Many of you reading this have probably been wondering where the blog posts have been. I’ve been silent for a long time now and so much has been going on worth writing about. The fact is that I transitioned over to be the global cloud architect for VMware starting on January 1 this year. At first I thought this was a good move since cloud hasn’t taken off, it’s immature, and everyone is trying to figure it out and will be waiting for a year before doing anything with it. I thought this is great because I’ll get to stay home with the family some more and finally have time for other things in life. Boy was I wrong!
For the first month on the job I read a lot and talked to a lot of people to figure out what cloud is, how people are defining it, if it’s even important, and who the players are. It took a while to come up to speed but I can now say that I have a PhD in all things cloud. Around Feb 1 I started going out and talking to customers about VMware’s cloud vision, our roadmap, and asking questions about what the customer’s vision of cloud was and what they’d like to do with it. I’ve spoken to just over 200 enterprise customers to date and about 60 different service providers on cloud related topics. Below are my findings in no particular order. I think after reading you’ll see why I’m getting my butt kicked.
I just got notified that my session on Building the Datacenter of the Future got accepted for Virtualization Congress 2009. Originally I got asked to do a panel but logistics just didn’t work out so I’ll be doing a session instead. Just looking through the session list it looks to be a great event. I hope to see a lot of people in Vegas in May.
Building the Datacenter of the Future
Today’s datacenter has become a complex environment of open and closed systems; distributed and centralized resources; and a huge cost center and bottleneck for the business. IT needs to change and it needs to start in the datacenter. In this session we’ll talk about what the industry is doing to change the way the datacenter works and how it’s designed. The good news is you don’t have to throw everything out to get there. Come learn how to take what you have now and transform it into a highly efficient service platform for the future.
It’s time to take a break from virtualization and cloud computing for a minute and do something much simpler to help out Mother Earth – turn the lights off. Earth Hour started in Sydney, Australia in March 2007. This year it will be held on March 28, 2009 at 8:30 pm local time wherever you are. It’s stupid simple to participate – just turn everything off from 8:30 pm – 9:30 pm in your local time zone on March 28. Spread the word so your neighbors and friends now and then put it on your calendar.
For more on Earth Hour and to participate go here.
It was a busy week last week in Cannes. I had a great time meeting everyone and talking about the exciting stuff that VMware is doing in the cloud space. It was especially nice to see all of the great cloud demos during Steve Herrod’s keynote on Wednesday. The keynote really showed off what VMware and our partners are doing in the cloud space. It also showed off the power of the VMware vCloud API. If you’re interested in the vCloud API then now is the time to visit the cloud site and register for the beta program (it’s over to the right) which will be launching soon. There’s a short survey to walk through and then you’ll be notified when the beta goes live. Until then you can stop back by here where I’ll continue to dive into the VMware cloud offerings and blog about the details.
Now it’s back to catching up on all of the exciting things I saw last week at VMworld and post them on this blog.
I worked several hours at the VMware booth and the Genius Bar at VMworld Europe the whole time staring at this huge cell phone showing off the new VMware Mobile Virtualization Platform (MVP). The VMware team was on hand showing off the new software at the show. Below is a demo. This technology will have a huge impact on client virtualization and go a long way towards anywhere, anytime, anything (AAA) access. Enjoy the video!
I’m sitting here putting the finishing touches on a presentation I’m giving at TAM Day at VMworld Europe. The topic is Green IT. Don’t ask me why I got distracted and found the video below but it’s a must watch for anyone that does presentations. Enjoy the video and see you all in Cannes!
I just updated my blog with Odiogo – a new service that transcodes all of my blog posts into audio feeds. So, if you don’t have time to read me on-line then you can subscribe to my audio feed in the right hand column and listen to me on the go. I’m sure I’ll entertain you on your way to work.
Disclaimer: Not responsible for being so boring and dry that you fall asleep at the wheel and drive off the road.
IBM and Amazon Web Services have partnered to allow developers to use Amazon EC2 to build and run a range of IBM platform technologies, the companies announced today. The new ‘pay-as-you-go’ model provides development and production instances of IBM DB2, Informix Dynamic Server, WebSphere Portal, Lotus Web Content Management and Novell’s SUSE Linux operating system on EC2.
Developers can use their existing IBM licenses on Amazon EC2 or use new Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) that IBM is making available at no charge for development and test purposes, enabling software developers to quickly build applications based on IBM software within Amazon EC2. In coming months, Amazon will introduce production AMIs running IBM services, enabling users to purchase these services by the hour.
Managed hosting specialist Savvis, Inc.(SVVS) today unveiled Savvis Cloud Compute, a new service that moves its utility computing service into the cloud, providing enterprise customers more flexibility in how they provision, manage and pay for services running in Savvis data centers.
