Event in General
- For me it was fine with the concentration on management / best practice and the move towards cloud technologies - but if you weren't interested in these or client then you'd perhaps be a little disappointed
- The discussion has moved on from why to virtualize to a more mature discussion about how to virtualize well, how to manage the environment and benefits that are beyond pure consolidation
- Well organised, good facilities, good food and plenty of it (its VERY difficult to avoid the breakfast pastries) all the staff were very helpful and friendly, easy registration etc. etc.
- I missed a couple of sessions as they were full before I arrived - but I did leave pretty much every session until 5 mins or so before the start (to make best use of networking facilities and time to catch up on email), so perhaps I should set more time aside to ensure a seat - where I missed the session I wanted to go to, there was always my 2nd or 2rd choice to fall back on
Most Interesting Products / Sessions
- vCloud Director - good to see someone taking the initiative in developing an approach that could work across your internal cloud and external cloud providers. Will VMware succeed in making this an industry standard? Time will tell, but when companies try to sell their approach as a new standard, it usually takes a long time to get other companies on board. VMware do have a massive market lead, so perhaps the can make it happen.
- vCloud Request Manager - nice portal and will work well for internal cloud adoption - see above about industry adoption
- VMware Project Horizon - great concept - re-presenting content to match the client device.
- VEEAM - looks very interesting for VMware management - an award winner and lots of customer interest on their stand.
- EMC VFLEX - picked up on this towards the end of the conference. Looks like storage federation between datacentres across MAN distances has become a reality. Excellent potential for much faster DR recovery times and simpler, automated processes. Early days of course, and some question marks over scalability. One to watch and I'm sure the other storage vendors will catch up and compete very soon.
- CIRBA - spoke to the guy who invented this stuff and its pretty difficult to keep up with the potential of this software. Its more than just monitoring, capacity management, planning and what-if scenarios, it could be difficult to know where to start.
- Panologic - "zero client" IP client - tiny, easily replaced by a spare in the cupboard (no need for on site engineers at remote sites), send a new spare out in the post. Packaging with VMware View to provide the VDI client looks good. Needs LAN connectivity to the VM though.
- Wyse - similar to Panologic. Getting expensive to manage thick clients out of the office / branch and into the data centre has to be a good way to go, if the business case can stack up.
- VMware - providing direct access to a number of senior technical team leads to help shape their thinking for new products and functionality upgrades.
Venue
- A long way out of the city centre, but thanks to EMC sponsorship of Metro tickets for the week, that wasn't really a problem - it was a 30 minute walk and Metro ride from our city centre hotel
- Good refreshments - plenty of breakfast pastries
- Well organised and signposted
- Registration was quick and effective
- Other than that, it was very efficient and therefore rather soulless, but that's to be expected
Solutions Exchange
- Large enough to remain interesting to drop into over the 3 days
- All the relevant vendors seemed to be there
- How did I manage NOT to win so many iPad prize draws???
- Most of the vendors seem to have got it now - you have to be able to get your message across in 10 to 15 minutes as most delegates are trying to squeeze in as much as possible between sessions, over lunch etc.
- Shame that some competitors (e.g. Microsoft) are given a compromised stand - VMware should be confident in its own products in the market place
- What happened to the fun and games during the Tuesday evening reception? I'm guessing its the impact of the economy - it makes sense to cut out the fripperies before anything else
Copenhagen
- I enjoyed the city and its general vibe / atmosphere - its very "central European"
- Being so cycle centric is so refreshing compared to the UK. Imagine, as you turn left in London, stopping to let all the cyclists go straight on before you complete your left turn - its a different attitude in Copenhagen
- Very expensive. Food and drinks are almost a luxury
- There's enough to do on a budget to fill 2 or 3 days, but probably not much longer unless you are very keen on visiting every museum and gallery available
- It's not far to Sweden if you fancy a day trip
- Friendly, polite and helpful people - I should feel guilty about speaking English all the time, but the locals are better at it than most of us native English speakers
Hotel
- Excellent. The room was small but very nicely furnished, modern and warm.
- Great value for money in such an expensive city
- Very well located for easy walking or cycling to all the main attractions and facilities in the city
- Breakfast expensive, so we relied on the pastries at the conference centre
Party
- Good venue - all in one big room meant there was a good vibe and plenty to see and do, including the video games etc.
- Clearly on a lower budget than previous years but the props were still fun and added to the atmosphere - fitting well with both of the bands
- Limited range of drinks available, but they were all included, so it would be churlish to complain!
- Although Bjorn Again were good fun, I would happily have listened to (and sung along with) Mad Hen for the whole of the evening
- Well done VMware for making the social event so informal and fun once again
Could Do Better Department
- VMware defending themselves against other hypervisors was less than graciously delivered
- Microsoft stand where they were banned from discussing Hyper-V unless visitors asked about it - not sure why VMware are so worried about the product - they can stand up to the comparison on merit (and Microsoft's pricing claims) without such blunt instruments
- Find a location where the beer is affordable!
VMWORLD SITE
VMWORLD SITE
Friday, 15 October 2010
Thursday, 14 October 2010
That's All Folks!
So that's all the sessions sorted. Only remains to fly back to the UK on Friday via EasyJet
Design, Deploy and Optimize SQL Server. Thurs 15:00
Scott Sayler - responsible for VMware relationship with Microsoft SQL
- The approach is similar to that adopted for Exchange and Sharepoint;
- Global stats from IDC - 9% of x86 servers run SQL, 4% run Oracle, so database is a significant volume of workloads
- Like most other VMs, SQL servers are generally over provisioned and organisations need to think about the licencing implications of this
- SQL 2008 R2 on Windows 2008 can scale to 256 cores (suggesting here that its enterprise class!);
- Benefits of databases on VMware
- increase hardware utilization
- no application change implications
- consolidate SQL licences
- rapidly respond to changing workload requirements (hot add of resource is possible with SQL 2008)
- ESXi 4 overhead is less than 10%
- overcommit is possible on processor, but not recommended for SQL
Comparison with SQL Scale Up Consolidation:
- If the OS has problems you loose all SQL instances - ie SPOF
- If SQL has a problem you loose all SQL instances - ie another SPOF
- Load balancing is not possible across nodes (i.e. DRS can only handle the location of the whole stack, not each individual instances
- Apps need to be remediated, maintained etc., at the same time and at the same speed causing peaks in mainteinance workloads and conflict across users agreeing when to have outages
- (Comment - VMware not mentioning the benefits of licence consolidation in this section!)
- OS can be a bottleneck
Licencing Advice:
- think of using SQL Enterprise Data Centre edition licencing
Host Best Practice:
- CPU - don't over commit pCPUs - vCPU count should be lower than pCPU count
- Memory - don't over commit memory; use SQL min / max server memory settings; - memory allocation to the guest should match peak requirements
-
- The approach is similar to that adopted for Exchange and Sharepoint;
- Global stats from IDC - 9% of x86 servers run SQL, 4% run Oracle, so database is a significant volume of workloads
- Like most other VMs, SQL servers are generally over provisioned and organisations need to think about the licencing implications of this
- SQL 2008 R2 on Windows 2008 can scale to 256 cores (suggesting here that its enterprise class!);
- Benefits of databases on VMware
- increase hardware utilization
- no application change implications
- consolidate SQL licences
- rapidly respond to changing workload requirements (hot add of resource is possible with SQL 2008)
- ESXi 4 overhead is less than 10%
- overcommit is possible on processor, but not recommended for SQL
Comparison with SQL Scale Up Consolidation:
- If the OS has problems you loose all SQL instances - ie SPOF
- If SQL has a problem you loose all SQL instances - ie another SPOF
- Load balancing is not possible across nodes (i.e. DRS can only handle the location of the whole stack, not each individual instances
- Apps need to be remediated, maintained etc., at the same time and at the same speed causing peaks in mainteinance workloads and conflict across users agreeing when to have outages
- (Comment - VMware not mentioning the benefits of licence consolidation in this section!)
- OS can be a bottleneck
Licencing Advice:
- think of using SQL Enterprise Data Centre edition licencing
Host Best Practice:
- CPU - don't over commit pCPUs - vCPU count should be lower than pCPU count
- Memory - don't over commit memory; use SQL min / max server memory settings; - memory allocation to the guest should match peak requirements
-
VM Density Thurs 13:30
Eric Horshman, Product Marketing Director
VMs per core / proc / host / cluster / cloud
- Expecting 24 core servers by end 2011, 64 cores by 2014
- By 2013 16GB DIMMs will cost the same as 2GB today
- 10GB networking will be common
- Conclusion is that servers will not be limiting VM density - the virtualization platform and management tools will be the defining factor
- Density dips as larger business critical workloads are deployed, but then it climbs again as larger hosts are deployed and features such as DRS are deployed.
- Use reservations mapped to real memory use by the guest VM
- Making comparisons between virtualization technologies (comment - of course, VMware is best, as you would expect from a VMware presentation!)
