VM /ETC » cloud computing

A Virtual Tipping Point

Rich Brambley — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 02:45:36 +0000

I’ve had the luxury of staying away from the math of the new vSphere 5 licensing. Honestly, I haven’t read the new guide, and I’ve only skimmed through posts that explore the pros and cons of different upgrade costs and future growth impact scenarios from virtualization admins, consultants, and architects of various size VMware virtual infrastructures. My opinion to date – VMware’s goal is to be a total Cloud solution, and this change in licensing reflects and fosters that plan. If you are able to correctly size you infrastructure, or if you can oversubscribe it so that you can offset the costs, then the hypervisor with the most features, the best performance, and the best partner ecosystem (in terms of available third party products leveraging vSphere APIs) is still a no-brainer. That would be vSphere 5.

Storm Clouds

I’ve also read the virtualization pundits’ predictions year after year. They usually go something like “this year is the year of VDI”, “sixty something percent of all servers can still be virtualized”, and “VMware’s market share will shrink to the advances of Microsoft and Citrix”. Is the record skipping? (does anyone know what a skipping record is anymore?). Personally, I’ve always felt a balanced market of hypervisor vendors would be the most likely prophecy for the datacenter, but VMware has always managed to innovate and stay ahead of the competition. Feature-wise, they continue to do so. But, the recent announcement of licensing changes may have changed things.

Whether right, wrong, misunderstood, reluctant to change, or just emotional, many VMware shops initially viewed the new licensing announcement like dark, thunder clouds approaching. Some reactions were as hot as a flash of lightning. Virtual warning sirens sounded across the community, but after a few days and some damage control from VMware, eventually calmer heads prevailed. But, like in the aftermath of any large storm, people began to build for the future. More so than ever before, public discussion of future plans seem to include a new possibility of alternative vendor virtual datacenters.

An Opening In The Clouds

My hunch is that current VMware shops will

not jump on the newest version like in the past. They will wait to decide, and while they wait they will explore the alternatives.

Many will decide to stick with VMware. I’m guessing those with environments already right-sized would be least likely to actually switch, for example. I’m sure there will be plenty of others with costs that are favorable to stay where they are, but I am already hearing many proclaim they have decided, been ordered, or are now motivated to actually explore other virtualization solutions.

I do actually believe that many will now move away from VMware, however. I’m not proclaiming any solution is better or my favorite, but instead I am pointing out the market conditions are right for the advance of VMware’s competition. Some may be in the form of wholesale migration, but I also feel a lot will be in the form of maintaining the existing vSphere while expanding future VMs on Hyper-V or XenServer. I’m just being a realist. Features may lead the hypervisor market today, but if history has taught us anything, the total business benefits of any offering has incredible influence on the decision makers who write the checks. As much as the engineer in me hates to admit it, most shops can more than get by with a standard set of virtualization features that exist in all the hypervisor options available today.

Tipping Point

So, are we actually at the start of a significant change in the virtualization market? Time will tell. My point is that recent conditions seem to indicate to me that the time is right, more so than ever before.

VIDEO: Carolina Summit 2011 Cloud Discussion

Rich Brambley — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 15:01:09 +0000

David Davis recently posted the video of the Ask The Experts Session from the Carolina Summit 2011 VMUG. In this session, I was fortunate enough to repeat my role (from the 2010 Summit) as session moderator, but the stars of the session were the experts from the panel consisting of Scott Lowe, Jason Nash, Mike Laverick and Mike DiPetrillo. These guys definitely drove an incredible and informative discussion about Cloud Computing, but more importantly, the information was focused on Cloud adoption concepts, concerns, and options from the perspective of the IT department.

Watch the video below. It’s just shy of 45 minutes in length.

VIDEO: Ask the Expert with Scott Lowe, Rich Brambley, Jason Nash, Mike Laverick and Mike DiPetrillo.

Seeding The Cloud. The Conversation

Rich Brambley — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 21:10:17 +0000

Last week I was in New York, NY for the vPower Tour as a guest speaker. My Northeast teeamates (we spell it that way at Veeam) asked me to present as a blogger, so I put together “Seeding The Cloud. The Conversation.” The actual presentation is embedded later in this post, but I wanted to provide a few notes about some of the slides first.

Credit Where Credit Is Due

Special Thanks to Yung Chou for not only helping me understand the Cloud Conversation better with his 5-3-2 Cloud Principle, but for also letting me use 3 of his slides. I also want to thank Mark Minasi for his recent speech at the Techstravaganza Event in Atlanta and his great article “Avoid Being Plowed By The Cloud”. Mark’s economist views of the Cloud were very inspirational and informative to me and for my presentation. I love his “numerological proctology” expression!

I used the Cloud

I used Google Docs to build the preso, and I streamed it live from the Cloud when I delivered it. I guess I owe thanks to Sprint for 3G being up that day too! Thanks to VMware and Intel for the YouTube video. That still cracks me up every time I watch it.

