VDI PERFORMANCE STILL FALLS SHORT OF PCS : Home EVERYTHING BUT THE KITCHEN SINK Editor’s Letter BRIAN MADDEN: THE TRANS- MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE Currents FORMATION OF Mi AN IT GUY Brian Madden: The Trans- BOB PLANKERS: formation of IT’LL ALL BE MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE: CREATING TOMORROW’S DATA CENTERS DATA TOMORROW’S CREATING MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE: an IT Guy SOFTWARE SOON

Bob Plankers: It’ll All Be Software Soon

Steve Gunderson: From the Front Lines COMPUTING:

Cloud IF YOU CAN’T Computing: If You Can‘tBEAT Beat ’EM, ‘Em, JoinJOI ‘Em N ’EM VDI IT teams are falling Performance Still Fallsbehind in the cloud adoption Short ofgame—and PCs that’s bad

Microsoft:for business. Everything But the Kitchen Sink

Jonathan Eunice: Are We There Yet?

OCT. 2012

MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • OCTOBER 2012 1 Editor’s Letter The Times They Are a Changin’

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Editor’s Letter By Alex Barrett existing assets? How do I manage these Editor in Chief off-site resources? What new skill sets do I Currents need? How secure is the cloud, really? Will it cost more or less than the old way of doing Brian Madden: business? What’s my exit strategy if these The Trans- WELCOME TO Modern Infrastructure. This new computing approaches are a miserable formation of an IT Guy monthly e-zine is designed to help savvy IT failure? professionals build enterprise data centers, It is all tantalizing but terrifying, and Bob Plankers: while keeping an eye on shifts in trends like Modern Infrastructure’s goal is to help IT It’ll All Be and consumerization. make informed, reasoned decisions about Software Soon What’s modern about Modern Infrastruc- cloud strategy. ture? As a tech journalist who’s been talking At the same time, enterprise IT is on a Steve Gunderson: From the Front to IT pros for years, I can’t help but notice collision course with another key “threat”: Lines that lately IT has started doing things differ- end users. Helping organizations survive— ently and faces new questions. and thrive—in this era of consumerization, Cloud Traditionally, the role of enterprise tech- Modern Infrastructure has enlisted end-user Computing: If nology publications has been to support IT computing experts like Brian Madden to You Can‘t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em pros as they make infrastructure purchasing weigh in with a regular column that lays out decisions—decisions about which types of what IT needs to do to meet the needs of VDI servers, operating systems, networks and today’s end users. Performance storage are best suited to support an orga- Infrastructure, meanwhile, is still infra- Still Falls Short of PCs nization’s workloads. But increasingly, IT structure, forever complex and evolving. As professionals are grappling with another such, Modern Infrastructure also hopes to

Microsoft: kind of decision: What infrastructure can help IT answer tough technical questions Everything I get away with not purchasing? We need a about platform selection, maximizing per- But the magazine that reflects this new world order. formance, minimizing management head- Kitchen Sink As cloud computing becomes more aches and ensuring optimal availability. pervasive and mature, I see IT pros who are The answers to the questions Modern Jonathan Eunice: Are evaluating their every move through the Infrastructure seeks to answer don’t lend We There filter of cloud computing. Rather than buy themselves to a 140-character tweet or Yet? a new server or make a new hire, they’re even an online forum. The tough questions asking, “Can I defray capital expenditures never do. These questions warrant serious and maintain existing staff levels by out- thought and research, expressed in reported sourcing some portion of my infrastructure features, columns and news analysis penned and operations?” by leading editors and IT experts. We hope Before IT can say yes to cloud, there are Modern Infrastructure provides value, and countless other questions: How will this let us know how you think we’re doing. new, virtual infrastructure jibe with my Welcome, and thanks! n

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Currents{ all the news you can use about modern infrastructure } Editor’s Letter

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Brian Madden: The Trans- formation of an IT Guy ONE ON ONE Which of the cloud players might win Bob Plankers: the battle for dominance? It’ll All Be The Cloud Standards You can complain about whether Amazon or Software Soon War Is On VMware is the right model, but we can say with great assurance that they both dom- Steve Gunderson: From the Front AS CLOUD COMPUTING lurches toward greater inate their respective parts of the market, Lines maturity, issues such as common standards and that is driving a certain amount of cus- and interoperability remain hurdles—even tomer perceptions. Cloud for users encouraged by the cloud’s promise Still, some people feel uncomfortable Computing: If of better infrastructure management and with [this] dominance … and they have to You Can‘t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em reduced costs. make a case for there being other standards, In this One on One interview, we sat platforms and APIs. But with 90% of public VDI down with Randy Bias, co-founder and chief cloud capacity being on Amazon and 90% Performance technology officer ofCloudscaling , an open of enterprise virtualization clouds being Still Falls Short of PCs source cloud infrastructure provider, to talk on VMware, it’s hard for me to believe that about the lack of standards among cloud another standard is going to come out and

Microsoft: providers and how today’s patchwork will clock those—that just doesn’t make sense. Everything ultimately give way to a more uniform cloud But the universe. Kitchen Sink Is it a problem that public and private cloud providers’ APIs haven’t been Jonathan Eunice: Are Many major cloud providers have compatible with one another? We There application programming interfaces that There are two different architectural ap- Yet? aren’t compatible with others’ APIs. proaches. The VMware pattern is what we Will this change? call enterprise virtualization clouds, which What I’ve seen is that infrastructure that is is the ability to take existing enterprise important to the business ultimately drives stovepipes—all the little silos of different toward standards and APIs and homogene- hardware, software and network and storage ity, simply because without those things, it’s architectures—and just recreating them and difficult to create a plethora of standards and virtualizing them. But [with that approach], APIs higher up the stack. you don’t get the economies of scale.

MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • OCTOBER 2012 3 Currents

So this kind of cloud has been driven by and it’s not trying to manage lots of stove- the need for greater server consolidation, pipes but to make the applications reflect greater utilization rates. the underlying infrastructure. The Amazon approach is more reminis- Home cent of what the giants have been doing. Instead of building stovepipes, they How do these cloud models differ Editor’s Letter build layer cakes, where they have a whole in practical terms? stack of services that support each other, There is a very big difference in the types of Currents from the concrete to the software. And then applications and workloads supported on at the software layer, they have a whole each. Brian Madden: bunch of applications that leverage that VMware customers have database servers The Trans- whole stack. We refer to this as an elastic like Oracle that are old and don’t have any formation of an IT Guy infrastructure cloud. It caters to greater scal- basic replication; they rely on the infrastruc- ability for the apps and the infrastructure, ture to have high amounts of availability and Bob Plankers: It’ll All Be Software Soon

Steve Gunderson: From the Front Lines OVERHEARD | VMworld 2012 Edition

Cloud Computing: If You Can‘t Beat “We all owe a round of applause to Hyper-V 2012, “Software-defined data ‘Em, Join ‘Em because I think the competition in this space is really the centers are great, but we reason that we’re starting to see some licensing reform from don’t know what we don’t VMware.” know yet.” VDI Performance —DAN BRINKMANN, solutions architect at Lewan & Associates, —KEITH NORBIE, VP at Nexus, Still Falls on VMware’s eliminating vRAM licensing a Stratos company, Short of PCs responding to Maritz’s keynote

Microsoft: Everything “It’s not a post-PC world. But the The PC is alive and “Yes, this is an admission Kitchen Sink will be for a long time. that we made things overly It’s a multi-device complex. Mea culpa.” Jonathan world.” —Outgoing VMware CEO “There are technical things Eunice: Are —From VMware CTO PAUL MARITZ on the company’s I want to learn, but a lot of We There STEVE HERROD’s decision to roll back its vRAM it is, how do you sell this to Yet? keynote speech licensing policy the business, how do you get them to want it as opposed to you telling them they need to use this—on the desktop “There’s no place like 127.0.0.1.” side? From the server side, I —Spotted on an attendee’s T-shirt think they get it.” —JAKE PAWLAK, IT architect at CNO Financial, talking about why he attended VMworld

MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • OCTOBER 2012 4 Currents

that the application is designed to assume up and deliver an Amazon equivalent that is that the infrastructure never goes down. more than just an API. We see a very different [experience] for customers that Home adopt Amazon, like What role, if any, does open source Netflix, and they play in cloud standards? Editor’s Letter are redesigning With this particular disruption, open source, their applications open standards are leading the charge. If Currents for the underlying you look at a lot of those guys who are really assumption that big—the and Facebooks—all of their Brian Madden: servers always go systems largely use open source—yes, for The Trans- down, and it’s just cost economics, but in many ways, it’s a con- formation of an IT Guy RANDY a question of when. trol-your-own-destiny thing. BIAS So the question is, Simultaneously, you’re starting to see a Bob Plankers: how do you design backlash among enterprises that have been It’ll All Be your application to handle that? beholden to hardware and software vendors Software Soon There is a sea change of perception, where and are starting to get sick of being locked people now see the value of being able to into these vendors and then getting milked. Steve Gunderson: From the Front scale applications horizontally, as the large Enterprises are starting to see that open Lines platforms like Facebook have done. source is at a maturity level where they can embrace it. Cloud Computing: If Will companies coalesce around a You Can‘t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em common standard? How is the cloud different from its There is some amount of coalescing already. predecessors? VDI But customers are all over the place, frankly; It’s pretty much disrupting the de facto Performance it’s still early days. And there is a disconnect standard: the client/server and enterprise Still Falls Short of PCs between the understanding of these two computing paradigm, which displaced the fundamentally different patterns. Custom- mainframe paradigm.

