When you haven’t
got time to cook a meal there really is nothing like the convenience of picking
up the phone and dialing for a home delivery kebab. You go online choose the
meal deal you want and 30 minutes later there’s a ring at your doorbell. So when
one of our customers asked if VCE could provide them with a segregated
infrastructure to their Vblock 300 for an immediate service roll out the
suggested meal deal was obvious, the Vblock 200. Literally delivered to their
doorstep in 30 days, the emergency project was successfully rolled out and
installed on a standardised infrastructure that was pre-configured
and pre-validated with minimal risk.
Delivered and packaged as a single product, the Vblock 200 is
made up of Cisco UCS rack servers and switches and an EMC VNX unified storage system.
As well as vSphere 5.1 enterprise plus and software such as PowerPath VE, the
Vblock 200 comes with the unique ‘single throat to choke’ VCE Support offering. As well as extremely tight time constraints, space was also a
particular challenge for this customer’s project as this infrastructure was not
to be housed at the customer’s usual enterprise datacenter. With only a single
door for access to the infrastructure’s proposed location, the usual scenario
would have been the rather painful process of having all of the components
delivered separately and then built and integrated on site much like an IKEA
flat pack wardrobe.
Delivered ready assembled - No allen keys required
Not so with the Vblock 200, as this single rack
system while housing critical applications was also able to fit through the
front door, leaving only for the power and connections to the core network to
be dealt with.
So next time you haven’t got time to build your own infrastructure for your remote office deployment, why not try ordering a Vblock 200? Not only can it fit through your front door, it’ll be delivered to your door, standardised, pre-integrated, pre-validated, pre-tested, fresh and ready within 30 days.
Well we were warned that "Le Vblock" was only part one and was to be continued...and sure enough here is the sequel and concluding part to the CIO story. Of course the ViB were courteous enough to send me the lyrics:
Yeah VCE, Vblock...Saving U Money Go Tweet, Go Blog!
We got 1000 strong, Vblocks are Kong -- King of the infrastructure, perfect little architecture, sexy black box, where an application rocks, &#$%, ^#$%@ can ya -- virtualise &^#$? ignore their #$%@, you can save a bundle, from their licenses, enticing this, exciting this, would you like some tips, on how we optimise, well we standardise, on a single product, that's called the Vblock, We got 100s, 200s, 320s, 720's, any workload baby, from SMB to the enterprise, we got 'em mesmerized, with our saving size, lower OPEX costs, firefighting stops -- you know what... yeah - we're really hot.
We Save U Money
Verse 2, Now here's what we do, 4 our customers, and why they loving us, it's a single support, a single throat 2 choke, resolutions done before u even know, we take away the patches, take away the pain, take away the risk and let you breathe again, with a single matrix, a pretested fix, done inside our labs, so u upgrade fast,
Customers say " we're saving money" -- Cuz there's no more P1s, and there's no more reasons, to be petrified , at firmware time, because we've verified all the things inside, now concentrate, on applications, and gravitate 2 biz solutions, infrastructure's boring, now u can ignore it, while u might own it, VCE's honed it
We Save U Money
Press: "Is a Reference architecture like VCE?" -- er no Analyst: "Is a @#$#^& company like VCE?" -- er no
There's nothing #$%@, when u market manure, if u wanna know for sure, then open up your doors, cuz the VCE crew will tell u what we do, we 'll deliver in days, what others only claim, production ready systems, pumping like pistons, VMs, Apps, Clouds u list em, everything u need with accelerated speed, with a service portfolio that'll make u dream, enabling your business, u can't resist this, accelerating projects, de-risked quickness, plug in datacenter, IT innovator, SLAs on, incidents gone, now your IT's hot, with all the savings u got....
So how does a 60% OPEX saving sound to you? Yeah that's what I thought....
So this link to the below video was waiting in my inbox this morning with the following lyrics and a note that this was Part 1.
Welcome to the ViB:
It's time for Change....
