Red Herring: Hardware versus Services

In a service-focused, platform-based infrastructure offering, the form factor is irrelevant. One of the most difficult aspects of cloud, virtualization, and the rise of platform-oriented data centers is the separation of services from their implementation. This is SOA applied to infrastructure, and it is for some reason a foreign concept to most operational IT folks – with the sometimes exception of developers. But sometimes even developers are challenged by the notion, especially when it begins to include network hardware. ARE YOU SERIOUSLY?  The headline read: WAN Optimization Hardware versus WAN Optimization Services. I read...

Ecosystems are Always in Flux

#devops An ecosystem-based data center approach means accepting the constancy of change… It is an interesting fact of life for aquarists that the term “stable” does not actually mean a lack of change. On the contrary, it means that the core system is maintaining equilibrium at a constant rate. That is, the change is controlled and managed automatically either by the system itself or through the use of mechanical and chemical assistance. Sometimes, those systems need modifications or break (usually when you’re away from home and don’t know it and couldn’t do anything about it if you...

IT Services: Creating Commodities out of Complexity

Let’s ignore the business for a moment. Why should IT be excited about IT as a Service? The focus of IT as a Service (ITaaS) is generally on the value it would provide with respect to self-service provisioning for both business and IT customers alike. But let’s ignore the business for a moment, shall we? Let’s get downright selfish and consider what benefits there are to IT in implementing IT as a Service. The big exciting thing about IT as a Service for IT folks is how it enables less-disruptive change. Less-disruptive means less work, less...

F5 Friday: How Can I Manage Thee? Let Me Count the Ways…

#v11 A robust and diverse set of management tools enabling a variety of infrastructure integration options is essential to architecting a dynamic data center In the continuing quest for a more dynamic data center, infrastructure integration must necessarily take center stage. While virtualization has enabled fluidity of server infrastructure, it has not done so for the network and may never be wholly suitable for the task for a variety of reasons. But the agility resulting from virtualization, the ability to manage resources on-demand, must be incorporated into the network infrastructure in order to scale...

The Infrastructure 2.0–Security Connection

#infosec #infra2 If you take one thing away from the ability to programmatically control infrastructure components take this: it’s imperative to maintaining a positive security posture You’ve heard it before, I’m sure. The biggest threat to organizational security is your own employees. Most of the time we associate that with end-users who may with purposeful intent to do harm carry corporate information offsite but just as frequently we cite employees who intended no harm – they simply wanted to work from home and then Murphy’s Law took over, resulting in the inadvertent loss of that sensitive...

JSON Activity Streams and the Other Consumerization of IT

The JSON Activity Stream specification could allow the (other and oh so soon forgotten side of) consumerization of IT to make its way into the data center. Remember when I posited that the Next-Generation Management of Data Centers Should be Modeled on Social Networking and introduced the concept of “Infrabook” – a somewhat silly-but-serious-at-the-time idea that infrastructure should get “social”? The recent publication of JSON Activity Streams – in addition to being very exciting from an infrastructure architecture perspective – may be exactly what is needed to bring this concept to life. ...

F5 Friday: The More The Merrier

Heterogeneous storage systems remain one of the more difficult data center components to virtualize. F5 ARX and ARX Cloud Extender continue to broaden support for more systems, making it easier to normalize data storage – even if the data and provider interfaces aren’t. This week Don joins us to share the latest news from the F5 Data Solutions Group.   The advent of directory virtualization opened up the ability to intelligently tier storage without a lot of manual intervention. The use of the strategic point of control between consumers of file services and the providers...

The Consumerization of IT: The OpsStore

Tablets, smart phones and emerging mobile devices with instant access to applications are impacting the way in which IT provides services and developers architect applications. When pundits talk about the consumerization of IT they’re mostly referring to the ability of IT consumers, i.e. application developers and business stakeholders, to provision and manage, on demand, certain IT resources, most usually that of applications. There’s no doubt that the task of provisioning the hardware and software resources for an application is not only tedious but time-consuming and that it can easily – using virtualization and cloud computing technologies – be enabled...

(IP) Identity Theft in Cloud Computing Environments

#devops #infosec  Shared resources do benefit organizations, there’s no arguing about that. But when resources forming the basis of identity are trusted and then inadvertently shared, you may find your (IP) identity misappropriated. In the past two years there have been interesting stories floating around about what happens when IP addresses are “shared” in public cloud computing environments. You’ve no doubt heard how someone spun up an instance and was immediately blacklisted by some other website because the last application assigned that IP address was naughty on the Internets. Organizations have struggled with such issues...

F5 Friday: HP Cloud Maps Help Navigate Server Flexing with BIG-IP

The economy of scale realized in enterprise cloud computing deployments is as much (if not more) about process as it is products. HP Cloud Maps simplify the former by automating the latter. When the notion of “private” or “enterprise” cloud computing first appeared, it was dismissed as being a non-viable model due to the fact that the economy of scale necessary to realize the true benefits were simply not present in the data center. What was ignored in those arguments was that the economy of scale desired by enterprises large and small was not necessarily...