Data Center Virtualization – Virtualizing the Last Mile

Just like a Telco, the ‘last mile’ of Virtualization is often the most difficult, I would say even more difficult than the initial phase of virtualization. What do I mean by the ‘last mile’?
The 5-10% of systems that you have LEFT to virtualize.
These systems are your most highly used, too X to virtualize, the most complex to migrate, dependent upon specific hardware, or travel around the world (such as laptops and other hand held devices). These issues are also highly political as well.

How will you pay for your virtualised applications?

Does an evaluation for a virtualisation project need to be only an exercise in understanding if X hosts will on Y servers? Will you be able to to virtualize every service you deliver? Are new applications required? What are your existing service-levels and requirements across your application portfolio? In most enterprises today, IT is a cost centre not a profit centre. Business units often want detailed involvement in implementation plans, asset purchases and ownership: it is not unusual that requests for applications come in terms of functionality – not in terms of service levels. With their release of Workspace iQ, Centrix Software appear to be unique in endeavouring to aggregate information that can be used to deliver data that can help provide IT with improved costing information without relying on specific vendors solutions to be in place.

GestaltIT Tech Field Day: Virtualization Line Up

I participated in GestaltIT’s TechFieldDay which is a sort of inverse conference, where the bloggers and independent analysts go to the vendors and then discuss the information they have received. We visited the following virtualization vendors:
* vKernel where we were introduced to their Predictive Capacity Planning tools
* EMC where we discussed integration of storage into the virtualization management tools as well as other hypervisor integrations
* Cisco where CVN and CVE were discussed in detail.

Citrix invests in Kaviza – VMWare's VDI to suffer from EMC demands?

Citrix have invested an unspecified amount of money in Kaviza whose grid architecture eliminates the expensive infrastructure that VDI solutions. With Kaviza’s solution all the functionality needed to provision and manage virtual desktops is consolidated into a single virtual appliance that scales on commodity servers. Will this announcement herald a major take-up of VDI? Indeed, can you really offer a turnkey solution to support your desktop centralisation strategy?

Does XenApp 6 Keep Citrix Ahead of the Pack?

Citrix has released XenApp 6 which finally provides support for Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 – what is available in this new release for your business. Besides R2 support, what does XenApp 6 offer your business, what WOW factors are provided to help justify the cost of using XenApp6 to springboard your x64 Presentation Virtualization implementation – be that a new implementation, or a migration from your existing environment.

Security Health Checks

Security baselines and security health checks are an important part of any modern day infrastructure. These checks are done periodically throughout the year, usually ever quarter. In my opinion this is a good thing to check and make sure your security settings are following the guidelines that the company has set out to achieve. Here is where I do have a problem. When setting up the guidelines for the different technologies in your infrastructure it would make the most sense that the people establishing the guidelines need to fully understand the technology they are working with. After all, would you really want the midrange or mainframe group to write the policies and guidelines for the Microsoft Windows Servers in your environment?