Microsoft: ers think they are recreating the Amazon We’ve gone from a gigantic single iron Everything environment when they create a VMware that everybody logs in to that runs But the environment that allows you to turn on VMs one or a handful of applications to some- Kitchen Sink on demand—except that it doesn’t provide thing that is more distributed, with shared the scale, the elasticity. And they find out Jonathan responsibility between IT staff who run Eunice: Are that it’s not good enough for their applica- centralized servers and users running We There tion developers to be successful internally, laptops or desktops, to an even more fully Yet? who then continue to go to Amazon. People distributed model that is always on. will continue to fail and, through the fail- —LAUREN HORWITZ ures, learn the hard way.

The thing that we’re really missing is a FOR MORE on standards and the cloud, check out set of solution providers that can package SearchCloudComputing.com.

“Cloud is pretty much disrupting the de facto standard.”

MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • OCTOBER 2012 5 Currents

NEWS IN REVIEW branching into networking and storage virtualization as they begin to catch up on the server side. Virtualization Vendors Microsoft began to ship Windows Server Home Move Beyond the Server 2012 with version 3.0 of Hyper-V in Septem- ber; once System Center 2012 Service Pack Editor’s Letter AS FEATURE GAPS close between competitors 1 is released to manufacturers, this version in the server virtualization market, ven- of Hyper-V will boast a number of advanced Currents dors look to pull parts of the infrastructure features. These include scalability upgrades beyond server CPU and memory under their for virtual machines, hosts and clusters; Brian Madden: control, while the IT community remains redesigned live migration; and support for The Trans- in wait-and-see mode about how it will all extensible virtual switches. formation of an IT Guy come together. VMware Inc. has begun to refer to this Bob Plankers: infrastructure land grab as the What took days of work It’ll All Be software-defined data center, a concept that from networking’s “high Software Soon took center stage at its VMworld conference in San Francisco in late August. priests” should now Steve Gunderson: In the software-defined data center, “all From the Front take a click of a mouse. Lines infrastructure is virtualized and delivered , and automation is entirely con- Cloud trolled by software,” according to VMware Microsoft will also introduce its own Computing: If execs in keynote speeches at the show. protocol for network virtualization, dubbed You Can‘t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em VMware’s initial focus is on virtual Network Virtualization using Generic networks, under its Virtual Extensible Routing Encapsulation (NVGRE), which, VDI LAN (VXLAN) tunneling protocol and the like VXLAN, can be used to overcome VLAN Performance Network Virtualization Platform (NVP) scalability limitations. Still Falls Short of PCs it acquired with Nicira Inc. in late July for Elsewhere, Red Hat Inc. is focused on $1.26 billion. offering software-defined storage—scale-out

Microsoft: VXLAN tunnels Layer 2 traffic over Layer NAS based on commodity server hardware— Everything 3, the goal of which is to extend virtual with its Red Hat Storage product, newly But the networks beyond traditional subnet bound- integrated into Red Hat Enterprise Virtual- Kitchen Sink aries. Nicira’s platform creates separate ization (RHEV) 3.1, which is out in beta. control and data planes in a data center Other storage features include stor- Jonathan Eunice: Are network, with the goal of easier deployment age live migration as well as the ability to We There of network services. hot-plug and -unplug disks and create live Yet? What previously took days or weeks of snapshots of virtual machines from a guest work from networking’s “high priests” at a agent capable of quiescing the file system. company should now take a click of a mouse New networking features due in RHEV 3.1 when setting up virtual networks, said out- include the ability to designate different going VMware CEO Paul Maritz, who spoke networks for management, storage and VM at a press conference at VMworld. traffic, UI support for Cisco’s UCS, and the Meanwhile, VMware’s server virtualiza- ability to hot plug and unplug NICs. tion competitors share similar ideas about Finally, Citrix Systems Inc. had remained

MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • OCTOBER 2012 6 Currents

so quiet on the XenServer front that spec- Heppner, a senior manager of virtualization ulation was beginning to crop up about the engineering for a large pharmaceutical com- future of the product—until mid-July, when pany based in the Northeast. the company held a webinar divulging its Experts say they would like to see VM- Home roadmap for XenServer’s next two years. ware articulate a more complete vision for While not focused on software-defined the software-defined data center. Editor’s Letter networking or storage per se, further re- The definition given by VMware in its leases of XenServer will focus on optimizing keynotes “doesn’t go far enough,” said Currents integrations with network and storage in- Edward Haletky, CEO of The Virtualization frastructure by breaking up the ’s Practice LLC. “That’s vCloud with today’s Brian Madden: “domain zero” into its component parts in automation. It doesn’t show me a vision The Trans- order to streamline services and improve of what [the software-defined data center] formation of an IT Guy I/O performance. could or should be.” Haletky sees the endgame for software- Bob Plankers: defined data centers as the ability to trans- It’ll All Be SIZING UP “SOFTWARE DEFINED” late a request from a business, such as, “I Software Soon IT pros attending VMworld said they are need to sell a million copies of a new product taking a cautiously optimistic approach to in the next six months,” into the data center Steve Gunderson: From the Front VMware’s software-defined data center. capacity, security and compliance features Lines “It would be nice to holistically add net- required to meet that demand, he said. working and storage as you add servers to- In other words, imagine being able to say, Cloud day, but it’s going to take a while before that “‘Siri, I need a data center,’” Haletky said. Computing: If vision comes to fruition,” predicted Joachim —BETH PARISEAU You Can‘t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em

VDI Performance Still Falls Short of PCs READER SNAPSHOT | Cloud Applications

Microsoft: D Can deploying critical apps in the cloud help prevent system downtime? Everything But the Kitchen Sink YES: 82%

Jonathan NO: 18% Eunice: Are We There “It’s just too risky to rely on Yet? D Does your organization support the use of ? another organization to keep your files secure. You’re YES: 33% better off developing an in-house solution—even if it utilizes cloud technology, at WE OFFER AN ALTERNATIVE: 11% least you’re in control.” —SearchConsumerization.com reader NO: 56%

MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • OCTOBER 2012 7 Currents

SUMMING IT UP | Cloud Services D Which of these external cloud services do you plan to use in 2012?

Home 80%

Editor’s Letter Half of surveyed IT managers will use this year, compared with 31% 60% Currents who will use Infrastructure as a Service.

Brian Madden: The Trans- 40% formation of an IT Guy

Bob Plankers: 20% It’ll All Be Software Soon

Steve Gunderson: 0% From the Front Lines Software as Storage as Infrastructure Platform as Database as a Service as a Service a Service a Service a Service

Cloud N=600 IT PROFESSIONALS; SOURCE: “2012 IT PRIORITIES SURVEY,” TECHTARGET INC., NOVEMBER 2011 Computing: If You Can‘t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em

VDI D Which of these infrastructure projects will your company implement, on some level, in 2012? Performance Still Falls Short of PCs 80%

Microsoft: Forty percent more IT managers Everything are devoting time to server virtualization 60% But the than to moving into private clouds. Kitchen Sink

Jonathan Eunice: Are 40% We There Yet?

