the iPad which you should have easier access to via the app (home) view.  The ability to activate airplane mode (oh, wait…), wifi network, VPN should be a quick finger motion away from where ever you are in the iPad. (20100505)
  • Apps Have to Get Smarter at Network Syncing: Apps shouldn’t always expect a network, allow me to work without one and sync upon request or when the network is detected (or ideally in the background with the next version of the OS).  A great example of this is Evernote which tries to sync with the online service every time you open the app.  Which makes it unusable if you are offline and trying to use Evernote to do something like….take notes. (20100505)
  • Adding Contact from Email Should be More Automatic: Why can’t the email packages pull out contact info from the email signatures?  We have been dealing with this long enough that this should be a standard feature by now.  For the iPad at least allow me to move the bubble-like contact add window so I can see the email message that the bubble window is floating in front of.  Currently it is a very cumbersome process that is not very user friendly. (20100505)
]]> http://www.latogalabs.com/2010/05/ipad-review-areas-improvement/feed/ 7 iPad Review After 2 Weeks of Use http://www.latogalabs.com/2010/04/ipad-review-2-weeks/ http://www.latogalabs.com/2010/04/ipad-review-2-weeks/#comments Wed, 28 Apr 2010 07:01:01 +0000 latoga http://www.latogalabs.com/?p=1016

Apple iPad

The iPad is primarily about media consumption, not creation. The potential is there for more, but it’s up to the apps and OS to still realize it. After 2 week of usage while at home, on the road, and at the office, this is the most succinct summary i have been able to come up with.

A little over 2 weeks ago I picked up a 32 GB iPad (WIFI only) after about 10 minutes of of hands on usage at one of my local Apple store. This was after a week of internal contemplation on why I would need one–most of this contemplate was triggered by an understanding of how much time I spend looking at computer screens daily and the recent San Francisco Magazine article Tech Gets a Time Out.  I also waited to give the typical Apple new product hysteria time to pass, but I’ll be honest that after a few minutes of use I knew I needed to purchase one though I couldn’t really explain why.  I have spent many an evening using the iPad at home, at the office, and on a week long trip.  What better way to learn the strengths and weaknesses of a new device than to use if as a replacement for your current device.

The iPad is not a replacement your current laptop. Especially if you consider yourself a power user.

I typically spend anywhere from 25-40 hours a week actively working on the computer (the cost of being a knowledge worker). This includes jumping between up to 15 different applications during a day.  Downloading files, creating files, saving files, sending files.  Huge amounts of typing.  The iPad alone (minus external keyboard) just couldn’t cut it as my only device.  I couldn’t go one entire day without needing to break out the laptop.  Especially when I needed to work on a file or when my hotel didn’t have WIFI available in my room…though the attention I got in the hotel lobby bar was more than usual.  :-)

[For the record, I did type at least half of all these reviews on the iPad. Eventually realizing that the WordPress App for the iPad didn't support cut/paste!  So the second half and final editing was done old school...on a physical keyboard.]

While the user interface of the iPad is revolutionary, I believe that is still suffers from a few core issues that currently limit it’s potential as well as suffering from the typical 1.0 product issues.  Over the past weeks I have been collecting my thoughts about the iPad and will summarize them in this multipart review (each part will be posted a day or two after the previous):

Now don’t get me wrong, if you’re not a power user the iPad may be a great secondary computer.  You just need to have another computer in the house to activate the iPad via iTunes.  And to back up the iPad.  Oh, and then there is the fact that the iPad only supports a single user…so it’s kind of hard to share between family members.  But, for someone who only needs to check a single email account and possible visit web pages (like my Parents), the iPad may be an ideal solution.  No more remote troubleshooting of wires and plugs with my Father after the grandkids visit and my Mother might even actually use it on her own.  (This was my backup plan when purchasing the iPad…until my wife confiscated it for 3 hours one night…)

It does take some time to get use to typing on the iPad, especially if you are a touch typist like myself.  I find myself constantly looking at the keyboard instead of the text that I’m typing.  If I look at the text, the lack of tactile feedback causes my fingers to drift causing mis-spellings that auto correction can’t even guess at or, even worse, I accidentally touch the text area causing the cursor to jump.  A colleague of mine indicated that some studies show that the fastest typers are on the iPhone/iPad keyboard once they get use to it.  If this is so it can only be at the cost of people completely giving up on typing what they wanted by letting the OS auto correct their mistakes to what it thinks they meant.  Not sure if I’m comfortable with that trend…

Ideally, if there was a OS level text to speach capability that applications could tap into, this would truly make me change my tune here.  While you can add a keyboard to the iPad, that’s just seems like a legacy boat anchor on this cutting edge device.  The ability to quickly enter data into the iPad with voice is something that I think we need to keep an eye out for in the future.

It is much more comfortable to use the iPad than a laptop, especially for doing stuff like reading email (not necessarily responding to email) and surfing the web.  You are truly holding the content in your hands and can sit more comfortably than with a laptop.  Typing on it is a bit more tricky, as I found it not really usable to put my feet up on the coffee table with the iPad in my lap for typing.  I needed the iPad higher up on my lap to type comfortably and it kept sliding down.  Similar issue when trying to type on the airplane, I found myself with the tray table down and me hovering over the iPad while typing. Though both of these will be different for each use based upon their build.  If you are watching something on the iPad, you will eventually want to rest it on something to give you hands, arms and/or neck a break.  This is where a easel style iPad case is a must have.   The best one appears to be the one from Apple, except that they seem to have under estimated the popularity of their case as they are sold out at all the Apple Stores I visited and back ordered on the online store.  Alas, I wait and suffer until mine arrives.

I did hear a unconfirmed rumor of a better case coming out in the near future, just not sure if that’s an upgrade of the Apple Case or a new 3rd Party one.

