Orchestrations

XM drops Hearts of Space (HOS)

2010-06-05T00:21:00.000-07:00

I recognize that XM needs to find a “path to cash” but was deeply saddened to hear they’ve dropped Hearts of Space HOS. Help create a more peaceful world. Subscribe to HOS at www.hos.com.

Microsoft Cloud Computing - Windows Azure Platform

2010-04-28T22:32:00.001-07:00

David Chou on Azure Cloud Architecture

Microsoft Cloud Computing - Windows Azure Platform

View more presentations from David Chou.

The BUsiness of Windows Azure Platform

2010-04-28T22:29:00.001-07:00

Dan Moore on the Azure Cloud

The BUsiness of Windows Azure Platform

View more presentations from Dan Moore.

Cassandra nosql eu 2010

2010-04-28T22:21:00.001-07:00

Jon Ellis on Cassandra

Cassandra nosql eu 2010

View more presentations from jbellis.

Architecting for the Cloud: Best Practices

2010-04-28T22:17:00.001-07:00

Cloud design thoughts from Jinesh Varia of AWS

Architecting for the Cloud: Best Practices

View more presentations from Amazon Web Services.

DOJ supports the AP News Registry

2010-04-02T13:21:00.001-07:00

April 1, 2010: The US Department of Justice supports the AP's News Registry. A milestone in improving how news content is distributed and licensed on the Internet.

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/April/10-at-358.html

What the new Health Care Legislation will mean

2010-03-27T09:57:00.000-07:00

There's a blend of enthusiasm, uncertainty and concern out there surrounding the landmark health care legislation passed March 21, 2010. The impact on quality of care? Are the costs and financing/offset projections realistic? Will I really be able to keep my existing plan? Impact on Medicare?

The Associated Press has put together an interactive piece that may help to understand the new Health Care legislation.

Make sure to click on each of the five feature areas across the top – Home; Implementation; My Status; Cost and Health Care History.

I found especially well done is the Health Care History time-line.

The Economist Special Report - "Data, data everywhere"

2010-03-19T09:15:00.000-07:00

The Economist has released a great read - a special report on data and information titled, "Data, data everywhere".

The report explores topics including the massive growth of both commercial and personal data, how that data is being monetized, how it's transforming the relationship between producers and consumers, the impact of data and information in how we govern, and important considerations around privacy in a more transparent information ethos.

Audio discussion with the author is here.

Articles in the special Report:

Information has become superabundant

Too much data

Information is changing business

How Internet companies profit from online data

Governments are becoming more open about data

News ways of showing data

The uses of information about information

New regulations

McKinsey video on reshaping business education

2010-01-16T11:38:00.000-08:00

Great discussion on evolution in business education.

Blair Sheppard, dean of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, discusses how the expectations of MBA students are changing—and why the traditional MBA education needs to change as well.

JANUARY 2010
Source: McKinsey&Company Strategy Practice

Cloudera Intros Hadoop Management Tools - CIO.com - Business Technology Leadership

2009-10-02T06:51:00.001-07:00

Cloudera Intros Hadoop Management Tools - CIO.com - Business Technology Leadership

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The Future of Cloud Computing

2009-06-06T14:11:00.000-07:00

What will a future cloud computing ecosystem resemble?

The ability for a company to tap into “externally owned and operated” computing capacity “just in time” with “pay as you go” billing and “elastic scale” are key features of the growing alternative computing approach known loosely as “Cloud Computing”.

While Amazon, RackSpace, Terremark, GoGrid, and others have championed the initial wave of this emerging and disruptive Service used by enthusiasts and early adopters, in order for Cloud to actualize its potential as a going concern will require an evolution in shape and size - if not substance.

