We at The Virtualization Practice, LLC have migratedg our business critical applications to the cloud. How simple was that task? It was not as easy as we have heard from others, and not as difficult as some have had, but it was not as simple as move my VM and run. Why is this? What are the methods available to move to the cloud? How do they stack up to what actually happens. Theory is all well and good, and I have read plenty of those architectures, but when the shoe leather hits the cloud where are we? Here is a short history, a comparison of methods, and some conclusions that can be drawn from our migration to the cloud.
TVP Category Archives
Virtualizing Business Critical Applications: Data Protection
A major aspect of virtualizing any business critical application is data protection which encompasses not only backup, but disaster recovery, and business continuity. It is imperative that our data be protected. While this is true of all workloads, it becomes a bigger concern when virtualizing business critical applications. Not only do we need backups, but we need to protect the business, which is where business continuity comes into play.
Security Automation = Good Security Practice
As I shoveled even more snow, I was starting to think about automation, as in how could I get something to shovel the snow for me, which lead to thinking about automation within the cloud. I see lots of discussion about automation in the cloud. Many of my friends and colleagues are developing code using Puppet, Chef, vCenter Orchestrator, etc. This development is about producing the software defined datacenter (SDDC). However, I see very little in the way of security automation associated with SDDC.
VDI Stall: VDI Appliances solve the hardware problem so, what next?
We’ve discussed the fact that VDI appliance makers were making good progress simplifying adoption of a virtual desktop infrastructure. An appliance-based route to market can be seen as win-win: being designed both to reduce cost and complexity of implementation (for the customer) and shorten sales cycles (for the vendor). So goes the theory. To understand this theory further one VDI appliance vendor, Pivot3, commissioned Dimensional Research to survey global IT in order to get real-world insight into the state of VDI.
Cloud Products and Services
Cloud products and services are only in its infancy but new and exciting technology is being released at an incredible rate. One example of something new is Kim Dotcom’s newly launched Mega cloud storage service with its free 50GBs of storage. What really got my attention with this announcement was that the data would be stored encrypted, which is nice to see security being built into the offering from the beginning. There are a few bugs that are being reported, but hopefully the start of the push to secure the cloud.
Evaluating Clouds
When evaluating clouds there are three major criteria that are used first before we get into the nitty gritty of how the system works. The criteria is not always in writing but it is in the back of everyone’s mind and in many cases are nebulous to define. Herein, I will try to look at those criteria in order to aid others in making the same decisions I have had to make lately while evaluating clouds.