Archive for category News
RedHat launching Broker for Cloud Computing
Posted by martijn in Cloud computing, News on September 5, 2009
RedHat has launched a new open-source project in relation to Cloud Computing : the Delta Cloud. It can be seen as a cloud broker between the end-user access device and the various clouds computing solutions today. Currently each cloud provider is introducing it’s own API to interact with. RedHat’s Delta Cloud now tries to fill this gap by introducing a open-source project which will act as a doorway to multiple clouds. Currently public clouds like Amazons EC2 and solutions based on RedHat Enterprise Virtualization based private clouds are supported. Support for VMware based private clouds and Rackspace will be added soon.
For more information about the subject go to the Deltacloud projet site here.
Purpose of this Delta Cloud is to protect applications agains “cloud API changes and incompatibilities”. It should create a an ecosystem of developers, tools, scripts and applications that can interoperate across the public and private clouds available today. For example : You can start building applications build through the Delta Cloud API in your private cloud. And without any changes move this application to a public cloud. Interoperability in your hands!
vCloud Express: Easy, pay-as-you-go IaaS
Posted by martijn in Cloud computing, News, Virtualization on September 1, 2009
VMware today announced the vCloud Express. The new type of service allows customers to get on-demand, pay-as-you-go Infrastructure as a Service. Several leading Virtual Service Providers (VSP) like Terremark, Bluelock, Hosting.com and Melbourne IT have adopted this technology and have currently several products in beta. Look here for more information.
Introducing VMware vCloud™ Express
VMware is today introducing VMware vCloud™ Express, a new class of service that will deliver reliable, on-demand, pay-as-you go compute as a service. Built on the industry’s leading and most complete virtualization platform, VMware vSphere™, VMware vCloud™ Express will enable customers to start with VMware vCloud™ Express and grow into full enterprise-class cloud environments with highly available and service level guarantees when they are ready to move into production. Unlike other on-demand cloud solutions, VMware vCloud™ Express will give developers quick access to a pay-as-you-go infrastructure that is compatible with in-house VMware virtualized IT environments—making the interoperability and portability of applications from external development to internal deployment easy. With VMware vCloud™ Express, customers will have the flexibility to leverage IT resources when they need it and pay for only what they use.
VMware vCloud™ Express will be available through many leading service providers including Terremark, BlueLock, Hosting.com, Logica, and Melbourne IT. These service providers are launching beta releases of their services today. To try VMware vCloud™ Express, find your preferred provider by going to: www.vmware.com/vcloudexpress.
“By leveraging VMware’s best-in-breed virtualization technologies and our vast experience providing solutions to enterprise and Federal government customers, our vCloud ™Express offering will provide customers a uniquely differentiated, cost-effective platform that meets their IT infrastructure needs,” said Manuel D. Medina, chairman and chief executive officer, Terremark. “Terremark’s vCloud™ Express services will provide our customers pay-as-you-go, on-demand access to enterprise-class infrastructure that is flexible enough to offer unmatched compatibility with their own internal IT platforms.”
What this really means is that you can now connect your virtual infrastructure, running vSphere, with the VSP(s) of your choice. Expansion of your infrastructure is now available just by going to a website, registering with your credit card and selecting your type of service. No more, no less. You connect your vSphere setup with the service have expanded your virtual capacity. Easy does it!
Well not entirely true. It’s still in beta and it won’t be perfect at first. But in general I like the product. It makes Cloud Computing, especially IaaS, more understandable and will help get Cloud Computing out of the “hype cycle” and into the realistic world of IT we live in. It’s not a product supported by one vendor, but also has a broad eco-system of service providers attached to it and it propagates interoperability which, in my opinion, is one of the key factors of making Cloud Computing a success!
VMware opens the door to the vCloud
Posted by martijn in Cloud computing, News, Virtualization on August 31, 2009
Today the Technology Preview version (0.8) of the vCloud API was released. This opens the door to build your own cloud based upon proven VMware technology. This is the next step of VMware entering the Cloud Computing arena.
Who is the vCloud API targeted towards?
The vCloud API is targeted towards developers and IT Admins across our service provider, ISV and enterprise customer community
What are some key distinguishing characteristics of the vCloud API?
This API opens the cloud to application vendors, service providers and enterprise IT. Simplifying the way applications are deployed and managed within the cloud.
For more information see the VMware vCloud Deverloper Forum where you can also find a FAQ, documentation and a forum to discuss the vCloud.
vSphere Overview Video
Posted by martijn in Cloud computing, News, Virtualization on April 25, 2009
Nice video with an overview of the new vSphere product by VMware.
vSphere launched!
Posted by martijn in General, News, Virtualization on April 22, 2009
April 21th was the big day the VMware community was waiting for. Finally the next generation of Virtual Infrastructure was release by VMware. As already announced the new name for this bundle of software is vSphere! It was announced by VMware’s CEO Paul Maritz during a simulcast. You can still view the presentation here.
