{"id":1237,"date":"2012-04-27T15:15:56","date_gmt":"2012-04-27T15:15:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.journeytothecloud.com\/?p=1799"},"modified":"2012-04-27T15:15:56","modified_gmt":"2012-04-27T15:15:56","slug":"virtual-appliances-and-the-networking-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/virtual-appliances-and-the-networking-team\/","title":{"rendered":"Virtual Appliances and the Networking Team"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the last few years there has been a lot of progress made towards virtualizing a decent amount of the traditional, network-centric appliances that used to be just hardware based.\u00a0Why are some companies still resistant to this software-based approach? \u00a0Is it because that\u2019s the way it has always been, or is it inherent to the networking geeks who may be less virtualization-savvy than some of their cohorts in the other technology silos?\u00a0 It reminds me of the days when VoIP was first being introduced and the subsequent lack of acceptance that some of the old-school, traditional telephony engineers fueled.\u00a0 Some of them accepted it and others retired.\u00a0 The point is though that it makes sense and those who accept it will be much the better for it. <\/span><\/p>\n

With the dynamic today moving towards private and public cloud offerings, the virtual appliance marketplace will most certainly continue to grow and mature.\u00a0 There are many reasons why this makes a lot of sense.<\/p>\n

Take a look at the time it takes to implement a physical network appliance.\u00a0 Let\u2019s use an application delivery controller \u2013 or load-balancer if you prefer\u00a0that term.\u00a0 How long does it take to implement a physical box into an existing environment?\u00a0 Between ordering the unit(s) which usually come in pairs, shipping,\u00a0and\u00a0installing, it takes some time.\u00a0 The cables need to be run, the box racked and stacked and then physically powered on and provisioned.\u00a0 We have been doing this for years and this used to be standard operating procedure.\u00a0Now that works well and good, kinda, in your own data center.\u00a0 What about a public cloud offering?\u00a0 Sorry, you don\u2019t own that infrastructure.\u00a0How about downloading a virtual appliance, spinning up a VM and you are off to the races. Again, this happens after provisioning the unit, but there is a lot less moving parts going that route.\u00a0 Cloud or not \u2013 either way it still makes sense.\u00a0 There will be less infrastructure requirements: power, rack space, cabling etc.<\/p>\n

There are some other tangible benefits as well.\u00a0 From a refresh perspective it just makes sense to upgrade a virtual appliance with a newer image \u2013 or adding memory \u2013rather than a hardware-based forklift upgrade every five years (with potentially more downtime required).\u00a0 The ability to shrink or grow a virtual appliance is one of the things that set it apart.\u00a0 We don\u2019t have to repurchase anything \u2013 other than license keys and annual service contracts.\u00a0 Regrettably, those won\u2019t go away.\u00a0 But coupled all\u00a0together with the flexibility to move your virtual appliances along with your data from one environment to another is key.\u00a0 We will see more and more network-centric appliances become virtualized.\u00a0 There will most assuredly always be some physical boxes that the network folks can get their hands on, but that will be for access purposes only.<\/p>\n

The companies\/manufacturers\/network-engineers who don\u2019t embrace this trend could quickly find themselves behind the eight ball. Analog phones anyone?<\/p>\n

\n<\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n

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Over the last few years there has been a lot of progress made towards virtualizing a decent amount of the traditional, network-centric appliances that used to be just hardware based.\u00a0Why are some companies still resistant to this software-based approach? \u00a0Is it because that\u2019s the way it has always been, or is it inherent to the…Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[200,74,71,201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-network-infrastructure","category-networking","category-virtualization","category-voip"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1237\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}