VMWare

I CAN HAS DEFINISHUN of SoftADC and vADC? In the networking side of the world, vendors often seek to differentiate their solutions not just based on features and functionality, but on form-factor, as well. Using a descriptor to impart an understanding of the deployment form-factor of a particular solution has always been quite common: appliance, hardware, platform, etc… Sometimes these terms come from analysts, other times they come from vendors themselves. Regardless of where they originate, they quickly propagate and unfortunately often do so without the benefit of a clear definition. A reader recently asked a question that reminded me that we’ve done just that... posted @ Thursday, March 11, 2010 3:31 AM | Feedback (1)

Lots of Little Virtual Web Applications Scale Out Better than Scaling Up Surprised? I was, but I shouldn’t have been. While working on other topics I ran across an interesting slide in a presentation given by Microsoft at TechEd Europe 2009 on virtualization and Exchange. Specifically the presenter called out the average 12% overhead incurred from the hypervisor on systems in internal testing. Intuitively it seems obvious that a hypervisor will incur overhead; it is, after all, an application that is executing and thus requires CPU, I/O, and RAM to perform its tasks. That led to me to wonder if there was more data on the overhead from other... posted @ Thursday, February 18, 2010 3:47 AM | Feedback (2)

Return of the Web Application Platform Wars If developers will not write “virtualization aware” applications, who will? The future of application development platforms may be at stake… Right now developers are packaging up applications in virtual machines and deploying them. That’s according to, well, every survey you find related to virtualization and cloud computing. Joe McKendrick, citing the latest Evans Data Cloud Development Survey, noted that “sixty-one percent of 400 developers in Evans Data Corp’s recent Cloud Development Survey report that at least some of their IT resources will move to the public cloud within the next year.” But even given the number... posted @ Thursday, February 11, 2010 3:30 AM | Feedback (1)

Clouds Are Like Onions Which of course are like Ogres. They’re big, chaotic, and have lots of layers of virtualization. In discussions involving cloud it is often the case that someone will remind you that “virtualization” is not required to build a cloud. But that’s only partially true, as some layers of virtualization are, in fact, required to build out a cloud computing environment. It’s only “operating system” virtualization that is not required. Problem is unlike the term “cloud”, “virtualization” has come to be associated with a single, specific kind of virtualization; specifically, it’s almost exclusively used to refer... posted @ Monday, February 01, 2010 3:52 AM | Feedback (0)

I Found the Missing Piece of the Virtualization Puzzle Nope. Wasn’t under the couch. In fact it turns out it wasn’t even missing, it’s just been overlooked and might already be in your data center. As more organizations continue to make virtualization a core part of their overall application deployment strategy they are finding challenges associated with managing and, apparently, optimizing their newly created heterogeneous infrastructure. Kevin Fogarty, in “10 Virtualization Vendors to Watch in 2010”, writes of some of the challenges with virtualization to come in the next year. One of those challenges is, apparently, optimization of resources across physical and virtual assets, at least... posted @ Tuesday, January 26, 2010 4:02 AM | Feedback (3)

A Fluid Network is the Result of Collaboration Not Virtualization The benefits of automation and orchestration do not come solely from virtualization. Virtualization has benefits, there is no arguing that. But let’s not get carried away and attribute all the benefits associated with cloud computing and automation to one member of the “game changing” team: virtualization. I recently read one of the all-too-common end-of-year prediction blogs on virtualization and 2010 that managed to say with what I think was a straight face that virtualization of the network is what makes it “fluid”. From: 2010 Virtualization Predictions - The Year the Network Becomes Fluid and Virtual ... posted @ Tuesday, January 19, 2010 3:08 AM | Feedback (0)

‘Twas Two Weeks Past (Cloud) Deployment Here comes St. Beaker and Santa Cloud … Twas two weeks past deployment and all through the house Echoed taps on a keyboard and clicks from a mouse The apps were all running inside VMware In hopes compute resources soon would they share. The dashboard showed statuses green and not red our admins had thoughts of going home in their heads The director was ready to it a wrap and I began... posted @ Wednesday, December 23, 2009 6:06 AM | Feedback (2)

