Boys and girls, today's homework assignment is a thought experiment. I want you all to put yourselves in the shoes of the CxO team making a decision to move to private cloud. There is of course one catch; you may not factor in ROI. We're dropping ROI because it clouds the subject (bad pun intended.) Let's skip the why should I do this experiment; I'd of course default to 'Because I told you so.' To read the full story click here.
One of the more hyped use-case examples for hybrid cloud is cloud bursting. And why not? It's truly the have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too scenario. During normal business operations, your systems run in-house on private cloud infrastructure, and during unforeseen or unpredictable peaks, your services burst to excess capacity at your public cloud provider(s) of choice. It's IT utopia, right? It’s the comfort of maintaining your own systems with the insurance of endless available capacity for the unknown. To see the full post visit: http://www.networkcomputing.com/private-cloud/232300065.
One of the advantages of a private cloud architecture is the flexible pooling of resources that allows rapid change to match business demands. These resource pools adapt to the changing demands of existing services and allow for new services to be deployed rapidly. For these pools to maintain adequate performance, they must be designed to handle peak periods and this will also result in periods with idle cycles… To see the full article visit Network Computing: http://www.networkcomputing.com/private-cloud/231903031.
You've been driving a perfectly suitable family sedan for the last ten years. It's highly rated by all the gurus who rate such things; it's safe, reliable and gets acceptable gas mileage. You've never loved it in anyway, although you did have a moment of pure capitalist joy when you drove it off the lot, and you've never disliked it in any way. Then one day you woke up and out of the blue you were bored and needed a change, a big change…
To see the full post visit Network Computing: http://www.networkcomputing.com/private-cloud/231901846
Long ago, in a data center far, far away, we as an industry moved away from big iron and onto commodity hardware. That move brought with it many advantages, such as cost and flexibility. The change also brought along with it higher hardware and operating system software failure rates. This change in application stability forced us to change our deployment model and build the siloed application environment: One application, one operating system, one server….
To see the full post visit Network Computing: http://www.networkcomputing.com/private-cloud/231901662
One of the key decisions in architecting an infrastructure for private cloud is selecting a storage platform for the deployment. Storage is a key component of the infrastructure and will play a major role in the overall performance of the private cloud. The storage decision carries additional weight due to its larger investment and typically longer refresh-cycle…..
To view the full article visit Network Computing: http://www.networkcomputing.com/private-cloud/231901384
In many data centers large and small there is a history of making short-term decisions that affect long-term design. These may be based on putting out immediate fires, such as rolling out a new application, expanding an old one, or replacing failed hardware. They may also be made by short-sighted or near-sighted policies, or more commonly old policies that aren't question in the light of new technology. These types of decisions can range from costly to crippling for data center operations…
To see the full post visit NetworkComputing: http://www.networkcomputing.com/private-cloud/231700329
Most private cloud discussions revolve around the return on investment of the architecture. Many discussions begin and quickly end with ROI. The reason is that ROI is very difficult to show in real numbers for any IT investment, but more so when the majority of the costs are soft costs.
ROI is an important factor and can’t be left out of discussions, but it’s not the only factor and likely not the most important factor.
To read the rest see the blog on Network Computing (no registration required): http://www.networkcomputing.com/private-cloud/231601280
I enjoyed a great conversation with Netapp's Vaughn Stewart and Cisco's Abhinav Joshi about FlexPod last week during Cisco Live 2011. Check out the video below.
For those that are interested and unaware I’ve been blogging for Network Computing for about a month on their Private Cloud Tech Center. You can find those blogs here: http://www.networkcomputing.com/private-cloud-tech-center. You should see a new one there every week or so. I will continue to publish content here as regularly as possible and I’m always seeking new contributors for guest posts or regular contributions. Contact me via the About page if you’re interested.