- Same comparison being made as the 09:00 session today - see notes below.
VMs per core / proc / host / cluster / cloud
- Expecting 24 core servers by end 2011, 64 cores by 2014
- By 2013 16GB DIMMs will cost the same as 2GB today
- 10GB networking will be common
- Conclusion is that servers will not be limiting VM density - the virtualization platform and management tools will be the defining factor
- Density dips as larger business critical workloads are deployed, but then it climbs again as larger hosts are deployed and features such as DRS are deployed.
- Use reservations mapped to real memory use by the guest VM
- Making comparisons between virtualization technologies (comment - of course, VMware is best, as you would expect from a VMware presentation!)
- Same comparison being made as the 09:00 session today - see notes below.
vSheild Thurs 12:00
Wanted to attend the session on Availability and Throughput but it was full (couldn't get there earlier due to 1-1 meeting on SRM and FT)
- vShield Edge protects the perimeter of the virtual data centre
- vShield App and Zones can create virtual secure zones around groups of VMs
- vShield Endpoint offloads guest security activities such as anti virus
Replace physical network zones with vShield?
Claiming vShield can be more secure than physical protection.
Can set physical machine default gateway to be the vShield Appliance
Standard 5 tuple policy approach
Has NAT and IPSEC VPN capabilities
Currently separating VMs means traffic going across external VLANs to external firewalls
vShield App provides firewalls at vNIC level
Robust ability to monitor traffic flowing between VMs as it all goes through the vShield appliance
Multiple trust zones within vSphere clusters
Cheaper than physical firewalls
Now going through use cases, but describing them isn't going to work well here without the diagrams.
Basically demonstrating how existing physical constructs can be migrated to vShield approach
- vShield Edge protects the perimeter of the virtual data centre
- vShield App and Zones can create virtual secure zones around groups of VMs
- vShield Endpoint offloads guest security activities such as anti virus
Replace physical network zones with vShield?
Claiming vShield can be more secure than physical protection.
Can set physical machine default gateway to be the vShield Appliance
Standard 5 tuple policy approach
Has NAT and IPSEC VPN capabilities
Currently separating VMs means traffic going across external VLANs to external firewalls
vShield App provides firewalls at vNIC level
Robust ability to monitor traffic flowing between VMs as it all goes through the vShield appliance
Multiple trust zones within vSphere clusters
Cheaper than physical firewalls
Now going through use cases, but describing them isn't going to work well here without the diagrams.
Basically demonstrating how existing physical constructs can be migrated to vShield approach
Long Distance VMotion "VM Teleportation" Thur 10:30
Chad Sakac - VP Technology Alliance EMC - manages the VMware relationship
A packed session, so it must be important to attendees given the number of people who are looking a little worse for wear after last nights party.
Much of this presentation will be conceptual.
All based on federation of storage across long distances
- EMC VPLEX is their new federation product
- NetApp Metrocluster and IBM SVC Stretch cluster is similar
- VPLEX is an active-active model
- Simultaneous access to storage in 2 locations - within or beyond data centres
- Traditional disk replication is like vSphere HA - disruption and then recovery
- VPLEX is more like VMotion - allows for planned disaster avoidance (comment - does this mean that there is still an outage?)
- VPLEX Metro is up to 100km (actually, 5 milliseconds)
- In 2011 VPLEX Geo will handle asynchronous distances
- Eventually VPLEX Global will be available for truly distrbuted mulit-active model
- Active-active GEO dispersion is possible
- Scale-out of storage brings N+1 for availability - otherwise there will be too many VMware clusters dependent upon too few storage arrays for resilience
- VPLEX Metro Distributed Virtual Volumes allow the data to be visible at the same time in both sites when synchronous
- VPLEX asynchronous (not yet available!) uses caching to "catch up" - a VM can be VMotioned, but the data follows later. Its not yet clear what happens if the intersite links are lost during many different use cases.
- Worth noting that VMotion is possible within the domain of a vCenter (ie not the cluster!). Intra cluster VMotions are parallel, inter-cluster VMotions are serial (ie only one at a time)
- VPLEX can work with pretty much any storage sub-system, not just EMC
- With advance created mirror - Successfully tested vMotion and Storage vMotion acros 100km. Took 3 hours for the storage and then a few seconds for the VM - can deliver 5 at a time. So good for planned moves, but not DR
Interesting observation - EMC VPLEX is based on commodity x86 server tech - another demonstration that x86 is Enterprise strength.
A packed session, so it must be important to attendees given the number of people who are looking a little worse for wear after last nights party.
Much of this presentation will be conceptual.
All based on federation of storage across long distances
- EMC VPLEX is their new federation product
- NetApp Metrocluster and IBM SVC Stretch cluster is similar
- VPLEX is an active-active model
- Simultaneous access to storage in 2 locations - within or beyond data centres
- Traditional disk replication is like vSphere HA - disruption and then recovery
- VPLEX is more like VMotion - allows for planned disaster avoidance (comment - does this mean that there is still an outage?)
- VPLEX Metro is up to 100km (actually, 5 milliseconds)
- In 2011 VPLEX Geo will handle asynchronous distances
- Eventually VPLEX Global will be available for truly distrbuted mulit-active model
- Active-active GEO dispersion is possible
- Scale-out of storage brings N+1 for availability - otherwise there will be too many VMware clusters dependent upon too few storage arrays for resilience
- VPLEX Metro Distributed Virtual Volumes allow the data to be visible at the same time in both sites when synchronous
- VPLEX asynchronous (not yet available!) uses caching to "catch up" - a VM can be VMotioned, but the data follows later. Its not yet clear what happens if the intersite links are lost during many different use cases.
- Worth noting that VMotion is possible within the domain of a vCenter (ie not the cluster!). Intra cluster VMotions are parallel, inter-cluster VMotions are serial (ie only one at a time)
- VPLEX can work with pretty much any storage sub-system, not just EMC
- With advance created mirror - Successfully tested vMotion and Storage vMotion acros 100km. Took 3 hours for the storage and then a few seconds for the VM - can deliver 5 at a time. So good for planned moves, but not DR
Interesting observation - EMC VPLEX is based on commodity x86 server tech - another demonstration that x86 is Enterprise strength.
Virtualization Platform Comparisons Thur 09:00
Disclaimer from me - this is a VMware presentation
VMware have a lab to examine competitve products to ensure their products stay ahead of the competition
Recent Microsoft TechEd Attendees voted vSphere as best in show product
Hypervisor Comparison
- VMware confirming that ESXi is the strategic platform - its currently 70Mb, however still need 1GB partition to allow for the roll-back version and space for dump files
- Hyper-V and Windows 2008 Server Core is 3.6GB
- VMware supports NIC teaming, Hyper-V is not unsupported by the vendors
- VMware built for clustering, Hyper-V is based on Windows clustering which is complex to set up
- System Center manages vCenter but requires over 10 different tools with various different look and feel, so quite complex compared to vCenter
- VMware Update Manager - select the update, select the hosts, set off automated process to VMotion the guests, patch hosts, VMotion the guests. Hyper-V R2 upgrade is 9 manual steps per host
Storage
- VMware supports multiple storage technologies and mix and match in the same cluster
- RHEV only allows one type of storage per cluster
- Hyper-V doesn't support NAS
- vSphere VMs encapsulated as files that are portable
- Hyper-V and RHEV use complex files that are more difficult to understand and less portable
- VMFS volumes grow from GUI
- Hyper-V allows additional volumes to be added but not grown, RHEL VMs need a reboot
- Storage vMotion unique to VMware
- Storage I/O QoS unique to VMware
- Thin provisioning - vSphere fully supports, Hyper-V its notadvised, Xenserver does not support this on FC/iSCSI
- When LUN fills, vSphere pauses the guest alerts and can restart when LUN has been grown. Hyper-V crashes the guest OS
- Snapshots supported in vSphere, not recommended in Hyper-V without downtime, RHEV also needs downtime
Resource Management
- Fault tolerance avaiable in vSphere (comment - but limited to small VMs). Not available in Hyper-V. RHEV work with Marthon Everrun to provide something similar, and only with Microsoft OS
- Affinity / anti-affinity possible in vSphere,
- Host affinity only available from vSphere (great for licencing restrictions - e.g. certain database vendors)
- Role based granular access controls to guest VM level in vSphere, XenServer has coarse pre-determined role
- Resource pools - divides up the resources in a cluster and you can assign ownership and roles - vSphere can spread resource pools across the cluster but XenServer can only divide server by server
- Memory overcommitment supported and vSphere and Xen, but not on Hyper-V. In XenServer the ballooning just prevents the VM from using the memory allocated to it, it doesn't actually allow the VM to use the unused memory allocated to other VMs. VMware forces the quietest guest to go to swap files to free up RAM for the busy guest
Benchmarks and Case Studies
- Taneja Density report using DVD Store
- Hyper-V handled 11 guests, RHEL KVM max at 14, XenServer and vSphere handled 32 guests
- Virtual Reality Check analysing terminal services on Intel Nehalem using transparent page sharing on vSphere 4.1 - no performance hi. They found no performance difference for XenApp on XenServer vs vSphere
- Graydon Head & Ritchey would have needed twice as many servers to run Hyper-V compared to vSphere
The conclusion is that vSphere is best - but that would be expected from this presentation really.