My sense is that the future of cloud computing will share common themes from the past. Ultimately, in the not-so-distant future, we will see major consolidation into a couple very large “Cloud Service Providers” or “Public Computing Infrastructures” addressing the scale, pricing, and security needs of the largest customer pools. However, it won’t be the Systems or Networking vendors (IBM, Cisco, HP, Dell, SUN) who build (or buy) this out end-to-end themselves, rather it will likely be one or more of the current “Carriers” (ATT, Verizon, or even a Cable company) who assemble and deliver. The systems vendors (and many innovative software companies adding in the Glue) will empower the Public Compute Provider with the technology building blocks and incremental sustaining innovations.

Two reasons why:

It’s a Service - Ultimately the business model is about running a utility service. Running a service requires an Operationally driven core mindset over the long haul -- not a Technology Development or Sales\Channel focus. This fundamentally requires operational processes and expertise currently more fully institutionalized within the Carrier and Utility’s DNA.

It requires mass scale – Competition, global-sourcing, automation, and the most fundamental economics of IT infrastructures will continue to drive prices and profit margins down to where only the largest can survive. Only the Carriers know how to deploy very large amounts of capital to generate consistent, profitable business at enormous scale. They also know how to leverage that ecosystem (customer base) for ancillary, higher-margin services. And because the building blocks will be architected from many commodity inputs and innovative software “projects” the Carrier will be well suited to command the best acquisition arrangements for these inputs to meet the more practical needs of the mainstream market (Security, Cost, and Service Level).

Time frame?

I expect that much of this will begin to unfold over the next 12 – 18 months as the next major wave of business investments pick up.

In Memoriam: David Carradine

2009-06-05T10:42:00.000-07:00

"There's an alternative. There's always a third way, and it's not a combination of the other two ways. It's a different way.”

We'll miss you Grasshopper.

EMC offers to purchase Data Domain for $1.8B in cash

2009-06-03T05:11:00.000-07:00

It probably feels pretty good to be sitting over at Data Domain (NASDAQ:DDUP) right now.

EMC (NYSE:EMC) just announced a $30/share (approx $1.8B) cash acquisition offer representing a 20% premium over the NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) offer of late May. Cha-ching! But will Data Domain take the higher offer? .... and what would a future as part of EMC look like?

Or, does the price for NetApp simply go up? With its in-line deduplication, Data Domain is considered an innovative leader and pioneer in the rapid growth disk-based backup and archive industry. Clearly, their product portfolio would complement either EMC or NetApp. But each have their unique characteristics. EMC comes with acquisition experience and a broad product portfolio across the information life cycle (including an existing deduplication acquisition, Avamar, in 2006). NetApp has grown from its NAS beginnings to a storage industry leader and lauded for its flexible "Data ONTAP" architecture.

It will be interesting to see how this unfolds.

Data Domain’s recent financial highlights:

- 2008 Revenue reached $274MM, more than double 2007’s $124MM
- 2008 Net Income $21.6MM (7.8%)
- Total Assets of $400MM, Total Equity $290MM (q1 09)
- Q1 09 Revenue $79MM -- Projected $375MM for 2009.
- Q1 09 Cash from Operations $11MM

Microsoft Virtualization Support for SQL Server

2009-05-27T12:55:00.000-07:00

Virtualization has been a tremendous enabler in helping organizations improve recovery readiness within their business critical systems. Many of these mission-critical backend systems run Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, MySQL, and PostgreSQL and are designed for "always on" availability. I previously provided some context for the momentum driving server virtualization projects on KTG's blog site blog.kennedytechgroup.com.

Although Microsoft has provided clustering as part of the Enterprise version of their server software since the late 1990s (originally dubbed "Wolfpack" in Windows NT 4.0), they've been slow to provide full support for virtualized deployments through CSS (Microsoft Customer Service and Support).

Just recently, Microsoft provided updates to their policy for virtualization support for SQL Server Clustering, writing on their official blog for CSS SQL Support.

As reported, virtualization is now supported for SQL 2005 and SQL 2008 guests provided the hardware virtualization vendor (the hypervisor) meets the requirements outlined in the The Microsoft Support Policy for Windows Server 2008 Failover Clusters (MSKB943984).