So the word is finally out. Let’s have some fun with this new product, but that probably won’t be a problem because of all the nice new features. And remember this is just the beginning. After this initial product release more will come. VMware will release new product which will integrate with vSphere in the next couple of months. The list can be found here. And not only VMware is going to release new products, but also the partners will release new innovative product which will make vSphere even a better product. So you’d better stay virtually connected to get the latest update!
Power over vSwitch back to where it belongs
Posted by martijn in Cloud computing, News, Virtualization on February 5, 2009
With the upcoming new version of ESX on the horizon, Cisco published more an more detail on the Nexus 1000V. The Nexus 1000V is Cisco’s virtual switch which intergrates directly with ESX creating one distributed over all your ESX hosts. Besides this distrbuted switch Cisco also integrates the them in their management software. This gives network administrators the possibility to manage all switches, physical and virtual. Giving the power of networking back to where it belongs; with the network admins.
Cisco Nexus 1000v with policy based VM connectivity
More information about the Cisco Nexus 1000V can be found here. A nice video can be found here.
But during a presentation I attended Cisco also explained the Unified I/O concept. That was something that was new to me. But it’s going to be possible to combine network and storage traffic over one connection a.k.a. Unified I/O. Wow! That’s great. That would result in only two cables going into my server. But how does it work? Currently we have 10 Gbit available, but in the next year 40 / 100 Gbit will be introduced.
Combined with the ever growing capacity of CPU and RAM in servers this will result in VM host monsters. But how are all these new techonologies going to integrate with one another. Thankfully Brad Hedlund a Consulting System Engineer with Cisco and CCIE has written an article to explain this in detail. You can read about it here.
And as always a picture says more then a thousand words :
Click on picture for more detail
CommVault Backup Solution For Virtual Environments
On January the 26th CommVault introduced their new datamanagement solution Simpana 8. Normally I’m not that much into backup solution. They need to do their job, period! But this one looks very impressive. In my opinion it’s more like “backup virtualization”. Out-of-the-box it provides data-deduplication. How wonderfull is that. This includes embedded-deduplication (backup to disk) and device-deduplication (backup to tape). Resulting in a reduction of data management costs by up to 40% in the first year and reduces the tape consumables by up to 90%!
CommVault data deduplication methods
Backing up all of a sudden became an easy job and besides that eliminating the backup window.
But also cool is that CommVault has a very nice backup solution for virtual environments. It works for both Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware ESX. It includes data-protection, archive, replication and reporting. All this integrated to deliver a complete virtualization solution managed from a single console. How wonderfull is that.
Besides that the software delivers the following capabilities to protect virtualized environments:
- Automated discovery of virtual machines using default protection policies
- Agentless backup of virtual machines eliminating resource consumption
- Multiple backup options, including image-level, file-level, and volume-level
- Multiple recovery options, from individual files to entire virtual machines from any physical server
- Embedded, global deduplication eliminates redundant data and reduces storage footprint
- Flexible architecture for seamless, consistent, reliable data protection across physical and virtual servers
- Fast, cost-effective, and reliable disaster recovery for business continuity
- Centralized management of virtualized and non-virtualized environments
All great features you want from your backup solution. Giving you an easy to manage backup solution at various datalayers in your virtual environment. I’m impressed, hope to try this a.s.a.p. 
For more information go here.
The Future Of Computing
Over at CES 2009 last week Microsoft’s Janet Galore gave a conceptual demo of how Microsoft’s technologies will change the way we find, share and use information. The video below will show you the next gen technologies and the way we will use them. A far as I can see we will:
- Be connected everywhere; Each device will be connected to that one big cloud we have, the internet.
- Have applications with social network integration; Social networking will integrate with applications. No more addressbooks, creating logins, sending emails, etc. We just share all information through the application we’re working in. How cool is that!
- Flexible user interface; Apple may be a few steps ahead, but the flexible easy to use interfaces will also make its way in to the most common interface we use. Maybe even your own customized user interface for all devices. Talk about personal tweaking.
- “Mind map” like presentation of information. I like mindmapping. It’s fast and structured method of showing information in two-dimensional form. Would be great to have such a feature in the future to present large amounts of information.
- Multi language information display. Would be nice to write something in Dutch and everybody all over the world can read my blog post in their own language.
- Device interaction. Maybe the coolest feature of them all. Devices that can interact with one another. Sharing information for you without much hassle and on display.
So have a look at this video and see what the future has to offer (according to Microsoft ofcourse 
).
For more information go here.
Nice comparison of hypervisors
Danielle Ruest and Neil Ruest over at Redmond Magazine created a nice comparison of hypervisors that are currently available. Lately VMware, Citrix and Microsoft are bashing one another about who has the best, smallest, cheapest, etc. hypervisor. Hope this article will clear things up a little bit…
I especially like their conclusion, stating to find out yourself first before making a choice.
Article conclusion :
Don’t get fooled by stories that outline just how expensive one hypervisor is compared to another. What counts is experience, stability and guest operating system density. When you begin to build your own internal cloud, you’ll quickly discover that the best hypervisor is the one you can master in the shortest possible time frame. All vendors offer free virtualization technologies. Try them out in your lab, and see for yourself which one will run the most VMs and offer the best performance on a given set of hardware resources.
The full article can be found here.
