Category Archives: Future
VMware, Microsoft, and the Future
The on again, off again speculation about VMware's future has recently resurfaced, notably in a post by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols here and a follow on post by Scott Lowe here. I have a slightly different take, but overall I'm concerned about VMware as a company. There are several disturbing indicators about the company's future, and they keep reappearing in my conversation with customers. And the core, underlying driver of all of this concern is Microsoft.
VMware has been concerned about Microsoft since Hyper-V was initially announced. I think the concern over Microsoft was a key driver in the appointment of Paul Maritz to VMware's CEO role, as he would fully ...
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The Increasing Importance of VMware vCenter
It seems that with each generation of VMware products, the importance of vCenter (formerly Virtual Center) elevates from a central administration point to a keystone for full functionality. While a number of features in the vSphere suite are able to survive without vCenter, such as High Availability (HA) and virtual networking, many other pieces of the stack rely on vCenter for some or all of their ability to carry out tasks.
One example that emphasizes this is the VMware View product for virtual end user computing (VEUC) to host desktops. During a vCenter outage, you can still connect to any fully available desktop. However, both types of desktops, Full Clones (sometimes referred to as Thick Clones) and Linked Clones, are affected by ...
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EMC VFCache the new face of “EMC Project Lightning”
EMC debuted VFcache today, which was codenamed "Project Lightning." So what is this thing they call VFCache? VFCache is a server Flash caching technology that reduces latency and increases throughput by moving the active dataset up to the server-side PCI-e cache. It accelerates block I/O reads and also protects data by using a write-throughcache to the back-end storage.
First thought is how is VFCache different from similar products currently in the marketplace? Well let’s first look at how it compares to a DAS based cache solution.
DAS-based PCIe Flash technology stores the application directly on the Flash card, so in this architecture it doesn't provide protection if the card were to fail. With VFCache write-through cache, you have protection against data loss as it ...
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What’s the Forecast? Storage…
In this second to last post in this series, I'll review my thoughts on the near term future of the storage industry, technology adoption, and challenges faced by the incumbent storage array manufacturers. The next and final post will lightly touch on End User Computing and evolution of application development and delivery. If you have thoughts, comments, or would like to see more on any of what I have published in this series, I welcome all comments / questions / requests. Thanks for reading! - Brett
Storage Forecast:
As they have over the last 3-5 years, enterprise storage requirements will continue to grow at accelerated rates over the next 3-5 years. Information and intelligent access/use of that information is already a critical differentiator for companies in most ...
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Forecast – Server Virtualization and Compute (x86)
Second post in the series about where I see things going - this is a brief synopsis of my views on near term futures for Virtualization and Compute.
Virtualization
x86 virtualization will continue at a rapid pace. Over the next 3-5 years, compute and memory capabilities will continue to grow. Hypervisor technologies will continue to increase their ability to handle workload on both consolidated and non-consolidated basis. Rapid and massive server consolidation for cost savings alone will no longer be a core driver for virtualization. The focus of virtualization will shift as enterprise organizations begin to virtualize all Tier 1 applications as a driver to increase availability through virtualization attributes including scalability and portability. Most organizations will be challenged to identify any applications that will not be ...
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What’s the Forecast? Network…
Without the network - it really wouldn't matter what applications, servers, storage, or virtualization technologies are deployed. The network is by definition, what brings everything together and ensures that systems and users can interact to run business. I figured this would be a good place to start with my observations on what's coming...
Network virtualization will continue to the point that traditional models of distinct location or geographic-based network topologies will in many cases no longer be sufficient to support applications. In order to provide high availability, location independence, and application portability, many organizations will look at a massive flattening of the network infrastructure and the expansion of Layer 2 networking across datacenter locations.
Traditional three tier designs and the approach of extending L3 as far as ...
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What’s the forecast?
One of my customers was recently challenged by his CIO to come up with a vision for datacenter infrastructure technology trends for the next 18-36 months. The focus was not on any one technology, but more about how changes in many traditional datacenter technologies would change the way that technology is applied, how it interacts, and what that means for application development and deployment. This customer, like many, is distantly intrigued by the "sometime future" promise of public cloud, but is significantly more interested in what they can do today to increase datacenter efficiency and otherwise prepare for taking advantage of new and coming technologies to make their current and near future datacenter infrastructure the best it can be.
During the process of reviewing various parts ...
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OpenFlow Networking
Odds are that you've heard the buzz about OpenFlow. Lets take a quick look at what it is, how it works and a few benefits and challenges of the new technology.
What It Is
OpenFlow is a method to allow the traffic-forwarding behavior of an Ethernet switch to be controlled by an external software program. It was created by researchers at Stanford University (and others) to share physical networks between production use and experimental research use. The researchers needed a way to test new networking protocols at large scale without effecting normal user traffic. OpenFlow was developed to allow the production network to be carved into virtual segments - some segments for production use and other segments for experimental use. The production segments use traditional techniques to ...
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VMworld 2011: Day 4 (Thursday)
VMworld 2011 - Thursday
This is going to be my second to last update on VMworld 2011 – I’ll write up one more summary with a glossary to help easily find things next.
Today I attend the keynote followed by three sessions. Today’s sessions included NetApp’s solution to metro distance HA/DA (disaster avoidance), HP CloudSystem Architecture, and a vCenter Ops deep dive. So – to jump right in:
BCO2863 – Using Distance to your advantage to create a Unified Data Protection Strategy
Maybe because it was the last day of the conference, maybe because it was the first time slot, maybe it was the topic – not sure, but there really weren’t a lot of people in this session. Felt a little sorry for the presenters at the light ...
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VMworld 2011 – Wednesday
VMworld 2011 – Day 3
I ended up missing a couple of (what I thought would be less critical) sessions today so I could catch up on work, calls and blogs… I sure am glad that I did not miss VSP2884 - What's New in Performance for VMware vSphere 5.0.
Unlike some of the other technology sessions that I have attended – this one did not go very deep, but instead it provided a broad swath of information around every facet of vSphere – specifically why vSphere 5 is better. I could have gone to 10 different deep dive sessions to cover each of these. For both mine and hopefully your purposes – this synopsis was most excellent.
Also covered in this post – CMI3257 – vCenter Chargeback ...
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