Chuck's Blog

Where Does The Enterprise Desktop Go From Here?

Every so often, a well-understood category in IT becomes completely up-for-grabs in terms of answering the question: what's next? 

Clearly, how we think about enterprise desktops and delivering end-user computing is now very much in play. The many announcements coming from VMworld only underscores this point.

What's an enterprise IT planner to do?

Chad Is On A Tear ...

I know, there's a LOT to read and digest coming out of VMworld these days.

As an occasionally proliferate blogger myself, I have to hand it to Chad -- he's turned loose a veritable supernova of meaty and significant technology-oriented posts in the last few days.  I'm impressed, and I don't impress easily.  I know how much work is behind each and every one of these posts.

If you have a moment, please check these out:

vCloud Director and UIM

VPLEX, Long Distance VM Teleportation, and a great offer ...

Mega Caches, Automatied Tiering, or Both?

DRS -- For Storage

EMC Storage for VMware View 4.5 @ $38/client -- and scales to thousands!

RSA, VMware and Intel -- Securing Private/Public Clouds

And, of course, the video from the team that makes much of this magic happen ...

Good Reading!

Securing The Foundations Of The Private Cloud

Lots of activity at VMworld this week, plus the predictable flurry of vendor announcements.

Most people would agree that virtualization is *the* key enabling technology for most cloud models.  Make virutalization (e.g. VMware and associated infrastructure) provably secure and compliant, and you've gone a long way to securing the the clouds built on virtualization.

That's what RSA has announced -- an end-to-end GRC (governance, risk and compliance) solution that takes security in the virtual world to entirely new levels.

And if you see yourself living in a fully virtualized world, it's probably worth just a moment of your time ...

Pervasive Virtualization And Avoiding Accidental IT

No matter what you do, there's always a strong incentive to do what's expedient, as opposed to taking a more thoughtful approach.  For example, everyone has good intentions when putting their IT environments together, but it's so easy to get lost in the moment.

The distractions can be plentiful and tempting: feeling bound by legacy decisions, a vendor offering a too-good-to-be-true deal, perhaps a shiny technology bauble that distracts.

We're starting to have far more engagements with customers and partners around end-to-end fully virtualized environments, rather than just individual piece-parts.

And some of them are willing to share their results.

The Impact Of VMware Storage Integration

Today is the day that VMware announces the availability of 4.1, and a key set of storage integration APIs (VAAI) that provide all sorts of cool speed-ups between server and storage.  EMC's announcement of day-one support is here.

Chad Sakac (our legendary Virtual Geek) does a great job of explaining what they are, how to use them, and what they can do for you.  If your passion is hands-on tech, please head on over there.

However, if you're more like me, and are always curious about what things might mean in a broader sense, this post might be more to your liking ...

Oh My!

Many of us are still contemplating the enormous implications of VMware's announcement from the Google I/O conference.

Without getting too technical on you, the pitch is simple: build your applications on SpringSource's enhanced Java stack.  If you do, you can run them on any cloud: VMware's, Amazon's -- even Google's.

And that, my friends, presents an interesting opportunity for IT architects everywhere.

Bringing Oracle To The Private Cloud

Another announcement from EMC (and, indirectly, VMware) that deserves some elaboration.

The press release details new EMC Proven Solutions for Oracle / VMware environments

One that shows how to use FAST to run faster, cheaper and simple. Another one that details how to use a Celerra NS-960 to create a business continuity environment.One that shows how Data Domain integrates with Oracle's RMAN capabilities.

And finally, enhanced verification and support for joint EMC / VMware customers running Oracle in production environments.

I'd encourage you to follow the links -- there's some meaty goodness to be had if this interests you.

But I think there's more to the story ...

This Changes Everything

For those of us in the IT business, we occasionally encounter a fundamental new enabling technology that forces us to reconsider some of our long-held notions around the way things work.

I'd put server and desktop virtualization into that category, as well as the ubiquitous web.  If you're a storage person, flash has that potential as well.  If backup is your thing, the combination of dedupe and low-cost disks has changed how you think about things.

In this post, I'd like to start to introduce a technology concept that -- yes -- has the potential to change a great deal of how we think about IT at scale. 

And, yes, this is going to be a long post ...

Cloud Security Takes A Big Leap Forward

Yesterday, I posted on how clouds need to be better than the traditional physical environments they replace.  I made a long list of areas where that was either the case today, or would be relatively soon.

That thought turns out to be the perfect "prequel" for today's announcement from VMware, Intel and EMC/RSA.

They've demonstrated a proof-of-concept for securing the cloud that's arguably far better than anything you'd find in most of today's data centers.

VMware Management Takes A Big Step Forward ...

The headlines reads: "VMware To Acquire Certain IT Management Products and Software Expertise from EMC Corporation".

People will perceive this story one of two ways, depending on their perspective.

The first (and most common) perspective will be "so what?"

The second (and less frequent) perspective will be "this might be a big deal ..."

And I'd like a chance to share why I think this is more of the latter, and less of the former.