Comment - no mention of the limitation of VMware toolsets to the virtual platform, didn't give Microsoft credit for managing physical and virtual from the same management tools
Informal Gathering, Copehagen Forum, Weds Evening
The sunset on the way to the Copenhagen Forum was spectacular (click to enlarge):
Great party last night with a 60s / 70s / 80s / 90s theme. 2 bands Madhen and Bjorn Again.
Madhen were a covers band, but they did a great job on high energy songs such as "Disco Inferno", "Atomic", "Dancing in the Street", "Tonight", "Music", "I Can't Get No Satisfaction", "Hammer Time", "Walk This Way" etc., plus they mixed it up a bit with excellent interpretations such as the lyric's of Wham's "Freedom" over the top of the classic heavy rock riff from ACDC's Back in Black - sounds odd, but worked very well.
There was scenery about the venue such as huge glitter balls, 80's mix tape cassette, space hoppers, classic arcade videos, Wii tennis, driving games, pinball etc. Acrobats did an aerial display and there were a couple of breakdancing style acts. The atmosphere was good and I think the event benefitted from being away from the conference centre, so not so many folks wandering around with their VMWORLD back packs still attached! Plenty of lubricant available from the free bar too, so pretty much all were in a relaxed mood.
Bjorn Again were the headline for the evening with their Abba replica show. They only did an hour, but were good value entertainment and there was much signing along. Musically very good and the did a bit of their own thing such as adding a rap to one of the Abba classics. Predictably they finished up with Dancing Queen, but that was fine, as anything else wouldve been a disappointment.
Photos(click to enlarge):
Videos (click to play):
Great party last night with a 60s / 70s / 80s / 90s theme. 2 bands Madhen and Bjorn Again.
Madhen were a covers band, but they did a great job on high energy songs such as "Disco Inferno", "Atomic", "Dancing in the Street", "Tonight", "Music", "I Can't Get No Satisfaction", "Hammer Time", "Walk This Way" etc., plus they mixed it up a bit with excellent interpretations such as the lyric's of Wham's "Freedom" over the top of the classic heavy rock riff from ACDC's Back in Black - sounds odd, but worked very well.
There was scenery about the venue such as huge glitter balls, 80's mix tape cassette, space hoppers, classic arcade videos, Wii tennis, driving games, pinball etc. Acrobats did an aerial display and there were a couple of breakdancing style acts. The atmosphere was good and I think the event benefitted from being away from the conference centre, so not so many folks wandering around with their VMWORLD back packs still attached! Plenty of lubricant available from the free bar too, so pretty much all were in a relaxed mood.
Bjorn Again were the headline for the evening with their Abba replica show. They only did an hour, but were good value entertainment and there was much signing along. Musically very good and the did a bit of their own thing such as adding a rap to one of the Abba classics. Predictably they finished up with Dancing Queen, but that was fine, as anything else wouldve been a disappointment.
Photos(click to enlarge):
Videos (click to play):
Wednesday, 13 October 2010
Storage Futures Weds 16:30
Today's problems:
- how do we add more capacity without down time?
- how do we manage fault isolation?
- planning and sizing over time is difficult, paticularly with VMs which are dynamic in nature
- how is capacity optimised?
- is the storage SLA matching the application requirements?
Scale Out
- add more arrays to virtualized storage means trivial hardware refresh, scales with servers, difficult to produce differentiated services when all the VM hosts can see all the same datastores
- example is web apps being on one cluster that has no cross site storage replication and those apps that need hot / warm are in a different cluster that has cross site storage replication
VMware Vision
- VM profile of storage specification allows VMs to have different policies within the same cluster
- Define back up and snapshot policy
- The policy is shared with the storage infrastructure so the storage knows what to do with the VM
Desktop Vision
- VDI cheaper storage than desktop
- storage simpler to manage than distributed in the desktop
- stateless desktops are those that don't store anything unique and/or important in the VMDK
- stateful is where the VMDK contains unique or important data
- stateful are expensive as it hampers de-duplication (possible with NetApp today - i.e. up to 90% dedupe. Of course, other de-dupe vendors are available). VMware just need to work with this technology, no particular actions
- De-dupe is also possible via image optimization with each VDI referring back to a base image and then only having its differences stored as unique files. Linked-clones delivers this, but some apps can't cope
- Performance can be a bottleneck for VDI (eg boot storms, virus checkers)
- Ideal might be to have the base VMDK images on local storage on the servers and hold the diff files on the shared storage
Data Centre Storage
- what about VMs moving across clouds - ie between datacentres?
- multi site datastore federation - all storage is available in both data centres and VMs can see the data in either location - an extention on top of synchronisation. Likely to be costly to acquire and manage?
- DR snapshots into the cloud? Will include the VM status in the VMDK
- User data in the cloud to allow personalization across devices is effectively a back up scenario
-
- how do we add more capacity without down time?
- how do we manage fault isolation?
- planning and sizing over time is difficult, paticularly with VMs which are dynamic in nature
- how is capacity optimised?
- is the storage SLA matching the application requirements?
Scale Out
- add more arrays to virtualized storage means trivial hardware refresh, scales with servers, difficult to produce differentiated services when all the VM hosts can see all the same datastores
- example is web apps being on one cluster that has no cross site storage replication and those apps that need hot / warm are in a different cluster that has cross site storage replication
VMware Vision
- VM profile of storage specification allows VMs to have different policies within the same cluster
- Define back up and snapshot policy
- The policy is shared with the storage infrastructure so the storage knows what to do with the VM
Desktop Vision
- VDI cheaper storage than desktop
- storage simpler to manage than distributed in the desktop
- stateless desktops are those that don't store anything unique and/or important in the VMDK
- stateful is where the VMDK contains unique or important data
- stateful are expensive as it hampers de-duplication (possible with NetApp today - i.e. up to 90% dedupe. Of course, other de-dupe vendors are available). VMware just need to work with this technology, no particular actions
- De-dupe is also possible via image optimization with each VDI referring back to a base image and then only having its differences stored as unique files. Linked-clones delivers this, but some apps can't cope
- Performance can be a bottleneck for VDI (eg boot storms, virus checkers)
- Ideal might be to have the base VMDK images on local storage on the servers and hold the diff files on the shared storage
Data Centre Storage
- what about VMs moving across clouds - ie between datacentres?
- multi site datastore federation - all storage is available in both data centres and VMs can see the data in either location - an extention on top of synchronisation. Likely to be costly to acquire and manage?
- DR snapshots into the cloud? Will include the VM status in the VMDK
- User data in the cloud to allow personalization across devices is effectively a back up scenario
-
Technology Preview of Project Horizon Weds 15:00
Noah Wasmer, Director, Advanced Development, VMware
Tiffany To, GPM, Advanced Development, VMware
Another very full session - clearly the keynote on this topic has generated considerable interest
Products under development disclaimer
Next Gen end user computing - the top tier of VMware's view of 3 tier model (middle tier is vCloud Apps Platform, base tier is vSphere infrastructure)
- 75% of ISVs deliver their new apps through web presentation layer - SaaS, virtual, on premise
- Diversity of connecting devices (e.g. 1,000 new types of Android devices will hit the market in 2011)
VMware approach
- single sign on for SaaS apps - aligned with internal apps and controls
- single sign on regardless of device
- looking to use industry standard protocols
- thinapp wrap can add a security layer and can be leased out to non-managed platforms and that lease can be withdrawn when required
- embracing App-V, XenApp, Dropbox (allows users to post data so they can get to it from any location / device), Salesforce etc
- Vmware proposing management of directory federation
- for traditional desktops an app icon will appear as standard, smilarly for other devices that same app will look native to the OS / interface
- modernizing Windows clients using apps isolation / portability
- need to mobilise and sync data
- looking to make externally hosted SaaS look like part of the enterprise.
