Tag Archives: Data center

The new IT Landscape

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A view from the Infrastructure

In the last 15 years the Infrastructure landscape was defined by demands of the business. This will of course not change. However the approach that one business line demands middleware X another middleware Y will stop. There is a profound reason for that.

In the last couple of years the physic run the Infrastructure has dramatically comodiasied. This has reach a point where the saving for large enterprise no

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longer get in significant dimensions. The efficiency thru Server Virtualization and nowadays Storage Virtualization has reached in some enterprises more than 80%. With new storage and server orchestration layers and additional concepts like the enterprise hybrid cloud (EHC) this can be tweaked more, but needs first a different approach to the IT operation.

Key here is private cloud, which is similar to the public could offerings, of course on premise.

So what is the catch?

Mainly the operation. In the traditional datacenter, many enterprises and global operational IT departments have build a structure to map the silos approach of the LoB (Line of Business). You will find functions focused on Server, Storage, Networking, Databases, Middleware etc. Each of them have coordination functions with the LoB and cross functional sections. Lost of talks I have with those entities in the IT department always claim that they can do that better than external companies like VCE, which offers converged Infrastructure. Also many of them hide behind the “vendor-lock-in” argument.

On the other side we see that this cost the companies a fortune. Often this IT departments cover 70% of their cost with this, or the other way they can save a lot of that.

What has changed ?

With the concept of “as-a-service”, IT has the ability to automate many tasks and build a software layer as the final governance. With new concept of SLA build into the Software defined components IT personal no longer has to pan, define think-about and run it. Combined with the Converged Infrastructure and the possibilities of Software defined it changes the silos approach to an more holistic view of the datacenter. This does not only save cost and transport test and development of the infrastructure back to the vendor, it also allows higher integration of resources to drive more efficiency.

How does LoB react ?

Often they already there. With offerings of a public cloud the development of new software happens in this organizations often without the IT department involvement. This is a major concern of the CIO and CDO which I here very often. LoB´s look at the business outcome, they have alternatives to the internal IT now and they move off.

So what is next?

From ym view a lot will come in to analyze of the current state of the IT department and how mature this is already in the as-a-service transformation. There are various of offerings like the IT Transformation Workshop of EMC to define and reshape the IT landscape. Have a look at that.

So what with the applications?

Not so simple. There will be three types of applications found in many of the enterprises.

Applications which only deliver information, exist because of historical reasons. Others are monolithic large Enterprise Apps, like SAP, or Oracle Applications the thrid one are new apps for the new business lines touching Web, Mobile, social and cloud.IT-Transformation-Storymap1

For the first, I would retire them and replace that by a database delivering the results. Maybe there are apps no longer used, but nobody realize that? Shut them down. The 2nd kind is more tricky, and have to looked at case by case build a migration strategy and this may take some mont/years. The last I would put immediately on the new concept of Infrastructure.

So what is the key characteristics of this infrastructure?

Automation and orchestration, comodization and standardization. To drive more cost out of the IT the next generation of architecture have to follow this rules. More that that it has to build an independent layer between the physic and the applications. An interface between the resources and the applications. Efficiency and time to provisioning can be only gained with automation. Modern architecture drive provisioning down from weeks to days or even hours, defining the SLA and report back the cost of the selected SLA`s. Also it reports back whether a service breached the SLA or has performed in the payed and agreed parameters.

Finally all this journey start with the ability of the IT department to change and understand the journey of the private cloud.

Image courtesy of pro-physic.de, EMC Corporation

Read More:

http://itblog.emc.com/category/it-transformation/

https://blogs.vmware.com/cloudops/it-transformation

Keynote at the VMword 2012, with Pat Gelsinger and Steve Herrod

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VMworld Barcelona

VMworld Barcelona 2012

Pat Gelsinger is on stage in is new role as CEO of VMware

Pat starts with an back view of the history. Waves of change has been the only constant at the IT industry. Led by IT innovations and driven thru technology. He talks about phases of IT maturity, reactive vs. proactive.
The transformation is in each layer starting with consumer, IT departments, people, operations and procedures. It began in various layers simultaneously and he talked about the infrastructure layer first of course.

From server to cloud.

This means from 25% in 2008 server are virtualized, today it is around 60%. The expectations that it will be in the near future more than 90% of all workloads virtualized.  This has also impact on the provision of servers from week, to days and in a view years to minutes and seconds or less. This only can be done by introducing a new paradigm automation

Next topic: software defined datacenter
Introducing the VMware perspective. Means that it is everything virtualized. Pat starts to talk about a huge legacy in the DC of today; the only solution here to end the dilemma is to abstract, pool and than finally full automate. Leading to the concept in manufacturing on „Just in time“ or all as a service.
The Software defined Datacenter is based on the vCloud suite, the basic element of the beginning of the journey.