20%

0% Server Disaster Data center Create Windows Server virtualization recovery consolidation private cloud upgrade

N = 1,272 IT PROFESSIONALS; SOURCE: “2012 IT PRIORITIES SURVEY,” TECHTARGET INC., NOVEMBER 2011

MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • OCTOBER 2012 8 Currents

COUNTDOWN its support provider, according to Search VirtualDataCentre.co.UK. Pulling Back the Curtain Home on Vendor-Speak 3 MICROSOFT Microsoft introduced a new Windows 8 Editor’s Letter AS A TECHNOLOGIST, you parse the vendor Metro-style touch interface that works on doublespeak, read the fine print and try to all form factors and allows end users to Currents separate the wheat from the chaff on over- choose which input method to use when. blown claims about a technology’s capabili- “This is what we mean when we say Win- Brian Madden: ties. It’s no surprise that vendors sometimes dows 8 provides a no-compromise experi- The Trans- over-promise and under-deliver. ence,” the company said. formation of an IT Guy In this edition of Countdown, we high- But Metro certainly requires users to light some recent gems that demonstrate compromise their familiar, and user-friend- Bob Plankers: vendors’ marketing hype and missteps. ly, Windows look and feel, which may affect It’ll All Be productivity and desktop security, according Software Soon to SearchEnterpriseDesktop.com. 1 ORACLE Steve Gunderson: From the Front If you haven’t already gotten word, Oracle Lines Corp.’s latest claim is that its cloud comput- 4 VMWARE INC. ing platform is a “subscription-based (SaaS) VMware Inc. claims that rival Microsoft’s Cloud deployment model with easy, predictable Hyper-V server virtualization offering isn’t Computing: If pricing.” cheaper than its vSphere product, while You Can‘t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em But Oracle’s cloud will likely cost more Microsoft asserts that VMware is far more than the usual pay-as-you-go cloud plans, expensive. So which is it? VDI according to SearchCloudComputing.com, Unfortunately for those shopping for Performance and so far, information about availability virtual products, there is no black-and- Still Falls Short of PCs and features seems to be anything but easy white answer. In the recent report “VMware to follow. vSphere vs. Microsoft Hyper-V: Which Is

Microsoft: Cheaper?” SearchServerVirtualization.com Everything found that many factors play into the true But the CITRIX SYSTEMS INC. cost of a virtualization environment. It’s a Kitchen Sink 2 After IT pros expressed concerns over complicated formula, but we’ll likely hear Citrix Systems Inc.’s decision to move all plenty more claims of cost-effectiveness Jonathan Eunice: Are versions of XenApp before version 6.5 from the leading virtualization vendors. We There to end-of-life status by July 2013, Citrix Yet? lengthened the XenApp lifecycle through the Extended Support Program, a technical 5 HEWLETT-PACKARD CO. support offering. Hewlett-Packard Co.’s service-level agree- While it’s true that Citrix extended Xe- ment (SLA) offers 99.95% availability and nApp support, the price is exorbitantly high. states that if it does not meet this commit- One large enterprise in Europe with 2,500 ment, it will apply a service credit to your XenApp platinum seats was given an approx- account. imate quote of $121,000 per six months by Beware the financial promises of the SLA.

MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • OCTOBER 2012 9 Currents

HP and other cloud vendors promise be- use computing resources from independent tween 99.95% and 99.9% of uptime monthly, providers. Businesses would pay only for the but pay out on an SLA only if the number IT resources they actually used on a month- dips far below those levels on several occa- ly basis—much like electricity or any other Home sions. And, the way HP calculates availabili- utility. ty isn’t exactly straightforward. In fact, some Back then, the problem was no one knew Editor’s Letter experts think that cloud SLAs are nothing what cloud computing actually was, or how more than a cheap marketing ploy. to deliver it to users. Currents —ADAM HUGHES Then the Internet burst onto the scene and flooded the marketplace with cheap, Brian Madden: plentiful bandwidth. Web browsers provided The Trans- a platform-independent means to deliver formation of an IT Guy applications, and virtualization gave service EXPLAINED providers the abstraction layer and dyna- Bob Plankers: mism necessary to build a multi-tenant IT It’ll All Be utility. That’s when the cloud started taking Software Soon Anything as a Service shape, and service providers found ways to CLOUD COMPUTING HAS spawned a new lexi- cater to businesses eager to outsource at Steve Gunderson: From the Front con, with terms cropping up at a breakneck least parts of their complex and costly data Lines pace. Just consider cloud bursting, cloudware centers. and cloud-oriented architecture. Cloud One of the latest terms to emerge is XaaS, Computing: If which can mean Anything as a Service or You Can‘t Beat XaaS is not a specific ‘Em, Join ‘Em Everything as a Service, depending on whom you ask. XaaS is not a specific service model, service model, but it VDI but it recognizes the various service models recognizes the various Performance that make up the public and private cloud Still Falls service models that Short of PCs computing industry. The cloud industry has spawned the evo- make up the public and Microsoft: lution of various Web-based service models, Everything including Software as a Service (SaaS), Plat- private cloud computing But the form as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure Kitchen Sink industry. as a Service (IaaS)—collectively known as the SPI model. Other services include Stor- Jonathan Eunice: Are age as a Service (SaaS), Communications as a Cloud’s service models today are subdi- We There Service (CaaS), (NaaS) viding and becoming more granular (such Yet? and even Monitoring as a Service (MaaS). as Identity Management as a Service) so the XaaS and cloud computing have been a notion of XaaS is constantly being refined. long time coming. The idea of cloud com- Given this alphabet soup of acronyms, XaaS puting has been around for decades, even has appeared as an umbrella term that cov- though it wasn’t always called that. Technol- ers any (or every) service a company could ogists have long yearned for a world where provide via the Web. For all practical purpos- rather than building, maintaining and staff- es, XaaS is simply another term for public ing a corporate data center, a business would and private cloud services. —STEPHEN J. BIGELOW

MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • OCTOBER 2012 10 End-User Advocate The Transformation of an IT Guy

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Editor’s Letter By Brian Madden local IT guy. Pete asked if I had a laptop, and I answered that I did and pulled it out of my Currents backpack. When Pete saw that it was a Mac, he responded with an eye roll and a protract- Brian Madden: ed sound that I would describe as a combina- The Trans- I’VE BEEN AN IT guy my whole career, most tion of a sigh and a groan. formation of an IT Guy of it focusing on end-user computing via In the subsequent four years, I’ve dealt technologies like SMS, terminal services and with the triumph of finding amazing tech- Bob Plankers: VDI. Along the way, I’ve enjoyed the stereo- nologies like Dropbox, followed by the It’ll All Be types of end-user naïveté. I’d be the first to agony of learning that our IT department Software Soon joke about how many users it takes to screw has blocked them. I’ve been the guy who in a light bulb, RTFM errors and the “short has experimented with as many third-party Steve Gunderson: From the Front between the keyboard and the floor.” But cloud-based services as I can just because Lines four years ago, all that changed. I don’t like logging into the VPN. And I’ve For a decade of my career, I worked on the challenged our IT management to explain Cloud IT side of the business, either directly in an what they mean when they say that Gmail Computing: If IT department or as a consultant to one. But isn’t secure—while in the meantime, our You Can‘t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em in November of 2008, TechTarget (the pub- West Coast Exchange server is in a closet, lisher of this magazine) acquired my small behind a door that doesn’t close completely VDI company. due to the exhaust duct from the portable Performance While my day job didn’t change—I was air conditioner that was hastily installed one Still Falls Short of PCs still responsible for writing and speaking weekend to deal with random freezes. about end-user computing—my role within Of course, I’m still writing about health

Microsoft: the company changed drastically. I went care networks that deploy VDI to ensure Everything from the guy who made every IT-relat- HIPAA compliance, only to be foiled by doc- But the ed decision in the company to one of 700 tors using iPads and Facebook. And I know Kitchen Sink employees overnight. At TechTarget, when I of IT professionals who have lost their jobs needed help, I was expected to call the help because they couldn’t “solve” the security Jonathan Eunice: Are desk. When I needed a new service or piece risks posed by creative end users. We There of equipment, I had to get approval from my How do we solve the balance of end-user Yet? manager or fill out a form on the intranet. desires and corporate IT needs? I’ll dig into that question in Modern Infrastructure every month—just as soon as I figure out how to FROM IT GUY TO ADVOCATE print this column. Now where did Pete go? n My first day on the job was my first day in “end-user land,” and it foreshadowed my BRIAN MADDEN is an opinionated, supertechnical, fiercely worst fears. I showed up at the office in San independent and consumeriza- Francisco and introduced myself to Pete, the tion expert. Write to him at [email protected].

MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • OCTOBER 2012 11 In the Mix It’ll All Be Software Soon

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Editor’s Letter By Bob Plankers is what separates one server vendor from another these days. Currents Putting hardware device functions in software is great for vendors. Commodity Brian Madden: hardware not only drives down costs but also The Trans- A FEW YEARS AGO, someone asked me what I makes it easy to update a device. Hardware formation of an IT Guy thought about the future of storage in the has bugs, too, just like software. When most data center. At the time, I quipped that we’d of the functionality of a device is implement- Bob Plankers: eventually just have giant piles of solid-state ed in software, a fix is just a firmware -up It’ll All Be memory and software would differentiate date away. With custom hardware, custom Software Soon vendors. Look around the data center today and Steve Gunderson: From the Front you see it happening, not only in storage I think it’s safe to say Lines but other areas as well. Custom ASICs in that software is truly network switches are being replaced by Cloud “merchant silicon”: a fancy name for com- the most interesting Computing: If modity processors from Intel and AMD. The You Can‘t Beat part of hardware now. ‘Em, Join ‘Em core features of servers among vendors are becoming indistinguishable. And the storage VDI arrays are really just Intel servers them- circuitry or custom ASICs, that task isn’t as Performance selves, often running Linux or embedded easy, and sometimes not even possible. Com- Still Falls Short of PCs Windows, with a lot of network interfaces modity hardware also allows a hardware and drives. developer to use pre-existing drivers, speed-

