Discussing Virtual Machine interoperability with the Open Data Center Alliance
The Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA) is holding its Forecast event in San Francisco in June, and I’ve been invited to moderate the panel discussing Virtual Machine Interoperability. As moderator, I’ll be far more interested in facilitating insights from panel and audience than in wittering on about what I think, so I wanted to use this [...]
Survey lifts covers on Cloud Promiscuity: good thing, bad thing, or who cares?
Figures from RightScale‘s latest State of the Cloud Report (free registration required) suggest “a strong interest in multi-cloud strategies” amongst respondents. The rationale for hybrid cloud (mixing a public cloud service like Amazon’s with something running in your own data centre, colocation site or hosting facility) is reasonably well understood, but why might companies choose to use more [...]
A High Temperature Mystery
I just visited a data center of a branch in Thailand. I was headed down to Thailand anyway, and as they were having some problems and I like troubleshooting I said I would stop by. For some reason, the data center has been extremely hot and they have not been able to contain it. This [...]
We’re Still Waiting for a Cloud That Just Works
SaaS entrepreneurs shouldn’t need a TechOps team until they hit $20m in revenue. I’m willing to write a piece of the Series A check to whoever can really fully solve this problem so that TechOps becomes a side issue.
On Cloud Outages (Yeah, They Happen)
Recently the world went wild when Amazon Web Services suffered an extended service outage. I’m not going to make a song and dance about AWS’ woes – suffice it to say that every provider, Cloud or otherwise, has outages. I will say that with Cloud Computing outages are more obvious than with traditional on-premise infrastructure. [...]
VMware Acquires Nicira–Quick Analysis
Yet another day of massive news with yesterday’s blast coming from VMware who are acquiring Nicira, a five year old veteran of software defined networking (SDN). This follows closely on the heels of VMware’s acquisition of DynamicOps, a heterogeneous cloud management tools and really speaks to VMware’s view on a future that is far from [...]
Crunching the numbers in search of a greener cloud
Although sometimes portrayed as a big computer in the sky, the reality of cloud computing is far more mundane. Clouds run on physical hardware, located in data centres, connected to one another and to their customers via high speed networks. All of that hardware must be powered and cooled, and all of those offices must [...]
Visiting the Switch SuperNAP Facility
While in Las Vegas recently I was invited by Mark Thiele to tour the Switch SuperNAP data center – an invitation I jumped at. Like all guys, I grew up reading stories about soldiers and spies and dreamed of running around in a SWAT team. Entering a facility that has ex-marines patrolling the perimeter in [...]
Nimsoft Monitors vCloud
Nimsoft (more on them here) is today announcing its monitoring toolset, Nimsoft Monitor, covers the performance monitoring of vCloud environments. I’ve long said that dynamic monitoring and control will become increasingly important in the future as organizations look to really leverage the elasticity that cloud brings – one can only drive elasticity if one has [...]
Solar power in the data centre – solution or window dressing?
Most of us recognise that the Earth is warming and that — despite our planet’s temperatures having dramatically risen and fallen before — we humans must accept some measure of responsibility for the current changes. Already consuming at least 1.1-1.5% of global power, and only forecast to grow ever-more rapacious, the data centres that power our information [...]
VirtualSharp on Cloud Disaster Recovery
I’m sitting here at the CloudBeat event, a conference that I’ve had a deep involvement in with as co-content adviser along with my friend and colleague Paul Miller. Our focus for this event was to avoid the obvious vendor pitches and CloudWashing sessions and instead gather togteher some great customer success stories to tell the [...]
Is Open Compute Ready for Prime Time?
I just returned from the Open Compute Project (OCP) Summit in NYC. It was an eye opening experience. I thought I would share my take aways plus talk about what I perceive as a core issue: can the Open Compute Project (OCP) grow beyond Facebook? By that, I mean there is a clear challenge right [...]
Whisper Sweet Nothings…
If you whisper the word “Infrastructure” to me, I can guarantee that as quick as a flash, I will conjure up two very clear yet very different mental images, each telling an interesting story of the juxtaposition of my professional life. One will be of a sterile data center, you know, the kind that we’ve [...]
Bing Maps Data Center Time Lapse
This is pretty cool. A minute and a half time lapse of a data center build out in Colorado. It’s kind of interesting, in a hardware hacker geek kind of way. :) (Cross-posted @ Composite Code)
Poke Me On…
My incredible passion for anything related to aviation has burned an indelible problem into my existence. I have a recurring dream. It happens every few months, rarely with much deviation from the plot, yet it is guaranteed to end in the same way – me waking with a smile on my face. In the dream, I am wandering around the [...]
