In my first post, I discussed how software and various tools are dramatically changing the Ops department. This post centers on the automation process.
When I was younger, you actually had to build a server from scratch, buy power and connectivity in a data center, and manually plug a machine into the network. After wearing the operations hat for a few years, I have learned many operations tasks are mundane, manual, and often have to be done at two in the morning once something has gone wrong. DevOps is predicated on the idea that all elements of technology infrastructure can be controlled through code and automated. With the rise of the cloud it can all be done in real-time via a web service.
Infrastructure automation + virtualization solves the problem of having to be physically present in a data center to provision hardware and make network changes. Also, by automating the mundane tasks you can remove unnecessary personnel. The benefits of using cloud services is costs scale linearly with demand and you can provision automatically as needed without having to pay for hardware up front.
Archivo mensual: agosto 2014
VMware to offer additional public cloud services
VMware’s annual confab, VMworld, takes place in San Francisco this year. At that conference, VMware is expected to release additions to its public cloud infrastructure vCHS in efforts to differentiate its business model from other providers.
Although vCHS has been around for the less a year, the infrastructure has received mixed reviews. Some administrators seem to love the way it integrates into VMware’s vCenter while others note the lack of features and functionality found within the interface. According to Bill Fathers, SVP & GM at VMware, naysayers may finally get their way.
“Looking at the adoption of public cloud over the last five years, there’s no question that it’s kind of reached a bit of a sticking point,” says Fathers in an interview with eWeek. “The current model isn’t going to continue to scale. And as we know, this is the next phase of the adoption of the enterprise public cloud.
“As a result, we’re going to continue to double down and pile on services that will help us differentiate in the area of compatibility.”
Fathers continues by mentioning that VMware is looking for a way to connect with customers to show that VMware’s vCHS offering gives better compatibility and more flexibility for the workloads you currently utilise on-site.
Fathers says: “We want to differentiate ourselves with our public cloud by saying to our customers and potential customers: ‘Look, we think the compatibility with your existing environments is THE key.’ In the last year, we’ve proven that to ourselves (internally).”
Fathers continues by mentioning the success of DRaaS. Disaster Recovery as a Service is one way for shops that can use VMware’s vCHS service to begin utilising the cloud services. In fact, Fathers mentioned that DRaaS is “fast becoming VMware’s fastest-growing product globally.”
VMware looks to capitalize on DRaaS’s success by launching other niche products that give data center administrators more confidence in choosing vCHS over the competition.
The post VMware to Offer Additional Public Cloud Services appeared first on CloudWedge.
@StackIQ To Present at Cloud Expo Silicon Valley [#Hadoop & #BigData]
Due of the rise of Hadoop, many enterprises are now deploying their first small clusters of 10 to 20 servers. At this small scale, the complexity of operating the cluster looks and feels like general data center servers. It is not until the clusters scale, as they inevitably do, when the pain caused by the exponential complexity becomes apparent. I’ve seen this problem occur time and time again. This talk describes why clusters are so different from farms of single-purpose servers that reside in traditional data centers, and why without an automated solution that can address the cluster requirements, real pain is coming and failure is certain.
@DevOpsSummit | @Rackspace Extends #DevOps Service
Rackspace® on Tuesday announced new features to its DevOps Automation Service including Windows Support and expanded environment stack support. Rackspace also launched a new DevOps Advisory Service for broader DevOps transformation engagements. Available in the U.S. and UK, enhancements to the Rackspace DevOps Automation Service offering provide customers with additional services and Fanatical Support® through the new managed operations service level. These enhancements will help customers design, manage and scale their cloud operations and enable a continuous application delivery model.
@AppZero_Inc Adds Wragby Business Solutions as Gold Partner [#Cloud]
AppZero has announced that Wragby Business Solutions & Technologies Limited, a Microsoft cloud partner in Nigeria, has joined the AppZero Partner Program as a Gold Partner for Nigeria and the rest of West Africa. Through the partner program, AppZero collaborates with system integrators, service providers and resellers to support enterprise application migrations to and across datacenters and clouds.