The iPad is a great platform for consuming media. Whether that is surfing your favorite (non-flash) websites; watching a streaming Netflix movie, one you have stored locally, or a TV show from ABC; reading your favorite news site, newspaper, or book, you can do it all beautifully from this one device.  Oh, and rumor has it there are some nice games for the iPad as well…

Again, the comfort factor for the iPad comes through here.  You have your own personal high quality screen.  A great headset and your good to go. I find myself walking around the house with the iPad getting caught up on news and blog reading.  And I have watched more Netflix steaming movies recently than I have the physical discs they send me.  The real risk here is how much time you end up spending staring at a screen.  Just like Crackberry and iPhone addiction, iPad addiction is sure to be on the rise.

It would be nice if multiple user support was added to the iPad in the future.  It would be good to be able to log into my own iPad view of apps, bookmarks, and email accounts separate from those of my wife’s.  Even at a lower price point, I don’t see buying a second iPad anytime before a new hardware version (with a front mounted camera) comes out.

Unfortunately, I have experienced the WIFI signal problem.  I get severe WIFI signal degradation on the iPad where I don’t with my Laptop.  After moving the home office out of the future nursery I installed an Apple Airport Express on the other end of the house to boost the WIFI signal and iTunes enable a stereo.  Amazingly, the iPad doesn’t seem to be able to pick up the signal or get handed off to the stronger signal of the Airport Express, even when I’m standing right next to it or connecting anew to the network in front of it.  This has been annoying at most and something I hope will go away when I upgrade my primary WIFI router to a newer model that fully supports 802.11N.

Net Net:  If you’re a consumer needing a new computer for just web access and email, the iPad should be seriously considered.  If you’re a business user and want the iPad for something more than attracting attention for the next few months at the hotel bar, think about what you really need your computer to do. Add a docking station/keyboard if you need to do any heavy typing.  Make sure you invest in an iPad case that can be used to prop the iPad up at different angles as this will make using the iPad much easier.  Just don’t expect the iPad to replace your primary computer just yet.  At least not until iTunes free iPad activation and cloud based backup of the iPad data becomes a reality.

]]> http://www.latogalabs.com/2010/04/ipad-review-2-weeks/feed/ 7 Virtualization Round Up 20100307 http://www.latogalabs.com/2010/03/virtualization-20100307/ http://www.latogalabs.com/2010/03/virtualization-20100307/#comments Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:26:21 +0000 latoga http://www.latogalabs.com/?p=971

I know that it has been rather quite here at the Labs for the past few months.  Not only has 2010 started off with a bang of activity, but I have also been preparing for my new long term project (details at my photography blog).  So lots of exciting stuff for 2010, just need more hours in the day.  Below is an abbreviated list of virtualization links that have come out over the past 2 months that caught my attention:

VMware Specific Links

General Virtualization & Cloud Links

  • Gartner had a number of recent posts that talk about Windows kernel-level vulnerability, which also affect Hyper-V and shed light on the value of a dedicate hypervisor versus one that is extended from the Operating System.
  • Steve Kaplan has a few months old but pertinent comparison of Cisco UCS vs. HP Matrix: strategic vs. tactical approach to virtualization. Both an interesting analysis/comparison of virtualization computing platforms as well as a between the lines look at the future of our enterprise computing market.  Make sure to browse thru the comments as well.
]]> http://www.latogalabs.com/2010/03/virtualization-20100307/feed/ 0 Today Apple Leverages Social Marketing http://www.latogalabs.com/2010/01/apple-announcemen-social-marketing/ http://www.latogalabs.com/2010/01/apple-announcemen-social-marketing/#comments Wed, 27 Jan 2010 16:59:01 +0000 latoga http://www.latogalabs.com/?p=952

Today’s the big day, the big Apple announcement. Personally, I have been trying to avoid the rumor mills and gossip blogs over the past few weeks in order to focus on personal revenue generating activity (just in case I may want to purchase something from Apple in the near future). But this morning something on the radio news caught my attention, Apple will not be live broadcasting the event on the web. At first I thought this was strange, live broadcasts are the best way to engage clients online. But then my pre-coffee mind caught up, why waste all the money of live broadcasting it online? There is an entire battalion of Apple fans who will live blog/live tweet the event and make comments on today’s announcement for weeks.

This is the magic of both the Apple marketing machine and of social media in action…pay attention.

One other comment about today’s announcement, I hear so much media talk about today’s announcement to be a direct competitor to e-book readers. Without knowing if today’s announcement is a slate/tablet computer, one thing I do know for sure…Apple will not release a product that will compete with existing products in the market. They will product something that will help change the market or create an entirely new one. This is what Apple is great at, today’s announcement will not be just a way to compete on the e-book front, but likely something much more grandiose.

Oh, and by the way…there is a big Oracle/Sun announcement today too….in case you forgot.

Update: one other interesting point on the Apple announcement that some mentioned to me this morning is what does Steve look like. With all the rumors on his health seeing him at the announcement will be interesting. As well as reading between the lines with his speech; he should start messaging suscession plans so that analysts and public alike stop equating Apple with Steve jobs. The future of Apple has to be unlinked from Steve at some point.

]]> http://www.latogalabs.com/2010/01/apple-announcemen-social-marketing/feed/ 0 2010 Enterprise Virtualization Trends http://www.latogalabs.com/2010/01/2010-enterprise-virtualization-trends/ http://www.latogalabs.com/2010/01/2010-enterprise-virtualization-trends/#comments Tue, 19 Jan 2010 00:25:02 +0000 latoga http://www.latogalabs.com/?p=942

This is not a new year predictions list.  Given the fact that it’s over two weeks into the new year, this is not a new year anything list.  However, after spending the better part of the year so far reviewing the business plans for my clients and working on 2010 strategies I thought it would be valuable to share the common trends I’m seeing as a snapshot of what large enterprises are doing with Virtualization and Cloud Computing.