Is Vendor Lock-In Really a Bad Thing? When you look at the success of some very proprietary solutions and the loyalty with which customers defend them, you have to wonder if vendor lock-in is really as bad a thing as we sometimes make it sound. The subtext in the discussions around data portability and interoperability in general in cloud computing is really about vendor lock-in. Those driving efforts to come up with solutions that allow customers to pack up their data and head to another provider are primarily concerned about the dangers of being locked-in to a single vendor solution. ... posted @ Friday, November 13, 2009 3:47 AM | Feedback (7)

Virtualization Changes Application Deployment But Not Development Cloud computing management functionality and standards are right now laser-focused on virtual machines, and most APIs include the ability to stop,start,launch,etc…at that level of the infrastructure. This is because the application is still insulated by its virtualized environment. The “depth” of management and standards efforts today stops at the hard shell of the virtualization layer and leaves the soft, chewy application center alone. This means nothing is really all that different for developers. But it could, and some might argue should, be different.   The development of a web-application for a cloud computing environment today is really... posted @ Monday, November 09, 2009 3:57 AM | Feedback (3)

Maybe Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud Makes Cloud Computing Too Easy With just a few clicks you, too, can create a cloud computing environment. But if you’re like a lot of organizations, you may not know what to do with it after that. The latest version of Ubuntu Server (9.10) includes the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC), which is actually powered by Eucalyptus. The ability to deploy a “cloud” on any server running Ubuntu is really quite amazing, especially given the compatibility of Eucalyptus with Amazon and the plethora of application images available for nearly immediate deployment. It supports both a public and private option, and a hybrid model, and... posted @ Tuesday, November 03, 2009 5:30 AM | Feedback (6)

Migrate a live application across clouds with no downtime? Sure, no problem. F5 and VMware demonstrate live migration of a virtualized application across clouds without downtime or user disruption Cloud is reaching the peak of possibilities and that (often) means just more paper solutions. You know the ones; the ones that exist only on paper (or in blogs as the case may be). Those paper solutions need to exist because the ideas need to come first either out of necessity, i.e. to solve a specific problem, or out of a desire to find new ways to leverage emerging technology, like virtualization. But still, you’d like to see some of these... posted @ Monday, August 31, 2009 4:33 AM | Feedback (9)

Cloud Computing’s (not so) Best Kept Secret Cloud providers know the secret to a successful cloud computing implementation is integration between the infrastructure and virtualization Ever notice that cloud providers are v e r y reluctant to reveal on what foundation their cloud computing architectures are laid? Most providers don’t want to share their “secret sauce” because, well, then everyone else could get into the game as well. While it is certainly true that the infrastructure – and specifically the application delivery infrastructure – you choose to lay the foundation for a cloud computing architecture can affect your ability to succeed and innovate... posted @ Tuesday, August 25, 2009 10:17 AM | Feedback (0)

Virtual Machine Density as the New Measure of IT Efficiency You’re going to need a dynamic infrastructure lest you effectively negate the gains achieved by higher VM densities In the continuing saga of “do more with less” comes a new phrase that’s being tossed around: VM density. For example, VMware puts forth the notion that the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of virtualization technology must consider VM density, saying, “Density matters in a many-to-one relationship.” VMware illustrates this concept in the context of TCO, but in general an increasing number of solutions are beginning to tout not only the benefits of higher VM density, but of their solutions ability... posted @ Monday, August 24, 2009 4:07 AM | Feedback (0)

The Revolution Continues: Let Them Eat Cloud The consensus seems to be, at least from the myriad surveys, studies, and research, that cloud as a model is the right answer, it’s just the location that’s problematic for most organizations. Organizations aren’t ignoring reality; they know there are real benefits associated with cloud computing. But they aren’t yet – and may never be – willing to give up control. And there are good reasons to maintain that control, from security to accountability to agility.  But the “people” still want the benefits of cloud, so the question is: how do we put... posted @ Thursday, May 14, 2009 3:27 AM | Feedback (1)