The Partner Program is the foundation of AppZero’s worldwide channel strategy to ensure comprehensive global coverage of its award-winning application migration software in the run-up to Windows Server 2003 (WS2003) end of support. Microsoft recommends AppZero Enterprise for application migration for various applications from Windows Server 2003 to either Windows Server 2012 or Azure.
OpenNebula 4.8 Lemon Slice Is Out!
The OpenNebula team has just announced the immediate availability of the final version of OpenNebula 4.8, codename Lemon Slice. This release brings significant improvements in different aspects. Sticking with its vision of bringing simplicity to cloud management, there are improvements in the recently added Cloud View portal, designed for end users. One significant advantage of the new portal is the ability to control flows, groups of interconnected Virtual Machines that conform a service. Based on this Cloud View, a Virtual Datacenter administrators view has been included (VDCAdmin View), which enables VDC admins to easily manage the VDC users and resources.
An important highlight in this release is the vast improvement made to the hybrid model. Support for two new public cloud providers has been added, widening the range of possibilities to offload VMs in case the local infrastructure is saturated. The hybrid model in OpenNebula enables a centralized management of both local and remote resources for the cloud administrator, and a transparent consumption of these resources for the end user. With these two new additions, namely support for Microsoft Azure and IBM SoftLayer, OpenNebula is increasing the possibilities to build powerful, robust, cost and performance efficient cloud infrastructures across administrative domains and public cloud providers.
PMP Meets ITIL and Says, “YES!”
By Brian Shaw, PMP, ITIL Foundations, LogicsOne
Successful IT project management professionals are making continuing education the norm. Neither IT ecosystems nor the tools for managing projects are static, and as a result, we must actively build skills to evolve with business needs. Furthermore, by achieving certifications we demonstrate competency within the marketplace.
The first certification you need as a project manager is your PMP, Project Management Professional certification (For more information visit www.pmi.org). The body of knowledge for a PMP certification, often referred to by PMBOK ®, provides a framework for: initiating, planning, executing, controlling and closing projects. This framework provides a common language, set of expectations and guidance for project success. GreenPages-LogicsOne has made PMP certified project managers the standard to ensure consistency and excellence in project management.
Recently a peer recommended I attain the ITIL Foundations certification. ITIL stands for IT Infrastructure Library and provides an approach to IT service management. ITIL offers structure and processes for: Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition, Service Operation and Continual Service Improvement.
A certification, such as ITIL, for ongoing services may seem like an odd choice for a PMP accustomed to managing projects with a fixed scope and duration, however upon closer review you will discover an ITIL certification fits perfectly with project management. While ongoing services are different from projects the implementation of new or changed services are typically achieved by projects.
New services are brought to life in service transition. Projects in service transition interface with the other stages of the ITIL lifecycle to ensure the vision from service strategy, as outlined in service design, comes to life in service operation. Additionally, opportunities to improve services as identified in the continual service improvement ITIL stage may also become projects.
The ITIL Foundations certification has many benefits to project management professionals practicing within a service organization. Those benefits include:
- Shared Terminology: Engineers and operations staff may not always know project management terminology, however they are familiar with terms such as incident management, SLA, etc. The knowledge required to gain an ITIL Foundations certification will ensure you are familiar with the same terms as people in the service organization. This shared dictionary goes a long way towards avoiding confusion.
- Outcome Based Action: Projects should deliver a specific result, as should the transition stage within ITIL.
- Clarifying Roles & Responsibilities: This is a huge benefit for project managers. Have you ever been on a call, trying to assign a task and either nobody volunteers or you don’t know who the owner should be? If yes, then ITIL is a great fit for you. ITIL delineates responsibilities by roles which fit nicely into project plans.
- Project Success: The ITIL strategy for building new services has proven successful since originally conceived in the 1980s by the British government. What project manager doesn’t love successful strategies?
- Professional Development Units (PDUs): Already a PMP? If yes, then you are required to attain 60 PDUs for each certification renewal cycle. ITIL courses and the certification can be used for PDUs. For the exact number of PDUs allowed with your course, check with your ITIL program provider and PMI.