Keep in mind that my clients cover a number of different business sectors, technology use cases, as well as technology adoption profiles.  Across all the business units and groups that I work with, nearly the full range of technology adoption categories are represented:  from early adopters to late majority.

Painting with a broad brush, here are the general trends that I’m seeing for the year ahead.  I’m interested in hearing from my readers on what they are seeing.  Please leave a comment and let me know!

Do More With Less…again

While economists and pundits alike claim the recession is over, I’m seeing the general attitude of doing more with less continue within Enterprises.  Part of this can be brought back to some groups leveraging the recession to invest in the future and work on game changing projects.  Some of this tends to be more cost cutting constraints where the cutting could be debated as being well past the muscle.  I’m even seeing a few groups adding in new key objectives for the year on top of the the ones they had previously agreed to, thus adding more work on the current staff levels.

IT As a Service

This has been one of the most talked about strategic initiatives for IT for over a decade now.  While the idea has had numerous names over the years, I’m seeing consistently more and more organizations moving their IT thinking to be more service based.  Rather than planning on a project by project basis, it’s about leveraging and maximizing the utilization of your infrastructure across all projects.  The logical out spinning of this is measuring and monitoring your capacity to stay ahead of demand.  IT organizations are either actively moving toward a services based approach or adapting their plans to start moving this way.  The biggest laggard in this area would be the financial systems to charge back IT services to the business units, but most IT organizations is not letting that hold them back — they just plan on adding that charge in when the financial systems catch up.   The side affect of this is the IT staff, those with an eye to the future are adapting their skill sets, those who aren’t will be wondering what happened when their jobs go away.

Private Clouds

While IT as a Service is not the same as Cloud Computing, there are many similarities.  Most of my clients are actively working on building Private Cloud environments where the end users are not just sharing all infrastructure as a service but are completely abstracted from the IT organization managing the infrastructure.  Users buy their VMs from a service catalog, get their VMs configured and deployed automatically and then get a bill with usage details every month.  When they don’t need their VM anymore, they click the delete button and watch their bill go down.  IT is moving to just configuring infrastructure and abstraction management tools and monitoring usage and planning for expansion.  The furthest along with this have gotten their with a small number of existing IT architects and engineers and will have an environment that can grow quickly with no additional head count needs.

Desktop Virtualization Foundations

Make no doubt about it; 2010 is the year that the foundation for desktop virtualization will be firmly cemented into IT.  The risk mitigation (keeping desktop data in the data center), time savings (quick deployment and updating times) and flexibility (re-use of physical office space for shift workers with each having their own desktop) of virtual desktops are understood and now being leveraged in pilot applications.  Once this genie is out of the bottle, desktop users will be wanting more.

The side affects of this include the eventual destruction of old dekstop oriented service vendors and the rise of new virtual desktop solution providers.  I don’t think the enterprise is ready for desktops in the cloud run by a 3rd party, but a few of my clients have been asking about putting desktops in their private cloud.

Cracks in the Towers

Another side effect of desktop virtualization is clear cracks forming in the various IT towers.  The knee jerk reaction I saw last year to desktop virtualization was the data center folks say “I’m not managing dekstops!”.  While moving desktops into the data center doesn’t shuffle the cards of responsibility for the different towers (the desktop team will still be supporting the desktops), it does force these towers to work together more than they have before.  Server teams talking to desktop teams.  Desktop teams talking to storage teams. All these teams talking to the networking teams.  The philosophies of “this is our domain and these are the rules you have to follow” are being softened by the stones being thrown at it from virtualization. Desktops in the data center requires everyone to think outside their normal boxes and understand the end users’ needs are changing.

Data Center Virtualization: Narrower and Deeper

As data center virtualization has continued on it’s march, it has resulted in the physical infrastructure options within the data center to narrow.  By standardizing on a smaller number of physical options within the data center, virtualize becomes less complex and automation becomes easier.  At the same time, the use cases for virtualization continue to get deeper.  Virtualization first policies are forcing all business units to run everything in a VM.

A side effect of these aspects of virtualization’s success is that CIOs are now looking at other areas of expense and driving for consolidation there as well: software, services, even real estate.

Migration to ESXi

VMware has been stating for a number of years now that ESXi (a thin hypervisor with API only access for automated management and a much smaller security attack surface) is the wave of the future. IT organizations have finally realized that VMware wasn’t kidding.  With only two weeks into the new year, I have seen more requests to discuss ESXi that I did all last year.  And with the automation and stateless aspects of ESXi that were talked about at VMworld 2009, I expect this area of activity to only pick up.

]]> http://www.latogalabs.com/2010/01/2010-enterprise-virtualization-trends/feed/ 0 Virtualization Round Up 20091120 http://www.latogalabs.com/2009/11/virtualization-20091120/ http://www.latogalabs.com/2009/11/virtualization-20091120/#comments Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:05:07 +0000 latoga http://www.latogalabs.com/?p=924

iStock_000002360778XSmallToday’s the last day before a week long vacation over Thanksgiving and it’s been a continual mad dash for the finish line.  The rain is falling, the wind is howling, and I’m not looking forward to a vacation painting project…what better time than to catch up on a few key virtualization links that I have built up over the past…month! Wow, guess I’ve been busier than I remember.  ;-)   Some of these might be a bit old news (unless you have been living under a virtual rock lately…like me), but still valuable to raise to your awareness.

Have a safe and relaxing Thanksgiving holiday (at least here in the States).

VMware Specific Links

General Virtualization & Cloud Links

]]> http://www.latogalabs.com/2009/11/virtualization-20091120/feed/ 1 VCE & Acadia the Tipping Point of Private Cloud? http://www.latogalabs.com/2009/11/vce-acadia-tipping-point-private-cloud/ http://www.latogalabs.com/2009/11/vce-acadia-tipping-point-private-cloud/#comments Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:01:19 +0000 latoga http://www.latogalabs.com/?p=905

… Most customers can’t afford that status quo, where the majority of their expenditures go into keeping the lights on versus innovation.  It really comes down to the CIO’s desire to enable their business strategy rather than a cost center. …

This is how Cisco’s John Chambers portrayed today’s VCE announcement during the joint webcast with EMC’s Joe Tucci and VMware’s Paul Maritz.  What Chambers was describing was the Private Cloud.  While only time will tell if VCE will be the tipping point of Private Clouds, today’s announcement was clearing laying out a destination for IT over the next few years.