Are you ready to get your Vblock.....it's 30 days baby and it's on - it's VCE (x2)
Have you heard about the C.I. craze? Transformation that will amaze OPEX savings that's second to none CIOs we can show you how it's done
Infrastructure that's rolled out in days As a product that simplifies the ways IT delivers to your business Private Cloud? We can get you to this!
Ahhhhh VBlock - it's VCE- VBlock
All that pressure got you down Trouble tickets spinning u round and round Late night calls when patches don't go right Finger pointing with no end in sight
With VCE it's a single number to call A single product that's preinstalled, Pre-integrated, pre-tested and what's more A single matrix to upgrade it all
Ahhhhh VBlock- it's VCE- VBlock
Now feel the emergence of convergence
Now shake your body right down to your datacenter
All that pressure that made you cry Is now replaced with an ROI That can't be beat with an "always on" design Technology that makes your business thrive
Accelerated & standardized Consolidated & optimised New Applications rolled out on time A De-risked DC that's virtualised
Ahhhhh VBlock - it's VCE- VBlock
Shake it for me, shake it for me a reference architecture never did it 4 me
Gotta plug in 2 your core of your network baby & power it up now someone help me
With EMC World 2013 now upon us and with myself unfortunately unable to go, I found it strange that I received yet another mysterious email from the ViB, this time the picture posted above. Is there a coincidence that this is coinciding with EMC World? I'm not sure but I do know that if you are at EMC World make sure you get the the chance to visit VCE's Booth #425.
VCE have the following planned for your technical, intellectual and business-minded delight:
- VCE Booth #425
features product demos and over 40 in-booth theater presentations, with a
prominent exhibit floor location.
- The VCE booth will
feature live Vblock™ Systems, representing three product lines:
Vblock System 300
Vblock System 100
Vblock System 200
- Live Vblock Systems
will also be present in investor company spaces:
Cisco Booth # 401
Vblock System 300
EMC Booth
Vblock System 300 in USD Booth
VMWare Booth # 201
Vblock System 100
- VCE maintains a
presence within EMC program running at this event:
SE Conference
Attended by 3000+ EMC and
Partner SE’s
Global Partner Summit
3,000 partners – with high % of
channel partners)
D. Martin, VCE VP of Global
Channels, will present during the keynote
CIO Connect
This executive event hosts 75
Mid-Market CIO’s
Frank Hauck, VCE CEO, will serve
as a panel member
- A formal meeting
program on-site at the Venetian will facilitate customer and partner meetings
with VCE leadership. Account managers will submit meeting requests.
Program availability:
Monday, May 6 from 12 - 5 pm
Tuesday, May 7 from 8 am – 5 pm
Wednesday, May 8 from 8 am – 5 pm
- VCE Booth #425
includes an In-Booth Theater. VCE will host 15-minute theater
presentations 2 times per hour, including:
VCE corporate overview
Customer presentations
Partner presentations
Six in-theater VCE presentations:
Workload Mobility Automation, a
3-way joint demo with Cisco, EMC and VCE
Desktop Virtualization (VDI),
showcasing VMware Horizon, the next generation of VMware View
VCE Vision™ Intelligent
Operations, which will feature VMware vCenter Operations as well
Data Protection and EMC
RecoverPoint, presented by John Comeau, VMware SRM
SAP on Vblock Systems
IT Transformation
TCO Tool – Joint TCO Tool with
EMC
Training
Services, including professional
services and customer support
- VCE Breakout
Session presentations:
Going Live with SAP on 100%
Virtual Infrastructure – A Case Study of EMC’s SAP Deployment on VCE
Vblock Systems, presented by Mike LaFauci
EMC Backup: Avamar and Data
Domain – Backup and Recovery in VCE Converged Infrastructure
EMC Unified Infrastructure
Manager – Ease the Transition to a Cloud Infrastructure on VCE Vblock
Systems
EMC VNX Family – Leveraging
Vblock Systems for Converged Infrastructure
So that leaves just one question.....who are the ViB and will they be at EMC World?