- Secure STS at the enterprise boundary will talk to VMware Horizon which in turn will talk to the SaaS provision
- Horizon STS will be vAppliance or will run on Windows IIS
- Uses SAML for security passes token across the boundaries, only the token is passed, not the credentials
- Agent specific to each device will advise the service of the device type requesting access which allows the app to be presented in the appropriate format
- Admin can control which devices can access each app
Windows Apps
- ThinApp can allow patching but mitigates conflicts
- Horizon will track apps usage, allow self service, consumerization of devices
- Horizon will allow deployment / leasing of ThinApp wrapped apps to any device anywhere
- ThinApp packaged apps can be lodged in the Horizon cloud and automatic updates from ISVs can be automatically applied
- User credential requirements can be included in the ThinApp wrapper
- Horizon manages the policies of apps / user / device / time mix
- Deactive device access, app access or user access to apps
- Provisions the apps on the devices and, where necessary, creates the user with the SaaS supplier
Data
- Sync roaming profiles across devices
- Sync data around platforms and enable sharing of data between users but across multiple devices
-
Tiffany To, GPM, Advanced Development, VMware
Another very full session - clearly the keynote on this topic has generated considerable interest
Products under development disclaimer
Next Gen end user computing - the top tier of VMware's view of 3 tier model (middle tier is vCloud Apps Platform, base tier is vSphere infrastructure)
- 75% of ISVs deliver their new apps through web presentation layer - SaaS, virtual, on premise
- Diversity of connecting devices (e.g. 1,000 new types of Android devices will hit the market in 2011)
VMware approach
- single sign on for SaaS apps - aligned with internal apps and controls
- single sign on regardless of device
- looking to use industry standard protocols
- thinapp wrap can add a security layer and can be leased out to non-managed platforms and that lease can be withdrawn when required
- embracing App-V, XenApp, Dropbox (allows users to post data so they can get to it from any location / device), Salesforce etc
- Vmware proposing management of directory federation
- for traditional desktops an app icon will appear as standard, smilarly for other devices that same app will look native to the OS / interface
- modernizing Windows clients using apps isolation / portability
- need to mobilise and sync data
- looking to make externally hosted SaaS look like part of the enterprise.
- Secure STS at the enterprise boundary will talk to VMware Horizon which in turn will talk to the SaaS provision
- Horizon STS will be vAppliance or will run on Windows IIS
- Uses SAML for security passes token across the boundaries, only the token is passed, not the credentials
- Agent specific to each device will advise the service of the device type requesting access which allows the app to be presented in the appropriate format
- Admin can control which devices can access each app
Windows Apps
- ThinApp can allow patching but mitigates conflicts
- Horizon will track apps usage, allow self service, consumerization of devices
- Horizon will allow deployment / leasing of ThinApp wrapped apps to any device anywhere
- ThinApp packaged apps can be lodged in the Horizon cloud and automatic updates from ISVs can be automatically applied
- User credential requirements can be included in the ThinApp wrapper
- Horizon manages the policies of apps / user / device / time mix
- Deactive device access, app access or user access to apps
- Provisions the apps on the devices and, where necessary, creates the user with the SaaS supplier
Data
- Sync roaming profiles across devices
- Sync data around platforms and enable sharing of data between users but across multiple devices
-
Self Service and Workflow Automation for the Private Cloud Weds 13:30
John MacLean, Director, Product Management, VMware
Strategy is virtualization, automation and self-service
Self service drives efficient consumer data collection, is the basis for freedom of choice
Workflow is automation of the regular tasks
vCoud Request Manager interfaces with the vCloud Director vCloud API so that you can layer this over private clouds and compatible ISP cloud services
VMware Service Manager (ex EMC) - service desk, config & change, asst management, service request fulfilment to business users
Service Request Fulfilment:
- Hierarchical view of IT service catalogue - can include chargeback for each service
- When a request is created, data can be collected as per the design required - so can collect data from requestor based on tabs, collapsible sections, dates, drop downs etc. Includes option to lease the selected resources
- Workflow generated through graphical interface and diagramming. Many of the workflow tasks are hidden from the user (e.g. update inventory, email notifications). Audit trailed, role based permissions.
- SLA responses are configurable - e.g. standard vApp driven VM can be minutes but custom can be weeks
- Tasks can call out or use connectors (e.g. VMware config mgr, EMC storage, 3rd party technology), write your own connectors.
- Connectors support discovery, events and push actions
- Connectors include vCloud Director
vCloud Request Manager (launched at VMWORLD Europe 2010)
- Adds workflow approval process to requests
- Consumer (e.g. developer / trainer) selects an app from service catalogue
- Feedsback to consumer when the app is up and running, post approval process
- Tracks software licence consumption
- Need to associate licences with a vApp
- Consumes and releases licences as apps are created and destroyed
- Policy Based Cloud Computing
- Admin sets up blueprints that include chargeback etc.
- Brings consistency through deployment of vApps (they're stacks!)
vApp templates can be exposed according to the permissions of the user
Strategy is virtualization, automation and self-service
Self service drives efficient consumer data collection, is the basis for freedom of choice
Workflow is automation of the regular tasks
vCoud Request Manager interfaces with the vCloud Director vCloud API so that you can layer this over private clouds and compatible ISP cloud services
VMware Service Manager (ex EMC) - service desk, config & change, asst management, service request fulfilment to business users
Service Request Fulfilment:
- Hierarchical view of IT service catalogue - can include chargeback for each service
- When a request is created, data can be collected as per the design required - so can collect data from requestor based on tabs, collapsible sections, dates, drop downs etc. Includes option to lease the selected resources
- Workflow generated through graphical interface and diagramming. Many of the workflow tasks are hidden from the user (e.g. update inventory, email notifications). Audit trailed, role based permissions.
- SLA responses are configurable - e.g. standard vApp driven VM can be minutes but custom can be weeks
- Tasks can call out or use connectors (e.g. VMware config mgr, EMC storage, 3rd party technology), write your own connectors.
- Connectors support discovery, events and push actions
- Connectors include vCloud Director
vCloud Request Manager (launched at VMWORLD Europe 2010)
- Adds workflow approval process to requests
- Consumer (e.g. developer / trainer) selects an app from service catalogue
- Feedsback to consumer when the app is up and running, post approval process
- Tracks software licence consumption
- Need to associate licences with a vApp
- Consumes and releases licences as apps are created and destroyed
- Policy Based Cloud Computing
- Admin sets up blueprints that include chargeback etc.
- Brings consistency through deployment of vApps (they're stacks!)
vApp templates can be exposed according to the permissions of the user
vCloud Design Patterns Weds 10:30
- Packed session - mostly architects in the audience.
- vCloud Director is several integrated products aimed at bridging private and public clouds - you may need further 3rd party tools until VMware plug any gaps.
- Virtualization of the infrastructure continues to be the basis - vCloud is an additional layer - aim is for consumer not to know what's going on "under the hood"
- vCloud Director includes the vCloud API
- vCenter Chargeback and vShield Edge (virtual appliance) and Manager (one per vCenter) are critical components to bring protection and billing
- vRequest Manager brings the workflow piece
- One vCloud Director database supports multiple vCloud Director instances
- vCloud Director needs Oracle which, due to licencing, may exclude the use of a VM for vCloud Director!
- Best practice is to separate the management of clusters of resources from vCloud reource management
- Create your VM clusters based on service qualities. Create VDCs around consumer organisations. So a VDC may use resources from across the VM clusters
- The VM clusters have networks to external resources, organisations have networks and vApps have networks between them
- No longer need to create resource pools in the VM clusters - vCloud director becomes the manager of resources
(Comment - there are 3 presenters and they are clearly feeling their way through this stuff as they "clarify" each others' presentation. Lots of use of the term "we're trying to" which doesn't come across as completely confident)
- Organisations are the security boundaries
- An Organization vDC maps 1:1 for a provider vDC service offering - So Org A Gold, Org A Silver, Org B Gold, Org B Silver etc.
- vApps allow templates of VMs - e.g. 3 tier apps as one package - installed, configured and then booted in the correct order.
- vShield can apply at vApp network to Organisation network and/or from Organisation network to External network
- Some use cases being demonstrated
- Cloud resource group restrictions - no FT, no SRM - need to discuss back up solutions with storage suppliers if they are using vStorage API. A bit fuzzy on who needs to recover from back ups - looks like its not the consumer
- Organisation vDCs can use a number of different resource allocations and aligned chargeback models, including metered pay as you go
Looks like it would be good to try this for dev and test environments where we can tie down SLA and resource allocations to dev groups and charge appropriately - they can then deploy and destroy vApp stacks as they wish within the organisation.
- vCloud Director is several integrated products aimed at bridging private and public clouds - you may need further 3rd party tools until VMware plug any gaps.
- Virtualization of the infrastructure continues to be the basis - vCloud is an additional layer - aim is for consumer not to know what's going on "under the hood"
- vCloud Director includes the vCloud API
- vCenter Chargeback and vShield Edge (virtual appliance) and Manager (one per vCenter) are critical components to bring protection and billing
- vRequest Manager brings the workflow piece
- One vCloud Director database supports multiple vCloud Director instances
- vCloud Director needs Oracle which, due to licencing, may exclude the use of a VM for vCloud Director!
