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Cisco wants in on the data center -- the virtual kind, that is. If that message has failed to escape your notice till now, then the company hopes its latest raft of announcements will drive home the point. With the Cisco Live! customer conference as the backdrop, the company revealed more of how it intends to participate in the virtual infrastructure. VFrame, its network-driven service orchestration provisioning platform, remains a centerpiece. An enhanced version, VFrame 1.2, will support integration between Cisco's Application Control Engine (ACE) software and VMware ESX virtual servers. VFrame 1.2 could virtualize servers to ACE virtual devices, for example.

Read more on Cisco's Data Center 3.0 plans

Read more on how Cisco plans to manage the virtual data center

Listen to blogger Mitchell Ashley on VFrame's significance

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Jim Metzler and Steve Taylor are two of our resident WAN optimization experts, frequently sharing their insight in the Wide Area Networking Alert newsletter. In a recent conversation, the dynamic duo shared some great insight on where we are on the long road toward end-to-end optimization. To Metzler’s way of thinking, we’re moving from Stage 1 to Stage 2 of network optimization. In Stage 1, he says, the idea that IT should be assuring acceptable application performance reached the widespread enterprise consciousness. As such, IT undertook tactical approaches, solving problems on a piecemeal basis using WAN optimization controllers and the like. Now comes the hard part, and there are no simple answers in this stage. Enterprises have got to figure out how to assure application uptime, performance, management and security across myriad organizational and technology boundaries. Simply put, “We don’t do a good job of solving problems that cut across organizational boundaries.” Taylor agrees, of course. He puts it in the context of convergence, which we’ve been talking about for years. “When you really can’t tell the difference between the application and the network then we truly have convergence. And we’re only about 20% of the way there.”

Read more about how net optimization is evolving.

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Little by little, management tool vendors are getting better at providing the ability to manage the virtual server infrastructure. HP, for example, has renewed efforts to develop software for managing VMware hypervisor technology. In partnership with VMware, it will tackle management and automation software for performance, configuration and availability management of VMware servers. (HP already handles basic VMware management.) And start-ups such as ManageIQ are focusing on capabilities such as virtual server configuration management. Truly, these efforts are good. But they still fall short of the ultimate management need – meaning, the ability to provide end-to-end management of the entire virtual infrastructure, not just the server piece of it. As Cameron Haight, research vice president at Gartner, says in a recent story on the challenges of virtualization management, “It's important to look at virtualization in a holistic fashion [because] poor design in one IT silo can impact the overall performance. It's important to have management visibility across these technology components to help us rapidly diagnose potential performance and availability problems.”

Read “Virtual goo” for more expert insight on how to handle the challenge of managing and optimizing the virtual infrastructure.

As technologists, the last things you probably want to deal with are people and processes. But if you’re trying to optimize application delivery, then an organizational overhaul most likely will be required. Michael Morris, a network architect and frequent Network World blogger recently described the issue for me:

“A lot of IT shops are set up in the old silo model -- here’s the application piece, here’s the infrastructure team and underneath the infrastructure team I’ve got the server team, the network team, the security team and they’re all in silos under different managers. It’s very hard right now to say, ‘OK, I’ve got a new application coming in. What do we need to do to deliver this application so it’s optimized on the network, has the right security, the right server resources, and all of that goes in harmony?’ IT organizations aren’t built that way.

“You get a new application, like SAP, and it’s not until six months into an eight-month project that the developers come to the network guys and say, ‘Oh by the way, we’re going to run SAP over your network. Is that OK?’”

The application delivery story, Morris says, is really a non-technical one. It’s about how enterprise IT needs to organize for proper service delivery optimization and what processes need to be put in place to make sure that happens.

That might not get you super excited, but it’s the right move – and your users will love you for it.

