Why, oh why, oh why, has every man and his dog started calling everything Cloud? Cloud Hosting, Cloud Apps, Cloud Services? Is it me, or was it only 6 months ago that these were called Virtual Hosting, Web Apps, Web Services? What’s changed? In my eyes, nothing! I hadn’t really noticed this until the other day when I was attending a “Cloud” seminar.

Cloud Hosting: What makes it Cloud? It’s just Hosting on a Virtualization platform. Cloud Apps: Why are they Cloud Apps? They are just applications hosted over the Web, no? If we follow this trend we’ll soon be calling WebMail, CloudMail!

Since I first heard about the concept of Cloud, I’ve been keeping a close eye on how it would evolve. It was meant to be the “New Black” and I if wanted to keep on the cutting edge of technology, then the Cloud is where it’ll be at. Almost 2 years on and I’m still waiting for something to happen. In that time Virtualization has taken massive steps forward with VMware’s vSphere Product, but Cloud is still only really in existence as a concept.

I’ve been regularly attending various Cloud focused seminars in the hope of seeing something special, something magical, something where I can think to myself “Now this is Cloud Computing!”. But It hasn’t happened yet. You either get techies giving talks on “conceptual” ideas about Apps with elasticity or how to scale databases on demand, or you get Marketing bods trying to flog their Virtualization Platform’s as Cloud Platforms.

I mean who came up with the idea to use the word Cloud? Who was that person? Is he/she part of the same illusive contingent who decides what is “Politically Correct” and what’s not? And why call Cloud, Cloud? Was it simply because it’s always been common practice to use a Cloud image to represent “The Internet” on network diagrams? Or was it a scientific based decision as real clouds in the sky expand and contract independently. Or maybe it was based on the fact that scientists have spent many years studying Clouds and probably still don’t fully understand how they work.

With all these question left unanswered, how is it that we’ve come to have some many Cloud Services/Products available to us? There hasn’t even been a set of standards set for Cloud yet. What happens if when the standards are set, the standards are different to what people expecting?

Is Cloud just a Buzzword? Like Bouncebackability? One person makes it up and others jump on the bandwagon and before you know it EVERYONE is talking about it?

Personally I think the Cloud will pass us by. I don’t think it will ever come to fruition, a bit like HD DVD, MiniDisc and Chesney Hawkes. Cloud products/services of course will be available but as I mentioned earlier, these won’t be anything more than Virtualization Platforms. By the time software developers actually create software that enables fluidity, like Cloud idealists believe there should be, platforms would have moved on even further and combining the two will produce something beyond the Cloud……A form of Utility Computing? I’d Love to know your thoughts.

These are of course are just my views, which I have tried to make without reading other peoples definitions and ideas. I’m not an expert, I’m not going to pretend to be one. I just wanted to share with you some of the thought processes I’ve had over the past 6 months. As time goes by I’m sure my views will change. Maybe in a years time I’ll look back at this post and laugh about what I wrote, maybe I could have hit the nail on the head. Only time will tell.

Here is Kate Craig-Wood’s Definition of the Cloud, It makes for an interesting read (Note: Read after time of writing). I think it’s really interesting, everyone has such a different view on Cloud and it’s definition.

© Simon for Gestalt IT, 2010. | Is It A Bird? Is It A Plane? No, It’s….The Cloud!
Read more posts categorized as Cloud Computing, Featured

There’s a lot of talk about Dynamic Data Centres, Dynamic Infrastructures; mostly in a cloudy context and mostly as some over-arching architectural vendor-focused vision. At times, I wonder if when a vendor talks about a ‘Dynamic Infrastructure’; if they actually mean, you can use as much of OUR infrastructure as you like? You can flex up and down on OUR infrastructure.

This is rather limiting from an end-user IT consumer’s point of view because you still find yourselves locked into a vendor or a group of vendors. So it’s only dynamic with constraints; actually, I think Amazon got it right in their naming, it’s Elastic but not truly Dynamic.

So as a good architect/designer/bodge-it-and-scarper-type person, you should be asking this question every time; if I do this, can I get out? What is my exit plan? Can I change any key component of the stack without major process/capability impact? Is the lock-in which comes with any unique feature worth it?