Central to the new offering is an improved customer portal that gives users more control in provisioning virtual compute and storage capabilities, and the ability to purchase fractional compute resources on demand by the instance with flexible month-to-month business terms.
This is one of the many VMware Powered Service Providers that will make the move to offer cloud based services. I think key to this new offering is the flexibility in how many cycles you actually use and how you get billed for it. Prior to this move Savvis used a more traditional hosted offering of paying for a server (virtual or physical) whether you were actually using those resources or not. This new move will open the offering to customers that perhaps are smaller or to customers that want more utility like services.
It will be interesting to watch the announcements from other Service Providers entering this space and how they go about differentiating from the others in the industry. Perhaps we’ll start to see providers focusing on offering “certified” cloud offerings for hosting HIPAA or PCI regulated content. That’s my guess for what’s next.
You know, a lot of people really get confused on cloud vs grid. The two are closely related. I always think about it in the terms of virtualization vs grid (since I work for VMware). Grid is great if you have an app that needs a lot of combined compute cycles. Virtualization is great if you have a lot of apps that need a little compute cycles each.
Now enter cloud. Cloud really encompasses both of these. The point of cloud is you don’t have to care if you have a grid infrastructure underneath or a virtualization infrastruture underneath. All you do is deploy your app to the cloud and let the cloud figure out how to get the app the resources it needs.
That’s why cloud is the over arching architecture for virtualization or grid or SaaS or PaaS or anything else. All of these can play in the cloud together at the same time. You build your cloud with these blocks as you see fit and based on what you want your cloud to do. Simple as that.
A couple of weeks ago I posted about SQL Server running in a VM and how disk writes were assured to happen in contradiction to a poorly written article on SQL Solutions. After working with VMware Engineering there’s now a KB article that talks about how and when I/O writes happen with different VMware products. Below is the full text of the KB article. You can also find the source here.
The Citrix Systems-XenSource acquisition has brought disappointment and frustration to some Citrix partners, who said the vendor isn’t being aggressive enough with its server virtualization strategy.
Somehow I told you so just doesn’t cut it. This is the first time I’ve seen some good public documentation backing up my confusion around what the heck is going on with the Citrix acquisition of XenSource. They certainly aren’t making money on this deal. Why they’re not being aggressive with the technology is anyone’s guess.
Today starts what will surely be a wrath of postings about VMworld Europe. For those familiar with VMTN or people that just want to hear a group of really smart people speak don’t miss this event. Duncan over at Yellow Bricks posted the official details of the VMTN Meeting the Experts event.
Okay, the dates and time have been set for the Meet the VMTN Experts session. We are still looking for an official name for the session but just write down these dates and times and be sure to be there:
Tuesday 24th – 13.00 – 14.00
Wednesday 25th – 13.00 – 14.00
Location: Community Lounge on the solution exchange
Who will be there:
Jason Boche – Boche.net + VMTN Moderator
Thomas Bryant – VMTN Moderator
Steve Beaver – thevirtualblackhole.com + VMTN Moderator
Eric Sloof – NTPro.nl + VMTN/VMUG Contributor
Scott Herold – VMGuru.com + VMTN Contributor and author of VMware ESX Server: Advanced Technical Design Guide
Wil van Antwerpen – vi-toolkit.com + VMTN Contributor
Gabrie van Zanten – gabesvirtualworld.com + VMTN Contributor
Alan Renouf – teckinfo.blogspot.com + VMTN Contributor
Tom Howarth – PlanetVM.net + VMTN Moderator
Duncan Epping – Yellow-Bricks.com + VMTN Moderator
As a lot of people may or may not know I really hate anonymous comments. I do allow them on this blog as do most other blogs but about every month I revisit that decision. On the one hand I don’t want to have to make people register in order to get their opinion posted. On the other hand I really find anonymous comments cowardice. I mean if you really feel strongly about your point then why not just put your name there with it? I always make a point of putting my full, real name on every one of my comments. If that means registering then I take the extra time to do that.
I work for VMware as a Principal Systems Engineer. The opinions expressed here are my personal opinions. Content published here is not read or approved in advance by VMware and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of VMware. This is my blog - not a VMware blog.
Title:Presentation Zen
Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery Author: Garr Reynolds ISBN 10: 0-321-52565-5
This is my second read about creating great presentations. I love this book because it has sample after sample of really nice presentations and describes why they are great. For more good reads visit the Good Reads page.
General Housekeeping
Frequency of Updates
I try and write something new 1-2 times per week. I'll update more when I'm in the office and possibly less when I'm out and traveling. If there's something you'd really like me to hear my thoughts on then just email me.
Comments and Feedback
Anyone is free to comment. I will not filter or delete any comments unless they are obvious spam or flames. When commenting, any information you can share about who you are, how to contact you, what you do for a living, etc. would very much be appreciated. Let's keep the discussions live and interactive.