Microsoft: ing development cycles and reducing costs. Everything Less complex circuitry also leads to lower But the IT’S THE SOFTWARE, STUPID power consumption, which in turn leads to Kitchen Sink So what distinguishes one vendor from less heat and higher reliability. Everyone another? It’s software. Software is what likes that. Jonathan Eunice: Are implements incredibly fast, low-latency Given all that, I think it’s safe to say that We There networks on top of commodity processors as software is truly the most interesting part of Yet? exemplified by companies like Arista Net- hardware now. Since commodity hardware works. Intelligent software is what enables saves so much time and money, could we storage vendors to eschew expensive “enter- take it a step further and just eliminate all prise” solid-state disks in favor of inexpen- custom hardware itself, like that in a net- sive consumer-grade drives and still achieve work switch or storage controller? Vendors high reliability and performance. Software like Dell and HP do a great job of producing on management controllers (which are what is essentially inside storage arrays themselves small PCs bolted inside servers) and network switches anyhow. They also

MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • OCTOBER 2012 12 In the Mix

provide well-known monitoring interfaces replace proprietary parallel storage net- and all manner of hardware support. What works. We can also rely on the availability if the only thing that a traditional hardware features of a hypervisor to help us if there is vendor shipped was a software image? Can a problem. Home Once we let the server vendors do what they do best, we can refocus all the effort we Editor’s Letter What if all the tedious used to spend on hardware design and sup- work was handled port to problems like integration. What if, Currents when a server was provisioned, the storage by the infrastructure started replicating its data automatically? Brian Madden: so us humans could What if, when a server is decommissioned, The Trans- the load balancer and firewalls automatical- formation of an IT Guy work on the interesting ly removed the rules and closed the ports? problems instead? What if there were industry-standard appli- Bob Plankers: cation programming interfaces so that auto- It’ll All Be mation could occur no matter whose firewall Software Soon we rely on the server vendors, and perhaps a or storage was in use? What if all the tedious, hypervisor on top, to supply the rest? error-prone, repetitive work was handled Steve Gunderson: From the Front It turns out that the answer is “Absolute- by the infrastructure, so us humans could Lines ly.” We can implement a network switch work on the hard and interesting problems entirely with software, with nearly every instead? Cloud feature as the hardware equivalent. We can That’s a data center future I look forward Computing: If implement a firewall, a load balancer or an to, and one I’ll be talking about in this e-zine You Can‘t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em intrusion detection system. We can imple- every month. n ment distributed storage arrays, calling BOB PLANKERS is a virtualization and cloud VDI on the time-tested and fast local disks and architect at a major Midwestern university and Performance controllers, high-bandwidth network inter- author of The Lone Sysadmin blog. Write to him Still Falls at [email protected]. Short of PCs faces, and well-known network protocols to

Microsoft: Everything But the Kitchen Sink

Jonathan Eunice: Are We There Yet?

MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • OCTOBER 2012 13 From the Front Lines Tackling Cloud Concerns

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Editor’s Letter By Steve Gunderson Frustrating prospective customers with a slow or unavailable website was a real con- Currents cern, and the cloud offered an elegant solu- tion that could eliminate that trepidation. Brian Madden: The project team had the foresight to per- The Trans- THEY SAY THAT a picture is worth a thou- form pre-event load testing and simulation. formation of an IT Guy sand words, but what if you want only 500? As it turned out, the project team discov- Working with many clients on a wide range ered that the website was doomed given its Bob Plankers: of IT projects, I’ve had the opportunity to underlying architecture, which resulted in It’ll All Be see what works in the real world, and what’s multiple bottlenecks that even the unlimited Software Soon more promise than reality. Sometimes a re- horsepower of the cloud would not be able al-world story, can put things into perspec- to overcome. The hosting architecture was Steve Gunderson: From the Front tive better than any 1,000-word essay. That’s quickly redesigned, retested and successful- Lines my intent over the next several paragraphs ly deployed, well in advance of Super Bowl and in this column each month. Sunday. In this case, the cloud became not Cloud It seems like every year some new tech- only the answer to scalability concerns but Computing: If nology explodes onto the IT scene with huge also the perfect testing ground to identify You Can‘t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em potential, and frequently even greater hype. potential catastrophic failures well ahead of But tackling every one that comes along is the company’s website launch. VDI usually both impractical and too expensive. In this client engagement, the lesson we Performance So how do you choose the right ones for you learned was never to abandon the disci- Still Falls Short of PCs and then integrate them successfully into plined procedures, processes and testing your environment? plans that have served IT so well over the

Microsoft: decades. Sometimes choosing the right tech- Everything nology (cloud provider) is the easy part, but But the CLOUD CONSTERNATION the real success comes from implementing Kitchen Sink One of our recent customer stories high- solutions with the same continuity, testing lights the opportunity (and challenge) pre- and systematic approach that’s delivered Jonathan Eunice: Are sented by the cloud. In this case, the story is solid results in the past. We There about an advertiser, a website and the Super In the months to come, I’ll be sharing Yet? Bowl. The story begins with an advertiser more customer stories from the front lines and its ad agency planning to launch a major of both enterprise and SMB engagements. consumer ad campaign during the halftime With any luck, our stories will help paint a show of the 2012 game in Indianapolis. The picture to assist you with your real-world campaign was designed to drive enormous decision making. n volumes of traffic to the company’s website,

so scaling short-term capacity up and down STEVE GUNDERSON is a principal at Transitional Data via a cloud offering was hugely attractive. Services.

MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • OCTOBER 2012 14 COVER STORY

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Editor’s Letter Cloud Computing: Currents If You Can’t Beat Brian Madden: The Trans- formation of an IT Guy ’Em, Join ’Em Bob Plankers: It’ll All Be IT teams are falling behind in the cloud adoption Software Soon game—and that’s bad for business.

Steve Gunderson: From the Front Lines

Cloud Computing: If You Can‘t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em By Alex Barrett

VDI Performance Still Falls Short of PCs

Microsoft: CLOUD COMPUTING IS here, and enterprises way to avoid unnecessary capital expendi- Everything are increasingly taking advantage of the tures, overhead and head count. Business But the limitless pool of off-site resources that it units see Software as a Service (SaaS) ver- Kitchen Sink provides. With few exceptions, though, IT sions of applications that are easy to get up isn’t really leading the charge—even though and running and don’t require any mainte- Jonathan Eunice: Are it should be. nance. Developers see a thriving community We There “The thing about the cloud, it’s usually of their peers doing cool stuff and delivering Yet? driven by not-IT,” namely the chief financial new ideas. officer, individual business units and devel- Meanwhile, IT pros—who are most opers, said Jeff Ready, CEO at Scale Comput- technologically equipped to take on the ing, an SMB storage and server provider in cloud—look at public cloud and see security Indianapolis. holes, integration nightmares, a threat to job That not-IT crowd sees plenty of poten- security and yet another thing to do. tial for cloud. The finance side of the house That’s a stark contrast to IT’s attitude looks at the public cloud and sees an easy about virtualization. Back in the early 2000s,

MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • OCTOBER 2012 15 Cloud Computing

IT seized upon the nascent technology as IT folks have a tendency an easy way to solve nagging capacity and power issues, reduce costs, and gain greater to either dismiss or manageability and availability. IT adopted Home ignore cloud computing, a “virtualization first” policy, and business owners were often the last to know that their Editor’s while developers and Letter applications were running in a virtual ma- chine (VM). Early adopters of virtualization application owners Currents were hailed as modern-day IT heroes, saving sally forth and reinvent the company money, laying the foundation the business. Brian Madden: for a workable disaster recovery plan—even The Trans- saving the planet! formation of an IT Guy IT folks have a tendency to either dismiss or ignore cloud computing, however, while izon company that offers managed hosting Bob Plankers: developers and application owners sally and cloud services. It’ll All Be forth and reinvent the business. Not only “I’ve been in some meetings between IT Software Soon are IT pros missing out on an opportunity to and the IT people attached to a business cover themselves in glory, they’re also risk- unit, and there will be this weird discussion Steve Gunderson: From the Front ing the possibility of becoming less relevant where the business owners try to hide the Lines to their organizations. fact that they’re already doing [cloud],” Rubin said. Cloud The problem is that when business own- Computing: If CLOUD ADVOCATES ers go around IT, they almost always forget You Can‘t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em COME OUT OF THE SHADOWS to ask the tough questions that experienced A few years ago, IT could still reasonably IT pros would ask a cloud provider: What are VDI make the claim that cloud was a bunch of hot your uptime statistics? How do you achieve Performance air that would soon blow over. But it’s getting redundancy? How do you ensure security? Still Falls Short of PCs harder to make that claim. What is your service-level agreement? Is Spending on public cloud services cer- running this workload in the cloud actually