I've recently been inundated with a number of sporadic emails from a certain account named ViB. While I initially thought it was some kind of hoax I started to realise that this was a serious account as I was being sent exclusive information and industry tidbits specifically around how VCE's Vblock was enabling significant OPEX savings for customers as well as empowering CIOs to rapidly enable business transformation.
Amongst these interesting insights I was also sent a number of photos of cars with rather interesting number plates - see below:
ViB - vehicle 1
ViB - vehicle 2
ViB - vehicle 3
While none of this was really making any sense, it was this morning when I received a link to a new 40 second clip (see below) from the ViB where I was assured things would become clearer.
If anything what does seem to be clearer is that the ViB is most likely an acronym for "vArchitect in Black". Apart from this the 40 second teaser trailer seems to throw up more questions than answers!
- Are the ViB a new specialist team within VCE?
- Is this teaser trailer a precursor to a new documentary or feature film from VCE?
- Is this just a marketing stunt or hoax?
- Is this the precursor to another new product launch from VCE?
- Does this in fact have anything to do with VCE?
- Why are CIOs looking to VCE's Vblock as a solution to their problems and more specifically the ViB?
I'll leave you to decide by watching the clip yourself below and of course update you if and when I receive further information and clarification.
I was recently asked to take part in a debate for the Sunday Telegraph newspaper on the subject of "How will IT infrastructure evolve?". In case you missed it, it's now available online at:
I expect to see continued exponential growth in the use and emulation of internet data centres; the likes of Amazon, Rackspace, Memset or Google that have tightly packed racks, operating at very high efficiencies, running cloud computing services.The key difference in approach will be the widespread adoption of commodity hardware to deliver enterprise quality services by moving intelligence into software. Examples include distributed applications running on virtual machines, many cheap nodes crunching big data and more object storage and non-relational databases.Storage is especially exciting. I believe the days of “big iron” vendors, RAID5/6 and tape are numbered. Our enormously resilient, distributed storage system using commodity tin costs us less than £20 a terabyte per month. By layering media types, such as SATA disks, SSDs and DRAM, and mobilising tools including Automated Intelligence’s Datapoint, you can have your cake – cheap storage with low latency for critical data – and eat it.
A CIO’s infrastructure decisions will focus more on leading the business rather than simply aligning with it. Technologies such as unified communications, virtualisation and cloud computing will be further adopted to gain a competitive advantage while security and risk concerns have to be mitigated. This requires an agile and flexible IT model that is shackled by traditional infrastructure and has left IT departments struggling with daily firefighting exercises. To ensure success, IT admin will need a new breed of infrastructure that enables them to focus on delivering, optimising and managing the application while not needing to worry about the infrastructure that supports them. Consequently the benefits offered by standardised, pre-integrated and pre-validated converged infrastructures will gain even more traction in the industry. This will not only present a dramatic paradigm shift in IT infrastructure but also the way IT is approached, managed, deployed and viewed by the application owners and business it supports.
There can be no questioning that big data is a disruptive market force. The massive influx of data that’s impacting upon organisations of all shapes and sizes means that traditional IT infrastructure is becoming increasingly obsolete. Big data is the intensive analysis of large, complex, disparate or unstructured data sets to get actionable results in real-time. For many, to do this with an on-premise infrastructure will almost certainly lead to failure as few boast the necessary servers or computer clusters. Simply put, to execute big data analytics you need the suitable infrastructure to underpin it. Organisations need a massive amount of computing power to take all their data, wherever it’s stored, and analyse it for valuable insights. For most people at least, this leaves cloud computing as the most attractive option. Being able to gain access to potentially limitless scalability through Infrastructure-as-a-Service via the cloud makes big data a possibility for one and all. As such, the evolution of IT infrastructure seems likely to be moving towards outsourcing.
