Development Tools and Application Servers for the Cloud

Development tools like Eclipse and Visual Stuio are being built to ensur applications can be deployed in to the cloud on application servers. Key challenges include the manageability and scalability of application servers. Innovations include the use of non-java languages like Groovy and Jython and even PHP and Javascript on JVMs, and the final demise of SQL as object caches offer more natural scalability.

vSphere Upgrade – 2nd Disk Issues with Hardware 7

As vStu discovered all virtual machine disk files (VMDKs) are presented to VMs as SAN disks and Windows 2008 changed how SAN disks were handled, in effect they are offline until you set them online. I kept getting a pesky, “Disk is Offline because policy was set by an administrator” message. Microsoft’s website does not even know about this error message apparently. But the solution is a combination of websites. First you need to change how Windows 2008 sees the SAN devices, then you need to clear a readonly flag, then you are good to go.

Persona Management – User Environment Management by Another Name?

They say there’s no such thing as bad weather – just the wrong sort of clothes. Likewise, there shouldn’t be such a thing as a bad user profile experience – its more likely you’ve the wrong type of profile solution. VMWare View users can undoubtedly look forward to faster logon times, but is that the only thing they need?

What User Virtualization Certifications are Necessary?

In many ways, the IT world has gone certification happy. Nearly every job requirement lists certifications as well as length of service, however, in the realm of cloud computing and virtualization what do these certifications mean? Are they even valuable? Is there a general enough certification that covers all the hypervisors, is there a third party certification available?

Eucalyptus/Terracotta a scalable Java Cloud Platform?

We recently received a presentation on a combined solution from Eucalyptus and Terracotta. Initially we were suspicious because they clearly share an investor – Benchmark Capital. Was this a PowerPoint integration dreamt up by two Venture Capitalists over a power breakfast? However, the combined solution was presented by some very plausible techies with a real-live demo and does look as though it starts to provide a generally-useful abstraction over which to deploy scalable applications (specifically Java stacks), and it too works with commodity hardware. It’s not as slick as the 3Tera solution, more of a command-line approach, but it potentially has the edge in scalability.