The Journey begins with the First Step

The journey to cloud computing begins with our existing infrastructure and applications. Good Grief Charlie Brown, we can't just throw everything out and start over "in the cloud". We need to leverage exisiting investments, skills, and to the extent possible, processes. Mostly, when you bring up uhet subject "cloud", people immediately think of public cloud offerings. There is a reason for that . First is "Pooling". Pooling is the activity that enables us to break down the traditional physical silos of infrastructure and create capacity pools of CBU, memory, storage, and networking - all aspects of the Data-center - to maximize our use of resources. Secondly, we want the cloud to be able to enable automated scaling up and scaling down of resource capacity to workloads efficiently - VMware referes to this as "Elasticity". Third is "Automation". To be a truly dynamic, on-demand environment, then it has to be fully automated. All of theses characteristics have a significant impact on lowering costs. They also provide the foundation for an infrastructure that will support the agility that a business stakeholder wants. In fact, some Agencies are factoring the process of "agility" into their Enterprise Architecture policies. Cloud Computing provides the right architecture to enable infrastructure on-demand.

However, I must admit that I am not a big fan of the public cloud as it currently stands in its maturity. Many of these clouds do not have an "exit" strategy and once you are in, you are not able to back out. Additionally, being a risk averse individual, I am not yet willing to relinquish my authority and responsibility for the security and privacy of my company's resources and employees to a third pary where I have no visibility as to how they maintain security. That being said, does not negate our goal of leveraging exisiting investments currently in place in the datacenter. The concept of the cloud architecture can be applied to our existing datacenter and the creation of a Private Cloud

But, infrastructure is only the begining of the journey and it is not prudent to think that consolidation of the servers in the data center amounts to cloud computing... The clip below gives you and idea of what VMware's vision is as to get to the cloud...

Creating A Virtual Machine

Creating a virtual machine from scratch is a three step process.

First I ran the New Virtual Machine wizard to create a virtual machine. The NewVirtual Machine wizard guided me through the key steps for setting up a new virtual machine, helping me set the virtual hardware specifications and other parameters. A virtual machine provides a base x86 platform and you use the wizard to choose devices to install on that platform. For example, you select the number of virtual processors, the amount of memory, the virtual disk capacity, and so forth. Next I set the virtual machine to connect to a physical CD-ROM device or an ISO file, power on the virtual machine, and install the operating system just like you would for any new physical machine. Finally, I installed VMware Tools to enhance the performance and manageability of the virtual machine. The VMware Tools installation wizard automatically selects the VMware Tools version appropriate for the operating system running in the virtual machine.

After creating a new virtual machine, like a physical computer, it has a blank hard disk. Before you can use it, you need to

partition and format the virtual disk and install an operating system. You can install the operating system from an installation CD-ROM or create an ISO image file and install from that file.The basic procedure to install the guest operating system from CD-ROMs is to first insert the installation CD or floppy into the physical device. Then on the VM menu on workstation menu bar for the virtual machine, click the Settings option to open the Virtual machine Settings editor. On the Hardware tab, for CD/DVD Drive, be sure to enable Connect at power on option under the Device Status. Then when you power on the virtual machine, it will boot from the installation CD. From there you can follow the instructions provided by the operating system vendor to partition the disk and install the operating system. A faster and often more convenient method is to install from an ISO image file. To do so, you must change the virtual machine settings to connect to the ISO image instead of the physical device. Virtual machines support both attended and unattended installations. You can install VMware Tools after installing the guest operating system VMware Tools is a suite of utilities that enhances the performance and manageability of a virtual machine. The installers for VMware Tools for Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and NetWare guest operating systems are bundled into Workstation as ISO image files.

Viola, we have a virtual machine on our host…. Next week we will look at “configuring virtual networks”… Hopefully, this will keep you from making the same mistakes I and my two colleagues made.

Try it: you’ll like it….

This is aimed at the small to medium business that wants to get started in virtualization but thinks it takes too much of an investment. Well I’m here to tell ya – That aint the case. There are two VMware products with which you can start to learn what it’s all about and if you want to go further. One is VMware Server. VMware Server is a Free and easy way to get introduced to virtualization. VMware Server provides a risk-free introduction to Windows and Linux application server virtualization. I am currently evaluating it and the other introductory product – VMware Workstation 7.
The top three reasons many business use either of these products is (a) Test and Development of software and IT environments, (b) use of virtual machines to evaluate software, and (c) they want to assess what this virtualization thing is all about. Now before we go any farther, I want to let you know that there is another free product out there: It’s the VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXI). However, it does require a dedicated server (recommended 4GB Memory and dual socket, dual core). The next step after ESXI would be vSphere. So if you have a server with the requisite configuration, go for it. But if you are just feeling your way – look at VMware Server or VMware Workstation 7 to begin. There is a cost for VMware Workstation 7 – Approximately $190.00. Now let’s do a quick comparison of these two products.
First of all neither require a dedicated server. They both can run on a Dual Core PC (XP, Win 7, or Linux) with 2GB Ram. This is the minimum that I would recommend. Remember the more ram and processing power, the more virtual machines/better performance. Both can run either Windows or Linux as a guest operating system. OK, what are the differences? They are Basic. VMware Server is designed with the Data Center in mind… it is a Server product while VMware Workstation 7 (while more flexible) is built for the desktop/laptop. With Workstation 7 you can demonstrate a complete network solution on your laptop – You can even run ESXI on one of your virtual machines. OK, which should I use….? Remember the universal answer – It all depends.
Actually, I plan to use both…. I can use VMware Server to establish a small test and development lab to evaluate software. When I am ready, I can use the VMware upgrade roadmap so that I do not lose my infrastructure investment. I can also use VMware Workstation as a demonstration platform both for the infrastructure and developed solutions.
How will you use these entry points?

VMworld 2010 - Day One

After arriving last night, I was raring to go this morning. Up early (4:00AM PDT)... Waiting for someplace to open so I can eat breakfast... Find a Denny's and around 7:00AM head down to the Moscone Center to register and am struck with the enormity of this conference. VMware has decided to make a statement.... They have taken over every cardinal point of the compass in the Moscone Center. The image is of only the West Moscone Center Building. As far as I could see, North and South buildings were equaly adorned. The guys really planned an intense convention... If it deals with VMware, it is here. There are sessions on every aspect of current and near term projected VM products. The Hands-On Lab is state of the art (VM art -that is)- Both Basic an Advanced subjects are covered. The discussions, at least the ones I attended were informative, interactive, and at times intense-I loved it. I estimate that there are over 320 breakout sessions and workshops being attended by approximately 16,000 attendees. The planners are quite socially oriented and are "eating" their own dog food". They have set up stations where we can use Thin-Client machines to access apps in their "private-cloud" and have created mobile apps proving that VMware is aiming to design for user personal computing and not just for the personal computer. Tonight's the welcome reception and gracefully, the first session is not until 0930 tomorrow. I'm looking forward to the Keynote.