What is VCE?

Industry Leaders at VMware vSphere Launch

Industry Leaders at VMware vSphere Launch

Rather than repeating all the details that have been provided elsewhere, the cliff notes summary is that VCE is a partnership between Cisco, EMC, and VMware.  By combining Cisco UCS server hardware and networking with EMC storage and management VCE creates a certified and supported data center solution to enable turnkey virtualized data centers running VMware vSphere on Cisco and EMC hardware components.  Along with the partnership, a new corporate entity called Acadia was announced to provide solution services under a separate entity from the primary stake holders of Cisco and EMC with participation from Intel and VMware.

Here is a list of others talking in more detail about VCE Coalition (I’ll try to update this over the next few days as well):

All of this private cloud chatter just a day after Gartner predicts cloud computing spend to take off.  Should be interesting to watch Cisco announce their Q1FY2010 earnings tomorrow…

Why Do I Think Enterprises Should Care about VCE?

Private clouds are a reality in the enterprises.  I have clients who are either mid-project of building a private cloud or deep in the architecture and planning for their private clouds.  The simple reason being that they know they need a fully virtualized, self service environment to respond to their internal business customer’s needs.  The stories of business groups being told it would take a year or more to deploy their new application environments are true.  Some times this is due to lack of data center space or capacity (that seems to be the pandemic spreading quicker than swine flu), sometimes due to lack of human resources in today’s recession recovering economy, sometimes a combination of both.

Virtualization is the key to the data center capacity pandemic facing many enterprises.  But just layering virtualization on top of the existing data center is like providing some Tamiflu to someone who is sick with the flu.  It may help them get better over time, but not over night.  There are still data center designs which don’t take into consideration the ramifications of virtualization.  I have clients who have plenty of extra floor space in their data center, but not enough power, or backup generator capacity, or floors that aren’t strong enough to support a storage array needed to fill the empty space with virtual computing infrastructure.

On top of that, virtualization with the legacy process in place don’t allow IT to respond to customers needs at the speed of business.  This is where private clouds with automated management and self-service provisioning capability come into play.  Take that low hanging visualization fruit and let the users feed themselves.  Providing internet cloud capabilities in the enterprise data center for web apps and basic services is just the start.  Once you start providing that self service capability for enterprise applications as well, now you’ve got something.

What I see VCE providing is the same building block approach that Amazon, Google, and Yahoo have each individually custom built for their own data centers, but in a packaged, tested, and supported format from trusted infrastructure vendors.  Now any Enterprise, big or small, has the ability to run their data center in an automated fashion using virtualization and hardware solutions purpose built for the task.  Enterprises are risk adverse in their IT departments, so having Cisco, EMC, and VMware standing behind the solution with a independent services and support group in Acadia, will help ease concerns.  And with the enterprise sales forces of both Cisco and EMC selling VCE solutions, access into the key decisions makers in Enterprises is there.

It’s easy in the early days of a partnership like this to show how all of this is nothing new, and in many ways true statements.  So the additional details that come out over the new few quarters will be important.  And the amount of traction that VCE has over that same time still needs to be seen.  But I see the foundation that is presented in VCE, as well as the potential that is there for the near future, as helping many enterprises solve the data center challenges facing them today as well as help enterprises break through that 30% virtualization barrier.

And What Impact Do I See to VMware?

I have seen various discussion today debating whether the VCE coalition is a good or bad thing for VMware.  Scott Lowe, for example, raised some interesting questions on the impact of VCE on VMware which sprouted some interesting discussions.  But over all, today’s VCE announcement was largely Cisco and EMC with support from VMware.  VMware’s partnerships with other hardware vendor’s and solution providers are still in full force.  If down the road the VCE coalition starts to show high numbers of VMware enableed servers shipped than other hardware vendors, there is nothing that prevents those other vendors form creating similar partnerships that include VMware.

In the end, it comes down to the same thing as always…market demand.  If the enterprise customers demand a fully integrated virtual data center solution, then more and more of the enterprise vendors will need to start offering them to remain competitive. As The Register pointed out, right now it’s a two vendor story: VCE and HP…and both include VMware.

And will VCE/Acadia be the tipping point for Private Clouds?  We’ll have to look back in a few years and find out.  But between now and then we’re all in for an interesting ride in IT-land.

]]> http://www.latogalabs.com/2009/11/vce-acadia-tipping-point-private-cloud/feed/ 0 HP BladeSystem & vSphere 4.0 Reference Architecture http://www.latogalabs.com/2009/10/hp-bladesystem-vsphere-40-reference-architecture/ http://www.latogalabs.com/2009/10/hp-bladesystem-vsphere-40-reference-architecture/#comments Wed, 14 Oct 2009 17:33:00 +0000 latoga http://www.latogalabs.com/?p=888

This morning a little birdie pointed me to an HP Reference Architecture document that is hot off the press: HP BladeSystem Reference Architecture: HP Virtual Connect Flex-10 and VMware vSphere 4.0 which appears to be the vSphere 4.0 update to the previous reference architecture HP produced for VI3.  If you’re running or architecting vSphere deployments with HP blade systems (as a number of my clients are), you should check out this doc.

