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Microsoft’s mediocre cloud appliance

admin — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 18:44:07 +0000

A short while ago, Microsoft announced their plans to create a stack platform appliance for Azure . This was done, presumably, to deal with the competitive threat from VMware , which is part of the V-Block-centered Acadia business venture. Sorry Microsoft, but IMHO, this is a clear signal that the cloud stack has been catapulted to the stratosphere of hype. There are a couple assumptions about clouds in a can that show the ready-fire-aim nature of these types of solutions. The first is that clouds in a can will provide an on-ramp for private cloud infrastructures to to use public cloud infrastructures in the future. Oh yes, and how exactly will that work? Vaporware drawn on white boards with clouds in the middle? The allure of an easier future through stacks rivals any of the malarkey that our industry has ever produced. The second assumption is that customers will save money with stacks and appliances.

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Microsoft’s mediocre cloud appliance

Cloud Is In The Eye Of The Beholder

admin — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 20:03:45 +0000

Lots of cloud chatter this week. A couple of good industry events. An interesting new startup offering a cloud operating system for private clouds. Even the ever-outspoken Werner dissing private clouds as "false clouds". A lively debate, to be sure! Time for me to offer up another attempted level-set in this discussion. It's easy to become lost in the details, and more difficult to see what's really happening here — or, at least, what I think is happening. Disruption Is In The Air Clouds disrupt three aspects of technology: how it's built, how it's operated and how it's consumed. Other than that, it's business as usual There's excitement in the air, but also certain degree of fear. The deck chairs are starting to get re-arranged in the IT vendor world. Hot winds of change are blowing through enterprise IT organizations. And vast piles of capital are flowing into the new intermediaries — the service providers. As all of this happens, I'd encourage everyone to remember the golden rule.

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Cloud Is In The Eye Of The Beholder

The Real Rock Stars of EMC World: EMC IT

admin — Fri, 14 May 2010 18:19:21 +0000

There's a veritable river of information, perspectives and opinions coming out of EMC World this week. Not to mention about a bazillion tweets on the #EMCworld hashtag. While all the keynotes were excellent, the one that I thought really stood out came from the EMC IT organization. Sanjay Mirchandani and his team did an excellent job of bridging the gap between theory and practice while adding a healthy dose of pragmatism to the whole private cloud discussion.

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The Real Rock Stars of EMC World: EMC IT

Why dual controller arrays are not best of breed for cloud storage

admin — Wed, 05 May 2010 11:40:17 +0000

A couple weeks ago, one of the major storage vendors had two major problems to resolve after one of their arrays suffered a firmware bug-induced failure at one of their cloud (email) service provider customers. They had to: Help the customer get back to normal service levels after they had become unacceptable. Confront a public relations problem after it was exposed by a leading storage publisher.

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Why dual controller arrays are not best of breed for cloud storage

"JBOGs"

admin — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 10:52:19 +0000

I am here to declare that I am first to coin the term “JBOGs” – Just a Bunch Of Gigabytes for Cloud-based Storage. This is the same vain as “JBOD” – Just a Bunch of Disks which is a known term to us storage folk.

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"JBOGs"

Cisco C200M1 CIMC Update Process

admin — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 14:32:53 +0000

Image via Wikipedia Just a quick note from the field (as it were). If you’ve been blessed enough to get a Cisco C-series server, there’s a nifty new Cisco Integrated Management Controller (CIMC) release available as of today’s writing. Version 1.0(1e) was the shipping release as of January 2010. Version 1.0(2) is the latest point release available as of March 2010

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Cisco C200M1 CIMC Update Process

Something “cloudy” this way comes…

admin — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 20:04:12 +0000

Image via Wikipedia I love receiving suprise packages. Way back in January, I got a briefing on a VERY cool server offering from Dell that was going to be part of their DCS (Dell Cloud Services) offering. I, of course, requested one understanding it to be an almost perfect density compute node for my EMC Atmos Virtual Edition testing and design work.

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Something “cloudy” this way comes…

Enterprise Computing: HP Blades Day; Paul Perez Interview – Clip 1

admin — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 10:00:55 +0000

Finally I’ve managed to post here the first of a number of video clips from the recent HP Blades Day. Paul Perez discusses my question regarding the management of the range of (somewhat) disparate storage technologies HP have acquired over recent years. I’m looking forward to discovering more about: The converged management framework and “on-ramp”.

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Enterprise Computing: HP Blades Day; Paul Perez Interview – Clip 1

DLP, Collaboration And The Cloud

admin — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:27:15 +0000

Another fascinating example of convergence and synergy crossed my desk this morning. The news release is fairly straightforward: " RSA Helps Global Corporations Collaborate Securely With New Release Of RSA® Data Loss Prevention Suite ". As press releases go, it's sort of ordinary-looking material — what could possibly be exciting here? And that's exactly what I wanted to share with you ..

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DLP, Collaboration And The Cloud

Cloud Security Takes A Big Leap Forward

admin — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 15:20:58 +0000

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.

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Cloud Security Takes A Big Leap Forward