For more on this topic, read:

Dear IT: Forget the technology

Four ways to improve IT and get better application performance

Cisco would like to control the virtual infrastructure via products that automatically provision, manage and optimize virtual environments. Through its VFrame data center appliance, for example, it proposes a way of pulling together not only the network capacity needed to meet application demand but also the server and storage resources. At least one industry observer, Zeus Kerravala, a senior vice president at Yankee Group, finds intrigue in the company’s strategy – especially since it goes against what other IT vendors – meaning, those with a computing bent -- say. “The network does touch everything, so it makes sense that eventually the network could be the orchestrator for virtual environments,” he says.

Read the full story

Plus, Virtual goo, how to manage and optimize the virtual infrastructure

In a data center strategies briefing earlier this year, Burton Group analysts shared their thoughts on technology’s biggest up-and-coming trends. On the storage front, one of the trends noted by analyst Gene Ruth was the growing acceptance of backup as a service. Storage providers are finally shaking the stigma they’ve born since the dot-com era, he says. EMC’s purchase of Mozy and IBM’s of Arsenal Digital helped a lot to give legitimacy to the storage-as-a-service market. Too, as discussed in this week’s special New Data Center package, storage service provider wannabes have smartened up. They don’t want your primary data, as their brethren of old did. They want to store your backups and e-mail archives, and offer the opportunity to relinquish your worries over the backup infrastructure and associated IT staffing. Many IT managers are digging the idea, are you?

Read the story, Is an online backup service OK for your data stockpile?
See who's offering storage-as-a-service
See the New Data Center package in its entirety

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... or at least that's what EMC is hoping for its enterprise-class flash drive technology. CEO Joe Tucci touted its Enterprise Flash Drive (EFD) technology at EMC World this week, even saying the advent of flash technology will change the storage industry more than anything else will over the next 10 years. And, in a Network World Panorama podcast posted this week, Barry Burke, chief strategy officer of the Symmetrix line, says the interest in enterprise-class flash "is far broader than we expected" because customers are considered it for "just about any type of application in their environment that you can imagine." This, he says, kind of threw EMC for a loop, as it had initially considered EFD primarily -- if not exclusively -- for high-performance, mission-critical, heavy transaction-processing-oriented applications. But performance improvements are performance improvements, it seems, and customers are seeing no reason not to consider EFD for applications like e-mail.

Listen now for more details on EMC's enterprise-class flash technology, performance improvements, cost, efficiencies and more.

Read the flash coverage from EMC World.

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The notion of storing data in an Internet cloud should be pretty exciting for any Web business – especially for any Web business that isn’t also a storage expert. That’s because cloud-storage providers can relieve the storage burden while speeding data delivery for a Web site operator. Cloud-storage providers – meaning, for now, Amazon, Nirvanix and Mosso -- balance server loads and move data among various data centers to ensure that information is stored close to where it is used. You might have your typical security and reliability concerns, but that’s the old risk-reward analysis.

Read more on storage cloud services.
Listen to a podcast explaining the relationship between cloud and utility computing.
Get more analysis on the latest in storage.

By now we’ve all heard about the looming data-center power problem. But do we truly understand just what it we’re facing? Perhaps not really, contends Ken Brill, executive director of the Uptime Institute, a widely respected data-center consulting firm that has been tracking data-center energy consumption for years. “I’ve been ignoring [energy-consumption growth rate data] as somewhat alarmist – until we got in this recent Uptime member data,” says Brill in a video cast on the group’s findings. Now, he’s really taking notice. Recent statistics gathered from Uptime member companies, representing about 50 data centers, absolutely show an unprecedented growth rate in power consumption, he says. While the average data-center site shows an 11% compound annual growth rate in 2006 and 2007, the top third of data-center sites studied show about a 24% CAGR in 2006 and 2007. In two years, energy consumption has more than doubled at these sites. Data-center electric consumption is the fastest growing sector in the U.S. economy, and the U.S. doesn’t have the means of licensing as many power plants as will be needed to keep pace with these consumptions rates, Brill says. As Uptime keeps crunching the numbers, it promises to share more insight on the implications for the nation’s IT infrastructure. In the meantime, listen to Brill’s current analysis here. And, for more on the data-center energy consumption issue, check out:

Power: What you don’t know will hurt you
Power: the cost reality
5 ways to curb data-center energy use
Energy-efficiency case studies

This week’s story on the cost reality of powering the data center makes it clear that, despite all the “green” hype, most IT executives haven’t yet or are only now beginning to place energy efficiency high on their criteria list when picking servers, storage devices or network gear. Experts attribute this in part to a lack of awareness of how much powering a company’s IT equipment costs. Plain and simple, IT executives often don’t see the electric bills. They’re not responsible for carrying the cost of the powering the IT infrastructure. Picking energy efficient gear doesn’t help their bottom lines. Looking at the results of a recent reader survey, most IT executives don’t even talk very often to the data center facilities managers. None of this is good, experts say. IT executives who aren’t aware of the impact their decisions can have on the data center’s power infrastructure and the company’s electric bill are in a vulnerable position. Next time they need to add more gear, they might find themselves surprised by the power infrastructure’s ability to support it or cost prohibitions. Do you agree with the experts who say IT must take responsibility for the data center power bill? Or not? polls - Take Our Poll

Enterprise All-Star Award winner Baerlocher USA has a pretty cool server virtualization story to tell. It isn’t about server consolidation (although the company does use the technology for that purpose, too). The coolness factor comes into play because through the smarts of the company’s NAFTA region IT chief, the company was able to put off a $2 million investment in a new production system – ie, the system at the heart of Baerlocher’s manufacturing operations. Baerlocher has copied that production environment, complete with way outdated Windows NT-based servers, onto a VMware infrastructure that cost roughly $45,000. Theoretically, Baerlocher can run the production environment on the virtual infrastructure for the next 10 years, says Oliver Fischer-Samano, IT director. Not that he wants to do that, but having the option is a relief, he adds.

Read the story

See all the All-Star winners

So, Oracle is at it again – increasing pressure on other industry players with like technology of its own. Last year, it took aim at Red Hat with cheaper Linux support. This time around, the database giant wants to horn in on VMware’s action. The company took the wraps off a Xen-based hypervisor, called Oracle VM, that provisions virtual servers, manages virtual environments and moves applications from one server to another while the program remains running. Like other software vendors offering or working on virtualization hypervisors, Oracle is looking to diminish its software’s reliance on the underlying operating system. Chuck Rozwat, an Oracle EVP, put it in a nutshell: “With Oracle VM, users keep doing what they’re doing, whether they are running a database or running an application, they don’t see any change at all. Their job just moves from one machine to another.” This hypervisor will run with Oracle and non-Oracle apps, and with Linux or Windows systems.

Read the story

Get more on virtualization trends

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Building a complex service-oriented architecture is one thing, managing it an entirely other. One tool alone won’t do the job for a complex, enterprise SOA. As Randy Heffner, a Forrester Research analyst, says: "Sooner or later, if you are doing strategic SOA, you will need robust SOA management; and to get comparable functionality, you may have to get a set of products, rather than just one." Network World assessed the SOA management challenges and came up with 10 tools that are worth checking out for the tough tasks. They are:

AmberPoint's SOA Management System: policy-based run-time governance and more
BMC Software's AppSight: functional load testing of SOA-based applications
CA's Wily SOA Solution: application performance monitoring
HP's SOA Manager: management of loosely coupled application components and Web services
IBM's Tivoli Composite Application Manager for SOA: Web services management
iTKO's LISA Enterprise SOA Testing platform: unit, regression, functional and load testing
Mindreef's SOAPscope Server: automated Web-services governance, testing diagnostics and support
OpTier's CoreFirst: management of transaction workloads
Progress Software's Actional for SOA Operations: SOA mapping
Tidal Software's Intersperse: application management, business process tracing and run-time monitoring

Get more details

Over on the application side of the house, enterprises are embracing the service-oriented architecture. That means they're allowing application components to be shared across an enterprise, even pulled from external parties, and assembled in a loosely coupled way. This could mean trouble in the data center, as SOA's flexibility translates into unpredictability. As Donna Scott, a Gartner analyst, says, “You better have the capacity to support that one service and have planned for that scaling from an infrastructure perspective -- hardware, software, network, bandwidth and storage." Foundational technologies to support SOA include server provisioning and configuration management, server virtualization, and run-book automation. Experts recommend these and other technologies be combined in a service-oriented infrastructure. With SOI, they say, companies can move from dedicating infrastructure resources for each application to allocating resources dynamically using virtual processing, storage and network resources.