And when I say any component, I mean all the way up to the application. So as part of the non-functional requirements of any application, there should be:

1. Data Export/Import
2. Archival

standards defined and actually implemented. This goes for any off-the-shelf application as well.

For Cloud to truly change the way IT is done and delivered; this has to be done..otherwise the only way is vertically integrated stacks, which ultimately lead to long-term lock-in. There are still mainframes in existence, not only because they are the right platform for some workloads but also because people are struggling to unpick the complex interdependencies which exist.

© Martin for Gestalt IT, 2010. | What is Dynamic?
Read more posts categorized as Cloud Computing, Server Virtualization

What a week in Las Vegas at VMware Partner Exchange 2010! For all those that complained just 4 months ago that VMworld 2009 was disappointing because the announcements were few and far between, all I can say is, based on what I watched, experienced, and touched this week at PEX 2010, VMware should grab your attention again soon! Unfortunately, so much of what was discussed falls under the VMware Partner NDA that I’ll have to ask VM /ETC readers to wait for the technology to become public. We’ll have plenty to discuss when it does.

For now I’ll quickly wrap up my week and drop some hints about VMware’s future direction based on my understanding about what I saw during the PTAB meetings, the Keynotes, and the Hands On and Self Paced Labs. I’m also linking to some reactions from others to support my impressions.

The official VMware News Release for Partner Exchange can be found at this link:

VMware Partner Exchange 2010 Kicks Off With Record-breaking 2,600+ Attendees, 55 Sponsors and 45 Countries Represented

PTAB: Cloud Infrastructure and Virtual Desktops

I knew what was on the Partner Technical Advisory Board meeting agenda before I arrived, but I have to admit I was still pleasantly surprised. In short, the two day meeting was split by topics. We talked about virtual servers on Day 1 and virtual desktops on Day 2.

The server discussions included everything from possible future enhancements to the vStorage API to details about Project Redwood architecture. Discussions included a mix of vSphere roadmap possibilities and potential directions of VMware in the private and hosted cloud. VMware is serious about Platform as a Service, Infrastructure as a Service, and Software as a Service, and the slides presented to the PTAB committee revealed a considerable strategy to make it happen. I’ll just say it is a lot clearer to me where exactly Zimbra and SpringSource fit into VMware’s future plans.

Switching to the second day and to the topic of virtual desktops, if you are like me you would assume it to be a different day of independent content. Surprisingly, the paths of servers and desktops seemingly are going to collide in the VMware virtual cloud. I would suggest that you get ready to rethink what a VMware Virtual Infrastructure actually means. The boundaries will be changing as to where VMware’s technology actually begins and ends.

Among the 32 other PTAB members with me was Brian Knudtson. Brian has been providing his own coverage of the VMware PEX 2010 on his Knudt Blog. Check out his posts as well – Partner Exchange Day 1 – Sunday (PTAB Day 1) and Partner Exchange Day 2 – Monday (PTAB Day 2).

Keynotes: VMware Gets Aggressive About The Cloud and SMBs

EVP of Worldwide Field Operations Carl Eschenbach opened the official first day of the conference with his Keynote on Tuesday morning. Eschenbach later called on stage Rick Jackson, VMware’s Chief Marketing Officer, they established that 2010 would be an aggressive year for VMware. The two also emphasized VMware’s intent to secure existing and future business in the SMB market. The day 1 Keynote concluded with the promise that special discounts would soon be available for the vSphere Essentials bundles.

On Wednesday morning, VMware’s CTO Steve Herrod took the stage. Herrod’s Keynotes usually provide the product demos and are therefore always the most anticipated for me. The PEX 2010 Keynote 2 definitely did not disappoint! With the help of a few VMware product managers, Herrod demonstrated a technical preview of the Redwood Cloud UI as well as a future virtual desktop environment with application virtualization integration. A key point to the demos was that the Cloud is a series of “layers of abstraction” above the physical hardware. I thought Herrod and company did a great job illustrating this by providing example scenarios where screen shots of both the user’s perspective and the system administrator’s tool set were provided.

