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It is all about automation … [Part 2] January 5, 2009

Posted by Roel Gydé in Cloud Computing, Data Center Management.
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Following the article in Virtualization Review and our post on “It is all about automation”, John Urquhart (Market Manager for Cisco’s Data Center 3.0 Strategy) gives his view on automation and especially on cross-vendor and the future of the IT

” … It will work through accepted standards and protocols between components at all levels of the distributed compute stack. VDC-OS and Citrix Workflow Studio are pieces of the puzzle, but there is much work under way throughout the IT industry. … “

For that he is absolutely right, but what is more important is his view on the changing role of the system administrators.

” … I would also strongly recommend that system administrators begin to think about how they would automate their jobs. Better yet, how would you eliminate the need for the human-centric processes you use to manage VMs altogether, in favor of tight metrics-centric optimization policies? … “

When systems like Citrix Workflow Studio and VMware VDC-OS go mainstream it will be much more about managing the global infrastructure with proactive projects instead of the current often applied politic of break-fix.

One thing is for sure this will result in once again (as I already stated many times before) an IT infrastructure adopting to the business needs and Service Level Automation is looming around the corner. Providing the possibility to VARs, Integrators and Cloud Providers to focus on that where they are best at … strategical work and the future cloud providers are surely amongst them.

It is all about automation … January 4, 2009

Posted by Roel Gydé in Data Center Management.
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Virtualization review posted an interview with Bogomil Balkansky from VMware on the release of VDC-OS in 2009. Altough that VDC-OS was the biggest announcement last VMworld it becomes more and more clear that it is for 95% a marketing solution as Rachel Chalmers is quoted in the article:

“Rachel Chalmers, research director, infrastructure management for the analyst firm The 451 Group, agrees that much of VDC-OS is about rebranding rather than new technology. “VDC-OS is partly marketecture, and signals a changing of the guard” from former CEO Diane Greene to Maritz, Chalmers says. “Greene was always very careful to say that the hypervisor is not an OS.”

It is all about tying all the products together into one ‘automated solution’.  Citrix is also working on a similar solution with Citrix Workflow Studio, which is based on a powershell so it opens up to other solutions from other vendors. One thing for sure if VDC-OS, Workflow Studio, … go mainstream (VDC-OS late 2009, Workflow Studio probably earlier) it is all about automation, but what about automation in cross-vendor data centers. How will that work?

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VMware VDC-OS & 2009 Roadmap – Podcast October 12, 2008

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The guys & girls over at VMTN talked about the concepts of the virtual datacenter OS with VMware’s own Leena Joshi, and they covered some of the 2009 roadmap material which was announced during VMworld 2008.

Listen here.

VMworld 2008 – Keynote Session – Steve Harrod September 17, 2008

Posted by Roel Gydé in Uncategorized.
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Summary of the keynote given by Steve Harrod on September 17th:

  • Virtual Infrastructure 4.0 itself has not been announced, yet the major components have already been introduced:
  • Virtual Datacenter OS consists out of:
    •  the hardware/interaction layer:
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      •  vCompute – platform that interacts with the hardware, with vCompute the hardware specifications have been adapted to:
        • 8 virtual CPUS
        • 256GB per VM
        • 40 GB/s network throughput
        • up to 64 nodes per cluster
        • up to 4906 cores to manage
        • full support for DPM
      • vStorage – new features have also been announced on the level of storage. VMFS and storage vMotion will be extended with stroage thin provisioning and linked clones
      • vNetwork – the network layer functionalities have been improved with virtual distributed networking and support for 3rd party solutions
  •  
    •  the application layer:
  •  
    •  
      •  vAPP: gives applications priorities and SLA levels (hello legal disagreement with Microsoft?)
      • VMware FT: high availability with 2 vMs in sync (like Marathon Technologies everrun VM)
      •  Security (shouldn’t that be vSecurity?): VMsafe APIs on the way
  •  
    •  the management layer
  •  
    •  
      • Virtual Center becomes … vCenter with chargeback, performance optimization, orchestration and many other modules
      • vCenter server component will be available for Linux (as virtual appliance)
We have not yet received any confirmation on the general availability of VI4 (of which VDC-OS will be a big part), yet the solutoin seems to be in beta or beta 2.

VMworld 2008 – Keynote Session (Paul Maritz) September 16, 2008

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The main points of todays Keynot Session by Paul Martiz at VMworld in Las Vegas:

  • cloud, cloud, cloud … cloud-fever
  • IT moves from client-centric to decentralized environments with increased flexibility of the applications and services (including moving around places). Which requires to be managed as one big … cloud. In order to support VMware will (as already posted yesterday: 
    • Virtual Datacenter OS
    • vCloud (video)
    • vClient
  • Cisco announces the Virtual Switch for Virtual Infrastructure (Personal brain-jump: what is the difference between vLANs and a virtual switch
  • vStorage:, disaster recovery collaboration with the major storage vendors
  • vApps: describes collections of appliances and their service level properties. This metadata enables the VDC OS to provide service levels to this collection of apps.
  • Virtual Center will be rebranded to … vCenter (focus on the v ;-) )
  • VClient: bare metal hypervisor for desktops
  • vCloud with vAPP: an applicaiton has an SLA of a 7 seconds, SLA is not met, applicaiton moves to an external cloud. When increasing the load, a new VM is started and users are diverted.
  • VMware View is the new name for VMware VDM
In general nothing special, or at least nothing that was not know before the session. One thing is for sure, finally you get a good conceptual story which provides the solutions for a dynamic datacenter (oops thats Citrix) … a dynamic cloud or vCloud.
Tomorrow another keynote session focussen on product development and R&D.

VMworld 2008 – Announcement so far on day 1 September 15, 2008

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VMware announces the Virtual Datacenter Operating System (VDC-OS). … more

VMware announces VMware Ready Program for Management Solutions – The VMware Ready Program is expanding for partner providing management solutions for the Virtual Datacenter Operating System (VDC-OS). The VDC-OS transforms datacenters into their own internal cloud … more

VMware announces the vCloud Initiative to deliver enterprise-class cloud computing, be federating compute capacity on demand between virtual datacenters and cloud service provides such as BT, Rackspace Sungard, T-Systems, Verizon Business … more

VMware optimizes software delivery and distrbution with Virtual Appliance Solutions. … more