3 CPUs and 12GB RAM is the New Tier-1 App

May 9, 2012 in Virtualizationism | 5 comments

In what can only be regarded as a breakthrough in hypervisor performance technology, it is now possible to run tier-1 applications on minimal resources and without regard for high-availability of any kind!

A fascinating new report from Enterprise Strategy Group reveals that one particular hypervisor is suddenly capable of running tier-1 applications on just 3 virtual CPUs and a mere 12GB RAM — power and efficiency at its finest.  Not only that, the New Tier-1 App no longer requires application-level clustering to meet stringent SLAs!  Simply throw your mission-critical SQL Server database on a stand-alone hypervisor and skip the shared block storage entirely — you just don’t need it anymore.

Comprehensive lab scalability testing has demonstrated and proven once and for all that it is indeed possible to put not one, not two, but eight mission-critical tier-1 applications on a single stand-alone hypervisor host with no need for HA protection of any kind.

Beyond the obvious cloud computing use cases one would envision NASA and other high-performance compute environments benefitting immensely.  Customers using other hypervisors can only hope their vendors are feverishly working to provide similar performance and availability features so that the remaining universe of tier-1 applications can also be effortlessly virtualized on just 3 CPU cores and 12GB of memory.

The timing for this breakthrough is actually perfect, as SQL Server 2012 introduces a new per-core licensing model that would have sent costs through the roof if not for this remarkable advancement — bullet dodged!

 

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Great VMware Opportunity: Networking, Security, VXLAN, vShield, vSphere, vCloud

April 30, 2012 in Virtualizationism | 2 comments

The newest member of my team at VMware just finished new hire orientation today, but there is still one more opportunity for a top-notch technologist.  This time I’m looking for a person that loves working with networking, virtualization, VMware vSphere, cloud computing, firewalls, and VPNs.

If you know that VXLAN offers a better approach to network virtualization than NVGRE and you listen to Packet Pushers during your Silicon Valley commute, dust off your resume and take a look at the job description — contact me directly with any questions.

 

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Missing: “Private Clouds” at the MMS 2012 Hosted Cloud Pavilion

April 27, 2012 in Virtualizationism | No comments

Last week at Microsoft Management Summit 2012, attendees were directed to the “Microsoft Hosted Cloud Pavilion” for information on secure, enterprise-ready private clouds built on Windows and System Center.

I spent some time talking to these hosting providers, expecting to hear about how they have System Center 2012 deployed and ready to integrate with App Controller for amazing Infrastructure-as-a-Service hybrid cloud nirvana.  Much to my surprise, none of these companies were talking about this at all.  One was promoting an OpenStack initiative and all of them were happy to rent dedicated physical servers to customers — running Windows, Linux, VMware ESXi, etc. — but mostly the focus was on pay-by-the-month virtual servers.

Even offering Windows VMs and System Center management doesn’t make a true private cloud.  While private clouds can be hosted externally, the one attribute that makes them private is dedicated infrastructure.  By and large, shared infrastructure means public cloud.

This is the very thing Gartner analyst Lydia Leong discussed recently:

Given the widespread use of NIST cloud definitions, and the reasonable expectation that customers have that a provider’s terminology for its offering will conform to those definitions, calling a multi-tenant offering “private cloud” is misleading at best.

Once again, Microsoft has demonstrated that it is perfectly comfortable playing fast and loose with facts when characterizing product offerings, leaving customers — and the media — to believe that System Center hybrid and hosted private clouds are a reality today when they really nothing more than marketing.  One might expect more substance from a company that has dumped tons of cash on advertising campaigns that accuse a competitor of merely “talkin’ cloud.”

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Missing: System Center 2012 Hybrid Cloud

April 26, 2012 in Virtualizationism | No comments

In a typical discussion of cloud computing, the question inevitably arises: “what is cloud anyway?”  Not too surprising, considering the fact that the term is hurled around on billboards, television, and everything in between.  “The Cloud” comprehension varies for a simple reason — there are different types of cloud computing that cover a wide range of uses.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology took the initiative to provide recommended definitions of cloud computing models.  They’re probably not perfect, but it looks like the industry is starting to converge around this de facto standard.  You might be surprised to learn that the U.S. government could even produce a document like this, let alone have it consist of a mere three pages! Download Special Publication 800-145, NIST Definition of Cloud Computing, September 2011 and see for yourself.

Since you’re reading this article, you are probably clear on public cloud versus private cloud and Infrastructure-as-a-Service compared to Platform-as-a-Service.  But have you considered what qualifies as a hybrid cloud?  Microsoft has generously proclaimed that System Center 2012 enables “a hybrid cloud you can manage from a single pane of glass.”  A quick check of the facts tells a different story.

The truth is, System Center 2012 doesn’t offer capabilities that match the NIST definition of hybrid cloud:

Hybrid cloud. The cloud infrastructure is a composition of two or more distinct cloud infrastructures (private, community, or public) that remain unique entities, but are bound together by standardized or proprietary technology that enables data and application portability (e.g., cloud bursting for load balancing between clouds).

When it comes to hybrid cloud, System Center 2012 App Controller is two half-solutions in one.  The product is a web interface that allows provisioning PaaS applications to the Azure public cloud or IaaS service templates to a Virtual Machine Manager private cloud.  No mixing and matching — IaaS private cloud workloads cannot be moved to the public cloud and vice-versa.  Remember that the next time you hear Microsoft talking hybrid cloud.

But there is a cloud computing leader with true hybrid cloud computing solutions today: VMware.  Thanks to the large ecosystem of VMware vCloud providers, customers can integrate one or more public clouds with a vSphere/vCloud Director private cloud for true hybrid cloud computing.  And one more thing: VMware has offered this capability for over a year already!

Trust VMware for all your cloud computing needs: private, public, and true hybrid.

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Microsoft Management Summit 2012 a.k.a. “MMS 2011 for real this time”

April 24, 2012 in Virtualizationism | No comments

Microsoft Management Summit (MMS), the annual user conference focused on System Center technologies, just wrapped up.  Based on the technical content, it sure seemed like 2011 all over again.  I suppose that’s one of the inevitable consequences that come with the practice of marketing future versions of products in order to compete with more mature and proven solutions.

Back at MMS 2011 we heard about System Center 2012 — which was supposed to ship by the end of 2011 – and how the various products would revolutionize private clouds everywhere.  The sessions in 2011 demonstrated a range of new features such as Server App-V, Service Templates, SMI-S LUN creation, etc.

What a difference a year makes.  In the world of selling futures and beta software — the world Microsoft lives in — the keynote presentation in 2012 showed us amazing new demos of features such as Server App-V, Service Templates, SMI-S LUN creation, etc.  Sound familiar?  Perhaps just reality catching up with marketing.

To be fair, there were some new announcements as well — MCSE, the flagship certification of the 1990′s is back, this time for cloud! Oh, there was also this terrific coffee mug thing… must see.  And kudos for no obviously fake technical demos this time around.

One of the unexpected disclosures during the keynote was that next year MMS would not only be in a different location but at a different time: New Orleans in June 2013.  That seems awfully close to that other annual conference, Microsoft TechEd.  Connecting the dots could lead one to the conclusion that these two annual conferences are going to be getting a little cozier.

Whether Las Vegas in April or New Orleans in June, one thing’s for sure — it will be a perfect place to start talking about beta software that will solve all of your private cloud dilemmas.  You know, the one that’s really going to work; the one that solves all the problems with that old 2012 version.

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