Keynote reactions from others

VMware employee Duncan Epping echoes my amazement about what was previewed on Wednesday:

“I was impressed with all the insights Steve gave in terms of upcoming products, brand new projects and even a couple tech previews. I am looking forward to the upcoming version of VMware View and a new project which I can’t disclose as the VMware NDA Police would again kill me.”

Responsible for all things VMware at EMC, Chad Sakac says the following on his PEX wrap up post:

“Steve Herrod did some big unveiling.   Project “Redwood” (end user self-service portal targeted for Private and Public cloud uses) was public outed for the first time, as well as the next version of VMware View (loads of stuff in here, more to come soon).  He also talked about the scaling and feature goals of the next generation of the vSphere generation.”

Chad’s post is really about 10 blog posts on Partner Exchange and EMC’s doings in Las Vegas shoved into one title. He covers lots of topics. Check it out.

Hands On and Self Paced Labs – The VMware View Buzz

Previously mentioned for posts about PTAB above, vExpert Brian Knudtson comments:

“… I attended the Advanced View 4 Lab, which ended up actually being a Tech Preview of the next version of View. This next version introduces many new features and some considerable changes to the interface and scalability of the product. According to the lab instructors, they didn’t even get their hands on the code until three days before the conference and had to learn it while building the lab. I have to say that I was very impressed with the product, the improvements they made and the stability of a product still in the Alpha stage. This release has more features than View 4.0 had and is everything that View 4.0 should have been. It will truly be a game changer.”

I too attended the VMware View lab, and got a first hand glimpse of what everyone was excited about. View dot next, the only version name or number VMware employees would commit to, is amazing.

I also used the self paced labs to explore configuration of The Nexus 1000v virtual switch as well as using the REST client to connect to the vCloud API. PEX 2010 was actually the first time I’ve used the self paced labs. The customized lab interface that allows an attendee to select a lab at their terminal coupled with the monitoring screen visible to all lab takers is really cool. During my few hours in the self paced labs on Wednesday I noticed average activity of over 300 VMs on the monitor.

It was good to see Randy Keever again. Randy’s GETO team built and managed all the conference lab infrastructure, and Keever was actually sitting at the administrator’s table during my VMware View lab. The set up was mostly the same from VMworld 2009 in September. Early reports from attendees on Monday said they experienced some congestion when simultaneously starting installation processes in a lab, but Randy’s team identified the issue as a too aggressive vSphere host oversubscription strategy and were quickly able to add additional blade servers as vSphere hosts. For those that see this as an opportunity to knock ESX oversubscription, realize that conference labs are a unique scenario. How often will administrators experience an environment where nested ESX hosts are created, started, and reset on an hourly basis. My labs started on Tuesday. I can tell you I had no issues.

Looking Ahead

2010 should another great year for VMware virtualization. I’m hoping I can fill in the blanks for VM /ETC readers between now and VMworld 2010!

© Rich for Gestalt IT, 2010. | VMware PEX 2010: My Wrap Up
Read more posts categorized as Cloud Computing, Events, Server Virtualization

My presence at Storage Expo NL may have been cursed, but my presentation went off without a hitch thanks to the creativity and flexibility of the VNU staff and Expo volunteers like Ilja Coolen. In my session, I talked about the shortcomings of traditional tiered storage as a way to advance the Noble Goals of Storage Management and proposed a solution: Although merely using different disk types will never deliver the goods, adding flash and cloud to an integrated, automated solution will be truly revolutionary. I look forward to the day when all of today’s buzz-worthy technologies (flash, cloud, thin provisioning, automated tiering, post-RAID) are mixed together to form a really revolutionary storage system.

I went ahead and recorded the entire presentation and posted it on Vimeo for anyone to see. But I just realized I never posted it here to my blog. So without further ado, I give you “Extreme Tiered Storage: Flash, Disk, and Cloud!”

Stephen Foskett on Extreme Tiered Storage from Stephen Foskett on Vimeo.

By the way, in case you were wondering, I used BoinxTV to create this video.

© Stephen for Gestalt IT, 2010. | Extreme Tiered Storage: Flash, Disk, and Cloud
Read more posts categorized as Cloud Computing, Storage

Before the Alliance, Coalition, and Partnership start the Cloud Wars, everybody raise your Guinness and say “Brilliant!”