Did You Know

Real Cloud Seeding examples slides:

Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics – before both opening and closing ceremonies
Woodstock 1969 – several reports from witnesses
Project Stormfury – 1960s experiment to seed hurricanes in the Atlantic
Chernobyl – Russian pilots seeded radioactive clouds before they reached Moscow

The Points

You (and your company) are already using the Cloud.
Define YOUR Cloud Conversation.
Understand your IT Department’s value and services before you try to determine if The Cloud is a good alternative.
Be a Numerological Proctologist yourself!
Consider DR as a “low hanging fruit” reason to use The Cloud.

The rest should be self explanatory.

Who knows. Maybe I’ll get to deliver it again sometime!

“Seed The Cloud” Presentation: “Feel The Power in vPower” New York, NY Event

Rich Brambley — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 22:34:39 +0000

This coming Thursday (June 16, 2011) I will be in New York, NY for the “Feel the Power in vPower” Veeam Tour. Although I am a Veeam employee and this is a Veeam sponsored event, I am not there to deliver the Veeam Backup and Replication presentation. That will be handled by my Northeast U.S. peer, Gaylord Friend. (Worth your time all by itself and a you get a free meal!) Instead, I’ll be there to do a vendor neutral presentation called “Seed The Cloud’. The presentation is my own and will not reflect the opinions or thoughts, or represent current or future products of my employer.

http://go.veeam.com/tour-feel-power-vpower-east.html

A Blog Post Delivered With Slides

With “Seed The Cloud” I am attempting to present a new VMETC.com blog post in slides. So, just like with my usual writing style, this presentation will offer a light-hearted, (hopefully) entertaining agenda of my thoughts and opinions on “The Cloud conversation”. As always, I will be referencing other bloggers and analysts who are Cloud experts, but adding my own “2 cents” to the mix. The (still subject to last minute changes) outline is currently:

Real Cloud Seeding
Virtual Cloud Seeding
Virtual Cloud Confusion
Why Seed The Virtual Cloud
Virtual Cloud Seeding Options
Have a Seeding Plan
Have a UnSeeding Plan

I will post the slides here on VMETC.com after the event.

Be sure to be at the Atlanta Event June 23 too!

In 2 weeks my Southeast team will host our Veeam Tour event. If you’ll be in the Atlanta area on June 23 and would like to attend register at the same links above!

VM Replication Is The New P2V (Planning V4DR and V4BC)

Rich Brambley — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 03:29:45 +0000

Because of the prevalence of virtual infrastructure these days, I’ll make the argument that virtual machine (VM) replication, both for business continuity (BC) and disaster recovery (DR) purposes, is the new P2V (physical to virtual migration) project. Not in the literal migration of physical to virtual, but in the same P2V concepts of infrastructure consolidation and capacity planning. I’m also talking similarity of process and in the frequency in which it is occurring. Simply put, IT shops that performed P2V migrations several years ago are now exploring how they can accomplish their DR site fail over or their BC needs with their virtual machines.

Let’s call these new generation of projects V4DR (virtualization for disaster recovery) or V4BC (virtualization for business continuity).

The comparison

If I rewind 3 to 5 years ago in my career, capacity planning for server consolidation was a weekly project and topic of discussion. Customers were either in the process of converting physical servers to virtual machines or they were exploring the possibility to do so. In both cases, capacity planning scenario spreadsheets and reports were frequent “ground zero documents” to almost every project plan I was involved in.

Just like P2V projects, VM replication today also requires some of the same considerations for job scalability and times to complete – i.e. using multiple hosts as targets and making sure the network can support getting the job done as quick as possible. Not to mention ip addressing, VLAN assignments, and application connectivity after the fact. Thank goodness we no longer have to deal with hardware drivers and other unneeded software a second time. Hopefully, VM alignment is a thing of the past too!

I’m not seeing the same “ground zero documents” for replication projects, however.

Use the same capacity planning tools?

So, I’ll ask the question:

are the existing capacity planning tools we have used previously for our P2V migrations good enough to help today with the V2V replications needed for our new V4DR and V4BC?

In theory they should be: monitor the virtual machines for several weeks and then determine the capacity and resources needed at the DR site. Leverage the capacity planning scenarios in these tools for reports like “What If I lose a Host?” or “What If I add X number of VMs?”.

Replication Capacity Planning

My point is, I think most look at today’s capacity planning tools as either no longer useful since the migration is over, or useful just for primary site capacity purposes. Looking at the output of these tools a little differently could also provide secondary site planning. A report like “What if I lose a host?” could also be viewed as “Can I consolidate my VMs on even less hosts for DR?”. “What if I add X number of VMs?” could also be viewed as “How much capacity do I need to purchase at my DR site?”.

Is what we have today good enough to be reused , or do we need a whole new version of capacity planning and virtualization assessment tools? Call the new tools Cloud / Hosting / DR/ BC / Replication Capacity Planners? Take your pick!

I’m curious. What tools that exist today do you think are already providing output that is useful for V4DR or V4BC planning? Leave a comment!

disclaimer: I work for Veeam Software. Veeam Backup and Replication is a VM replication solution. Veeam Reporter has Capacity Planning reporting capabilities.