Pat Gelsinger on vCloud Suite

This suite it is comprehensive, deliverers the highest performance, proven reliability, check it out.
Pat announced now that vRAM will no longer exist. based on the customer feedback VMware has decided that this is no longer the way to go. The new model is

  • priced per CPU
  • one easy solution
  • has no limitations

Back to the Software defined datacenter, diving into the management philosophy, more automation, less management, which will lead to IT broker of services also mean that the management must change.
The  policy based automation is the key to manage the future datacenter, eliminating time and human errors in the equation. This equals
service provisioning including vCloud Automation, vFabric Application Director,
operation management including vCenter Operation management suite,
Business management including IT business management suite.

The CEO now talks about Cloud Infrastructure around software, technology and architecture. This leads to the next area: How do I operate in the new World? its about People, culture and org, as well as Process and control and IT Business management
A new forum is build to shape the ecosystem, call „cloud ops forum“
Moving on to multi cloud environment, like vCloud, physical, non/VMW and public.
Pat mentioned  PaaS is key represented thru cloudfoundry and automatic service provisioning DynamicOps, and software defined networking and security, keyword is nicira.

Addressing the multi cloud world
The VMware executive claims that it is ready for the open world.
Next high light is on applications, to move apps into new dimensions from vFabric on application transformation.
This all has been only be able to drive this transformation it was only be able thru the huge partner system.
Pat now moves the mic over to Chief Technology Officer Steve Herrod.

Future Storage Directions

Steve start to talk about the next generation  vCloud suite, and start to dig into. VMware, vSphere, virtualization, focusing on Exchange, share point server and SAP as well as Oracle.

What is a Monster VM, drive this to the edge.

  • 2011: 32 vCPUs, 1 TB per VM and IOPS 1 M per host, 
  • 2012: up to 64, 1 TB and more than 1 M IOPS per host.

So what about tomorrow’s applications, So what are they, in Telco, VoIP issues is latency, VMware is looking into that , based on vFabric, they look into the shared virtual memory, also HPC is coming to to virtualization, PaaS like cloudfoundry, introducing more on the Hadoop integration.

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Learn from the past, think about the future, but live in the now !

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When I prepared for my last tests at the University, one of my professors mentioned that they intend not to guide us to find good jobs immediately after the University, the key is that we as graduates have longer term chances to find and keep excellent jobs. At this time I thought it was stupid, my profession starts with my first job and not in 10 years.

Die of an Intel 80486DX2 microprocessor (actua...

Die of an Intel 80486DX2 microprocessor (actual size: 12×6.75 mm) in its packaging. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Time showed to me, that it is key to have both in mind when you start and it is essential to stay laser sharp focused.

Same in datacenters, when CIO´s get confronted with the new reality of BYOD, data deluge, cyber attacks and complexity explosion. Positions and processes years worked no longer seem accurate, personal gets confused, and the business units claim to have often more IT knowledge, since they use flexible services on the Internet. The CIO´s and IT managers I talked to often seek for external help, call consultants, which tell them that all has to change, processes has to be reworked and the HC has to decrease.

What a challenge!

Most people underestimate the finest attitude mankind has is: the best ability to change and adapt. Of course this is not easy, people like to be in the comfort zone, don`t like to get moved or learn new skills, move on and modify, even they do this all their lifes.

Most successful IT organizations I know have arranged with that to a superlative, taken the employees on the road and established a culture of change. As we learn from the past the change never stops, we moved from monolithic mainframes to mini´s to server to PC and now to tablets; from proprietary OS to open source from complex instructions CPU´s to RISC and back, from multiple CPU architectures, to multiple server to multiple core architectures. From ASCII terminals to mouse driven interactive PC´s to gesture tablets. From 640 KB RAM to Tb of RAM, from 5 MB Disk drive to 4 TB and now flash technology. So we know the past, we understand that telecommunication 10 years ago has been an enterprise asset and now is an outsourced, VOIP driven business.

So what will the future bring to plan, new devices, like the Google glasses, faster storage, from keyboards to voice driven interaction with computers, to InMemory DB build in CloudOS, from Applications to functions, from physical infrastructures topologies and silos, to software defined datacenters. From Application centric approach to information centric concepts, from blade farms to virtual workloads which independent from the blades will be executed?

We will see computer talk to computers, make decisions for us, devices will generate information, which only relevant for seconds. Batch processing will become too slow to keep pace;

This image was selected as a picture of the we...

This image was selected as a picture of the week on the Farsi Wikipedia for the 13th week, 2011. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

it will be replaced thru bigdata algorithms.

On the consumption model we will purchase only what we consume, vendors have to deal with end customers enterprises will move legacy workloads to specialized and focused workbenches, all information has to be secured and trusted to be transferred.

So the key for the future will all about information, generates, capture, store, manipulate, destroy and analyze, we call it the gravity is on information.

Based on that, CIO´s and IT managers have to and do act in the now, to prepare. Build an agile infrastructure, make our investments in the Datacenter on skills, new technology, information and big data, that supports the workload management and secure the information, which this is critical to the enterprise or the privacy of an employee or customer. Investments in IT of an enterprise should help to build and prepare an agile datacenter around the information to be ready for the near future and bejond.

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