If you were to ask EMC or VMware whom they
consider their major threat and competition you’d be easily forgiven for being
mistaken to think it was NetApp, HP or offerings such as Hyper-V. With many
terming us to now be in the third era of corporate computing, with mainframe
and the client/server being the first two, the current cloud era has
undoubtedly been spearheaded by the likes of Google, Amazon and Facebook. It is
here where EMC and VMware face their biggest challenge of remaining relevant
and cutting edge in a market that demands automation, simplicity and speed of
deployment. Despite major marketing campaigns of “Big Data” and “Clouds” that
have seen airports littered with exorbitant amounts of posters and adverts, as
well as numerous acquisitions of various companies that have extended already
huge product portfolios, both EMC and VMware have struggled to release
themselves from the shackles of being deemed just a Storage and Hypervisor
company. So in light of this it’s no surprise to see both companies spin off a
new and independent venture that will address this very challenge, namely the
Pivotal Initiative.
With a promise of $400 million in investments
and a 69 / 31 % split in ownership between EMC and VMware respectively, the
Pivotal Initiative will be headed by none other than VMware’s ex-CEO Paul
Maritz. At the time his stepping down from that position raised a few eyebrows
and questions as to whether he was being demoted, prepped for early retirement
or was just being pushed to make way for VMware’s current CEO, Pat Gelsinger.
In hindsight one could easily see this now as a move that maybe Maritz himself
initiated from his own recognition that VMware as a company was failing to
transition yet alone be recognized as a PaaS organisation.
Maritz like most in the industry would have
recognised that with ever increasing data sets and ever increasing scale, the
need for automation, rapid application development and deployment is quickly
breaking beyond the capabilities of traditional man managed infrastructures
that have previously been offered by EMC and VMware. Moreover both VMware
and EMC know it’s all about applications and specifically big data applications.
For VMware and EMC to succeed in having the de facto platform of the IT
industry, it’s key they win the war to host these new and integral
applications. To address this EMC and VMware went about acquiring just about
every relevant start up or product that could possibly address this challenge
from GemStone, GreenPlum to SpringSource. Despite this huge purchasing spree
and VMware’s push to develop vFabric and create the PaaS initiative Cloud
Foundry both EMC and VMware have struggled to gain market recognition as true
Cloud and PaaS players.
One of the key aspects challenging EMC and
VMware’s recognition as a Cloud and PaaS offering has ironically been the very
thing they drove to try and solve it i.e. the incredible rate of acquisitions
and consequent increase in product portfolios. With sales and presales teams
that had been accustomed for years to successfully pitching and selling storage
arrays and hypervisor licenses, the demand on them was now to understand new
and alien concepts of Big Data analytics, PaaS, application development, SaaS
etc and also address a customer base they were not accustomed to. Now by having
Maritz head up a brand new and independent company that can essentially take
the appropriate products from those portfolios, the opportunity is to establish
brand new and focused sales, technical and post sales teams that understand
applications, big data etc. as well as have the right level of existing
relations within their potential client base.
So what is the Pivotal Initiative actually
bringing new to the table in terms of products? Well not much actually. In fact
what it does bring is a much needed cohesion between what have now been a
multitude of disparate acquisitions and products that have failed to gain the
market share their technical and business benefits certainly deserve.
Firstly there’s the platform that will be
based on EMC’s Greenplum appliance integrated with Pivotal HD, the data
querying system that works with Hadoop. The Greenplum appliance is based on the
open source PostgreSQL, which is a full ANSI-standard relational database
system and has performance benchmarks with Hadoop’s parallel system that are
already impressive. With the soon to be released Pivotal HD product from the
Pivotal Labs group, the aim is to conduct even more queries against even larger
data sets.