- Best practice is to separate the management of clusters of resources from vCloud reource management
- Create your VM clusters based on service qualities. Create VDCs around consumer organisations. So a VDC may use resources from across the VM clusters
- The VM clusters have networks to external resources, organisations have networks and vApps have networks between them
- No longer need to create resource pools in the VM clusters - vCloud director becomes the manager of resources
(Comment - there are 3 presenters and they are clearly feeling their way through this stuff as they "clarify" each others' presentation. Lots of use of the term "we're trying to" which doesn't come across as completely confident)
- Organisations are the security boundaries
- An Organization vDC maps 1:1 for a provider vDC service offering - So Org A Gold, Org A Silver, Org B Gold, Org B Silver etc.
- vApps allow templates of VMs - e.g. 3 tier apps as one package - installed, configured and then booted in the correct order.
- vShield can apply at vApp network to Organisation network and/or from Organisation network to External network
- Some use cases being demonstrated
- Cloud resource group restrictions - no FT, no SRM - need to discuss back up solutions with storage suppliers if they are using vStorage API. A bit fuzzy on who needs to recover from back ups - looks like its not the consumer
- Organisation vDCs can use a number of different resource allocations and aligned chargeback models, including metered pay as you go
Looks like it would be good to try this for dev and test environments where we can tie down SLA and resource allocations to dev groups and charge appropriately - they can then deploy and destroy vApp stacks as they wish within the organisation.
Veeam Wed 09:00
Interesting session at the Veeam stand - demo of the product for capacity planning, monitoring etc. Looks good, flexible and includes Visio diagrams of your environment.
Winner of Best of VMWORLD 2010 at San Fran
Winner of Best of VMWORLD 2010 at San Fran
Tuesday, 12 October 2010
Solutions Exchange Tuesday 18:00
Solutions Exchange - the vendor booths. Very busy at this point with the free drinks on offer.
The booths themselves are great with lots of demos and knowledgeable staff on hand. The "fun" element from previous VMWORLD conferences wasn't in evidence tonight though.
Photo taken earlier in the day when it was quieter
The booths themselves are great with lots of demos and knowledgeable staff on hand. The "fun" element from previous VMWORLD conferences wasn't in evidence tonight though.
Photo taken earlier in the day when it was quieter
Capacity IQ Tuesday 17:00
Now in version 1.5
Added "what if" analysis
Experience across many organisations shows that 90% of VMs are oversized
Storage and storage I/O have been added in 1.5
Remember that usable capacity is the capacity after allowing for VMware overhead
Uses an "average" VM for what if analysis, based on the actual VMs in your infrastructure
Can give recommendations on resizing
Added "what if" analysis
Experience across many organisations shows that 90% of VMs are oversized
Storage and storage I/O have been added in 1.5
Remember that usable capacity is the capacity after allowing for VMware overhead
Uses an "average" VM for what if analysis, based on the actual VMs in your infrastructure
Can give recommendations on resizing
Migrating to x86 From Proprietary Systems Tuesday 15:30 - Bull Presentation
Mainframe and UNIX systems have typically been scaled up, x86 typically scale out.
Bull Novascale Bullion builds up x86 building blocks designed to allow scale up of x86 apps
Claiming scale up with 2x Bullion 12 Intel Xeon servers is 37% cheaper than 16 x 2 socket blades (mainly due to lower connectivity costs).
A larger server means that peaks and troughs in the load cancel each other out and allow for more efficient use of the resources. Less vMotion so less load on the network. Lower number of VMware and other licences
Basically, this was a presentation to justify buying a larger server over more smaller servers. Didn't really need 60 mins to do this.
Bull Novascale Bullion builds up x86 building blocks designed to allow scale up of x86 apps
Claiming scale up with 2x Bullion 12 Intel Xeon servers is 37% cheaper than 16 x 2 socket blades (mainly due to lower connectivity costs).
A larger server means that peaks and troughs in the load cancel each other out and allow for more efficient use of the resources. Less vMotion so less load on the network. Lower number of VMware and other licences
Basically, this was a presentation to justify buying a larger server over more smaller servers. Didn't really need 60 mins to do this.
Building Private Clouds - Actual Experiences Tuesday 14:00
Panel:
Greg Bybee VMware
Alan Russell Experian
Clint Greenwood General Electric
Glenn Harper Sabre Holdings
James Jones LabCorp
Jordan Janeczko Seimens IT Solutions and Services
- The key message about vCloud Director are being replayed - virtual data centres across shared hardware - clear logical boundaries
GE Project Rainmaker
Platform as a service and hybrid cloud is strategy, working on the internal cloud first
Internal cloud - 2011 Q2 delivery
CISCO UCS with vCloud on top
Gone for full VMware suite - chargeback, vShield etc
Using VDCs to deliver differential services to different businesses
Siemens IT Services
Delivering internal services
Delivering cloud services to customers
Focus on helping customers integrate their existing services with cloud and address security etc.
Most customers have hybrid cloud approach
Much adoption of VMware, Spring Source, Zimbra when providing services to customers
Offer secure virtual test cloud (vTC) for customers to run their own test services - the customer uses vCloud Director to help themselves with appropriate billing
HP Blades
Sabre Holdings
Airlines, hospitality, Last Minute, Travelocity etc
Follow the sun development environment
Suffering from VM sprawl
Using vCloud Director to allow devs to self service within the limits of resource that they have allocated in their virtual data centre
Building library of vApps in a catalogue - great for sales and training teams
Took 3 days to set up vCD, most of which was learning the terminology
Packaged a 3 tier app which can then be built and destroyed in multiple environments
EXPERIAN
Follow the sun development
Need to have multiple versions of applications due to local regulatory variations
Want to drive consistency into the organisation
Engage your customers - in this case as the developers what they want
Quick to deploy with very little cost - build the service using VMs on existing VMware clusters
LabCorp
Medical testing
IBM rack servers, EMC storage
vCloud has driven process standardization
30 days to provide physical, 7 days to provide virtual - most of this is through change control across all the infrastructure components
With vCloud a VM can be provisioned in 5 minutes due to pooling of server, network and storage resources - the existing teams provide the pools then the virtual data centre team manages within those pools
Leasing allowed significant resource reclaiming
Licencing can be an issue - are you big enough to have an all you eat contract?
Greg Bybee VMware
Alan Russell Experian
Clint Greenwood General Electric
Glenn Harper Sabre Holdings
James Jones LabCorp
Jordan Janeczko Seimens IT Solutions and Services
- The key message about vCloud Director are being replayed - virtual data centres across shared hardware - clear logical boundaries
GE Project Rainmaker
Platform as a service and hybrid cloud is strategy, working on the internal cloud first
Internal cloud - 2011 Q2 delivery
CISCO UCS with vCloud on top
Gone for full VMware suite - chargeback, vShield etc
Using VDCs to deliver differential services to different businesses
Siemens IT Services
Delivering internal services
Delivering cloud services to customers
Focus on helping customers integrate their existing services with cloud and address security etc.
Most customers have hybrid cloud approach
Much adoption of VMware, Spring Source, Zimbra when providing services to customers
Offer secure virtual test cloud (vTC) for customers to run their own test services - the customer uses vCloud Director to help themselves with appropriate billing
HP Blades
Sabre Holdings
Airlines, hospitality, Last Minute, Travelocity etc
Follow the sun development environment
Suffering from VM sprawl
Using vCloud Director to allow devs to self service within the limits of resource that they have allocated in their virtual data centre
Building library of vApps in a catalogue - great for sales and training teams
Took 3 days to set up vCD, most of which was learning the terminology
Packaged a 3 tier app which can then be built and destroyed in multiple environments
EXPERIAN
Follow the sun development
Need to have multiple versions of applications due to local regulatory variations
Want to drive consistency into the organisation
Engage your customers - in this case as the developers what they want
Quick to deploy with very little cost - build the service using VMs on existing VMware clusters
LabCorp
Medical testing
IBM rack servers, EMC storage
vCloud has driven process standardization
30 days to provide physical, 7 days to provide virtual - most of this is through change control across all the infrastructure components
With vCloud a VM can be provisioned in 5 minutes due to pooling of server, network and storage resources - the existing teams provide the pools then the virtual data centre team manages within those pools
Leasing allowed significant resource reclaiming
Licencing can be an issue - are you big enough to have an all you eat contract?
Management Strategy & Solutions - Ramin Sayar Tuesday 12:30
Ramin Sayar, VP, Management Products
Evolution of Management in a New Era
- traditional management tools are built around static resources and ITIL processes which is potentially constraining agility
- requirements - integrated, simplier approach to performance, capacity and health of the virtual environment; need to measure and demonstrate effectiveness and efficiency; audit and config reporting; standardising images and ensuring patch compliance; improve time to provision new VMs and grow / shrink capacity
- CapEx savings are being realised, OpEx is now the target
- Strategy is to build automation into all of the VMware product set
- Performance is being delivered by the acquisition of Integrien (comment - looks similar to Netuitive?). Uses existing collectors such as Tivoli, vCenter, HP etc. Detecting normal and abnormal behaviour and alerting on that rather than on fixed thresholds. Allows for dynamic behaviours in the infrastructure. Will hook into DRS algorithms - first part of 2011 before we see a VMware version of the product. Heatmap gallery by cluster. Works equally well with physical servers.
