Posts tagged Basic
VMware’s Case for Reducing Cloud Management to Its Basic Tasks
Dec 2nd
Yesterday, during their rollout conference for WebLogic Server 12c, engineers from Oracle introduced developers to a concept they called Virtual Assembly Builder. Their idea was this: When you take a Java application, with all its myriad underpinnings and dependencies, and move it into a virtualized environment such as a cloud, certain libraries that the app needed when running on a physical server will need to be substituted with VM-aware components for optimum performance. The philosophy there is, you want the virtual machine to closely approximate the characteristics of the physical one, including how it works and how it’s managed.
When I ran that concept past a pair of VMware marketing managers this afternoon, they could not have disagreed any more pointedly with Oracle’s basic philosophy. During a demonstration of VMware technologies including vFabric, they explained why products like AppInsight, released last month, present a more simplified dashboard for administrators of applications deployed through cloud-based IaaS services.
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“We’re currently seeing this bifurcation between what we call cloud providers and cloud consumers,” begins Steve Henning, VMware’s head of applications product marketing. “You can think of the cloud providers as the traditional infrastructure operations teams, managing the deployment and performance of infrastructure forever.” Organizations have become accustomed to using these teams for managing applications in terms of the resources they consume within their physical data center infrastructure, he says.
Just the facts, ma’am
Translating that context into the cloud, he argues, doesn’t make sense. Public cloud infrastructure managers should have their own tools (he suggests vSphere Operations Manager) for managing resources on their own behalf. The only information the owner of an application should require is not how the components of the cloud are performing, asserts VMware, but rather how the application is performing.
“The cloud gives the opportunity to be able to empower applications owners to be able to manage applications at the business level, independently of the underlying infrastructure,” the product manager goes on. “What we’re trying to do is bring together a set of tools that can allow the application owners to be able to efficiently and effectively deploy their applications, [and] manage their performance in a closed-loop way that’s independent of the infrastructure.”
Companies that are customers of public clouds are expecting service levels that approximate the numbers hammered out in their SLAs, or the tiers that providers often “color” with bronze, silver, and gold. So VMware says, these customers need their IaaS-based apps to report those numbers in the same formats. Performance problems within an application can be rendered in the context of such a report, so that customers can address those problems to the extent that they can: for instance, by adding storage capacity, compute power, or memory.
Maintaining the abstraction
A forthcoming version of vCenter Operations Manager, Henning tells us, will give cloud infrastructure managers an application-centric view of performance, alongside its existing VM-centric view. That way, application performance teams (should IaaS providers have them) may be dispatched to address issues at the applications level, on behalf of their customers. This has been a highly requested feature.
“If I’m an applications owner, and I’m deploying on a public cloud, why would I want to manage the performance of the infrastructure that is being given to me by that provider?” asks Henning. “I am expecting a level of service from them, and I should be able to get a measurement of that service, but I’m certainly not going to sit there and try to diagnose infrastructure problems. If I’m not getting the level of service that I’m expecting, I’ll go to somebody else who can provide me that level of service.”
By contrast, an application owner wants to see data points like: the relative speed of transactions, the throughput level of middleware, the operations per second for specific segments of Java or other code. “These are things that I can manage myself, independently of the infrastructure. And as long as I’m getting the green light that it’s performing well, I don’t need to manage the CPU and utilization on a platform I don’t even own.”
“A company that comes with an approach that cloud and/or virtualization is another layer, is actually missing the ability to unlock the value that cloud computing brings,” adds Shahar Erez, VMware’s group product manager for data center intelligence. “Cloud computing is all about abstracting the layers that you don’t need to understand in order to achieve productivity and agility in the layers you own… Not knowing allows me to focus on providing more business value in the layer that I can make impact on.”
Shifting abstraction from people to services
Erez gave us an example of an IaaS customer who complained that whenever he needs to scale his Web site, he has to place a request of the IaaS provider’s infrastructure team, which winds its way through the help desk, and eventually acquires the necessary approval to provision a new VM with a new deployment of Apache Tomcat. The whole process could take a full three weeks. That’s not the fault of cloud architecture, though; with the right tools and with less arbitrary bureaucracy, the provisioning process could instead take minutes.
How does the owner of the application know for certain that the service level reported by his IaaS provider is accurate, and not just some Perl script with a green light on it? VMware’s Henning tells us that the app owner’s vFabric tools will be able to spot performance problems wherever they are, and identify independently (not just through some certificate from the service provider) whether the problem is addressable on his end. “If it’s not, but these guys are tellin’ me I’ve got a green light, I’m gonna go move somewhere else. I’m not going to deploy agents with my application that are going to measure the performance of the infrastructure. If you tell me it’s green, and it’s really red based on everything I can see in my application performance management suite, that’s looking at it at the business level, I’ll go somewhere else.”
