virtualization
Are you Touchy About your Appliances?
Us guys, we like our things – our cars, computers, gadgets, you name it. We like tangible stuff that we can touch and hold, none of this touchy, feely stuff. So what’s the deal then with the future of our network gear? Are we destined for “manly” physical appliances or are we going for those “pansy” virtual appliances? Read more
IBM Research Study: Server Consolidation Won’t Help Nearly Half-the-Time
IBM Research just released a large-scale performance survey of several thousand data center servers over the past two years. The research shows that, on average, today’s servers’ biggest performance challenges are in-memory and disk utilization and not in processor usage, and that in about half the cases server consolidation will not make sense. Read more
Cisco, VMware and EMC Offer Training As Trends Evolve
There is no doubt that things in the IT world are evolving rapidly. It professionals running data centers have to be on their toes and keep up with the changes.
If you missed the announcement, Cisco, VMware and EMC are collaborating to bring training for IT pros in the areas of virtualization, unified communications, networking, big data, cloud computing, and data center infrastructure. Read more
What do Infoblox and March Madness Have in Common? One and Done
March Madness wrapped up this week with Kentucky winning the NCAA tournament and coach John Calipari finally getting to cut down the net and get his ring. Of late, the term “One and Done” has become synonymous with Coach Calipari since so many of his players come to play for a single year and then make the jump to the NBA. Read more
Let’s Virtualize Everything
Apple calls its Bonjour protocol "zero-configuration networking", but it's better described as a service discovery protocol that's essential to the operation of iTunes, Apple TV, printing, the increasingly popular AirPlay, and a broad range of functions that span all of Apple's major product lines. Read more
How Much Do You Really Know About Network Virtualization, SDN and OpenFlow?
Most of you reading this have heard of OpenFlow and some of the recent announcements regarding it. HP announced a whole new lineup of network solutions that takes advantage of this exciting new software standard that promises to let you control and program your network like you would your computer. Read more
Linux Foundation Report Shows Growing Linux Adoption Rates in the Enterprise
Released today, Linux Adoption Trends 2012: A Survey of Enterprise End Users is based on responses from 428 IT professionals from organizations with US$ 500 million or more a year in revenues or 500+ employees and is available for download from the Linux Foundation site. Among the key findings, the study shows that 8 out of 10 respondents say that they've added Linux servers in the past 12 months and plan to add more in the next year. Read more
Get Out of the Data Center Business
I just spoke with an IT executive at a large marketing and advertising firm. He has completely moved his data center to a local colocation facility. He has two cages at the facility. One cage is dedicated to the IBM Mainframe and the other to his x86 environment. About 40% of his x86 environment is virtualized with the plan to keep virtualizing systems as the opportunity presents itself. Read more
Cisco pulls Puppet's purse strings
Cisco has invested in Puppet Labs, a maker of IT automation software. Actually, Cisco was but one new investor in Puppet Labs' C round of financing, which totaled $8.5 million.
Other new investors in the company include Google Ventures and VMware. They join existing investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, True Ventures, and Radar Partners in the round. Read more
It's Time To Child-Proof Our Networks
As the old security cliche goes, "people are the weakest link in the security chain." ESG tested this theory in its recently-published research report, "U.S. Advanced Persistent Threat Analysis."
http://www.enterprisestrategygroup.com/2011/11/apt/?utm_source=Homepage&...
According to the security professionals surveyed for this report, non-IT employees' security skills remain poor:
* 49% of respondents rated their organization's non-IT employees general security knowledge as "fair" or "poor." Read more
Windows Comes to the Mainframe Mountain
A CA exec once told me if a mainframe crashes three times in year, that is an unreliable computer. If your PC crashes three times in one day, it's been a good day. Ok, so this was in the days of Windows 3.1, but the joke always stuck with me.
One thing that hasn't changed is mainframe reliability. They are still the gold standard for uptime and reliability, and with 40 years of development, there isn't much for alternatives. Maybe that's why despite repeated declarations that the mainframe, it continues to survive, thrive, and see significant updates from IBM. Read more
Gartner: 10 key IT trends for 2012
ORLANDO -- If you had to pick 10 technology-related trends that will impact your enterprise infrastructure in the coming year, Gartner says you'd do well to start with virtualization and move to other issues such as social media influence, energy issues and flat networks to name a few. Read more
Cisco and the Consumerization of IT
It’s painfully obvious that the consumerization of IT isn’t going away. You hear it in the news, from manufacturers, and the loudest voice of all – your end-users.
Most likely, helpdesk requests about configuring, updating or using consumer devices has eked their way into your top 10 most common calls list. (A personal favorite, though not a top 10: “How do I get that bird game on here?”) Read more
Virtualization saves Microsoft almost $50 million yearly
The following is a guest blog by freelance editor and self-confessed keyboard geek Marco Chiappetta. In the eat-your-own-dogfood category, Microsoft recently released a pair of documents that showcase its use of Hyper-V in its own datacenters. Microsoft has been chanting for years about how much more affordable Hyper-V implementations are than VMware and few people dispute that. But they do argue that you get what you pay for, particularly with VM density, memory over-commit and management features. Read more
Server 8 Benefits from Lessons Learned With Azure
So by now the cat's out of the bag on Windows Server 8 and how much of a monster upgrade it will be. But Microsoft didn't just come up with this list of features in a vacuum, or out of some desire for Paul Maritz's head (well, maybe…). Server 8 is the culmination of almost two years of being a cloud service provider. Read more
Windows Server 8: To the Cloud!
Microsoft held a mind-meld with about 40 journalists and influences at its Seattle headquarters last week to discuss Windows Server 8, the follow-up to Server 2008, and I've been able to extract a few details, NDAs and not being there not withstanding.
PRODUCT TESTER'S REACTION: Windows Server 8: The Microsoft Server Fork Read more
OpenFlow inventor: Network provisioning will inevitably be automated
2011 has been an exciting year for Openflow and software defined networking (SDN). Continuing my informal series on Openflow, I recently got the chance to have a conversation with Nicira CTO Martin Casado to discuss the future of SDN generally and OpenFlow specifically. Read more
Xsigo has a fabric to go up against Cisco, others
So back from vacation, digging out and catching up after two weeks fishing and boating, and I come across one of the more interesting data center networking products announced during my absence: Server Fabric from Cisco irritant Xsigo Systems. Read more
Oracle VM 3.0 Launch
My colleague Brian Babineau had the opportunity to attend the Oracle VM 3.0 launch where the company outlined its “Application-Driven Virtualization” strategy and solution portfolio. Although I personally have not dug into the details of the entire announcement (it is a busy time of year for anything virtualization), I wanted to share a couple Brian’s thoughts and provide some quick analysis. Read more
Torvalds says, "Virtualization is evil"
Ask the world's most famous kernel developer what he thinks of the virtualization wars going on the Linux community between KVM and Xen and you'll hear a condemnation (of a sort) of them both. "I'm not a virtualization kind of guy. I think virtualization is evil," Linus Torvalds told the crowd at LinuxCon on Wednesday during his keynote interview session with Greg Kroah-Hartman.
Virtualization takes Torvalds away from the hardware and that's not where he wants to go. "I built a kernel because I wanted to get my hands grubby with things like I/O ports." Read more
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