]]> http://www.latogalabs.com/2009/10/hp-bladesystem-vsphere-40-reference-architecture/feed/ 0 Can Employee Owned IT Overcome the Hurdles? http://www.latogalabs.com/2009/10/employee-owned-overcome-hurdles/ http://www.latogalabs.com/2009/10/employee-owned-overcome-hurdles/#comments Mon, 12 Oct 2009 06:33:25 +0000 latoga http://www.latogalabs.com/?p=866

For the better part of the past two weeks I have been living the life of Employee Owned IT and dealing with the worst case scenarios.  For those who are unfamiliar with the concept, this is essentially where the employee owns their laptop and uses it for work.  The ultimate version of this concept is the employer providing a yearly stipend for purchasing any laptop or computer that the employee wants (usually meeting a minimum performance requirement) and then providing the employee a virtual desktop for all their corporate work.  The theory is that the employee is happy because they get the laptop they want, can (officially) use it for personal work, and they keep the laptop when they leave the company.  The employer is happy because they have shifted money on their books away from owning depreciating assets, saved money overall on the management of their physical client computers, and have a more secure and controlled corporate client computing environment that is compartmentalized using virtualization and primarily contained within their data center.

I have been living this life as a self-driven experiment.  Working on my personal MacBook Pro–which has all my personal software and utilities I use daily for both work and extra curricular activities (photography)–and running a corporate VM with all my official corporate software installed and VPN connectivity.  Everything has been working wonderfully…until the SuperDrive in my MacBook Pro suddenly decided it didn’t want to burn CDs/DVDs anymore. I had purchased the Apple Care protection plan with my laptop, so all I needed to do was take the MBP into the nearest Apple store, have them run a test to verify that the SuperDrive was kaput, and have them replace it.

All went according to plan up till the replace it part.  I needed to leave my computer there for 1-3 days.

1 to 3 days?  This is my production machine!  The Genius helping me at the Genius bar didn’t seem to understand what that meant.  I needed this computer to do my daily work.  Not just that, but could I trust them to have my personal computer, personal information, web browser passwords, and all for 1 to 3 days?

Welcome to the reality of EOIT.  A few of the hurdles that it faces:

  • Hardware Failure & Repair:  The risks and abuses of some private IT repair shops are well documented by news investigations. So how does an employer embarking on EOIT protect themselves and their employees in these hardware failure situations?  Do they require that computers be purchased from only national distribution channels?  Are these the hardware manufacturers with retail stores so the employee can always physically take their computer to some expert for help or repairs?  How does the employer know the quality of the help or repairs?  Do they even care once they have pushed the expense of this off on the employee?
    • There is a bigger change in the dynamics of the computer sales model here as well.  If the retail store outlet is a requirement, now any retailer without store fronts is at a disadvantage.  The companies that have technology centric store fronts now become lucrative partners (i.e., RadioShack, Cell Phone companies).  Then the battle moves into the classic consumer product sales challenges of shelf placement, kiosks, and the like.  If this type of change were to occur, say goodbye to the enterprise client hardware sales person…I already know that the most forward looking of these sales people think they are seeing the end of their career runway because of the previously describe scenario.
  • Information Security: In the EOIT scenario, the employer’s data should be secure because it is living in a protected VM.  A VM that is most likely living only in the data center and access remotely by the employee.  Or, for select power or mobile employees, living on their laptop but encrypted and password protected and could easily be moved to a an external hard drive before taking the computer in for repairs.  But what about the employees personal information?  Should the employer even care?  Ideally, wouldn’t it be great if the employee could have the same protections and ease of migration for their personal computing environment as they have for their corporate computing environment?  This is the goal of bare metal client hypervisors, like the announced VMware CVP.  One could copy their personal VM off to the same USB hard drive and copy a VM containing a fresh install of an OS to their laptop hard drive.  Now if the IT repair technician starts snooping around the computer, there is nothing there for them to find.

These are the two hurdles that I faces personally with my EOIT experience.  There are a few more that employeers face, like:

  • calculating the actual cost savings that a company could achieve through EOIT
  • determining all the possible risk scenarios that a company needs to account for with EOIT and deciding which ones they need to take on and which they are willing to push on to the employee.

My solution to the two hurdles mentioned above was rather unique to my situation.  First, I have a second MBP that I could use while my production system was in the shop.  Second, I was already planning to upgrade the internal hard drive in my laptop and had the new hard drive in hand.  So I was able to clone my personal laptop’s hard drive to the new, larger, hard drive; reformat the internal hard drive; and install a new installation of the OS.  So when I handed my personal laptop over to the Apple Store, there was no personal data on it at all and I could keep working by booting my second MBP off of the cloned hard drive.

Unfortunately for the EOIT vision, this was a very unique situation and I had the technical knowledge to achieve the work around.  For the EOIT vision to become a wide spread reality, these worst case scenarios need to be easily handled by the common employee, with general computer knowledge, through a simple process that includes only a few clicks of the mouse.  I think that technically we are much closer to this reality that most people realize.

However, the biggest hurdle still exists…does Employee Owned IT drive substantial cost savings and will enterprises embrace it?

]]> http://www.latogalabs.com/2009/10/employee-owned-overcome-hurdles/feed/ 2 Virtualization Round Up 20091005 http://www.latogalabs.com/2009/10/virtualization-20091005/ http://www.latogalabs.com/2009/10/virtualization-20091005/#comments Tue, 06 Oct 2009 06:29:59 +0000 latoga http://www.latogalabs.com/?p=857

cowboy rodeoI’m a bit delayed with this edition of the Virtualization Round Up due to some challenges with upgrading my MacBook Pro over the weekend (don’t you just love unforeseen production outages!  And over a weekend no less…there’s a couple of blog posts coming out of this…).  Slightly delayed, but just still within the best when consumed by date, here’s the latest super-sized Round Up:

VMware Specific Links

  • New Releases
    • Workstation 7 RC was recently released.  No, this is not the official release, but an early version that you can test and play with…
    • Fusion 2.0.6 was recently released.  A maintenance upgrade that is free for all Fusion 1.x and 2.x users.
    • It was announced today that Fusion 3.0 will be available on October 27th, pre-orders are currently being taken.
    • SRM 4.0 was released today.  This version of SRM works with vSphere 4.0 and NFS support.  Make sure you check the SA compatibly matrix to make sure your storage has an adapter available.  Some of the EMC platforms are currently not on the list…
    • While not an official VMware product, View Open Client 4.0 Beta 1 was recently released. (now that my Mac is working again, maybe I should try installing it…)
  • Ricky El-Qasem of VirtualizePlanet recently release his vSphere Plugin Wizard which makes it easy to embed a website or web portal into vCenter.
  • Dell and VMware recently announced a broadened partnership on the Desktop front in which Dell will offer VMware View as an option for its Flexible Computing solutions.
  • Dave Lawrence has a great post out discussing getting more advanced with View.  A few more advance items you can can configure with View.
  • Performance Troubleshooting for VMware vSphere 4 and ESX 4.0 is a new guide available on the communities site.
  • As I’ve indicated before, I think Fault Tolerance is one of the key new features within vSphere. In some recent testing that Todd Muirhead did he showed how even with using a 1vCPU Exchange VM,  FT is a real value added feature that shouldn’t be overlooked.  You may also want to check out Eric Siebert’s Master’s Guide to VMware Fault Tolerance for all the FT details.
  • Are you a VMware shop that would love to run Oracle virtualized but hesitate due to support statement confusions?  Then you’ll find Oracle on VMware posts at Virtual Geek (including part II) worth the read.  The longer you’re in the industry the more you have to laugh at the games…
  • VMsafe is another key new aspect of vSphere which I have been disappointed to see hasn’t taken off faster.  Every View client of mine has been beating up their security vendors on VMsafe for the past few months.  So, What is happening with VMsafe?
  • I updated the VMware Network Port list with a link to an interested graphical representation of this information that another colleague of mine here at VMware created.
  • An interesting post by Maish Saidel-Keesing & discussion about using memory over commit made me chuckle a bit as I remember ever time I heard a client proud about how they are running their systems memory at the high rate of 50% utilized.
  • And those who worry about over committing memory better buckle their seats when they see what the future holds, as Intel and VMware discussed some of the new memory and power management technologies they are working on.
  • James Urquhart hits the nail on the head with his recent posts Cloud computing and the big rethink: Part 1 and Part 2.  His thinking dovetails what Paul Maritz has been saying since before the launch of vSphere.  With virtualization creating a huge mainframe, do you need all the bloat of traditional OS?  A application specific hosting container running as the “VM” starts making a lot of sense…oh yeah, and VMware bought SpringSource…
  • A client recently asked for help in identifying which physical NIC his VM was using for troubleshooting, and luck would have it the VMware Networking Blog just posted a tip for doing this with vSphere.  If anyone knows an equivalent method for VI3, please post in the comments!
  • I found this recent post Comparing VMware’s Cloud to Amazon S3 comical in it’s mis-understandings.  VMware doesn’t host their own cloud (at least not commercially for others to use).  They make the software that allows others to create their own cloud.  vCloud is just a marketing term to indicate partners who are building upon the VMware vSphere platform.
  • As I have a number of clients planning large P2V conversions, Eric Siebert’s article on Removing old hardware after a P2V conversion is very timely.

General Virtualization & Cloud Links

  • I found it interesting that Adobe is offering a cloud service for Flash, while this is essentially a CDN for Flash applications, it is another example of how far the cloud front as spread.  As Matt Mullenweg recently tweeted, has Cloud jumped the shark?  Maybe in marketing aspects…
  • Ron Oglesby from Dell shares some great research around the question of is there an optimal adoption curve for server virtualization? While ever IT shop can argue how the adoption curve methodology doesn’t work for their organization, this is an important topic that all users of virtualization have to be asking themselves as dragging of feet with virtualization in today’s economy has the hardest of business impacts.
]]> http://www.latogalabs.com/2009/10/virtualization-20091005/feed/ 0 Virtualization Round Up 20090918 http://www.latogalabs.com/2009/09/virtualization-20090918/ http://www.latogalabs.com/2009/09/virtualization-20090918/#comments Sat, 19 Sep 2009 02:41:33 +0000 latoga http://www.latogalabs.com/?p=827

Round Up II

Well, it’s been two weeks since the end of VMworld, and how the time has flown.  Everyone should have seen plenty of write ups on VMworld by now (so I won’t bother) and the labs and sessions are now available at the VMworld site.   Based upon comments I saw twittering about online, it appears that some people didn’t realize that the data center built at VMworld was actually in use for all the hands on labs.  VM /Etc did a great interview with the Operations Team manager for the VMworld Data Center, to provide more of the back story on that.

And so, back to the regular roundup from the past few weeks, the usual collection of things that caught my attention recently for this reason or that.  Thanks goes out to all my colleagues and my twitter network for leading me to many of these gems!

VMware Specific Links

General Virtualization Links

  • EMC’s Chuck Hollis recently wrote about Chargeback vs Pricing where he discussed how Pricing can be an effective tool to force consumers to change their consumption behaviors.  I had this general discussion this week with two clients on the path to private clouds; they are interested in VMware Chargeback so they could  start exposing consumption to their virtualization users even if there is no price associated with it…just to get the IT users to start realizing what they are consuming.  IT organization who are still trying to just drive users off of physicals onto VMs can use Chuck’s advice to drive this change of behavior through pricing.
  • Cloudy days ahead:  2 In 3 IT Managers Have Cloud Funding, according to a recent survey.  This jives with my experience as 66% of my clients are actively moving forward with private clouds and the expectation of a federate cloud.
  • Citrix announced plans to evolve Xen into the Xen Cloud Platform.
  • In what appears to be a move into the Cloud space, Tibco Acquires DataSynapse. While I’m sure some of the folks I know at DataSynapse are happy about this, I haven’t had a chance to get their take on this acquisition yet.
  • Floyd Strimling has an interesting view of the the newest battle between IT Giants, Why Cisco should fear HP.
]]> http://www.latogalabs.com/2009/09/virtualization-20090918/feed/ 2 Virtualization Round Up 20090824 http://www.latogalabs.com/2009/08/virtualization-round-up-20090924/ http://www.latogalabs.com/2009/08/virtualization-round-up-20090924/#comments Mon, 24 Aug 2009 19:26:07 +0000 latoga http://www.latogalabs.com/?p=807

cowboy rodeo

On the final march to VMworld 2009, this will be the last roundup until after Labor Day.

VMware Specific Links

General Virtualization Links

]]> http://www.latogalabs.com/2009/08/virtualization-round-up-20090924/feed/ 0 Virtualization Round Up 20090914 http://www.latogalabs.com/2009/08/virtualization-20090914/ http://www.latogalabs.com/2009/08/virtualization-20090914/#comments Fri, 14 Aug 2009 22:47:31 +0000 latoga http://www.latogalabs.com/?p=789

photo by alandberning

photo by alandberning

It’s amazing how quickly the vacation effect can wear off you.  It’s been a few week since the last roundup and even thought I was on vacation for one of those weeks, there are a number of items that I had collected and wanted to share.  The usual mix of something for everyone…

VMware Specific Links

General Virtualization Links

]]> http://www.latogalabs.com/2009/08/virtualization-20090914/feed/ 0 Closed Source Buys Open Source V2.0 http://www.latogalabs.com/2009/08/closed-source-buys-open-source-v20/ http://www.latogalabs.com/2009/08/closed-source-buys-open-source-v20/#comments Tue, 11 Aug 2009 07:34:40 +0000 latoga http://www.latogalabs.com/?p=781

In case you didn’t notice from the change of tone in my tweets, I have been on vacation with the family for the past week.  Enjoying the scenic grandeur (and at times solitude) of the Pacific Northwest and taking a ton of photos with my new camera (1388 photos to be exact…and 5 movies…).

Today, I had the joy of the first day back on the job and dealing with the flood of emails, followups, and catching ups that is the price we pay for taking some time off and not reading emails.  Like that wasn’t enough, today VMware (my employer) had to go an announce that we were acquiring SpringSource (and add a few more items to my list to completely dissolve that post-vacation glow! :-) ).

After a day dealing with my inbox and urgent items, I had to take some time out of the evening photo processing to read the Steve Herrod and Rod Johnson blog posts on the acquisition.  And provide a bit of a different viewpoint on this acquisition…fresh from vacation and not knowing anything more about this acquisition than what has been publicly stated by others (so safe from saying anything other than my opinion – see disclosures in the About latoga labs in the sidebar).

I’ve Been Through This Before

I’m not talking about my employer acquiring a company.  I’m talking about a closed source Company acquiring essentially an Open Source company.  Before joining VMware I used to work for IONA Technologies (sound familiar….think CORBA…Yes!  That IONA!).  I was there when IONA bought LogicBlaze.  What made this acquisition interesting (especially for me…being part of the enterprise sales team at IONA) was that we went from having 1 closed source product (ESB) to three products (all ESBs) which competed with each other.  And I was only allowed to sell one of them.

Executing a successful merger is not easy even when the companies are very well matched.  But it becomes even more difficult when they have conflicting core values (and revenue models) like closed source code development and open source code development.  In my most recent experience, the Iona/LogicBlaze merger didn’t work as well as it could have because the two sides of the house competed against each other and management turned a blind eye to it while they tried to figure out a revenue strategy post merger.  Funniest thing is that a lot of the core value propositions we were discussing with clients at IONA in that Enterprise sales team that I was part of, still hold true today.  Back then virtualization was a huge hidden value savings that I couldn’t tap into.  Not any more…

Regardless of the synergies that two companies can provide each other technology wise, there is not as much focus traditionally placed on the social aspect of merging two companies.  It is that social aspect (like the social aspect of introducing any new technology in a company) that will drive the speed and revenue value of the acquisition.  Having been through this before in a rather painful way, it is important to mention this fact.

Why VMware + SpringSource Makes Sense

The good news is that this conflicting personality issue shouldn’t be a problem with the VMware/SpringSource merger.  First, there is no competing technologies between the two vendors.  SpringSource allows VMware to access the higher level parts of IT (Applications and App Developers) while also working together to enable the Cloud Vision of vSphere.

Second, based upon what Rod Johnson indicated in his blog post, he will be heading up SpringSource as a separate unit within VMware following the VMware BU organization.  This should mean that SpringSource will get to work as they have been to support their existing community and customers in that classic open source way while working together with the other VMware BUs to add bigger picture value through the combination of SpringSource technologies with VMware’s.

Paul Maritz has indicated in the past the need to move up the value stack of IT and has used the term framework more than once during the vSphere launch.  The ability to leverage the virtualization foundation of vSphere with vApp and abstract away the applications from the operating systems with SpringSource’s various build-run-manage products not only provides a much more open application development environment to compete with Google and Amazon, but also provides an solid migration path for Enterprises to move to the Private Cloud with all their web based Java applications.  Image a world where Java App developers have the ability to integrate via the spring framework right into the virtualization based cloud where their apps will be tested/QA’d/run.  Regardless of weather…er…I mean whether…that cloud is an internal cloud or an external cloud.

I see some very clear and interesting developments on the horizon from this acquisition which I’ll try to disclose my opinion on in the future.  And, as is can be the case when you put a lot of very smart people together with solid management, I’m sure we’ll see some surprises as well.  From the looks of my LinkedIn network, I’ll also be re-united with some old colleagues as well!

Tomorrow will be an interesting day of conversations with my global clients to hear their take on things!