Read the story

Take a poll: Have you built an SOI?

The idea of adding a “data center architect” to the IT staff seems to be catching on quickly. Results from the 2007 Network World Salary Survey show that hiring managers very much have this position on their radars. Of 588 respondents, 60% were looking for data center architects. If you’ve got the right skills, you could demand premium pay -- the survey shows that hiring managers consider finding qualified professionals to fill this role as tough. This new position, spinning out of the move to the on-demand, real-time enterprise, is for those who have experience managing servers, storage, security and facilities and now want to get into the next big thing. That includes bringing an integrated, holistic approach to data center architecture and design.

Read story, and get the hiring outlook

Virtualization is the enterprise technology of choice these days. That can lead to some confusion, with vendors flinging around the term left and right. What is desktop virtualization, for example, and how does it compare to application virtualization? Get a quick conceptual run through of seven types of virtualization, complements of Enterprise Management Associates.

See the slideshow

Server virtualization security is a troublesome challenge. In a recent survey, 250 Network World readers said they realize virtualization introduces increased security risk. But of those respondents, only one-third seemed to understand that the virtualization platform layer itself is vulnerable, and were pushing virtual-machine platform vendors to make security integral to their products in addition to following more traditional security best practices. So many enterprises may be failing to apply even the most basic security policies for protecting their virtual servers.
Read the story and take our poll:

You’ve had a virtualized server infrastructure for a while, and the benefits have proved outstanding. But you’re not one to rest on your laurels, so now what? Certainly there must be a way to get even more out of server virtualization. And there is. Because virtualization has proven so invaluable within the enterprise, the technology has spurred a wave of innovative developments from start-ups and established players alike. There are products aimed at boosting performance, making management easier and extending virtualization to the desktop and into mobile instances, too. Network World hand-picked 10 companies that offer some of the most interesting new virtualization products out there. They are: 3Leaf Systems and InovaWave, for help with virtualization-related I/O processing bottlenecks; Kidaro, Provision Networks and XDS, for desktop management; Attune Systems, for dealing with unwieldy file storage; Insystek, Scalent Systems and ToutVirtual, for virtual server management; and Marathon Technologies, for disaster recovery.

Read the story for full company and product details, and share your favorite virtualization products.

Green was a big theme at this week’s Next Generation Data Center conference. Virtually every speaker I listened in on found some way of mentioning the need for greater energy efficiency, less power consumption and other buzz phrases of the green data center movement. All this green is good. But one of the more intriguing green concepts I heard came from Ann Livermore, EVP of technology solutions at HP. During a keynote presentation, Livermore brought together the green idea and the automation ideal of the next-generation data center. Imagine a day when you could move applications around your IT environment not just to optimize performance but to take advantage of energy efficiencies. Now that’s cool!