YouTube Guinness Brilliant Six Pack Commercial

It’s obvious now that Cloud Computing is no longer just a concept. Amazon EC2 has been around for a while, vCloud Express was announced late last year, Microsoft is moving full steam ahead with Azure, and new internal cloud infrastructure and storage solutions are appearing on the scene weekly. CTOs and IT Directors are starting to see legitimate solutions for offloading some or all of their development and production workload and infrastructure to alternatives in The Cloud.

Put yourself at the helm of one of the Original Equipment Manufacturer’s (OEMs) that have made their money selling server, switch and storage hardware in the private data center to date. Faced with the future possibility that companies will have an option to run applications and services on infrastructure they don’t buy, build, or maintain, what would be your strategy for generating reoccuring business in the future?

I bring it up because of all the cloud architecture announcements. EMC announced a coalition with Cisco and VMware, NetApp has a Secure Multi Tennancy alliance with Cisco and VMware, and HP has announced an Integrated Infrastructure partnership with Microsoft. The storage OEMs are the first out the gate with the snap together infrastrucure for the cloud, but I imagine other hardware partnerships are not too far behind. VMware and Cisco UCS may already be the first with Microsoft and HP? Microsoft and VMware conveniently can run on top if it all.

Before the Alliance, Coalition, and Partnership start the Cloud Wars, everybody raise your Guinness and say “Brilliant!”

It’s brilliant because it’s a simple win / win solution no matter what happens. The appeal of Everything as a Service, Iaas, Saas, Haas, and any other “as a service” you want to think up is interesting and efficient whether implemented internally or externally. Those hardware and software providers that have a cookie cutter architecture with guidelines for implementing in a dynamic, do it yourself, modular data center should stand out as go to manufacturers.

The point is that, although the OEM partnerships may have many complex implications that are being discussed in the community from every possible angle, at the heart of the announcements is a simple desire to keep selling products. Selling them no matter who is buying – the traditional IT department or the cloud provider. Like the Guinness six pack, combining the equipment also results in more unit sold for everybody.

Brilliant!

© Rich for Gestalt IT, 2010. | If You Were An OEM Facing The Cloud What Would You Do?
Read more posts categorized as Cloud Computing, Server Virtualization

VMware is purchasing Zimbra, a messaging and collaboration software company, from Yahoo!. Already one of the most popular virtual appliances available for download in VMware’s Virtual Appliance Marketplace, Zimbra will now be optimized for VMware vSphere and probably be offered as a standard service in VMware hosted cloud offerings such as vCloud Express. Eventually I would expect to see Zimbra imported and exported as a vApp for the federated, private vSphere cloud environment. As for now, Zimbra is running more than 55 million mailboxes for both SMB customers as well as in hosted environments that arguably have instantly become VMware customers.

There is no doubt that VMware will provide support, enable high availability, ensure live backup and DR site fail over, as well as  develop scale, automation, monitoring and management capabilities for virtualized Zimbra. The fact that VMware is acquiring a large percentage of SMB mail accounts could mean that virtualizing those servers (if they are not already) will provide the first shining, every day business application in the cloud examples.

VMware CTO Steve Herod explains on his personal blog that purchasing Zimbra is part of VMware’s strategy to simplify IT:

“VMware’s mission is to simplify IT, and every VMware product focuses on attacking the complexity and rigidity that has crept into this world. In many ways we see the excitement over cloud computing to be a longing for a simpler, more flexible way of doing computing. The VMware strategy is to help customers achieve cloud-like efficiency and operational improvements across the major IT infrastructure investment areas.”

Other reports I’ve read seem to suggest that VMware is “seeding” it’s cloud for the SMB market by buying Zimbra, and at the same time possibly even attempting to strengthen it’s position against the looming threat from Microsoft. Maybe VMware is even trying to beat Microsoft at it’s own game but on a new battlefield. A post on The Tech Beat blog from Businessweek.com titled VMware’s ‘West Coast Offense’ explains the following:

“[Chief Operating Officer Tod] Nielsen, VMware Chief Executive Paul Maritz, and Executive Vice-President Richard McAniff are all former executives at Microsoft, whose Windows Server products compete with VMware’s software. VMware is employing a strategy similar to the one Microsoft used to dominate the desktop computing market, adding software applications that can create demand for an underlying system.”

