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

Interesting short article here on future interfaces using Infiniband to provide a flexible interface for hypervisor various services that require high-bandwidth (network, SAN, etc.).

very cool – you can buy Infiniband modules for HP c-class kit now, and this kind of interface standardisation can only be a good thing for flexibility, just cable and forget, any change becomes just a software re-configuration which in turn means less late nights in the datacentre which can only be a good thing!

credit for original link from Bladewatch

Robert Scoble gives the new Amazon Kindle a lashing.. here

My take; for me I can’t see the point of it.. wouldn’t Amazon be better investing in electronic books that can be read on PC’s or phones, PDA’s etc. – rather than building a limited device locked to one web service an iPhone/iPod touch or Asus Eee would have a good screen for this kind of use.

I’d rather spend a bit more on a decent multi-functional device rather than another bit of gadgetry to lug about with its related chargers etc., would guess most people that would use one of these are also likely to have at least a mobile phone or a laptop – Joe consumer is probably more likely to buy a paper book surely?

Scoble is normally pretty positive about most stuff (even if the rest of us think it’s a bit pointless), guess he really doesn’t like the Kindle!

Will be interesting to see when the hardware hackers manage to use it’s in-built cellular data services – which seem to be a flat rate as Jerry Pournelle points out

Interesting post over on Dugie’s blog about how much energy Microsoft have saved by switching to virtualization.

As they say would be good to see that in Watts, but I’ve been having the same discussion internally, data centre power is very limited here in the UK now and this is the only real solution in my book

Details here..

http://blog.windowsvirtualization.com/wss/microsoft-it-going-green-with-virtualization-today

Mark Wilson has a good post that translates the Microsoft-ese into English for the rest of us! here

Cool idea, using ground water to cool a bunch of Sun Blackbox datacentres inside an old coal mine.

But $400m USD to setup and it’s going to take 2 years – wasn’t the whole point of Blackbox to make this kind of thing quick to deploy?

article here

Good whitepaper from VMWare here explaining full & paravirtualization and hardware assist.

I have to say I like VMWare whitepapers, they always seem to be very well written, especially when compared to Microsoft’s white papers!

Obviously its a bit slanted towards VMWare with a bit of marketing in there too but gives a good expanation of the underlying concepts that tend to make peoples heads hurt

I’m a big believer in this, and yes it does depend on who you work for.. some employers expect the earth, and the skin off your back – however you always maintain the overall control… after all you’re not held there at gunpoint are you?*

If you don’t like it, walk… I do get bored of listening to the “grass is always greener on the other side” brigade – if there really was this nirvana where everything is perfect don’t you think everyone would be working over there instead of plugging away with you?

Anyways – Steve Richards posted a great article about how he manages his working day. Whilst he has some specific health issues that mean he has to strictly control his stress/work loads I think there’s a lot in there that everyone can apply to their working day.

Blog post here

*well ok, maybe some people are..

Bladewatch has an interesting post here.

I’m mainly interested in Martin’s last comments,

“Virtualization can be a real business enabler, a way of providing the IT infrastructure in a more energy efficient way, as well as allowing the business to have a more on-demand, fluid type infrastructure. One of the ideals would be when we can get to a follow the sun model, an infrastructure that runs with your business around the globe following where the energy is cheapest at that specific time, with a fluid type failover. That I could have my New York teams run from London whilst the server guys update the New York infrastructure is the kind of evolution of the platform that could be a real enabler, the investment, the planning and the applications all need to be in line with the infrastructure, as does your business processes, the charge back.”

That would be cool, and it’s mostly achievable in the world of replicating storage and abundant high-bandwidth connectivity between major locations, failover to the other side of the world and it gives you a good sized window to upgrade/maintain the underlying platform, even replace it.

I’ve already achieved a similar thing with VI3 customer installations for a test/dev environment. no real reason why this couldn’t be the same for a production platform and on a global scale.

Ops want to be near the kit they support for that touchy-feely warm feeling? sure, provision the VM layer and you can have it in your DC for the support hours you cover… we’ll even shift it somewhere else when you are celebrating Christmas, Thanksgiving, Talk like a pirate day etc.

Same principal for web-type eCommerce services, virtually move the supporting infrastructure to be physically nearer the user base (lower network latency, distance etc.) during their peak hours..

Removing the Software<->OS<->Hardware dependency can only be a good thing, and with all this web 2.0 stuff people want stuff quick, that doesn’t work in the physical world where I have to order, deliver, rack, cable, install something physical to provide a new service – people want it now and the only way to do this is using virtualisation – better to provide a “grid” and allocate resources out of it as required – you can easily add capacity as you go in a controlled/planned manner.

go get it.

USB support would be handy for a few things I work on, but other than that nothing amazingly new for me, but blessed support for Server 2008/Vista etc.

Hopefully the web based admin console it a big improvement.

Will need to get time to try it out, can’t beat this for free VM Software IMHO.

Heh, now this is what you should do when testing infrastructures!