virtualization

Uptime Is Not Something To Be Revered

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Slashdot has a link to a tribute video to a Sun that was up continuously for 3737 days. That’s 10.23 years. It’s like a sequoia tree seeing the passage of civilization around it: My thoughts on this: The data center and infrastructure powering this machine was built in such a way as to keep this thing powered continuously for 10 years. Whoever built and ran that infrastructure was doing a good job. It’s a generalization but I bet there are very few cloud providers that can boast anything like that. That version of Sun Solaris is reliable enough to keep operating for years without disruption. Most OSes are, by the way, even Microsoft Windows. That particular hardware is reliable enough …

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OpenStack, Lock-In, Support Costs, and Open Source Free Lunches

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Since I posted my missive about OpenStack not being our savior from lock-in or support costs I’ve had a number of comments and discussions about it. The discussions generally start from the point of view that I’m wrong. Let’s take a look at a few of these. Also, it might seem like I’m picking on Randy Bias and Greg Ferro a little here but Randy seems like a good guy, and Greg is a friend, so there’s no animosity. Just point/counterpoint. TL;DR version: OpenStack is cool but isn’t some magic tech that prints money, open source doesn’t mean you don’t have to pay someone to support a service built on it, customized open source and custom solutions using open source don’t …

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Explaining Things Simply

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Humans try to make everything really, really complicated. Sometimes we need the complexity but we often do it just because we can. We do it without thinking about it, perhaps a subliminal way of telling people to check out our species’ big brains. It’s also the way we write. We write long and complicated emails, memos, documents, blog posts, whatever. We use big words when we could very easily use smaller ones. Think about all the times you’ve used the word “utilize.” You don’t need that word, ever. Another word you never need is “bespoke.” People who use those kinds of words are writing so that nobody will read or understand them, which is a complete waste of time for …

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Cloud Isn't Really About Technology

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If there was one concept about “the cloud” I wish more people understood it is that the cloud is not a technological revolution. Sure, a faster and more pervasive Internet helps, but we’ve had vendor-hosted applications for years. Virtualization has created better opportunities for server infrastructure, lowering barriers to entry and helping us squeeze blood out of things we once treated as rocks. But, despite being almost continuously conflated with “cloud,” it isn’t the cloud. Not by itself. The cloud is about people and about process. It’s about organizations deciding to talk to each other internally, to collaborate and solve problems together. Cloud is about opening the door to automation and security and scalability, asking computers to do what they …

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Tips for VMworld US 2012 & San Francisco

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As VMworld US 2012 approaches rapidly I’ve been thinking about the things I like to do in San Francisco, and the useful things I have learned over the years. If you have thoughts here about things that I’ve missed or are wrong about please add them in the comments! Transportation: From SFO I usually take the Bay Area Rapid Transit, or BART, to the Powell St. station. It’s cheap at $8.25 a person and relatively fast, though you’ll have to hoof it from the station to your hotel then. If you have more than one person a cab might be okay, but expect the ride to cost $50-$60. Shuttles are also a cost-effective way to travel, $17ish from SFO to …

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Thoughts on the VMware Code Leak

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VMware has confirmed that there was a theft of the ESX source code around April 8th, 2012. I have some non-linear thoughts on this whole thing. First, the code is from 2003 & 2004, and for ESX. ESX was the big, bloated hypervisor that shipped with whole Linux installs, and the purported 300 MB of source code sounds like they might have code for a lot of the Linux utilities that shipped with. So what? The newer version is ESXi which forgoes the Linux install in favor of being very small. That said, I’m going to assume they have the source code for the base hypervisor itself. I’m also going to assume that some of the hypervisor code from then …

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How To Increase Your "% Virtualized" Rates

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The #VirtualizeDell tweet chat today got me thinking about what stops most virtualization implementations around 50-75%. These are just some thoughts on ways to kick things loose. @LethaW commented “[that some of them are] sneaky and underhanded, and I love it.” I took that as encouragement. Needless to say, your mileage may vary. Problem: Physical hardware is required or requested by vendors. Solutions: Actually check to make sure that a vendor does require physical hardware. For example, Oracle doesn’t require it for many things, but there’s this misconception out there that they do, and I hear it from DBAs a lot. Consultants will also tell you a wide variety of things, too. Check the facts. Get it in writing. Don’t …

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Three Failings of Virtual Appliances

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I’m torn when it comes to virtual appliances. I love them because they make a lot of installations absolutely brainless. I hate them because the people that create them make assumptions that are ridiculous and unsupportable. Here’s the three ways I hate them the most: 1. There’s no good way to back them up. For organizations that haven’t gone the “whole VM” backup route there are very limited choices for backing these things up. Sometimes the virtual appliance has some method to export the configurations and data, but often not. And when there is a method it’s usually a web interface that cannot be automated. What I want: virtual appliances should be able to export their configuration and data on …

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The Realities of Single Panes of Glass

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The folks at Virtualization Tech Field Day 2 were tweeting about single panes of glass (I think they were playing buzzword bingo) and reminded me of my feelings on the topic. I’ve never thought a single pane of glass was all that special, or necessary. Once upon a time, when I was the IT guy for a small environment, I never used them because I didn’t feel like dealing with the hassle of tying everything together, arbitrarily creating dependencies and unnecessarily complicating my life. Now, as an “enterprise” guy, I can’t use a single pane of glass to see into my storage, network, backups, etc. because of the politics & silos with the storage, network, and backup teams. And even if …

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5 Minutes with vCenter Operations Manager 5

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I installed the new vCenter Operations Manager 5 about an hour ago. Whoa. I had the pleasure of meeting Kit Colbert, Praveen Kannan, and Martin Klaus last April when they were in town, and I know they, and the rest of the team, have been doing a lot of work on the product. It really shows. Here are my first impressions, literally. 1. The install procedure is very straightforward, in that I was able to get it fully installed without reading any documentation. The product is a vApp now, and comes with two components, the Analytics VM and the UI VM. You need two IPs, and despite the OVF import process prompting for the IPs those IPs need to be …

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