Microsoft: tainly isn’t down. Stamford, Conn.-based cheaper over the long run? Everything research firm Gartner Inc. predicts that the Failing to ask those tough questions up But the market for public cloud services will swell front has resulted in some well-publicized Kitchen Sink to $207 billion by 2016, up from $109 billion public cloud failures, such as the Los Ange- today. It also predicts that in 2017, the chief les Police Department’s move to partially Jonathan Eunice: Are marketing officer will spend more on IT than pull the plug on a proposed Gmail We There the chief information officer. At the top of deployment because of security concerns, or Yet? the list of popular public cloud services are Web-based services going down because of classic SaaS applications such as . an outage at a cloud provider. com for customer relationship management In June, (AWS)— (CRM) or Workday for payroll services. arguably the current top player for cloud de- And there’s an awful lot of IT happening velopers—infamously suffered from a power behind IT’s back, what’s sometimes called outage at one of its data centers, followed by “shadow IT,” said Ellen Rubin, vice presi- a bug in its Elastic Load Balancing service dent of cloud products at Terremark, a Ver- that caused some customers to be down

MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • OCTOBER 2012 16 Cloud Computing

for up to six hours. Some AWS customers business model and provide faster time to begrudgingly acknowledged their role in the market,” said Brett Adam, chief technology downtime. officer at rPath, whose image management “I think we found areas of the app that we software is often coupled with private cloud Home thought we had engineered better for fail- suites in support of self-service portals. ure, that we hadn’t,” said Jim O’Neill, CIO “IT runs on its own slow clock speed, Editor’s Letter of the hosted marketing software provider and the business runs at hyper speed,” said HubSpot, to SearchCloudComputing.com. Scott Hammond, vice president of strategy Currents “It’s easy for me to get mad at [Amazon],” and business development for intelligent he said, “but the truth is, our apps should automation products at Cisco Systems Inc. Brian Madden: have been built better.” Private cloud can be a way to bring those The Trans- groups in sync. formation of an IT Guy The Cisco Intelligent Automation for COULD PRIVATE CLOUD BE Cloud (CIAC) private cloud offering con- Bob Plankers: THE SOLUTION? sists of the Cisco Unified Computing System It’ll All Be An obvious answer to the growth of public server platform plus a self-service store- Software Soon cloud is for IT to implement a private cloud front, a service catalog, governance, provi- and regain favor among developers and busi- sioning and lifecycle-tracking software. The Steve Gunderson: From the Front ness owners. company has used CIAC internally to build Lines Diplomatically put, implementing a out a private cloud called Cisco IT Elastic In- private cloud “allows IT organizations to frastructure Services, or CITEIS. Hammond Cloud deliver higher service levels of the new cloud said that since the first CITEIS services Computing: If You Can‘t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em

VDI Performance IS IT RESIGNED TO A CLOUD FATE? Still Falls Short of PCs A RECENT SURVEY by security research firm Ponemon Institute suggests that enterprise IT knows that

Microsoft: public cloud has infiltrated the organization—but that it’s none too happy about it. Everything Just less than half of the 4,000-plus respondents to the Ponemon survey said they already trans- But the fer sensitive or confidential data to external cloud services, and another third will follow suit in the Kitchen Sink next two years. At first glance, that suggests that IT has put aside most, if not all, compunctions it may have had about cloud security. Jonathan Eunice: Are But dig a little deeper, and the picture gets hazy. Of those already putting sensitive data in the We There cloud, a full 39% said doing so has decreased their security posture. Sixty-three percent admitted Yet? to not fully understanding what the cloud provider is doing to secure data, and a shocking 35% hand over their encryption keys to their cloud providers. “There is a lot more data being transferred to the cloud than I would have expected, and I was surprised by the lack of confidence that enterprises have in the cloud,” said Richard Moulds, vice president of strategy at Thales e-Security, which sponsored the survey. “The only thing I can think of is that people are doing this because the economic benefits are so strong,” Moulds said. n

MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • OCTOBER 2012 17 Cloud Computing

went live last year, the range of “cycle time” Despite those challenges, developing a needed to stand up a new environment has private cloud can be worth the effort, practi- dropped from eight to 12 weeks down to any- tioners say. EPAM’s private cloud, for exam- where from 15 minutes to two days, depend- ple, helped it develop a new line of business: Home ing on workflow and governance processes. hosting the software it builds for customers The private cloud approach also dovetails in its own “Software as a Service service.” Editor’s Letter with existing investments in virtualization Prior to building out the private cloud, software, said Lydia Leong, an analyst in “delivery of solutions into the customer Currents Gartner’s technology and service provider premise was taking an enormous amount of group. time,” Feldman said. Now, rather than hav- Brian Madden: “The enterprise has big investments in ing to send engineers to the customer site to The Trans- virtualization,” Leong said. “With private install software, EPAM can simply promote formation of an IT Guy cloud, you can extend those investments if the stack to production and run it there. you don’t have the appetite for looking at Bob Plankers: new solutions.” It’ll All Be Setting up a private cloud, however, isn’t INFILTRATING THE PUBLIC CLOUD Software Soon exactly something you can do overnight. Not everyone is convinced that private cloud EPAM Systems, a software development is the answer. Steve Gunderson: From the Front outsourcer, has a 6,000-core private cloud Indeed, some people at IT organizations Lines used by thousands of developers and quality who have embarked on a traditional private assurance engineers in the U.S. and Europe. cloud project are concerned that private Cloud The company chose cloud computing soft- cloud didn’t fix the problems it was supposed Computing: If ware from in late 2010, and spent to solve, said Pat O’Day, CTO at Bluelock, a You Can‘t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em at least six months integrating it with its cloud provider based on VMware’s vCloud various development, continuous integra- offering. VDI tion, change management, staging and QA Many “implemented the private cloud, Performance systems, said Eli Feldman, vice president of but it didn’t really turn them into a service Still Falls Short of PCs cloud solutions and services at the Newton, organization,” O’Day said. Pa.-based firm. Nor does private cloud get you out of the

Microsoft: Beyond implementation, cloud integra- infrastructure management game. Everything tion work is never really done. “Private cloud is hard and expensive, and But the The CITEIS initiative has taken several at the end of the day, you still own the infra- Kitchen Sink years, Hammond said. An early phase was structure and have to manage and integrate to “replatform” the data center with UCS it. Yikes!” said Terremark’s Rubin. Jonathan Eunice: Are and virtualization. Then, an initial CITEIS To that end, hosting companies such as We There Express offering debuted in June of last year Terremark promote the cloud to customers Yet? that provided employees with up to two as a seamless extension of their existing VMs. A more expansive CITEIS Virtual Data hosted environments. Stefanini, an IT ser- Center offering was released in January. The vices firm based in Brazil, recently extended next step was to expand the offering to in- private infrastructure located in Terre- clude rPath and Puppet image management. mark’s Sao Paulo data center with Terre- The company is currently looking into how mark’s Enterprise Cloud to take advantage to integrate CITEIS with external public of reduced costs and overhead. clouds. Ailtom Nascimento, vice president

MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • OCTOBER 2012 18 Cloud Computing

of global accounts at Stefanini, said that blob storage, to name a few, and mark the running its intelligent voice routing (IVR) provider’s evolution from a simple Infra- application on Enterprise Cloud can save the structure as a Service (IaaS) to a higher-level company 40% over running it on dedicated (PaaS) provider. Home infrastructure. Stefanini also runs its inter- Meanwhile, internal IT “can barely keep nal enterprise resource planning application up with current demand,” said the AWS Editor’s Letter from the cloud. “Everybody uses it, and developer. “I have no hope of that additional nobody knows any different,” he said. functionality from them.” Currents Plus, for every workload that runs in Nor are other public cloud players on his Terremark’s cloud, there’s one less piece of roadmap. “AWS is it for me, for now.” To his Brian Madden: infrastructure that Stefanini needs to up- mind, competitors like Rackspace don’t offer The Trans- date and maintain, Nascimento said, and the enough PaaS services, and the developer formation of an IT Guy workload can be ramped up much faster. still perceives as focused on Like many companies, Stefanini got a Windows and the .NET development envi- Bob Plankers: taste of cloud computing running Sales- ronment. It’ll All Be force.com. “After we used that, we realized With that as the backdrop, IT folks need Software Soon it was safe and that we could start looking at to acknowledge the public cloud-based alternatives,” Nascimento said. The CIO ap- applications running in their environment Steve Gunderson: From the Front proved, and the organization now explores rather than trying to stop them, said Blue- Lines whether to run a workload in the cloud on a lock’s O’Day. “They need to ask, ‘Where do case-by-case basis. For example, while the we go from here?’” Cloud IVR app makes a lot of sense, hosting a cred- Building a private cloud can still be a valu- Computing: If it card processing application in the cloud able undertaking. “Self-service is a useful You Can‘t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em might not, Nascimento said. feature,” said O’Day. Even so, he said, the “It really depends on the kind of service,” real emphasis should be on enabling devel- VDI he said. opers and business units to intelligently take Performance advantage of cloud-based resources, wher- Still Falls Short of PCs ever they may be. ALL EYES ON AWS “IT should be shifting from a gatekeep-

Microsoft: Realistic IT admins should be prepared for er role to an advanced services role,” said Everything AWS because that public cloud platform has James Urquhart, vice president of product But the captured developers’ imaginations. strategy at enStratus Networks, a cloud Kitchen Sink AWS developers have gotten spoiled by management software provider in Minne- the community and the constant stream of apolis. “This means not striving to ‘own’ the Jonathan Eunice: Are new services available from the public cloud company cloud—as in the case of most pri- We There service, said one AWS user, a developer at a vate clouds—but rather to make it easier to Yet? brand-name software company who asked consume whatever cloud services best meet not to be identified. business needs.” “Amazon is always giving us something “The more control you can give to devel- new—some stuff we know that’s coming and opers without sacrificing control of opera- some stuff that’s a surprise,” he said. “It’s like tions, the better,” he added. n Christmas—you’re like, ‘What’s next?’”