Stick the phrase “next generation” in front of a few words and you’ve turned something old and stodgy into something cool and hip – or, so you hope. One of the industry’s latest attempts at this comes with the catchphrase “next-generation data center.” Away with visions of rows upon rows of servers and cabling up the wazoo and in with the vision of something, well, much more high-tech on one hand and abstract on the other. The next-generation data center – or New Data Center, as we here at Network World like to call it – isn’t about a building or a room but a strategic approach to the ways in which IT makes the business agile, dynamic and intertwined with the business. Enterprises that embrace the next-generation data center concept are Web-based and services-oriented, supremely agile, operating in real time, obtaining computing resources as needed on demand, and without boundary. Paul Strong, distinguished research scientist at eBay, articulated the concept quite well during a keynote address at this week’s new Next Generation Data Center Conference & Expo in San Francisco. While the next-generation data center encompasses a load of emerging technologies like policy-based computing, grid computing, utility computing, organic IT, on-demand computing, the real-time enterprise, autonomic computing, adaptive enterprise and so on, he said, it is really far more than a collection of technologies, Rather, it’s a way of running business processes driven by service-level agreements. It’s about turning IT from a cost center to a value center, he said. Ann Livermore, EVP of technology solutions at HP, hit the nail on the head, too, in her keynote. “Don’t think about the next-generation data center as a physical location,” she said. Instead, she added, think about it as the way in which IT will allow the organization to do more powerful things. It was good to hear these and other industry luminaries driving home our New Data Center!

Get more insight from eBay’s Paul Strong in this Q&A

Head to the New Data Center site

If you're into the latest advanced IT technologies and how they'll affect your business, then there's a new show that's right up your alley - the Next Generation Data Center Conference & Expo, from IDG World Expo. Organizers have pulled together big-name keynoters like Werner Vogels, Amazon CTO, and Paul Strong, distinguished research scientist at eBay. If anyone knows about how best to support a nimble, on-demand, services-oriented infrastructure, it's them. And the sessions themselves promise a huge info dump on everything from automating IT to creating the greenest of green data centers. The show features six tracks - Virtualization, HPC & Grid; Advanced Facilities Planning & Management; Advanced Networking & Services; Applications; Data Center Optimization; Data Center Security - plus three for Enterprise Information World, which is co-located with the show (as is LinuxWorld).

Get the full session agenda, including downloadable presentations, here

In a recent Network World Q&A, Amazon CTO Werner Vogels says more than 240,000 developers have registered for Amazon Web Services. This is the portfolio that includes Amazon’s Web-Scale Computing services, things like S3 (Simple Storage Service), EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) and SQS (Simple Queue Service), to, as Vogels puts it, reduce the “many menial tasks of managing a large server infrastructure.” At less than a quarter of a million, Vogels says the company’s developer business is small potatoes compared to its retailer and third-party seller businesses today. But he expresses high hopes that Amazon will be able to bulk up that piece of the biz. And, even if the numbers aren’t high, he seems to think the activity is pretty cool: “We’re pleasantly surprised by the
reaction of the developer community to the services we’ve launched. We’re seeing even more innovation and breadth of use than we anticipated.”

Read the full interview here

Catch Vogel’s Aug. 7 keynote at IDG World Expo’s new Next Generation Data Center Conference & Expo. Get more info here

The big buzz this week comes from industry heavyweights Cisco and HP, both of which made lots of noise on technology strategies for next-generation IT infrastructure – what we here at Network World call the New Data Center. From Cisco, we’ve learned of Data Center 3.0 and the company’s plan to move full-steam ahead into automation and virtualization. Under Data Center 3.0, Cisco will bring together disparate data center networking technologies to create a single fabric for connection and virtualization of network elements. This is good news for all those Cisco shops out there, but it’s not exactly unexpected, either. Nor is it a novel idea. We’ve seen this type of strategy from many other vendors, big and small, some more comprehensive, others less so – with Cisco’s vision falling into the latter category. Already the company has a slew of Data Center 3.0 products in the offing, and has plotted out the next two years of development work. And by all means, leading enterprise IT executives have been building toward such a dynamic data center for several years now. Still, good to see Cisco take this next step toward that ideal. As for HP, the company pumped up its New Data Center automation strategy by buying Opsware for its data automation technology. That whopping $1.6 billion deal comes on the heels of BMC’s purchase of Opsware competitor RealOps, signaling just how hot automated data center management technologies are becoming for the enterprise. In our story on the deal, Will Cappelli, a Gartner analyst, described the vendor motivation as such: “The next big step for the big four management vendors is a move into automation in the areas of active configuration management and dynamic resource allocation. It will be a big disruptive play and a defining technology when they move into automation technologies.”
Hey, it all validates our New Data Center vision, so we’re loving it.