- CapacityIQ - 1.5 adds storage analysis including the forecast and what if analysis. Scheduled reporting of oversized / undersized VMs
- Configuration & Compliance - vCenter Configuration Manager - patch, config and compliance management for host, Windows and Linux - scans and can report or remediate from a library of patches
- Application Management - VMware will add a packaging tool that wrappers applications into business services which can then be moved around between service providers (comment - for Spring only or will PHP, Ruby on Rails etc. be added? Not convinced that this will work in a change scenario as it will complicate a change as it will hit the complete stack)
IT Business Management - VMware Service Manager - service desk etc. vCloud Director allows creation of VDCs and allows consumers to call off resources available to them. Concept of element managers in the infrastructure, vSphere admin to build VDCs then Cloud Architect & Architect as a consume. vCloud Request Manager adds a portal, workflow, approvals, licensing and blueprints. Essentially its a type of service catalogue (looks like there might be some Lab Manager in there).
Evolution of Management in a New Era
- traditional management tools are built around static resources and ITIL processes which is potentially constraining agility
- requirements - integrated, simplier approach to performance, capacity and health of the virtual environment; need to measure and demonstrate effectiveness and efficiency; audit and config reporting; standardising images and ensuring patch compliance; improve time to provision new VMs and grow / shrink capacity
- CapEx savings are being realised, OpEx is now the target
- Strategy is to build automation into all of the VMware product set
- Performance is being delivered by the acquisition of Integrien (comment - looks similar to Netuitive?). Uses existing collectors such as Tivoli, vCenter, HP etc. Detecting normal and abnormal behaviour and alerting on that rather than on fixed thresholds. Allows for dynamic behaviours in the infrastructure. Will hook into DRS algorithms - first part of 2011 before we see a VMware version of the product. Heatmap gallery by cluster. Works equally well with physical servers.
- CapacityIQ - 1.5 adds storage analysis including the forecast and what if analysis. Scheduled reporting of oversized / undersized VMs
- Configuration & Compliance - vCenter Configuration Manager - patch, config and compliance management for host, Windows and Linux - scans and can report or remediate from a library of patches
- Application Management - VMware will add a packaging tool that wrappers applications into business services which can then be moved around between service providers (comment - for Spring only or will PHP, Ruby on Rails etc. be added? Not convinced that this will work in a change scenario as it will complicate a change as it will hit the complete stack)
IT Business Management - VMware Service Manager - service desk etc. vCloud Director allows creation of VDCs and allows consumers to call off resources available to them. Concept of element managers in the infrastructure, vSphere admin to build VDCs then Cloud Architect & Architect as a consume. vCloud Request Manager adds a portal, workflow, approvals, licensing and blueprints. Essentially its a type of service catalogue (looks like there might be some Lab Manager in there).
Boaz Chalamish Tuesday 11:00
Interesting discussion with Boaz who is head of Systems Management at VMware.
He was keen to push the new purchase of Integrien tools and that we should consider new deployments into the internal cloud and not worry too much about legacy platforms. More info that I can't share here.
There are a few organisations already running vSphere under apps that are 1:1:1 app:OS:physical server to deliver the benefits of the VMware toolset, manageability, SRM etc. One to investigate further.
He was keen to push the new purchase of Integrien tools and that we should consider new deployments into the internal cloud and not worry too much about legacy platforms. More info that I can't share here.
There are a few organisations already running vSphere under apps that are 1:1:1 app:OS:physical server to deliver the benefits of the VMware toolset, manageability, SRM etc. One to investigate further.
Bella Hall A Tuesday 09:50 Steve Herrod - Tech Innovation & Demos
- vSphere will aggregate across all the infrastructure - internal and external services
- Automate through policy
- Drive to be open and interoperable (comment - but is this really open or is it a vision of VMware being omni-present?)
- Talking about the new features in vSphere 4.1
- Pushing vMotion improvements and I/O QoS
- Pushing vSphere Essentials for small companies
- Announcing vCenter client to the iPad and available in the iTunes store later in October
- Have purchased Integrien for collating events and systems performance
- Making comparisons between ease of use of apps and services at home and the rigidity and lack of agility at work
- Strap line is IT as a Service - Optimizing IT Production for Business Consumption
- App store is equivalent to a service catalogue - use directory services to define who can have access to what apps
- Matching service offerings to business requirements should be visible to the consumers along with pay per use pricing - where the app runs should not be visible to the consumer
- vShield re-launched in support of the virtual data centres - partnering with McAfee and others
- vShield Endpoint protects each VM from the hypervisor
- vShield App is a logical firewall
- vShield edge - boundary protection
- Using vShield internally and in your cloud provider enables secure hybrid cloud
- more than 2,000 ISPs are now offering VMware vCloud services and many of them are adding vCloud Director and vShield - eg Colt, Verizon, Terremark
Eddie Durnell on stage - going to demo vCloud
- service catalogue
- hooks up VMs into a service with a simple diagram
- consumers see a virtual datacenter of services available to them, but they have no idea of where those services are being provided
- aggregates vCenters and datastores internally and ISP provider data centres - same look and feel
VMware vFabric
- New "open" apps fabrics - framework for developer, common platform services - includes vmforce and Google App Engine - will allow apps to move across clouds. Spring now but will add Ruby on Rails, PHP etc.
- Making open, but propose more value if run on VMware products
End User Computing
- Optimizing Windows via View 4.5- offline support (and sync back), Mac OS, Win 7, vShield Endpoint compatible
- Claiming sub $500 virtual desktop costs
- Promoting a move from device-centric to user-centric (comment - still, no suprise here)
Noah joings the stage to demo project Horizon (!)
- allows matching of SaaS apps to users and which devices they can use for each app - permits single sign ons via integration with AD (so federated security then)
- VMware View Client is coming for the iPad
- Horizon is re-formatting the app to suit the device, including screen size and integrated sign on
Audience applause is loudest so far - they must be impressed
- Automate through policy
- Drive to be open and interoperable (comment - but is this really open or is it a vision of VMware being omni-present?)
- Talking about the new features in vSphere 4.1
- Pushing vMotion improvements and I/O QoS
- Pushing vSphere Essentials for small companies
- Announcing vCenter client to the iPad and available in the iTunes store later in October
- Have purchased Integrien for collating events and systems performance
- Making comparisons between ease of use of apps and services at home and the rigidity and lack of agility at work
- Strap line is IT as a Service - Optimizing IT Production for Business Consumption
- App store is equivalent to a service catalogue - use directory services to define who can have access to what apps
- Matching service offerings to business requirements should be visible to the consumers along with pay per use pricing - where the app runs should not be visible to the consumer
- vShield re-launched in support of the virtual data centres - partnering with McAfee and others
- vShield Endpoint protects each VM from the hypervisor
- vShield App is a logical firewall
- vShield edge - boundary protection
- Using vShield internally and in your cloud provider enables secure hybrid cloud
- more than 2,000 ISPs are now offering VMware vCloud services and many of them are adding vCloud Director and vShield - eg Colt, Verizon, Terremark
Eddie Durnell on stage - going to demo vCloud
- service catalogue
- hooks up VMs into a service with a simple diagram
- consumers see a virtual datacenter of services available to them, but they have no idea of where those services are being provided
- aggregates vCenters and datastores internally and ISP provider data centres - same look and feel
VMware vFabric
- New "open" apps fabrics - framework for developer, common platform services - includes vmforce and Google App Engine - will allow apps to move across clouds. Spring now but will add Ruby on Rails, PHP etc.
- Making open, but propose more value if run on VMware products
End User Computing
- Optimizing Windows via View 4.5- offline support (and sync back), Mac OS, Win 7, vShield Endpoint compatible
- Claiming sub $500 virtual desktop costs
- Promoting a move from device-centric to user-centric (comment - still, no suprise here)
Noah joings the stage to demo project Horizon (!)
- allows matching of SaaS apps to users and which devices they can use for each app - permits single sign ons via integration with AD (so federated security then)
- VMware View Client is coming for the iPad
- Horizon is re-formatting the app to suit the device, including screen size and integrated sign on
Audience applause is loudest so far - they must be impressed
Bella Hall A Tuesday 09:25 Paul Maritz
Paul Maritz, CEO
- talking about history of VMware
- "wave 3" is IT as a Service
- in 2009 virtual servers exceeded physical deployments
- 2010 10million VMs will be deployed at a growth rate of 28%
- VMware has 190,000 customers
- thanks to the audience for delivering the virtualization explosion
- talking about virtualization across all data centre resources, not just servers
- £1 spent on hardware leads to £5-10 per annum on management so OpEx is the target
- Automate were possible, manage better where automation is not possible
- VMware releases will focus on automation and management across the whole infrastructure resources for foreseeable future
- Need to move security from physical boundaries to logical boundaries
- Security can be improved as it moves with the apps / data
- vCloud Director enables virtual data centres - associate a policy with applications to enable management of their characteristics - where they run, resource conflict mangement etc. Drives choice of how we pay for resource - internal vs external cloud and appropriate pricing that the business can understand.