VIRTUMANIA Episode 17: Hyper-V Dynamic Memory Is Not Over Commit

Rich Brambley — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 03:14:40 +0000

The VIRTUMANIA continues with Episode 17! Rick Vanover jumps in the co-host chair for me this episode. We are joined by special guests Ben Armstrong, Adam Fazio, and Brent Ozar. The following is the podcast summary:

VIRTUMANIA Podcast Episode 17 – Hyper-V Dynamic Memory Is Not Over Commit Hosted by Rich Brambley (@rbrambley) of VMETC with co host Rick Vanover (@rickvanover) of Rickatron.us. Guests include Ben Armstrong, Microsoft Virtualization Program Manager, (@virtualpcguy VirtualPCGuy Blog), Adam Fazio, Microsoft Consulting, (blog), and Brent Ozar (@brentO) of brentozar.com. This week’s show starts with some talk about the recent keynotes, demos, and sessions from the Microsoft TechEd 2010 conference in New Orleans, LA, but then quickly switches to an explanation of what the new Hyper-V Dynamic Memory feature really is, and more importantly, is not. Virtumania is an Infosmack Production.

Listen to the podcast with the embedded player or subscribe to get a weekly copy so you can listen when convenient.

Check out the VM /ETC VIRTUMANIA Page to listen to past episodes as well as episodes of Infosmack.

The following links offer more information on some of the topics mentioned in VIRTUMANIA Episode 17:

Microsoft TechEd US 2010

http://www.microsoft.com/events/techednorthamerica/

Virtualization Sessions

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2010/06/07/virtualization-at-teched-us-2010.aspx

BRENT’s Session:

Top 10 Developer Mistakes That Won’t Scale
http://www.msteched.com/2010/NorthAmerica/DAT316

BEN’s Session:

Hyper-V and Dynamic Memory in Depth
http://www.msteched.com/2010/NorthAmerica/VIR304

“Someday Lounge is community developed by five individuals with a mission to break free from the banal that define our culture. It was borne out of the need to express a crazy idea, try something different, or see something beautiful in a setting accessible to all. We depend on Artist and Audience to sustain this ambitious project to bring a diverse set of ideas on and off the stage and create a community where none existed. Together with a huge contingent of supporters, volunteers, workers, designers, Eric, Kris, Giuseppe, Mike, Adam, and Noah, Someday opened it’s doors in September 06 hosting a series of PICA T:BA 06 events.

Someday there will be a waystation and a headquarters for the cultural revolution to present its many faces to the public at large. Sit back, have a drink, and enjoy the show. Someday has arrived.”

Virtualization Humor This Week

Rich Brambley — Fri, 28 May 2010 20:43:00 +0000

There were a couple of virtualization related things that made me laugh this week, and since it’s Friday I thought I would pass them along for those that might have missed them.

You Might Be A vDiva If …

Jon Owings’ post on his 2 VCPs and A Truck Blog is definitely worth the quick read. You’ll be sure to get a long laugh. The comments are as good as the post itself, so be sure to scroll all the way down. I’m betting even Jeff Foxworthy will be proud of this effort if he ever stumbles across this one.

I added several of my own vDiva-isms in Jon’s post comments. Here’s just a few I created to give you an idea of the fun:

You might be a vDiva if …

Your notebook is an iSCSI target
You think SEX is a spelling error
You’ve ever called your children linked clones
You describe yourself at work as thin provisioned and over allocated

Put My Data Center In The Cloud

I found the video “A better way to cloud computing” posted on VMworld.com (and YouTube). Like a vDiva, this one needs no introduction either.

Enjoy the embedded copy below.

First Person Shooter As A Service

Rich Brambley — Fri, 07 May 2010 23:38:00 +0000

Are you confused from trying to figure out what exactly The Cloud is? Have you given up trying to determine if you want your software, platform, or infrastructure delivered as a service? Do you even care if a cloud is private, public, or hybrid any more? When you reach that point, maybe it’s time to frag some frustration away in a death match?! Better yet, what if that frag fest can be joined from a web browser, saves all of your settings on the internet, and provides the same experience from any computer whether running Windows or Linux? From both IE and Firefox? Let’s call this kind of (arguably) cloud offering FPSaaS – First Person Shooter As A Service.

Believe it or not, it exists already and it’s free. ID Software has created the Quake 3 based game site QuakeLive.com.

After creating an account, installing a browser plug in, and a quick download of some local content needed for game play you are ready to participate. Various game data such as maps are updated when you join matches. You can practice against Bots or unleash your wrath on combatants around the world. Choose from Free For All, Capture The Flag, Clan Arena, and several other modes of play. QuakeLive keeps track of your stats so you can see how well (or poorly in my case) you battle.

What else is there to say? Go check it out. Look me up when you do. I play as VMETC_01.

Maybe we should start a VIRTUMANIA night once a week? Leave a comment if you are interested.