Read the HP-Opsware story

Read the Cisco Data Center 3.0 story

Visit our latest New Data Center site

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The Boeing data theft guy is a bit of a curiosity to me. Here's a guy who apparently is so upset with the company and the FAA over parts inspections processes that he's willing to risk his freedom over it. Or, maybe this is a guy who's so blinded by righteous indignation that he simply can't distinguish between right and wrong. Or, is he just an arrogant cad who really thought he'd get away with it? My money is on option No. 2. After all, stories of data theft are big news these days; if the guy was thinking clearly I'm sure he knew he'd be taken way, way, way down if he got caught -- and come on, if he was rational he had to have known that as time went on the chances of him getting caught were getting pretty high. We're not talking about one or two confidential memos here. According to press reports, the official charges claimed the guy downloaded hundreds and thousands of Boeing-related documents. The question is, and one generating lively debate, why the heck didn't Boeing catch on to this guy over the three years he reportedly was stashing away the corporate jewels? Sounds like he had made his dismay known -- why didn't that trigger more scrutiny? Maybe the data-leakage protection technology wasn't all that in 2003, or even in 2006, but really, I'm hard pressed to lay this entirely at the fault of human behavior and not consider it as a technology shortcoming, too. How many more examples do we need before companies get serious, real serious about content monitoring and digital rights management? Chief information security officers must wage war!

Read the story

Share your opinion

Take a look at the latest in content monitoring tools

While stories of WAN optimization benefits abound, some IT watchers feel the technology is a poor substitute for effective policy and network management. “If resources are aligned with usage needs what use is there for WAN optimization?” questions one member of the Network World Community. The reader adds, “IT managers are seduced into buying this crap with all it's filtering, shaping and whatnot, features that are also available on many switches and routers. I think it's just adding fog to a mine-laden field.” What do you think? Is WAN optimization technology creating a generation of “lazy” network managers?

Join the discussion

Enterprise users accessing corporate applications across a wireless net don’t have to suffer from performance problems. That there’s nothing to be done about sluggish application response and latency over a wireless LAN is a misconception –unfortunately, a common one, says David Newman, a Network World Test Alliance partner and president of Network Test. "People say, 'It's just wireless; what do you expect?' In fact,” he says, “wireless LANs can be made to perform quite well, but it does involve thinking some about network design." Other wireless experts agree, and have some pretty simple-to-follow guidelines for optimizing wireless nets.
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Word is that Microsoft’s effort to improve the way its newest desktop OS deals with file- and print-sharing over the WAN isn’t half bad. With a trio of performance-boosters – a revised TCP/IP stack, a new CIFS implementation and QoS enhancements – industry watchers report better WAN performance for some applications, especially longer file transfers. But as with most-things Microsoft, Vista’s WAN performance improvements are a work in progress and suffer some problems.

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If your storage area network is suffering performance problems or your compliance out of whack, then you know your entire IT operation (if not the company as a whole) is going to suffer. Thank goodness for the arrival of technologies like storage virtualization, advanced back-up management, real-time performance monitoring, e-discovery and even green storage systems. Applied properly, these can make sure your SAN runs smoothly and cost-effectively.

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Storage certainly isn’t the biggest energy hog in the data center. But, cutting back on the amount of power consumed by storage systems can lower the energy bill and free up precious energy for other uses. And, saving power by using storage space more efficiently can cut down on wasted capacity, which means spending less on storage in the long run.

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The average U.S. company faces 305 lawsuits at any one time. Yikes! That statistic should be particularly troublesome to IT departments, which carry the weight of electronic discovery on their shoulders. That’s quite a heavy load, given that about 95% of all business communications now is created and stored electronically. And, if it’s stored electronically, that means it must be discoverable. Amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure that went into effect about six months ago make it so. Emerging tools and updated policies can help.

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