Validated products are listed on the Windows Server Virtualization Validation Program website.

Bob Ward of Microsoft writes:

Guest Failover Clustering is supported for SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008 in a virtual machine for Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008, and SVVP certified configurations provided both of the following requirements are met:

1. The Operating System running in the virtual machine (the “Guest Operating System”) is Windows Server 2008 or higher

2. The virtualization environment meets the requirements of Windows 2008 Failover Clustering as documented at The Microsoft Support Policy for Windows Server 2008 Failover Clusters

Additonal information:

Support policy for Microsoft SQL Server products that are running in a hardware virtualization environment: http://support.microsoft.com/?id=956893

Support policy for Microsoft software running in non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/897615

Routine updates are provided on the Microsoft Customer Service and Support (CSS) SQL Support blog.

Enable SSH on VMware ESX 3i

2009-05-18T11:13:00.000-07:00

Like its venerable older brother ESX, ESX 3i verison 3.5 installs with SSH disabled by default. You may wish to enable this to troubleshoot various issues, but note that ESXi lacks many of the commands/programs available within ESX (including the simple, lightweight "Nano" text editor and sshd_config.

Perform the following steps to enable SSH:

From the console press ALT-F1
Type "unsupported" and press ENTER (note the characters will not be "echoed" on the screen). This is "tech support mode" oulined in VMware KB#1003677.
Enter the root password
Using the text editor vi enter the following command: vi /etc/inetd.conf
Search for the line starting #SSH settings
Remove the # from the SSH row
Save and exit the config by using :wq!
Type: ps grep inetd on the console
Send a hangup signal by using the following command: kill -s HUP PID (process ID)

You can now SSH to your 3i server.

Thanks for any feedback and updates!

Enable SSH on ESXi, Enable SSH on 3i

An error occurred during configuration of the HA agent of the host

2009-05-18T10:37:00.000-07:00

You may receive this error when adding ESXi hosts to an HA cluster.

This issue and the solution are more fully explained at VMware KB#1004177 "ESXi 3 hosts that do not have swap enabled cannot be added to a VMware High Availability (HA) cluster"

Excerpts from KB article here:

“Starting with VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 1, only ESX Server 3i systems with swap enabled can be added to an HA cluster. ESX Server 3i systems with swap not enabled cannot be added to HA clusters, and display an error message similar to the following:

An error occurred during configuration of the HA agent of the host.

The Tasks & Events page of such a ESXi 3 Server system describes the error with a description similar to the following:

HA agent has an error : Host in HA Cluster must have userworld swap enabled

To enable swap on your ESXi 3 host system:
1. On the VirtualCenter Server, select the ESXi 3 Server host.
2. Click the Configuration tab.
3. Click Advanced Settings.
4. Choose ScratchConfig.
Configure ScratchConfig.ConfiguredScratchLocation to a valid directory with sufficient space (1GB) to hold the userworld swap file. The userworld swap can be configured on local storage or shared storage.
Note: Each swapfile needs a unique name across all ESX hosts.For example, /vmfs/volumes/.
6. Select the ScratchConfig.ConfiguredSwapState option.
7. Click OK.
8. Reboot the ESX Server 3i system.
After you have enabled swap on the ESXi 3 host system, you can add the host to a VMware HA cluster.
“

Additional information:

This has been noted up through ESXi 3.5 Update 4.

Additional ESXi issues with HA:

Most issues involve problems with DNS configuration. Make sure you have a host entry created in your DNS infrastructure for each ESXi server and the VC server and ensure that each ESXi host can resolve itself AND the Virtual Center (VC) server. The VC server should also be able to properly resolve each ESXi host.

ESXi Update 4 Release Notes:
http://www.vmware.com/support/vi3/doc/vi3_esx3i_i_35u4_rel_notes.html

Please share your comments below. Appreciate any feedback and updates!