- ISPs being encouraged to work with VMware to drive "standards" (are they standards or VMware proprietary interfaces?) across the industry
- Should allow movement across and between clouds to avoid the clouds becoming sticky
- Note PM is talking about building cloud foundations - so we're not there yet (no suprise there then)
- This is about old apps on new infrastructure - what about new apps? Batch based older apps are not going to respond to upcoming consumer expectations for on demand data and services
- Most new apps are being written in Spring, Ruby on Rails type frameworks so VMware supporting this by developing management and common services around these framworks, sitting on top of a virtualized infrastructure
- These apps frameworks abstract developers from the OS- perhaps the apps frameworks will soon contain just enough OS to operate on the infrastructure cloud?
- Admitting that there will be non-VMware enabled clouds - suggesting that the apps frameworks need to interface to multiple cloud models
- VMware working with Google and Salesforce.com to ensure that the Spring framework can operate on those clouds so apps on Spring will work on multiple infrastructures
- VMware using Software as a Service apps that weren't approved by IT - no integration of security - IT needs to get control (drawing parallels with PCs fiding their way into enterprises in the 1980s)
- Now addressing flood of new devices
- IT should focus on delivering the apps to the users and remove the need to worry about devices - access management will be key
- Automation and management of devices, apps frameworks and infrastructure in horizontal layers will be the key challenges
- talking about history of VMware
- "wave 3" is IT as a Service
- in 2009 virtual servers exceeded physical deployments
- 2010 10million VMs will be deployed at a growth rate of 28%
- VMware has 190,000 customers
- thanks to the audience for delivering the virtualization explosion
- talking about virtualization across all data centre resources, not just servers
- £1 spent on hardware leads to £5-10 per annum on management so OpEx is the target
- Automate were possible, manage better where automation is not possible
- VMware releases will focus on automation and management across the whole infrastructure resources for foreseeable future
- Need to move security from physical boundaries to logical boundaries
- Security can be improved as it moves with the apps / data
- vCloud Director enables virtual data centres - associate a policy with applications to enable management of their characteristics - where they run, resource conflict mangement etc. Drives choice of how we pay for resource - internal vs external cloud and appropriate pricing that the business can understand.
- ISPs being encouraged to work with VMware to drive "standards" (are they standards or VMware proprietary interfaces?) across the industry
- Should allow movement across and between clouds to avoid the clouds becoming sticky
- Note PM is talking about building cloud foundations - so we're not there yet (no suprise there then)
- This is about old apps on new infrastructure - what about new apps? Batch based older apps are not going to respond to upcoming consumer expectations for on demand data and services
- Most new apps are being written in Spring, Ruby on Rails type frameworks so VMware supporting this by developing management and common services around these framworks, sitting on top of a virtualized infrastructure
- These apps frameworks abstract developers from the OS- perhaps the apps frameworks will soon contain just enough OS to operate on the infrastructure cloud?
- Admitting that there will be non-VMware enabled clouds - suggesting that the apps frameworks need to interface to multiple cloud models
- VMware working with Google and Salesforce.com to ensure that the Spring framework can operate on those clouds so apps on Spring will work on multiple infrastructures
- VMware using Software as a Service apps that weren't approved by IT - no integration of security - IT needs to get control (drawing parallels with PCs fiding their way into enterprises in the 1980s)
- Now addressing flood of new devices
- IT should focus on delivering the apps to the users and remove the need to worry about devices - access management will be key
- Automation and management of devices, apps frameworks and infrastructure in horizontal layers will be the key challenges
Bella Hall A Tuesday 09:00
Wireless goes down when the hall is about two thirds full. Not sure if this is due to swamping or becuase you're encouraged to concentrate on the content.
Kind of humourous video about the meaning of cloud - Oracle building with its head in the clouds and reference to "azure skies". Parallels drawn with ordering a pizza, apparently. Matrix spoof "where is the Matrix"?
Humans are dumb terminals!
Intro from Maurizio Carlo
over 6,000 attendees (compares to 17,000 in the US in San Fran)
"forward looking" disclaimers about some content is not necessarily going to be delivered
Verizon, Terremark, Colt have collaborated to run the lab sessions in a private cloud. 2,000 VMs per hour created / destroyed - expecting to support over 5000 lab sessions
Virtualization maturity:
- get the most out of your infrastructure - virtualize your internal kit
- business production- achieve unprecedented reliability- virtualise critical services to improve service
- IT as a service - evolve to IT as a service via cloud (internal, external or hybrid) to provide agility
Kind of humourous video about the meaning of cloud - Oracle building with its head in the clouds and reference to "azure skies". Parallels drawn with ordering a pizza, apparently. Matrix spoof "where is the Matrix"?
Humans are dumb terminals!
Intro from Maurizio Carlo
over 6,000 attendees (compares to 17,000 in the US in San Fran)
"forward looking" disclaimers about some content is not necessarily going to be delivered
Verizon, Terremark, Colt have collaborated to run the lab sessions in a private cloud. 2,000 VMs per hour created / destroyed - expecting to support over 5000 lab sessions
Virtualization maturity:
- get the most out of your infrastructure - virtualize your internal kit
- business production- achieve unprecedented reliability- virtualise critical services to improve service
- IT as a service - evolve to IT as a service via cloud (internal, external or hybrid) to provide agility
Bella Hall A Tuesday 08:50
Hall filling up for the keynote, lots of slideware:
Virtual Roads, Actual Clouds
Put end users at the wheel through self service IT
Reject complexity. Foster control
Be brave. Accelerate change
Think big. Triumph boldly
Act today. Create tomorrow
Transform how you deliver service to your busiess
Change thinking, realize potential
and other magical statements!
Virtual Roads, Actual Clouds
Put end users at the wheel through self service IT
Reject complexity. Foster control
Be brave. Accelerate change
Think big. Triumph boldly
Act today. Create tomorrow
Transform how you deliver service to your busiess
Change thinking, realize potential
and other magical statements!
Bella, Tuesday 08:20 CET
The usual set up here with a main auditorium for the plenary sessions, break out rooms, lab rooms and the solutions exchange for vendors. Email terminals running and sponsored by Wyse. Lots of pastries for breakfast. Sessions start at 9am with Paul Maritz.
Monday, 11 October 2010
Sights and Sounds of Copenhagen
Monday, very bright, very sunny but chilly in the shade. A quick tour of the city on a hire bike is summarised below:
Sortesdam So lake
Library
Transport
More Library
Borsen - the spire is formed from the tails of four dragons that are arranged around the base of the spire
Christiansborg Palace
Skuespilhuset - the playhouse
The Opera House
Actual Segways, in the wild!
Skuespilhuset
Jellyfish
Views from the top of the Saint Anne Gade Church - you climb up inside the tower amongst the 33 carillion bells then out onto a balcony which then has a spiral staircase on the outside of the spire. Stunning.
Just left of centre on the horizon you can see the new accommodation being constructed at the Bella Center - the venue for VMWORLD (its tenuous, I know, but its related to the conference!)
The staircase on the final part of the climb as it spirals around the outside of the spire.
Nyhavn
So its down to business now!
Sortesdam So lake
Library
Transport
More Library
Borsen - the spire is formed from the tails of four dragons that are arranged around the base of the spire
Christiansborg Palace
Skuespilhuset - the playhouse
The Opera House
Actual Segways, in the wild!
Skuespilhuset
Jellyfish
Views from the top of the Saint Anne Gade Church - you climb up inside the tower amongst the 33 carillion bells then out onto a balcony which then has a spiral staircase on the outside of the spire. Stunning.
Just left of centre on the horizon you can see the new accommodation being constructed at the Bella Center - the venue for VMWORLD (its tenuous, I know, but its related to the conference!)
The staircase on the final part of the climb as it spirals around the outside of the spire.
Nyhavn
So its down to business now!
Sunday in Copenhagen
EasyJet provided the transport into the main Copenhagen airport via the ubiquitous Boeing 737 from Manchester in an efficient, cost effective manner. Enough and nothing more.
First shock - I was expecting stratospheric beer prices,but 500ml of bottled water at approx £2.20? Welcome to Copenhagen.
The weather outside the airport was bright and sunny, but EMC were ensuring that it was cloudy inside:
More evidence that the virtual World has arrived in Denmark:
Copenhagen airport is definitely in the efficient class of airports so soon enough I was onto the driverless Metro which has parallels with London's DLR. Its quick, its effective, very clean and takes you to the centre of the city in 15 mins. Being from the North of England, it pains me to say this, but suddenly London seems to be good value! £4 compares to an equivalent journey of £2.30 - on the DLR. Its very clean though, and its quite a different experience once underground with the tunnels being much more modern and illuminated:
The hotel is on the North East side of the city centre and overlooks the "lakes" - which look like very wide canals. James meets me out of the Metro at Norreport and we head off to the Kong Arthur. I get a room up in the roof space - its compact but as all the essentials including tasteful contemporary decor. If I stand on a chair I have an excellent view over the lakes through the Velux!