The View from the Other Side of Interop Everyone who is involved in networking, application networking, cloud computing, and virtualization knows about and is probably planning some kind of presence at Interop. It is “the” event for a variety of inter-related industries, all revolving around network-something. For six years I attended Interop, but as a member of the press. This time, I’m on the “other side” with a vendor, and the view is very different. At a minimum, there’s a lot more planning that goes into exhibiting at such an event. There’s booth layouts to review and decisions on what kind of information... posted @ Friday, May 08, 2009 3:42 AM | Feedback (0)

OVF: A few layers short of a full stack OVF (Open Virtualization Format) apparently just isn’t getting enough mindshare out there in the discussions of cloud computing that focus on portability and interoperability. The goal of OVF is to provide a portable, interoperable non-vendor specific meta-data that describes an application, its virtual container, and the attributes necessary to deploy it in a new environment with minimal human intervention. This will, allegedly, allow it to move seamlessly from cloud to cloud, drifting ever-so-gently and making the entire process appear effortless. Given that lofty goal, it’s no surprise that Jon Oltsik, senior analyst at the Enterprise Strategy Group, wonders... posted @ Tuesday, April 21, 2009 2:58 AM | Feedback (4)

Load balancing is key to successful cloud-based (dynamic) architectures Much of the dialogue today surrounding cloud computing and virtualization is still taking the 50,000 foot view. It's all conceptual; it's all about business value, justification, interoperability, and use cases. These are all good conversations that need to happen in order for cloud computing and virtualization-based architectures to mature, but as is often the case that leaves the folks tasked with building something right now a bit on their own. So let's ignore the high-level view for just a bit and talk reality. Many folks are being tasked, now, with designing or even implementing some form of a cloud... posted @ Friday, January 23, 2009 4:51 AM | Feedback (2)

Virtualization Gone Wild: Infrastructure as virtual appliances It has been suggested more than once, by folks normally considered rational, that in a cloud computing implementation everything - and I mean everything - should be virtualized. Even the infrastructure. The hype surrounding virtualization has spread not just to applications and their virtual image deployment as a means to achieve dynamic horizontal scale but also to infrastructure, to routers and switches and security devices. Indeed, there are a good number of infrastructure vendors currently offering and others feverishly working on virtual appliance versions of hardware devices for deployment in cloud and virtual computing environments. Part... posted @ Monday, January 12, 2009 4:29 AM | Feedback (7)

Virtualization: How to Isolate Application Traffic Many people are concerned with virtualization security (already coined VirtSec), and they're applying that concern from the virtual images all the way down the stack, to the network infrastructure through which virtualized application traffic is delivered. The desire for network infrastructure to be itself virtualized is growing out of a perceived need to isolate application traffic at every point in the infrastructure. But the technology to isolate application traffic at layer 2 and 3 of the infrastructure already exists, and has been essentially virtualized for years. The sudden desire for everything in the infrastructure to be virtualized completely is borne... posted @ Friday, November 07, 2008 6:33 AM | Feedback (2)

Making Infrastructure 2.0 reality may require new standards Managing a heterogeneous infrastructure is difficult enough, but managing a dynamic, ever changing heterogeneous infrastructure that must be stable enough to deliver dynamic applications makes the former look like a walk in the park. Part of the problem is certainly the inability to manage heterogeneous network infrastructure devices from a single management system. SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol), the only truly interoperable network management standard used by infrastructure vendors for over a decade, is not robust enough to deal with the management nightmare rapidly emerging for cloud computing vendors. It's called "Simple" for a reason, after all. And... posted @ Wednesday, October 22, 2008 3:58 AM | Feedback (1)