Each project manager has a responsibility for continuing education. The ITIL Foundations certification demonstrates familiarity with knowledge certain to contribute to your overall project success.
Interested in speaking with one of our project management experts? Click here!
@ThingsExpo | @VMware CTO @Simon Brunozzi to Present @vCloud
Enterprises require the performance, agility and on-demand access of the public cloud, and the management, security and compatibility of the private cloud. The solution? In his session at 15th Cloud Expo, Simone Brunozzi, VP and Chief Technologist(global role) for VMware, will explore how to unlock the power of the hybrid cloud and the steps to get there. He’ll discuss the challenges that conventional approaches to both public and private cloud computing, and outline the tough decisions that must be made to accelerate the journey to the hybrid cloud. As part of the transition, an Infrastructure-as-a-Service model will enable enterprise IT to build services beyond their data center while owning what gets moved, when to move it, and for how long. IT can then move forward on what matters most to the organization that it supports – availability, agility and efficiency.
Opinion: The inverted pyramid of IT infrastructure
By Nick Razey, CEO, Next Generation Data
If we ever lose a bid for a data centre contract, it is for one of two reasons.
Either the customer insists on being close to London and is happy to pay the premium for doing so, or the customer is obsessed by paying the lowest possible price and will accept any quality of data centre service to achieve this. While I struggle to understand both points of view it is the latter approach which is totally incomprehensible in the modern world.
I see the IT infrastructure as an inverted pyramid. At the bottom is the cheapest element, the data centre service.
It is staggering to think that the cost of this per rack (at NGD at least) is only £20 per day or less. That £20 rack supports perhaps £50k to £100k of hardware and software (the next layer of the pyramid), which support multiple business applications that provide the business systems and processes which are fundamental to the efficient running of a business worth millions (the top level of the pyramid).
It’s staggering to think a £20 rack supports perhaps £50k to £100k of software
That’s an awful lot of trust to place in a service costing £20 per day. But responsible operators like NGD (and to be fair, most of the London DCs) offer a service that IS trustworthy. A well designed and built Tier 3 infrastructure, properly maintained with ISO approved processes and highly trained staff will ensure that outages are vanishingly rare.
However, some customers are so focused on price that they will seek out the cheap and nasty data centre – the N+0 infrastructure with zero security and technical support 9 to 5 rather than 24/7.
With a service of this quality it is a question of when it fails not if it fails. And when the data centre fails, the whole IT pyramid will come crashing down with the attendant loss of revenue and reputation.
All to save a few pounds per day.
Picture credit: YoNoSoyTu
IBM looks to Canada for latest expansion, installs SoftLayer data centre
Another day, another snippet of news from IBM in its latest push for cloudy world domination: Big Blue has announced expansion plans for Canada, including a SoftLayer data centre in Toronto.
SoftLayer chose Toronto not just for its size – it’s the fourth largest city in North America – but its proximity to the tech community in Canada, as well as a litany of companies who are using the IaaS provider.
A glut of Canadian startups, including Mnubo, Epilogger and Maegan, have signed up for the SoftLayer Catalyst program, which offers discounts and offers for SoftLayer’s infrastructure, as well as consultancy and other resources. “We are very excited to see SoftLayer open a data centre in Toronto,” said Maegan co-founder Brenda Crainic in a statement.
Canadian expansion for SoftLayer follows its previous travels, launching data centres in the UK, Hong Kong and Central Europe. Customers can store and use the data centre immediately.
Last month IBM and SoftLayer celebrated their first anniversary together with yet more announcements, including an intriguing partnership between SoftLayer and Watson which gives the Jeopardy-winning supercomputer the keys to analyse SoftLayer’s big data.
Frequent chats with SoftLayer and IBM over the course of that first 12 months have revealed nothing but praise and excitement for the way the partnership is working out. SoftLayer EMEA managing director Jonathan Wisler described the marriage as “phenomenal” to CloudTech back in June.
Naturally this isn’t the only news to come out of IBM towers in recent days: the IT giant has also announced the acquisition of Lighthouse as part of its identity and access management offering, not to mention the government contract with California that Big Blue had won last month.
Find out more about the Canadian SoftLayer data centre here.