Archive for the ‘Christopher Everett’ Category

A colleague of mine, Mark Medovich, turned me on to an interesting solution for Mac users, like me. I am a recently converted Windows user to the MAC. (now for a little over a year) I have to admit, I love my MAC. I still use many Windows applications. I like outlook better than entourage, and the powerpoint presentation still works better with the version in which it was created. Hurray for Fusion… But I digress…. This solution is about running a MAC OS on top of vsphere. What? Really? I thought that wasn’t allowed? Actually, the great community over at DiscCloud have created a way to do so, without actually “running” the MAC OS on vsphere. http://disccloud.ning.com/

You do still have to run the Mac OS on your Mac and you can’t run the MAC OS on a non MAC Hardware. Pretty cool stuff. The way this works, is that it mounts the MAC OS instance as another instance on your mac client. Everything you work on, is stored and secured on the vsphere server. Backups can happne in the cloud.

All of the FAQs are here, including how it doesn’t affect the Apple EULA. http://disccloud.ning.com/page/disccloud-faq

This is a real world example of how the cloud can benefit the average MAC user, like me. This example brings home the how the cloud will eventually be a natural way of how we all will do our computing, in the future. Apple, as we know, has had a resurgence in popularity in the last several years with the iPhone being one of the major drivers. But us with MacBook Pros, have also helped. This is all conusmer/end user driven growth. Not Enterprise driven growth. Actually the MAC causes traditional enterprise IT shops difficutly. This is not unlike of how vmware got its momentum through individual server administrators that were tired of doing work at 2am on Sunday morning. And now, DiscCloud, a group of passionate MAC users and developers have developed a very inovative solution using vSphere and a cloud computing mindset. Here’s to the community, individual and innovation. Now its up to companies like vmware to take those inovations and enhance their ability to be managed within the enterprise.

Chris Everette is a colleague of mine, a Sr. Systems Engineer out of Detroit.  He is a very sharp, seasoned, virtualization industry pro.  In working with him over the past two years, I’ve noticed that he writes very well.  So of course, I’ve been trying to get him to start a blog, or contribute to this one, for quite a while. 

My hard work has paid off   It looks like for now he’ll be a guest blogger here on Virtual Insanity.  Whether or not he starts his own blog remains to be seen.  Please welcome Chris Everette to Virtual Insanity!

During VMworld last week, he sent me his first post, which I’m just now getting a chance to post …

What will your role be in the cloud?

Well being at my 3^rd vmworld gets me thinking.  I am wondering about this “cloud thing” just like everyone else who has been in IT for a long time.  I sometimes follow other blogger’s articles, and I like Chris Wolf’s writing.  He got me thinking, as well.  His article, titled the “Cloud and the Wal-martification of IT”  struck a chord.  If this Cloud thing really takes off, which by all indications it has and will continue to gain momentum, companies may scratch their heads and wonder if it makes sense to have their own IT assets and resources and IT professionals.  Especially companies where their core business is not IT.  So, what does that mean for IT professionals and particularly my customers?  Are we really going to all get our computing from several large cloud providers and many smaller ones?  Does anyone remember mainframe time sharing? 

Do I think that companies will outsource all of their IT to the cloud in the next year?  Probably not.  Chris Wolf uses the timeframe 5-10 years.  However, will portions be moved to the cloud?  I was speaking with one of my customers and he reminded me that he is already “outsourcing” web filtering and spam filtering to two different providers.  Many companies have their web  presences already “in the cloud”.  Software as a Service has had some bumpy starts and stops, but is now a reality for many types of applications.  It will be an evolution.  Security is still of concern.  There will be companies that will try something, not like it, pull back, only to move again to a model that provides them more flexibility and reduces costs. 

What does this mean for the IT professional?  I believe that if you are working for a company that is not an IT company, that you will want to manage your companies migration to the cloud.  Get out in front of it.  Volunteer to do the research.  Use it to further your own knowledge and career.  Can you convert your IT department from a cost center to a profit center and be a cloud provider for other types of similar businesses?   If all else fails, take your expertise to a cloud company.  The exciting thing is in the future you can work for a company that will service many different types of customers and provide you many interesting job challenges.  I believe cloud providers (since their business is IT) will be on the forefront of exciting and new technology as well as need the best and brightest to operate them.  Do an inventory of your skills.  Do you understand databases?  Great, cloud providers need to manage many databases (if not for their customers) for their own internal systems for billing, monitoring, reporting, etc.  Do you understand networking and security?  Cloud providers are going to need to guarantee that data cannot bleed from one customer to another.  Same for storage.  And obviously, also for virtualization. 

We call this concept of being able to support multiple customers on the same infrastructure as multi-tenancy.  Since a cloud provider’s model is multiple customers on the same infrastructure (“cloud”), it better be secure.    Is your expertise Enterprise Applications, messaging, development?  Guess what, cloud providers need application expertise as well so they can meet the business needs of their customers.  If you are a developer you need to be able to write applications that are “cloud aware”.  Applications that can ask for more resources if they need them.  Applications that may service more than one customer.  Do you understand service management?  Do you work with infrastructure services such as backup and recovery, business continuity or data center design?  Do you work for an IT provider, already?  Your customers of the future may change to include a mix of large “cloud providers”.    They exist, today and are called many things.  They may provide Hosting (infrastructure as a service), application services (Software as a service) or multiple platforms including items such as  storage (Platforms as a service) and even voice services.   I am sure there are some cloud “thinkers” that may challenge my simple definitions of these terms, but you get the idea.

I believe the security concern is the single largest inhibitor to companies running full tilt into cloud computing.  However, just like we use VPNs, SSL web services, and other forms of digital encryption of data on the public internet, these security problems will get solved and enforced.

IT is an interesting business.  Sometimes things build up until there is a tidal wave and things change rapidly.  Sometimes things move more slowly and there is an evolution.  However, if you hear the term “cloud” and think it is only a marketing term, you may want to think again.  It is already affecting and will affect all of us in IT sooner than we may think.

What do you think?