Enabling Cloud Computing: B-Hive, F5, and BlueLock Paul Maritz' keynote at VMWorld this year featured a demonstration of cloud computing using B-Hive, F5 Global Traffic Manager (GTM), and BlueLock. If you missed it, here's your chance to kick back and explore how these technologies fit together to provide a dynamic, virtualized environment.   Related Links ... posted @ Friday, October 17, 2008 4:14 AM | Feedback (1)

Cloud Computing and Infrastructure 2.0 Not every infrastructure vendor needs new capabilities to support cloud computing and infrastructure 2.0.  Greg Ness of Infoblox has an excellent article on "The Next Tech Boom: Infrastructure 2.0" that is showing up everywhere. That's because it raises some interesting questions and points out some real problems that will be need to be addressed as we move further into cloud computing and virtualized environments. What is really interesting, however, is the fact that some infrastructure vendors are already there and have been for quite some time. One thing Greg mentions that's not quite accurate (at least... posted @ Friday, October 17, 2008 3:58 AM | Feedback (8)

The day of the virtual desktop has come...and gone Desktop virtualization. Virtual desktops. Application streaming. Whatever you want to call it makes no nevermind to me because the problem driving the entire concept is gone. Eradicated. Made irrelevant by the cloud. Made irrelevant by cloudware, SaaS (Software as a Service), and the ubiquitous browser. I cannot count the number of times I've heard complaints about some form of desktop virtualization/application streaming in the past. It's slow. The server died in the middle of my exam. It's slow. There are no more licenses left. It's slow today (why do you add "today", it's slow every day!). Sensing a... posted @ Wednesday, September 24, 2008 5:01 AM | Feedback (1)

Are you (and your infrastructure) ready for virtualization? We're virtually there! Figuratively speaking, of course. VMWorld kicks off Monday night, and F5 is just putting the finishing touches on everything we've got to bring along to the show (yes, that means trinkets, too). What the heck are we doing at a virtualization show? Pshaw. We've been in the business of network and server virtualization for ... well, forever. Hey, 12 years is forever in this industry, isn't it? We'll be doing a cool demo with BIG-IP GTM in the B-Hive demo, where we'll demonstrate global load sharing between virtual data centers, and Trace|3... posted @ Wednesday, September 10, 2008 4:18 AM | Feedback (0)

Server Virtualization versus Server Virtualization No, that's not a typo. That's the reality of virtualization terminology today: a single term means multiple technology implementations. Server virtualization is used to describe at least two (and probably more) types of virtualization. 1. Server virtualization a la load balancing and application delivery 2. Server virtualization a la VMWare and Microsoft Server virtualization as implemented by load balancers/application delivery controllers is a M:1 virtualization scheme. An application delivery controller like BIG-IP can make many servers look like one server, a virtual server. This type of server virtualization is used... posted @ Thursday, August 07, 2008 4:14 AM | Feedback (9)

Does your virtualization strategy create an SEP field? There is a lot of hype around all types of virtualization today, with one of the primary drivers often cited being a reduction in management costs. I was pondering whether or not that hype was true, given the amount of work that goes into setting up not only the virtual image, but the infrastructure necessary to properly deliver the images and the applications they contain. We've been using imaging technology for a long time, especially in lab and testing environments. It made sense then because a lot of work goes into setting up a server and... posted @ Monday, July 21, 2008 4:33 AM | Feedback (0)

What OS Virtualization and Christmas Lights Have in Common Anyone who's listened to Bob Rivers' Twisted The Twelve Pains of Christmas can probably relate to the angry husband screaming, "When one light goes out they all go out!" because, yeah, we've all been there. Imagine now, if you will, a data center. A data center filled with servers humming along, each running three or four applications in virtual machines a la VMWare. Imagine now - it shouldn't be hard at all - that one of those servers suddenly just stops working. Let's say the drive crashes. After the blue smoke dissipates and the screams of... posted @ Tuesday, May 13, 2008 6:07 AM | Feedback (0)