Pivotal Initiative: The products may look familiar but only this time there's cohesion and focus
From a VMware perspective, there’s the
inclusion of Gemfire to serve as the caching layer with its capability of
quickly ingesting events via its in-memory data management system. Then there’s
Cetas that provides rapid analytics atop the Hadoop platform and is designed
for the elasticity of virtual resources with specific focus on not only vSphere
but also Amazon Web Services. Additionally and most interestingly is the
addition of the Cloud Foundry PaaS, which was initially built to run on
VMware’s proprietary system. This time it comes with the promise that it will
be an abstraction layer with application automation for cross clouds enabling
Pivotal to be hosted on the likes of Amazon Web Services' EC2. Coupling this
with SpringSource’s Java application development framework to enable
integration with legacy data sources and applications and the Pivotal Labs’ ability
for facilitating rapid coding, the objective is a focused approach and aim at
the jugular of online and enterprise analytics.
The Pivotal Initiative will aim to deliver
the market a data analysis platform capable of capturing large volumes of data,
quickly addressing and querying it and then producing near real time answers
that can be stored in a large scale-out storage system. It would be naïve to
think this is an initiative aimed just at existing VMware customers. This is an
attempt to not only enter but also become relevant in the software led
infrastructure arena that competes with the likes of Amazon.
In essence the Pivotal Initiative is a brave
yet necessary move from both EMC and VMware to embrace the challenge of change
as the legacy of traditional infrastructure faces the daunting prospect of new
software paradigms. Whether the Pivotal Initiative can be successful and
achieve it’s $1bn rate in its projected five years depends on a number of
factors. One thing is certain is that the first challenge to remaining relevant
in the IT industry is to acknowledge and adapt to change. The masters behind
the Pivotal Initiative have already achieved that.
When you think Cloud, whether Private
or Public, one of the key advantages that comes to mind is speed of deployment.
All businesses crave the ability to simply go to a service portal, define their
infrastructure requirements and immediately have a platform ready for their new
application. Coupled with that you instantly have service level agreements that
generally centre on uptime and availability. So for example, instead of being a
law firm that spends most of its budget on an in house IT department and
datacenter, the Cloud provides an unavoidable opportunity for businesses to
instead procure infrastructure as a service and consequently focus on
delivering their key applications. But while the understanding of Cloud Computing
and its benefits have matured within the industry, so too has the understanding
that maybe what’s currently being offered still isn’t good enough for their
mission critical applications. The reality is that there is still a need for a
more focused and refined understanding of what the service level agreements
should be and ultimately a more concerted approach towards the applications. So
while neologisms such as speed, agility and flexibility remain synonymous with
Cloud Computing, its success and maturity ultimately depend upon a new focal
point, namely velocity.
Velocity bears a distinction from
speed in that it's not just a measure of how fast an object travels but also in
what direction that object moves. For example in a Public Cloud whether that be
Amazon, Azure or Google no one can dispute the speed. Through only the clicks
of a button you have a ready-made server that can immediately be used for
testing and development purposes. But while it may be quick to deploy, how
optimised is it for your particular environment, business or application
requirements? With only generic forms the specific customization to a
particular workload or business requirement fails to be achieved as
optimization is sacrificed for the sake of speed. Service levels based on
uptime and availability are not an adequate measure or guarantee for the
successful deployment of an application. For example it would be considered
ludicrous to purchase a laptop from a service provider that merely stipulates a
guarantee that it will remain powered on even though it performs atrociously.
In the Private Cloud or traditional
IT example, while the speed to deployment is not as quick as that of a public
cloud, there are other scenarios where speed is being witnessed yet failing to
produce the results required for a maturing Cloud market. Multiple
infrastructure silos will constantly be seen to be hurrying around, busily
firefighting and maintaining “the keeping the lights on culture” all at rapid
speed. Yet while the focus should be on the applications that need to be
delivered, being caught in the quagmire of the underlying infrastructure
persistently takes precedent with IT admin having to constantly deal with
interoperability issues, firmware upgrades, patches and multi-management panes
of numerous components. Moreover service offerings such as Gold, Silver, Bronze
or Platinum are more often than not centered around infrastructure metrics such
as number of vCPUs, Storage RAID type, Memory etc. instead of application
response times that are predictable and scalable to the end user's stipulated
demands.