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Basic Disaster Recovery Practices
Oct 20th
While you may or may not take stock in the effects of global warming, one thing has been made abundantly clear in recent years: when nature strikes, practically nothing can withstand it. The best thing to do, of course, is prepare for the worst. As unsavory as that might sound, it’s critical to get a plan together before the worst does happen.
It is important to understand something right away: disaster recovery may not mean you will be able to recover everything right away. So the first thing to do is establish a prioritization plan that answers this one question: what do you absolutely need to keep your business going?
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Assigning priority like this is key, because even if you have diligently saved every scrap of data and safely stored it off-site, just like all the disaster recovery specs tell you, you simply may not have enough computing and storage capacity to run that software and data right away.
Brian Proffitt is a veteran technology journalist, analyst, and author with experience in a variety of technologies, including cloud, virtualization, and consumer devices. Follow him on Twitter @TheTechScribe and Google+ at +Brian Proffitt.
So, what you need to do in your disaster recovery plan is determine the absolute minimum in applications, data, and hardware resources you will need to keep your business running. For example, you will probably need your customer database and all of your front-facing applications… but will you really need HR’s database right away? Or your development systems?
After you determine what needs to be started first, keep going on the list, figuring out which systems will be re-activated and in what order.
Such prioritization should also be applied to your data. What data needs mirrored or backed up in near real time? What needs just hourly or even daily backups? Get your data strategy in order and it will greatly smooth out your recovery process.
Virtualization will also mitigate the resource problem. If your systems are virtualized, they can be brought back online much more quickly and efficiently in a virtual datacenter. Virtual servers also have the advantage of being moved out of harm’s way, if you have enough time to prepare for a disaster, such as a flood or hurricane.
A disaster is just that; a disaster, and as much as you might want it, you will not be able to turn-key your systems back on the next day. Be realistic in your objectives, because even the best recovery periods can take time.
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Basic SEO for Facebook Fan Pages
Sep 20th
Many have tried, and failed, to write a good post about how to SEO a Facebook fan page.
For example, optimizing the filename of your profile picture is one popular piece of advice that doesn’t really matter, considering Facebook just renam…
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Internet and Websites : SEO services: the basic foundation for success of … – Prudent Press Agency (press release)
Aug 21st
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Internet and Websites : SEO services: the basic foundation for success of …
Prudent Press Agency (press release) (Prudent Press Agency) SEO services are the foundation for success of online business. Therefore you should know the importance of SEO services. For all the Internet businessmen, using SEO services is extremely important and the need of hour. … Get favorable SEO services by Webdhoom |
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SEO services: the basic foundation for success of online business – AddPR.com (press release)
Aug 19th
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SEO services: the basic foundation for success of online business
AddPR.com (press release) SEO services are the foundation for success of online business. Therefore you should know the importance of SEO services. For all the Internet businessmen, using SEO services is extremely important a SEO services are the foundation for success of … |
View full post on SEO – Google News
A Guide To Creating A Massive Impact With Basic Reporting
Aug 12th
Google Analytics provides the opportunity to create sophisticated advanced segments and fancy custom reports in such a way it all perfectly fits your needs. Although I really love all these self-made reports, Google Analytics also contains around 80 or more standard reports. Not every report is…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
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Applying Basic SEO Correctly Can Save You From These Mistakes – Secaucus New Jersey News
Aug 8th
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Applying Basic SEO Correctly Can Save You From These Mistakes
Secaucus New Jersey News An easy way to help you rank your sites and avoid some of the common pitfalls would be to make use of the most common SEO mistakes often made by marketers. Don't make the mistake of wasting your time submitting your site to hundreds of search engines … Bullseye Media Ranked #1 eCommerce SEO Company in the UK Key2seo.com A Complete Shop Of SEO Services For Website Owners Netleadz launches Travel SEO Surgery |
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Ecommerce Dropship Business Tips: Basic SEO Checklist – Drop Ship (press release) (blog)
Jun 10th
 Drop Ship (press release) (blog) |
Ecommerce Dropship Business Tips: Basic SEO Checklist
Drop Ship (press release) (blog) If you have a dropship business or other ecommerce enterprise, you probably understand the importance of SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, in making your online venture a success. SEO is easy for the experts, and while it isn't exactly rocket science … Online Marketing Executive – London SEO Junkies at the Online Marketing Show, London |
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