There are certainly a lot of skeptics that say VMware’s sudden diversification is crazy. Anyone else reminded of Kevin Costner turning a corn field into a baseball diamond in the film Field of Dreams? Are there ghostly whispers echoing “If you build it he will come” in Palo Alto these days? It makes sense that VMware could accelerate cloud adoption if they provide and support (with their partners) all the critical services themselves.

I can’t help but imagine the future when I boot my client hypervisor and sync my offline VM while checking my VMware vMail (or will it be zMail?) with a native Zimbra client.

I guess Tuaw, the unofficial Apple Weblog, states what’s the most obvious for now with the post titled Zimbra and VMWare get married, cloud-shaped kids expected.

© Rich for Gestalt IT, 2010. | How Long Until I Check VMware vMail?
Read more posts categorized as Cloud Computing, Server Virtualization

One of the things you get used to as a consumer of services is that at times changes to the terms and conditions of that service irritate you and you consider moving your custom. Most of the time you don’t and eventually you learn to live with the changes. Actually, most of the times, the changes don’t make a jot of difference and you are just irritated for the sake of being irritated.

As consumers of ‘cloud applications’; this happens to us a lot; Twitter changes something, we all howl, it generally stays changed and we learn to live with it. User-interfaces change underneath us all the time, we have no choice and we learn the new interface. We cannot opt-out.

Now, look around your data centre; how many applications have you got running on legacy hardware/operating systems which are long out of support and in some case, the company which built them no longer exists? As you own the infrastructure, you can simply take the decision to opt-out and continue to run the application. A Business Unit might have very good reasons for continuing to run the application but it could simply be the case of ‘It Aint Broke, So Don’t Fix It’.

If Cloud Infrastructures become the norm, this no longer becomes quite so tenable. If your Cloud Provider upgrades it’s underlying infrastructure and you find your instance no longer works; your only opt-out might well to be find a way of moving that instance into a infrastructure which will support it. However, if the application is core and lots of applications partner with it; this might not be easy.

For support teams, this might finally give them the stick they need to encourage maintenance of applications enabling them to upgrade but if you are running a private cloud infrastructure, you could find yourself in the position where you have legacy clouds…and that will just make things worse.

© Martin for Gestalt IT, 2009. | Terms of Service
Read more posts categorized as Cloud Computing

Day 2 of the Tech Field Day kicked off with a trip to Ocarina Networks. For those who don’t know (a) Ocarina offer a “data reduction” appliance (b) an ocarina is a small oval, china flute. I say data reduction as the Ocarina appliance uses a variety of methods for reducing data size, including compression and de-duplication. The main presenters for Ocarina were Carter George and the CTO Goutham (Gou) Rao. Rather than deliver death by PowerPoint, Gou chose to whiteboard his entire session, getting into some significant depth on the theory behind data reduction techniques. The whiteboard approach was very informative  and popular with the delegates, generating lots of conversation.

Next up was Nirvanix. Nirvanix are a “cloud storage” company, operating in the same space as Amazon S3. After providing an overview of the company, Peter Pistek provided details of CloudNAS 2.0 a software offering which enables a Linux or Windows server to act as a NAS device, storing the data directly in Nirvanix’s cloud. This is a product I’ve reviewed in the past and previously I’ve not been favourable towards it. Expect to see my review of the 2.0 version in the near future.

Day 2 lunch was provided by W Curtis Preston and was followed by “Mr Backup” taking us through his new venture – Truth In IT, a paid-for community portal to assist clients in evaluating storage products (initially backup).

The afternoon was taken up by a trip to Data Robotics, creators of the Drobo storage device. This session was probably my most anticipated of the week and I wasn’t let down. It was superb – for a number of reasons. Firstly, CEO Geoff Barrall took us through the product in more depth, answering some of the questions I’ve always had around the way Drobo’s BeyondRAID technology operates. This will become a post in its own right, expect to read it over the coming week.

The Field Day delegates then split into groups for a practical session, followed by a questionnaire, the winners of which would receive a Drobo each. The winners were; Team #1 – me, Rod, Devang and Simon! Now I have two Drobo devices for my data.

The most anticipated part of the Drobo session was the unveiling of two new Drobo products. Details are under embargo until November 23rd, however I can say the new devices will fill out the Drobo range very nicely. Expect a post on this as the embargo date is reached.

Day 2 wrapped up with dinner at a local italian restaurant and signalled the start of delegate’s long trips home.

In summary, the first Gestalt IT Tech Field Day has been a great success. The presenters have been open with their product information, keen to discuss details and helped to provide a lot of insight into their thinking and strategies. Fortunately, no-one fell into the “marketing slideware” trap. Expect to see posts over the coming weeks and days that delve into some of the details we’ve seen over the last two days. As a group we’ve covered a huge number of topics to even attempt to put into a single post.

Congratulations to Stephen Foskett for setting the event up. A great deal of thanks also need to go to Claire Chaplais and Sunshine Mugrabi, without whom the event wouldn’t have happened. One final thought; where and when will Tech Field Day 2 be?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/33818355@N07/sets/72157622693448519/

Disclaimer/Disclosure: The sponsors and presenters of the Gestalt IT Tech Field Day event have only paid for my accommodation and travel expenses in San Jose during this trip. I am not employed or paid by any of the sponsors/presenters to express my views. I have received a Drobo storage device as part of the competition held at Data Robotics during the Field Day.  I also received a nice Drobo body warmer & T-Shirt and a T-Shirt from 3Par, plus a number of assorted USB memory sticks.

© Chris for Gestalt IT, 2009. | GestaltIT Tech Field Day – Day 2: Ocarina, Nirvanix and Data Robotics
Read more posts categorized as Cloud Computing, Server Virtualization, Storage

Before we all get carried away and pick on Cloud Storage as a specific target; perhaps we should sit back and think. It is not Cloud Storage; it is the Public Cloud which is the problem; the most visible failures have been storage related, but let’s be honest; without storage, you don’t have a Cloud Environment.

Cloud providers of Storage, Compute etc need to be held up to the highest standards of availability. You would not outsource your computing environment to Accenture, Cap Gemini, IBM etc without doing your due diligence, or perhaps you would?

Actually, I can think of many cases where people have outsourced various key parts of their business without due diligence; web-hosting for example, lots of SMBs have hosted their websites on random web-hosting companies with very little in the way of investigation. We have simply got into the habit of trusting people and we have accepted the enthusiastic amateur who starts a business.

But this business has got too big and important; but it aint a Cloud Storage problem! Stop throwing bricks at Cloud Storage; start holding the whole hosted computing business to account. Demand SLAs, verify SLAs, check insurances, ask for references, ask for evidence of best practise operating procedures. Be an informed consumer!

However, also accept that if you pay peanuts; you’ll get monkeys. So don’t just look at the cost, consider the value!

© Martin for Gestalt IT, 2009. | Not a Cloud Storage Problem
Read more posts categorized as Cloud Computing, Featured

EMC and VMWare’s coming together with Cisco is an exercise in Utility. If we take Nick Carr’s analogy of comparing utility computing with the power-generation industry, what the VCE alliance could be said to be is an attempt to define a de-facto standard for the ‘compute unit’. An attempt even to define what voltage the cloud should run at.

This is not necessarily a bad thing and there will come a time when we do need a standard for the ‘compute unit’; even a de-facto unit isn’t necessarily a bad thing. De-facto standards happen all the time; the processor has almost become a de-facto standard in that of the Intel chip, the desk-top operating system standard is pretty much Windows (and this from a Linux/MacOS fan).

Around these ’standards’; an industry has been built and thrives. And where there are standards in computing, there are dissenting voices and where there are dissenting voices, little industries spring and thrive in their niche.

But considering where we are in the development of cloud computing and especially, the infrastructure as a service play; arguably this is a bold and a very risky play. Much of what is being offered is at least behind the scenes, the proverbial swan; ‘graceful and elegant on the top, with little legs paddling like mad’. Perhaps this is why that this coming together is in the form of a services company? It’s just too hard for a currently over-worked IT department to make the technology play nice together?

© Martin for Gestalt IT, 2009. | An Exercise in Utility
Read more posts categorized as Cloud Computing, Featured