]]> http://www.latogalabs.com/2009/08/closed-source-buys-open-source-v20/feed/ 0 Convergence of Private Clouds Presentation http://www.latogalabs.com/2009/07/convergence-private-clouds-presentation/ http://www.latogalabs.com/2009/07/convergence-private-clouds-presentation/#comments Wed, 29 Jul 2009 18:14:38 +0000 latoga http://www.latogalabs.com/?p=770

Last night I presented the following at the SDForum Cloud SIG in Palo Alto (you’ll have to bear with the animations that didn’t come through well on the online version..).

Convergence of Private CloudsView more presentations from latoga.

We had a great turnout considering we are in the middle of summer vacations.  Thanks to Dave, Dave Nielsen & Bernard Golden for coordinating and everyone for attending!  (Even thought I have my brand new camera waiting to be used, I completely forgot to take photos!  Luckily others did and I’ll update this post there photos once they have them online)

My goals for the presentation was to first help everyone understand that Virtualization lies at the heard of cloud computing. Second was to explain that private clouds are just the evolution of an enterprise’s existing virtualized data center (their internal cloud) with the flexibility to expand the private cloud to external cloud provider’s data centers if and when needed.  The key point of clarity here is that an enterprise’s data center could be referred to as both an internal cloud and a private cloud.  But, the cloud that federates the internal cloud with an external cloud should always referred to as a private cloud. And my third goal was to detail the VMware components that go into creating a private cloud.

I was glad to see that everyone mostly understood that an enterprise’s cloud needs are not the same as a internet application’s cloud needs.  Enterprise’s have to deal with legacy applications that can’t or don’t need to be re-written to become fully cloud aware.  And with a vCloud enabled private cloud they don’t have to be.  But, if you have an application that you want to be cloud aware that flexibility is there.  Enterprises also have demands that require features like HA and Fault Tolerance and understand that adding those features may increase overall cost due to technical requirements these features require.

There will be a lot of additional cloud related announcements in the march up to VMworld 2009.  (Dave did a good job of trying to get a scoop on some…)  All the attendees showed great patience with my answers of coming soon with regards to more details.  And today they get a small reward with the Rackspace announcement: Rackspace Private Cloud leverages VMware to Extend Enterprise Computing on Demand.

If you’re attending VMworld 2009 in San Francisco in a few weeks, I included a list of a few sessions that help build on the overview that my presentation gives:

  • DE-03 – Introduction to vCloud APIs
  • TA3326 – Building an Internal Cloud-the Journey and the Details
  • TA3901 – Security and the Cloud
  • TA4100 – Internal Clouds: Customer perspective and implementations
  • TA4101 – Buying the Cloud: Customer perspective and considerations on what you should send to an external cloud
  • TA4103 – Engineering the Cloud-The Future of Cloud
  • TA4102 – Unveiling New Cloud Technologies
  • VM2706 – Improved cloud interoperability using virtualization management standards

There are many other cloud related sessions during VMworld, so make sure you check the schedule.  And Register early! Last year I had clients who registered too close to the show and couldn’t get into a number of the sessions they wanted.  Some are hands on labs and there are only so many VMs to go around…

And now, some links based upon some of the questions that were asked and items that I promised:

]]> http://www.latogalabs.com/2009/07/convergence-private-clouds-presentation/feed/ 0 Virtualization Link Roundup 20090726 http://www.latogalabs.com/2009/07/virtualization-link-roundup-20090726/ http://www.latogalabs.com/2009/07/virtualization-link-roundup-20090726/#comments Mon, 27 Jul 2009 16:31:14 +0000 latoga http://www.latogalabs.com/?p=752

photo by alandberning

photo by alandberning

Another few weeks have gone by and my list of Virtualization links have hit critical mass, time to thin the herd.  Lots of product releases from VMware and Private Cloud articles (just in time for my upcoming talk on the Convergence of Private Clouds).  Forgive the one day late posting…was too busy last night enjoying sunset from 2000 foot high ridge near my house–and too tired afterward–to post this yesterday.

VMware Specific Links

General Virtualization Links

]]> http://www.latogalabs.com/2009/07/virtualization-link-roundup-20090726/feed/ 0 How Virtualized Are You? http://www.latogalabs.com/2009/07/virtualized/ http://www.latogalabs.com/2009/07/virtualized/#comments Fri, 24 Jul 2009 21:45:33 +0000 latoga http://www.latogalabs.com/?p=746

There was an interesting discussion today amongst some colleagues of mine.  What is the industry average for the percent of corporate computing workloads that are virtualized?  According to Gartner back in February, the estimated global virtualization penetration is expected to hit 20% in 2009 (it was 12% in 2008).

Of course the devil is always in the details.  First, you have to correctly calculate your percentage virtualized.  Second, are you counting all servers across your entire company or just those in your department? (i.e., Production IT, a Dev/Test group)

When I look at my client base, there are certain departments that are well above 20% virtualized.  But, some of them are less than 20% virtualized company wide (assuming they even know how many servers they have across the entire company, those crafty buggers get good at hiding under desks…).

I thought it would be fun to run a highly un-scientific poll across my readers.  How virtualized is your computing environment?  To make it interesting, I’m going to break this down into two questions:

First:

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

(Consider “Your Department” to be the group that you work for and have the most knowledge about)

Second:

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Please vote in both polls and spread the word about this post, the more who vote, the more interesting the results will be…

]]> http://www.latogalabs.com/2009/07/virtualized/feed/ 1 VMware Network Port List http://www.latogalabs.com/2009/07/vmware-network-port-list/ http://www.latogalabs.com/2009/07/vmware-network-port-list/#comments Thu, 16 Jul 2009 18:58:23 +0000 latoga http://www.latogalabs.com/?p=731

One of the recurring requests I hear from my clients is for a list or diagram showing the network ports that are used by the various VMware products and components.  Thanks to some of my VMware Professional Service Colleagues for creating and allowing me to share with you the VMware Network Port List.  I’ll keep this under the VMW Launchpad section of the blog and try to update it as time permits.

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