Alastair Cooke is an independent analyst and consultant working with virtualization and datacenter technologies. Alastair spent eight years delivering training for HP and VMware as well as providing implementation services for their technologies. Alastair is able to create a storied communication that helps partners and customers understand complex technologies. Alastair is known in the VMware community for contributions to the vBrownBag podcast and for the AutoLab, which automates the deployment of a nested vSphere training lab.
It seems that HCI is a real product segment, and everyone wants in on the market. Cisco is already in with its Springpath partnership for the HyperFlex products. Nutanix is steadfastly going it alone with its successful IPO and a grand vision of future computing. Last week, HPE announced its acquisition of SimpliVity. Having worked …
Continue reading “HPE’s HCI Just Got Real: It Bought SimpliVity”
No matter how much technology we have, everything is about people. Even the best tools and automation can fail if the people operating them are not good at IT. Often we buy tools to fix problems, only to find that the tool is not the solution. The problem is not with the tool: more often, there is …
Continue reading “No Matter How Many Tools You Have, IT Is Practised by People”
As SF author William Gibson said, “The future is already here—it’s just not very evenly distributed.” Some IT infrastructure teams live in a future where they are resolving every issue before there are problems for end users. These teams live in a nirvana where help-desk tickets are all requesting new accounts to be created for …
Continue reading “Where Is My Operations Swamp-Drain-O-Matic?”
A while ago, I was listening to the GreyBeards on Storage podcast. One idea suggested by a guest is that application storage is going to end up in one of two forms. There will only be flash and cloud: specifically, flash in a mobile device and object storage in the cloud. I don’t buy that as …
One of the intriguing things about IT is just how much success is driven by nontechnical factors. For me, another fun part is looking at how the technical parts can shape the nontechnical parts. The decision to develop applications in a microservices architecture is a technical decision. There are a number of nontechnical results that …
Continue reading “Microservices Keep Developers Productive and Happy”
In considering simplification, I’ve been thinking about policies. I love the idea of policy-based management and IT systems that implement policy. But isn’t there a risk of policy sprawl? If we allow free reign on policy configuration, we will end up with a huge number of policies. Will we end up with so many possible policy …