Popular add-on services for AWS include ALEX BARRETT is the editor in chief of Modern managed Domain Name System and object Infrastructure.

MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • OCTOBER 2012 19 VDI PERFORMANCE

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Editor’s Letter VDI Performance Currents Still Falls Short Brian Madden: The Trans- formation of an IT Guy of PCs Bob Plankers: It’ll All Be VDI advocates tout the benefits of virtual desktops Software Soon over PCs and continue to call this the “post-PC era,”

Steve Gunderson: yet their ultimate goal is to deliver a PC experience. From the Front Lines

Cloud Computing: If You Can‘t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em By Bridget Botelho

VDI Performance Still Falls Short of PCs

Microsoft: VDI VENDORS CLAIM that virtual desktops software that gives end users the type of Everything trump Windows PCs, yet they have bent over personalized experience they get with PCs, But the backward in recent years to deliver a PC-like and both vendors continually improve their Kitchen Sink experience. IT pros want to know: Why not remote desktop protocol technologies with just use a PC? the goal of delivering PC-like performance Jonathan Eunice: Are Nearly every acquisition and improve- for virtual desktops. (Teradici, the vendor We There ment Citrix Systems Inc. and VMware Inc. that delivers VMware’s protocol, refers to Yet? have made to their virtual desktop infra- PCoIP as the “protocol that enables a true structure (VDI) offerings in recent years has PC experience for desktop virtualization.”) been in the vein of delivering a full PC expe- The truth of the matter, though, is that rience. They have yet to achieve that goal. while IT administrators can cobble togeth- Citrix and VMware both added offline er these and other technologies to deliver support to allow users to work on virtual virtual desktops that look and act like PCs, desktops without an Internet connection. virtual desktops still have a ways to go. Gart- Both have acquired profile management ner Inc. predicts that hosted virtual desktop

MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • OCTOBER 2012 20 VDI Performance

capabilities won’t provide a user experience wide during the second quarter of 2012, that comparable to that of PCs until 2014. is a drop in the bucket, but it looks like desk- As a result, most companies continue to top virtualization is finally on its way. rely on PCs. Enterprises that have evaluated Home VDI use a mix of PCs and remote desktop technologies, including application virtual- VDI VENDORS EXTEND Editor’s Letter ization, Microsoft’s Terminal Services and AN OLIVE BRANCH workstation virtualization, according to the Still, desktop virtualization remains an Currents “Virtualization Decisions 2011” survey of end-user computing niche, and vendors more than 500 IT pros conducted by Search- recognize this. Desktop virtualization ven- Brian Madden: ServerVirtualization.com. dors had ignored physical desktops in recent The Trans- But that doesn’t mean IT pros should give years under the belief that VDI would dom- formation of an IT Guy up on VDI, which offers benefits over the inate the market, but the fantasy of virtual status quo, said Todd Knapp, CEO of Envi- desktops displacing PCs is over. Bob Plankers: sion Technology Advisors LCC, a virtualiza- Virtualization vendors have admitted that It’ll All Be tion consultancy based in Providence, R.I. end-user computing encompasses far more Software Soon “The philosophy of virtual desktops than virtual desktops, and even VDI devo- surrounds not trying to teach new dogs old tees are singing Kumbaya. Steve Gunderson: From the Front tricks,” Knapp said. “We want to deliver The prime example is VMware’s May Lines something that is easier and more flexible acquisition of Wanova Inc. to gain central- than using a PC.” ized image management for physical desk- Cloud Server-hosted VDI offers IT administra- tops. The virtualization pioneer, which for Computing: If tors a way to centrally manage desktops, years has preached the virtues of desktop You Can‘t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em which is simpler than managing hundreds virtualization, has committed to use Wano- or thousands of individual PCs. Because va Mirage to provide customers with single VDI virtual desktops aren’t tied to hardware, image management for physical desktops. Performance VDI also affords flexibility, in that end users “We do not see the world of end-user Still Falls Short of PCs can access their desktops and apps from any computing exclusively through the lenses Internet-connected device. of virtual machines, and I am very excited

Microsoft: And as the technology becomes more about this opportunity to redefine what Everything mature, less expensive and less complex to desktop virtualization is and how it fits into But the deploy, we will see an increase in the speed our vision for EUC,” said Vittorio Viarengo, Kitchen Sink of deployment of VDI—or what Gartner VMware’s vice president of marketing for calls hosted virtual desktops (HVD)—over end-user computing, in a July blog post. Jonathan Eunice: Are the next five years, according to the research Citrix also supports the philosophy that We There firm. VDI isn’t the be-all end-all through its Flex- Yet? By the end of 2016, 30% of large organiza- Cast technology. Citrix acquired Virtual tions (those with more than 1,000 users) will Computer earlier this year to integrate its have deployed HVDs to 20% of their users NxTop client-side virtualization software or more. In all, HVDs will be used to deliver into the Citrix desktop portfolio. NxTop client computing capabilities to 77 million allows IT to centralize PC management and users by 2016, Gartner predicts. it integrates with VDI. Compared to the more than 87 million Other desktop virtualization vendors PCs that Gartner said were shipped world- have begun to expand their reach beyond

MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • OCTOBER 2012 21 VDI Performance

virtual desktops. Liquidware Labs Inc. day all we want to do is manage all of our recently introduced a departmental applica- desktops,” Knuth said. “If companies like tion management feature that will extend to VMware don’t give us a way to manage virtu- physical desktops. al desktops and physical desktops, we won’t Home PC support will help these vendors get out use them.” of the desktop virtualization box and into Editor’s Letter mainstream physical desktop environments. That’s not to say they plan to abandon desk- VDI AIDS DESKTOP MANAGEMENT, Currents top virtualization; as Gartner’s predictions FLEXIBILITY—FOR A PRICE show, there is business to be had. Simpler desktop management is one of the Brian Madden: But the end-user computing trend is that tenets of VDI, providing IT a way to central- The Trans- many companies will deploy a mix of virtual ize that function. formation of an IT Guy desktops and physical desktops, said Gabe “I can have thousands of desktops run off Knuth, a desktop analyst and BrianMadden. a single central image,” said Gunnar Berger, Bob Plankers: com blogger. Cloud, Desktops as a Service research director, desktop, applications and It’ll All Be and cloud-hosted applications will play into server virtualization for Gartner. “Other Software Soon the equation as well. products can do this, but [HVD] works in “VDI has been slow, but at the end of the more use cases.” Steve Gunderson: From the Front Lines

Cloud Computing: If You Can‘t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em TIMELINE | VDI Vendor Acquisition Citrix Systems acquires sepagoProfile for MAY 2012 • Citrix acquires VDI profilemanagement in May of 2008, then... Performance Virtual Computer Still Falls for client-side Short of PCs OCTOBER 2011 • virtual desktops Citrix acquires App-DNA for application management Microsoft: Everything • AUGUST 2011 But the Citrix acquires RingCube Technolo- Kitchen Sink gies for application personalization • MAY 2011 Jonathan Citrix acquires Kaviza, a simpler, Eunice: Are low cost virtual desktop product We There Yet? APRIL 2011 • VMware acquires SlideRocket to offer a PowerPoint-like feature

• FEBRUARY 2010 • MARCH 2011 VMware acquires RTO Software VMware acquires Mozy for virtual for profile management desktop backup and storage VMware acquires Zimbra for email and collaboration

MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • OCTOBER 2012 22 VDI Performance

The ability to access desktops and appli- But companies that buy into VDI say the cations from anywhere and on any device is flexibility and management benefits are a big benefit for organizations with remote worth the expense. and mobile end users. VDI advocates also tout security benefits. Home “You could argue that laptops do this, too. Having data on the endpoint is a risk. And you’d be right, but the ability to do this Industries that deal with sensitive data, Editor’s Letter with follow-me desktop technologies means such as protected health information, are I don’t have to carry one device with me; any better off with an HVD environment that Currents device is my access point,” Berger said. keeps that information in the data center Ease of management and flexibility were and off the endpoint device, said Berger. Brian Madden: reasons for Phoenix Central School District In addition, with PCs, IT must protect The Trans- in New York to adopt virtual desktops. data both in the data center and at the formation of an IT Guy The school district’s IT team needed a endpoint. Server-hosted virtual desktops way to deliver desktops and applications to eliminate the need to protect data in two Bob Plankers: the 3,000 users roaming between buildings locations. It’ll All Be and computer labs every day, so it deployed That said, the security of virtual desktops Software Soon VMware View along with Liquidware Labs is up for debate. Both PCs and virtualized Profile Unity software. Now, IT supports desktops run the Windows OS, which would Steve Gunderson: From the Front a pool of about 120 nonpersistent virtual be identically secure whether virtual or Lines desktops (which don’t store any user data physical, Gartner’s Berger said. or settings) that end users can access from “If there is anything I learned in my col- Cloud anywhere on campus, said Theodore Love, lege courses it’s that security is an illusion,” Computing: If technology director for the school district. Berger said. “No matter how hard you try to You Can‘t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em While VDI has allowed the school to de- secure something, there is always something liver desktops in a flexible way that is simple that makes it insecure. Encryption products VDI to manage, the cost is significant. only delay the inevitable.” Performance “VDI does not save money,” Love said. Still, hosted virtual desktops make sense Still Falls Short of PCs “Just look at the cost of storage on the back for some companies—but not all—and will end and your budget is blown.” be used alongside PCs, server-based com-

Microsoft: Indeed, VDI is expensive. Customers tend puting, disk-streaming technologies and Everything to see only the benefits in terms of opera- burgeoning cloud offerings. But the tional expenses, not capital expenses, Berger “They each have their place. They each Kitchen Sink said, at least not for the first few years. solve a problem,” Berger said. “No single Gartner estimates that total cost of own- technology is going to replace the need for Jonathan Eunice: Are ership reductions of up to 13% compared to all other technologies—at least not yet.” n We There well-managed desktops are likely beyond Yet? year three of a deployment. The firm expects BRIDGET BOTELHO is the senior news director in the Data Center and Virtualization Media Group. hosted virtual desktop Capex will fall by 10% Email [email protected] or follow by 2014. @BridgetBotelho on Twitter.

MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • OCTOBER 2012 23 WINDOWS SERVER 2012

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Editor’s Letter Microsoft: Currents Everything but Brian Madden: The Trans- formation of an IT Guy the Kitchen Sink Bob Plankers: It’ll All Be Microsoft is throwing an assortment of new Software Soon technologies into Windows Server 2012 in an attempt

Steve Gunderson: to prove its clout. But will this approach entice From the Front Lines IT to upgrade sooner rather than later?

Cloud Computing: If You Can‘t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em By Ed Scannell

VDI Performance Still Falls Short of PCs

Microsoft: WHEN MICROSOFT SHIPPED Windows Server in all—can convince Microsoft corporate Everything 2012 last month, it could have put on the users to move out of the comfortable con- But the packaging: “includes the kitchen sink.” fines of Windows Server 2008 R2 anytime Kitchen Sink By a wide margin, the company has soon remains to be seen. While some are crammed more critical core capabilities encouraged by what they see, others say they Jonathan Eunice: Are into this version of its flagship operating are still upgrading their servers to Windows We There system than any previous incarnation. Server 2008 R2 and that Server 2012 is out Yet? Several of these capabilities not only bolster on the horizon. basic operating system functions but also “Windows Server 2012 is a pretty inter- are designed to serve as building blocks for esting proposition, but it forces me to eval- Microsoft’s cloud, virtualization and storage uate not just what my next server OS needs strategies—each a market where it faces a are but my cloud and virtualization strate- handful of voracious competitors. gies as well. I am down the road with both But whether this raft of new features and of those, and so I need to investigate how technologies—numbering more than 300 [Windows Server 2012] will work with

MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • OCTOBER 2012 24 Windows Server 2012

non-Windows environments and applica- the OS to the main C partition. As long as the tions,” said Eugene Lee, a senior systems Hyper-V VHDs [Virtual Hard Drives] are in administrator with a large bank in Charlotte, a totally separate partition where you aren’t N.C. “I’ll be with 2008 for a while.” touching them, you should be good,” said Home Some analysts believe that moving ex- Susan Bradley, a Microsoft Most Valuable isting data and applications from older Professional (MVP) and a certified public Editor’s Letter versions of Windows Server could, given accountant with Tamiyasu, Smith, Horn and the new version’s improved capabilities, Braun, in Fresno, Calif. “I recommend how- Currents cost less than porting applications to previ- ever, not to put any role on that box other ous versions of Windows Server. Al Gillen, than the Hyper-V role at this point.” Brian Madden: program vice president, system software What might encourage some users to The Trans- for IDC, describes Windows Server 2012 move to Server 2012 sooner rather than formation of an IT Guy as “sequential and nondisruptive from an later, Gillen adds, is that Microsoft has installed application perspective.” discontinued mainstream, and will soon Bob Plankers: “The best way to get onto Win Server 2012 discontinue extended technical support It’ll All Be is to deploy it in the hypervisor role, which of the aged Windows Server 2003, and will Software Soon gives you the benefit of the new hypervisor, end mainstream technical support in July new storage management and the ability 2013 for all versions of Windows Server Steve Gunderson: From the Front to roll your Windows Server 2003 apps 2008. Lines forward onto the new infrastructure,” said “The timing could represent an interest- Gillen. “You aren’t saddled with the typical ing opportunity for Microsoft,” he said. Cloud costs and time of porting applications from Industry projections point to 2014 as a Computing: If older versions of Windows Server.” potential breakthrough year for the new OS. You Can‘t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em One IT administrator agrees that initially IDC predicts that by 2013, Windows Serv- deploying the product on an internal stag- er 2012 will represent 35% of all Windows VDI ing server in the hypervisor role was a fairly Server shipments with Windows Server Performance straightforward process. 2008 R2 still holding a commanding 64% Still Falls Short of PCs “We set up our test server as a Hyper-V share. But in 2014, Server 2012 zooms to host and rebuilt the box, put in a new drive 82% and Server 2008 R2 plummets to 18%

Microsoft: and enabled the Hyper-V role and installed (see chart below). Everything But the Kitchen Sink

Jonathan BREAKDOWN OF PROJECTED WINDOWS SERVER SHIPMENTS Eunice: Are (Percentage of Projected Worldwide) We There Yet? Server Operating Environments 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2016 Windows NT Server 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% Windows 2000 Server 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% Windows Server 2003 29.0% 8.2% 3.0% 0.6% 0.1% 0.0% Windows Server 2008 71.0% 91.8% 94.1% 64.2% 18.6% 10.6% Windows Server 2012 0.0% 0.0% 2.9% 35.2% 81.3% 89.4%

SOURCE: IDC

MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • OCTOBER 2012 25 Windows Server 2012

MICROSOFT STRIVES FOR THE CLOUD, write-once and run-anywhere strategy for BUT WILL USERS FOLLOW? the cloud.” Among the building blocks stitched into Even if Microsoft starts sending a clearer Windows Server 2012, perhaps the most message about Server 2012 as a legitimate Home strategically important is Azure, the compa- cloud OS, Eisenberg and others believe it ny’s cloud computing platform designed for will take corporate shops anywhere from six Editor’s Letter developing, deploying and managing cloud to 18 months to develop a standard serv- applications and services. Microsoft officials er image for Windows Server 2012 and its Currents trotted out the Server/Azure product combi- many built-in technologies. nation publicly for the first time at its Build “Generally what I see my shops do with Brian Madden: conference last year. server OSes is to start with the process of The Trans- That announcement stated that three of building a certified image and then stand formation of an IT Guy the four core concepts Azure is built upon all their new servers up against that image,” are directly aimed at cloud users and de- Eisenberg said. “And then you have to get Bob Plankers: velopers: the ability to allow IT shops to corporate and third-party developers to It’ll All Be build private clouds that offer public cloud create applications that need Server 2012 in Software Soon services; the ability to offer continuously order to run, and so far Microsoft is doing a available cloud services along with the abil- fairly atrocious job at that.” Steve Gunderson: From the Front ity to manage those services across multiple For Windows Server shops that have Lines servers from a single server; and the ability spent some time working with Azure on to run any application from any cloud. private or public cloud projects, the tighter Cloud While most corporate and third-party de- coupling of Server 2012 with the recently Computing: If velopers haven’t registered many complaints technically improved Azure may hold some You Can‘t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em about Azure as a development platform, few appeal. But the Windows Server 2012/Azure larger corporations have deployed the cloud combination won’t be so attractive to those VDI environment for meaningful applications or who have yet to launch their first cloud Performance services that reach down to internal users projects, or those who have but are using Still Falls Short of PCs or out to their customers. For Windows non-Microsoft technologies. Server 2012 to be more widely perceived as “If you are an Azure user, there is a lot to

Microsoft: the cloud operating system that Microsoft like with all the good hooks in there for con- Everything wants it to be, the company must do a better necting up products and services, so there But the job than it has so far in demonstrating that is a clear case for upgrading,” said Jonathan Kitchen Sink vision, some observers believe. Hassell, an IT consultant with 82 Ventures. “When Microsoft says [Windows Serv- “But if you are wondering what direction Jonathan Eunice: Are er] 2012 is a cloud OS, they are referring to to go in, there isn’t anything in Win Server We There Hyper-V being more robust and how System 2012 that answers that question for you. Yet? Center can manage it an Infrastructure as People won’t be saying, ‘Thank God it’s ar- a Service manner so you can set up a cloud rived so now we can go to the cloud.’” data center. But there is no real coherent Some users aren’t necessarily focusing cloud story other than saying that IaaS is on reasons not to deploy Server 2012, but the cloud,” said Mark Eisenberg, a director neither do they see a compelling reason to with Fino Consulting, specialists in advising do so. They say they will likely roll it out IT shops on cloud and mobile platforms. “I when it is time to refresh its server hard- am still waiting for them to articulate this ware base.

MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • OCTOBER 2012 26 Windows Server 2012

“[Windows] Server 2012 looks solid and tools could help trigger a major migration to has more than enough new features or tech- Windows Server 2012. “It’ll be interesting if nologies to weigh, but I don’t see anything Microsoft can create its own ‘event,’” Mc- that tells me I need to deploy this now,” said Dermott said. “We’re starting to work with Home Martin Kreig, a purchasing agent with a how to build public and private clouds with large transportation company in Jackson- Azure on one side and System Center on the Editor’s Letter ville, Fla. “It looks like we can pretty much other, [along with] the ability to transpar- deploy this in the normal cycle, which means ently move .NET code.” Currents waiting for the first service pack.” What might give the Standard version of Server 2012 a boost is Microsoft’s decision Brian Madden: to allow shops to deploy two virtual instanc- The Trans- VIRTUALIZATION INTEGRATION es of the operating system along with the formation of an IT Guy MAY OFFER A BOOST physical copy. The company offered only one Microsoft’s kitchen-sink approach may virtual instance with Windows Server 2008 Bob Plankers: turn out to be a way to outflank the com- R2. Some shops like the new licensing’s It’ll All Be petition in jockeying for space in the data financial and functional appeal. Software Soon center—but there are substantial hurdles to Whether the raft of new technologies overcome with customers who already have in Server 2012 entices corporate IT shops Steve Gunderson: From the Front investments in virtualization infrastructure, sooner rather than later remains to be seen. Lines such as VMware. But given the watershed moment Microsoft “I think Hyper-V has a bad rep and a lot of faces—as it attempts the tricky business of Cloud people just aren’t willing to try it,” said Sean ushering its corporate users from high- Computing: If McDermott, CEO of Windward IT Solutions, ticket server operating systems to cloud You Can‘t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em an IT service management firm based in computing and low-end mobile devices— Herndon, Va. “The virtualization train left sooner might be better. n VDI the station a long time ago.” Performance However, Microsoft’s move to link Hy- ED SCANNELL is a senior executive editor in the Data Still Falls Short of PCs per-V with System Center’s management Center and Virtualization Media Group.

Microsoft: Everything But the Kitchen Sink WHAT’S NEW IN WINDOWS SERVER 2012?

Jonathan Eunice: Are There are several key new features in Windows Server 2012: We There n PowerShell 3.0 new features include new cmdlets, bringing the total to 2,300 cmdlets Yet? n Storage spaces: allows multiple drive types at different sizes to share one common storage pool n Hyper-V Replica: host-based replication, used for mission-critical applications

Key features in Windows Server 2008 R2: n Hyper-V virtualization built in n Server Core, using a minimal server interface n Overall security enhancements, including BitLocker

MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • OCTOBER 2012 27 Are We There Yet? The Meta Overdrive

Home

Editor’s Letter By Jonathan Eunice in turn changes how we buy IT, write apps, deploy apps, secure data, audit compliance, Currents ensure performance and plenty more. To support that, everything in IT—how Brian Madden: it’s bought, consumed, managed and mea- The Trans- FOR THE PAST 30 years, I’ve been there, done sured—must now be considered at a “meta” formation of an IT Guy that with pretty much every part of dis- level—to work in the aggregate and with the tributed computing as it’s marched from abstractions. Bob Plankers: academic theory to workaday reality. I’ve Everyone has to move from instances to It’ll All Be learned that people, culture, organizational classes, from individual processes and run Software Soon structures and economics are every bit as books to patterns and templates. Everyone important as the technology. must become an architect, or at least think Steve Gunderson: From the Front Technology is a great tool, but how we about architectural concerns. Lines use it determines our investments and our What about designers, architects and outcomes. CTOs—people already thinking about blue- Cloud In this column every month, I’ll be the prints and classes and patterns? They have Computing: If nudge and gadfly. You may not agree with to move on to even more rarefied territory: You Can‘t Beat ‘Em, Join ‘Em my every observation or exhortation. I’m to metaclasses and macro patterns, to ab- good with that, as long as I can help you gain stractions of abstractions. VDI useful perspective on modern infrastruc- If it sounds like we’ve moved from the Performance ture. language of operations into the language of Still Falls Short of PCs programming, that’s exactly right. This shift is about automation, about making the data

Microsoft: META META center systematic and programmable. Everything IT was rigid and static; now it’s flexible and But the dynamic. We routinely do things IT pros Kitchen Sink only dreamed about five years ago. THE AUTOMATION IMPERATIVE Until recently, if you fired up an applica- Setting up servers, storage arrays, network Jonathan Eunice: Are tion, you knew where it would run, where its switches and whatnot by hand is labor- We There data would reside and how it would connect intensive, but doable at small scale. But Yet? to the rest of IT. But with virtualization, you when you have dozens, hundreds or thou- may not know where it’s running. It started sands of devices and apps—and when you’re here, but was dynamically shifted over yon- adding and changing them all the time—for- der for maintenance or load balancing. Poof! get doing it by hand. It’s not scalable, and it’s Now it’s somewhere else. It’s even more not sustainable. extreme when apps don’t run in-house. This isn’t entirely new. IT operations has We’ve changed basic assumptions about always had methodical aspirations—just where and how IT is accomplished. That look at groups, policies, RBAC (role-based

MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • OCTOBER 2012 28 Are We There Yet?

access control), models, deployment tem- plates and lights-out operation. But virtualization and cloud make auto- mation an aspirin, not a vitamin. It’s not just Home good for us; it fixes very real pains. When Modern Infrastructure is a operating at scale and speed, a systematic, SearchDataCenter.com e-publication Editor’s Letter standardized, automated approach is essen- Margie Semilof tial for IT sanity and survival. EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Currents Happily, the standardized, modular, Alex Barrett virtualized, API-ified platforms now avail- EDITOR IN CHIEF Brian Madden: able enable such higher-level operations. The Trans- Previous decades had elegant systems man- Lauren Horwitz formation of EXECUTIVE EDITOR an IT Guy agement concepts—but no way to directly use them. Christine Cignoli SENIOR FEATURES EDITOR Bob Plankers: We can now directly program and exe- It’ll All Be cute our templates and policies, using tools Phil Sweeney Software Soon like Puppet, Chef and Fabric, or application MANAGING EDITOR programming interfaces from Amazon Web Steve Gunderson: Eugene Demaitre From the Front Services, boto and OpenStack. These make ASSOCIATE MANAGING EDITOR Lines management automation practical at scale. Laura Aberle ASSOCIATE FEATURES EDITOR Cloud Computing: If BEYOND AUTOMATION Linda Koury You Can‘t Beat DIRECTOR OF ONLINE DESIGN ‘Em, Join ‘Em I’ve described the shift needed in systems management, but it applies everywhere. Rebecca Kitchens VDI Whereas once we might have thought about PUBLISHER Performance individual servers or apps, we now need to [email protected] Still Falls plan and buy across all apps and all infra- Short of PCs TechTarget structure, over multiple generations. 275 Grove Street, Newton, MA 02466 Microsoft: This is a much bigger mandate. If you’re www.techtarget.com Everything a cloud service provider or a CTO on Wall © 2012 TechTarget Inc. No part of this publica- But the Street, you’re already thinking this way. Kitchen Sink tion may be transmitted or reproduced in any But much of IT is just coming to this turn form or by any means without written permis- sion from the publisher. TechTarget reprints are and hasn’t fully absorbed it yet. High-scale, Jonathan available through The YGS Group. Eunice: Are high-automation, high-abstraction, highly We There patterned operations—this is the future About TechTarget: TechTarget publishes me- Yet? dia for information technology profession- for all IT. Shops that don’t get it right will als. More than 100 focused websites enable see their functions outsourced to providers quick access to a deep store of news, advice and analysis about the technologies, products that do. n and processes crucial to your job. Our live and virtual events give you direct access to inde- pendent expert commentary and advice. At IT JONATHAN EUNICE is principal IT adviser at analyst Knowledge Exchange, our social community, firmIlluminata Inc. Contact him at moderninfrastruc- you can get advice and share solutions with [email protected] peers and experts.

MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • OCTOBER 2012 29