Virtualization, Cloud, Infrastructure and all that stuff in-between

My ramblings on the stuff that holds it all together

Monthly Archives: July 2010

Park your own Azure Cloud in your Carpark with Microsoft

Leave a comment Posted by on July 12, 2010

 

I noted with interest that Microsoft have announced some details of the Azure platform appliance, a way of running the components of their Azure cloud service in your own data centre.

It reads from the article that this will be based around a container/pod type architectural unit of many servers, rather than a single hardware appliance;

“We call it an appliance because it is a turn-key cloud solution on highly standardized, preconfigured hardware. Think of it as hundreds of servers in pre-configured racks of networking, storage, and server hardware that are based on Microsoft-specified reference architecture.”

I mentioned this concept back in 2008, licensing out appliances of cloud IPR goodness (now known as PaaS/SaaS) to run on-site (see comments of my post here) is a great way to build confidence and gain market penetration for the cloud-sceptic organisation. Or just to help those people that can’t move their data and services into the public cloud to leverage highly scalable PaaS technologies.

Interesting times, will we see Amazon and Google start to offer EC2/AWS and AppEngine pods that you can run on-premise?

Of course, you can do this sort of thing at an IaaS level now with VMware and their vCloud partners  – VMware are moving up the stack with their PaaS (Springsource) and SaaS (Zimbra) acquisitions and a hybrid of on and off-premise would be easily achievable for them.

Cloud

London VMware User Group Thursday 15th July

Leave a comment Posted by on July 5, 2010

 

Quick heads-up the next London VMware User Group (VMUG) meeting is on Thursday 15th July.

I’ll be giving a short talk my on VCDX preparation, I’ve not finished it yet… but I’ll cover my exam experiences and the application process – I promise this will be the last time I speak at a VMUG for a while, Al asked me, I didn’t volunteer honest! 🙂

The Steering Committee are pleased to announce the next UK London VMware User Group meeting, kindly sponsored by EMC to be held on Thursday 15th July 2010. We hope to see you at the meeting, and afterwards for a drink or two, courtesy of VMware.
Our meeting will be held at the Thames Suite, London Chamber of Commerce and Industry, 33 Queen Street, London EC4R 1AP, +44 (0)20 7248 4444. The nearest tube station is Mansion House, location information is available here. Reception is from 1230 for a prompt 1pm start, to finish around 5pm. Our agenda looks something like this:
1100 – 1200 (Optional) Interactive PowerCLI / Powershell workshop – Alan Renouf

Note: If you would like to participate in Alan’s workshop, please bring a laptop, preferably with the most current PowerCLI and PowerShell binaries installed.

12:30 – 13:00 Arrive & Refreshments
13:00 – 13:20 Welcome & News – Alaric Davies

13:20 – 14:00 Sponsor Presentation, Why EMC for VMware? – Alan Renouf, Simon Seagrave

15:00 – 15:20 Refreshment break

  • Preparation steps towards the VCDX – Simon Gallagher, Ioko
  • ESX in the DMZ – Steve Bruck, Associated News and Matt Northam, VMware
  • vSphere 4.1 new features – James Smith, VMware

16:45 – 17:00 Close

17:00 – Pub
To register your interest in attending, please email londonvmug@yahoo.com with up to two named attendees from your organisation. If you do not receive a confirmation mail, please don’t just turn up since we will not be able to admit you to the meeting. Please separately mention if you intend attending Alan’s PowerCLI workshop at 1100. Content from the meetings will continue to be uploaded to www.box.net/londonug,NDA permitting.

Hope to see you there

VMUG