For Cloud to embrace the concept of
velocity the consequence would be a focused and rigorous approach that has a
direction aimed solely at the successful deployment of applications that in
turn enable the business to quickly generate revenue. All the pieces of the
jigsaw that go into attaining that quick and focused approach would require a
mentality of velocity being adopted comprehensively from each silo of the
infrastructure team while concurrently working in cohesion with the application
team to deliver value to the business. This approach would also entail a
focused methodology to application optimization and consequently a service
level that measured and targeted its success based on application performance
as opposed to just uptime and availability.
Velocity leads to a comprehensive focus on the successful deployment and optimisation of the application
While some Cloud and service
providers may claim that they already work in unison with a focus on
applications, it is rarely the case behind the scenes as they too are caught in
the challenge of traditional build it yourself IT. Indeed it’s well known that
some Cloud hosting providers are duping their end users with pseudo service
portals where only the impression of an automated procedure for deploying their
infrastructure is actually provided. Instead service portals that actually only
populate a PDF of the requirements which are then printed out and sent to an
offshore admin who in turn provisions the VM as quickly as possible are much
closer to the truth. Additionally it’s more than likely that your Private Cloud
or service provider has a multi-tenant infrastructure with mixed workloads that
sits behind the scenes as logical pools ready to be carved up for your future
requirements. While this works for the majority of workloads and SMB applications,
with more businesses looking to place more critical and demanding applications
into their Private Cloud to attain the benefits of chargeback etc. they need an
assurance of an application response time that is almost impossible to
guarantee on a mixed workload infrastructure. As the Cloud market matures and
the expectations that come with it with regards to application delivery and
performance, such procedures and practices will only be suitable for certain
markets and workloads.
So for velocity to take precedent
within the Private Cloud, Cloud or even Infrastructure as a Service model and
to fill this Cloud maturity void, infrastructure needs to be delivered with
applications as their focal point. That consequently means a pre-integrated, pre-validated,
pre-installed and application certified appliance that is standardized as a
product and optimised to meet scalable demands and performance requirements.
This is why the industry will soon start to see a new emergence of specialized
systems specifically designed and built from inception for performance
optimization of specific application workloads. By having applications
pre-installed, certified and configured with both the application and
infrastructure vendors working in cohesion, the ability for Private Cloud or
service providers to predict, meet and propose application performance based
service levels becomes a lot more feasible. Additionally such an approach would
also be ideal for end users who just need a critical application rolled out immediately
in house with minimum fuss and risk.
While there may be a number of such
appliances or specialized systems that will emerge in the market for
applications such as SAP HANA or Cisco Unified Communications the key is to
ensure that they’re standardized as well as optimised. This entails a converged
infrastructure that rolls out as a single product and consequently has a single
matrix upgrade for all of its component patches and firmware upgrades that
subsequently also correspond with the application. Additionally it encompasses
a single support model that includes not only the infrastructure but also the
application. This in turn not only eliminates vendor finger pointing and
prolonged troubleshooting but also acts as an assurance that responsibility of
the application’s performance is paramount regardless of the potential cause of
the problem.
Driving the Velocity of Change within the industry: VCE's new SAP HANA Vblock specialized system
The
demand for key applications to be monitored, optimised and rolled out with
speed and velocity will be faced by not only Service providers and Private
Cloud deployments but also internal IT departments who are struggling with
their day to day firefighting exercises. To ensure success, IT admin will need
a new breed of infrastructure or specialized systems that enables them to focus
on delivering, optimizing and managing the application and consequently not
needing to worry about the infrastructure that supports them. This is where the
new Vblock specialized systems being offered by VCE come into play. Unlike
other companies with huge portfolios of products, VCE have a single focal
point, namely Vblocks. By now adopting that same approach of velocity that was
instilled for the production of standardized Vblock models, end users can now
reap the same rewards with new specialized systems that are application
specific. Herein lies the key to Cloud maturity and ultimately the successful
deployment of mission critical applications.
For more information on VCE's new specialized Vblock Systems please visit:
