The Software Defined Data Center

The Software Defined Data Center: That was pretty much the biggest takeaway from this year’s VMworld in San Francisco. VMware made announcements about the new vSan that will be coming out soon and will enhance the software defined storage aspect and also the announcement about the NSX platform that addresses one of the final hurdles, network virtualization, to pave the path to finally have a completely software defined datacenter.

Virtual Desktop Patching and Data Protection

Data Protection and patch management of virtual desktops, while not a sexy topic, is one that should happen on a regular basis within any organization implementing or working to implement virtual desktops. Recently, we have been testing virtual desktop software and there is a huge difference between patching and protecting data in a small number of instances and 1000s of instances. There are scale considerations as well as ease of use for file level and system recovery as well as issues with patching virtual desktops (not to mention other security issues).

Vyatta: Building Block for Brocade SDN Plans

Brocade has stated they will buy Vyatta for an all cash deal. This is good news for Vyatta and perhaps a way for Brocade to partake of software that could rival VMware’s purchase of Nicira when Vyatta’s own SDN features are married with Brocade Ether Fabric technology. Brocade has been in the software business for a while now, but only with respect to their own hardware. With Vyatta, they will shortly own a building block to allow Ether Fabric to extend into the virtual and cloud environments. It would be short sighted to say this is just an SDN play, this purchase shows there is quite a bit of benefit to Brocade.