We head out to the Norrebro area on the other side of the lake and settle on "Pussy Galore's Flying Circus" to eat on the square at the top end of Sankt Hans Torv. Clearly someone got confused between or decided to combine Monty Python and James Bond. Either way, we find something to suit us both on the menu, James opting for the Pollock risotto, myself for the heavily nut based veggie burger. Both turn out to be delicious, although the burger could've benefitted from being served a little hotter. We sip at our Tuborg Gold lager which is wheaty and very tasty, but at near enough £8 a pint almost seems like an extravagance! The service was attentive but not overpowering with the venue being quiet but pleasant enough.
Hoping to hit the micro brewery of Norrebro Bryhus on the nearby Ryesgarde we were disappointed to find it closed. A nearby corner bar served a huge 750ml Tuborg Classic which is a pretty dark larger and this went down well as we started to plan our Monday - mixing some business with some sight seeing.
Next we made for Babarellah on Norre Farimagsgade, not far from the hotel which is described by the Lonley Planet guide as "almost unbearably cool" - clearly designed for us! Except that it too is closed - I'm reminded of a conversaton James overheard in the reception between the hotel staff and an American tourist "people of Denmark need to rest sometimes". So we end up in a very small bar in a small square where there is an artwork of a giant cigarette end which is bent up at one end as though it has been stubbed out - it must be a portent or something - as Denmark is somewhat semi-detatched in EU terms - the bar we're in is full of folk smoking. Coming from the UK it's a bit of a culture shock / throwback finding yourself in a tobacco smoke filled atmospherere. In the Lonely Planet's "When in Rome..." section is mentions "smoke like a kipper" - I think the author must've been in this bar when they wrote those words. There was a jazz group playing standards and improvs - piano, double bass, 2x Sax and a trombone
Smokin'
James enjoyed the music whilst I found myself admiring the musicianship more than the actual music. Great to see the players working so well together and meeting the expectations of their audience. Lovely friendly atmosphere here with James being invited to offer gifts to the locals, but we're not sure if we offended or if certain locals were overstepping the mark!
Jazz Bar James
When in Rome... So When in Denmark, Drink Danish Beer
Earlier in the day we went up to the Bella Center and registered for the VMWORLD conference - its a fair way out of the city centre but the Metro's very effective, much like the registration process which is semi-self service. We typed our names into a Wyse thin client terminal and a pass is printed and checked against photo id - all sorted in a couple of minutes. Our VMWORLD 2010 back packs contain a t-shirt, lanyard, vendor promo leaflets and a 4 day pass for all zones on the public transport - this is very useful and if you haven't set out yet its worth noting that EMC are sponsoring free travel on the local network for all attendees from 10-14 October, so just buy enough travel to get you to the Bella Center and the rest is covered for you through to Thurs.
So off to sleep now, so far so good!
Oh, and what happened to the Halifax? No comment!
First shock - I was expecting stratospheric beer prices,but 500ml of bottled water at approx £2.20? Welcome to Copenhagen.
The weather outside the airport was bright and sunny, but EMC were ensuring that it was cloudy inside:
More evidence that the virtual World has arrived in Denmark:
Copenhagen airport is definitely in the efficient class of airports so soon enough I was onto the driverless Metro which has parallels with London's DLR. Its quick, its effective, very clean and takes you to the centre of the city in 15 mins. Being from the North of England, it pains me to say this, but suddenly London seems to be good value! £4 compares to an equivalent journey of £2.30 - on the DLR. Its very clean though, and its quite a different experience once underground with the tunnels being much more modern and illuminated:
The hotel is on the North East side of the city centre and overlooks the "lakes" - which look like very wide canals. James meets me out of the Metro at Norreport and we head off to the Kong Arthur. I get a room up in the roof space - its compact but as all the essentials including tasteful contemporary decor. If I stand on a chair I have an excellent view over the lakes through the Velux!
We head out to the Norrebro area on the other side of the lake and settle on "Pussy Galore's Flying Circus" to eat on the square at the top end of Sankt Hans Torv. Clearly someone got confused between or decided to combine Monty Python and James Bond. Either way, we find something to suit us both on the menu, James opting for the Pollock risotto, myself for the heavily nut based veggie burger. Both turn out to be delicious, although the burger could've benefitted from being served a little hotter. We sip at our Tuborg Gold lager which is wheaty and very tasty, but at near enough £8 a pint almost seems like an extravagance! The service was attentive but not overpowering with the venue being quiet but pleasant enough.
Hoping to hit the micro brewery of Norrebro Bryhus on the nearby Ryesgarde we were disappointed to find it closed. A nearby corner bar served a huge 750ml Tuborg Classic which is a pretty dark larger and this went down well as we started to plan our Monday - mixing some business with some sight seeing.
Next we made for Babarellah on Norre Farimagsgade, not far from the hotel which is described by the Lonley Planet guide as "almost unbearably cool" - clearly designed for us! Except that it too is closed - I'm reminded of a conversaton James overheard in the reception between the hotel staff and an American tourist "people of Denmark need to rest sometimes". So we end up in a very small bar in a small square where there is an artwork of a giant cigarette end which is bent up at one end as though it has been stubbed out - it must be a portent or something - as Denmark is somewhat semi-detatched in EU terms - the bar we're in is full of folk smoking. Coming from the UK it's a bit of a culture shock / throwback finding yourself in a tobacco smoke filled atmospherere. In the Lonely Planet's "When in Rome..." section is mentions "smoke like a kipper" - I think the author must've been in this bar when they wrote those words. There was a jazz group playing standards and improvs - piano, double bass, 2x Sax and a trombone
Smokin'
James enjoyed the music whilst I found myself admiring the musicianship more than the actual music. Great to see the players working so well together and meeting the expectations of their audience. Lovely friendly atmosphere here with James being invited to offer gifts to the locals, but we're not sure if we offended or if certain locals were overstepping the mark!
Jazz Bar James
When in Rome... So When in Denmark, Drink Danish Beer
Earlier in the day we went up to the Bella Center and registered for the VMWORLD conference - its a fair way out of the city centre but the Metro's very effective, much like the registration process which is semi-self service. We typed our names into a Wyse thin client terminal and a pass is printed and checked against photo id - all sorted in a couple of minutes. Our VMWORLD 2010 back packs contain a t-shirt, lanyard, vendor promo leaflets and a 4 day pass for all zones on the public transport - this is very useful and if you haven't set out yet its worth noting that EMC are sponsoring free travel on the local network for all attendees from 10-14 October, so just buy enough travel to get you to the Bella Center and the rest is covered for you through to Thurs.
So off to sleep now, so far so good!
Oh, and what happened to the Halifax? No comment!
Friday, 8 October 2010
Planning and Printing
Route from airport to hotel on the Metro sorted and EasyJet boarding cards printed, DKK Krone in the wallet so all ready to go on Sunday.
Used the online scheduler to sort out my session plan, but still have 8 sessions with duplicate options - will have to see how it goes as the sessions are first come, first served.
Focussing on management tools, server density, learning how to effectively eliminate and further physical deployments and the private cloud / vCloud Director approaches.
Full week of networking opportunities with the VMware UK & Ireland visit to the Carsberg visitor centre on Tuesday evening and the main gathering on Weds featuring Bjorn Again - must remember to pack my white flairs (not!).
Used the online scheduler to sort out my session plan, but still have 8 sessions with duplicate options - will have to see how it goes as the sessions are first come, first served.
Focussing on management tools, server density, learning how to effectively eliminate and further physical deployments and the private cloud / vCloud Director approaches.
Full week of networking opportunities with the VMware UK & Ireland visit to the Carsberg visitor centre on Tuesday evening and the main gathering on Weds featuring Bjorn Again - must remember to pack my white flairs (not!).
Tuesday, 28 September 2010
Music Venues
Currently trawing t'Interweb for good music on Sunday 10th and Monday 11th October, just before VMWORLD kicks off. Any suggestions?
Monday, 27 September 2010
SORTED
Plans are in place - tix sorted for VMWORLD Europe in Copenhagen in week commencing 11 October 2010, flights booked, hotel booked and bike hire sorted.
Checked out the sessions today and have provisionally worked out my itinery. Initial observations:
- Some sessions I have 3 options I'd like to attend
- Some sessions only 1
- The cloud is all prevalent
- Lots on virtual client
- Not enough on management tools - particularly performance and capacity
Checked out the sessions today and have provisionally worked out my itinery. Initial observations:
- Some sessions I have 3 options I'd like to attend
- Some sessions only 1
- The cloud is all prevalent
- Lots on virtual client
- Not enough on management tools - particularly performance and capacity
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