Chuck's Blog

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.

From Virtualization To Federation

For those of you who took some well-deserved time off at the end of the year -- welcome back!

In the spirit of 2010 predictions, I'd like to offer up the prediction that a very specific term will become important during 2010: federation.

It's inevitable, as many of us will have to begin thinking about how pools of resources -- frequently separated by distance -- will communicate and cooperate to act as one thing, rather than a disparate pool of uncoordinated resources.

RSA SecurBook For VMware View

This just in.

One of our premises is that -- as we virtualize -- certain disciplines can be made *far better* than they were in the physical world.  Security is a prime example.

Nowhere does this play out as much as with virtual desktops.  In the security landscape, they're the endpoint that causes everyone to lose sleep.

If that sort of thing is on your mind, I invite you to take a look at this rather beefy "how to" document from EMC's RSA division. 

Remember, it's not about making it "as good as" ... it's about making it far better ...

Changing Definitions By Redrawing The Lines

It's a very fun time in IT, especially if you work in a larger enterprise or service provider.

Whether you call it pervasive virtualization, private cloud, or whatever -- the boundaries between traditional disciplines are being redrawn, and -- as a result -- many of the words and concepts we're so familiar with take on very different meanings.

As IT professionals (whether customer, vendor or consultant), I would argue that we all need to be very congnizant of helping people migrate from traditional meanings to newer ones.

In this post, I wanted to share three personal examples of somewhat familiar concepts where I believe this is happening right now.

The Private Cloud / VCE Presentation

For most of this year, I've relied on a single deck to explain the concepts of a private cloud and describe the recently announced VCE Coalition.

This rather long post is basically a scripted version of the presentation -- although there are always a few things that usually get said that go above and beyond what's here.

Disclaimer: these are the slides and the story that I've personally been using recently.  I'm not entirely sure if it's 100% official or sanctioned or anything else like that. Hope you find this useful and entertaining!

Is 2010 The Year Of Widespread Desktop Virtualization?

Many of think this could be the case.  It looks like a "perfect storm" cloud be shaping up in the industry to fundamentally change this piece of the IT landscape.

The thought is timely, given VMware's recent VMware View 4 announcement.  Check out the details from VMware here, or see Chad's excellent writeup here.

So, let's look at the enablers -- and the inhibitors -- and how they might play out in the very near future.

Big Appliances Vs. Virtual Pools

As the industry starts to move to fully-virtualized models, and cloud-like environments, I'm encountering a specific debate around IT philosophy.

The question revolves which is better for IT: purpose-built appliances, or pools of generic resources that are dynamically used?

And it's turning out to be one of the more contentious issues going forward.

"Control Planes" For The Private Cloud

I do tend to fall into a verbal shorthand that might be impenetrable to others.

As I sketch out end-to-end private cloud architectural diagrams to larger enterprises and service providers, I walk through the various abstraction and service layers.

I tend to end with a discussion of "control planes" that orchestrate and secure everything from the user experience all the way to the physical IT infrastructure -- regardless of where that physical infrastructure might be.

One the announcements this week from EMC -- Ionix Data Center Insight (or DCI), reflects a piece of this story, and deserves some discussion. 

Overcoming Distance

Over the last few centuries, much of mankind's ingenuity has been focused on eliminating the inconvenience of distance. 

From sailing ships to modern air transportation; from hand-carried letters to global telepresence -- we spend a lot of time and money to overcome distance in the physical world.

And, in the next few years, there's going to be an intense focus in IT in doing exactly the same thing.

The Continuing Saga of Oracle On VMware

I knew trouble was afoot a while back, first when Oracle acquired Virtual Iron, and later when they announced their intent to acquire Sun.

I told people at the time "Larry Ellison and Oracle are going to do everything in their power to lock out VMware".  People didn't really believe me.  Now it's pretty clear to all what the picture looks like.

Which brings up the inevitable questions of "why?" and "what happens next?"

So let me attempt a few answers ...