IT 2.0 :  Next Generation IT infrastructures

In this article, I'd like to document a setup I have been working on for a few days at the LSI office in Milano (great guys and free beverage there! Thanks!). LSI is the company from which IBM OEMs the DS3000, DS4000 and DS5000 lines of storage servers....

The last day of March 2009 Intel officially unveiled its brand new Nehalem core architecture under the Xeon 5500 product name umbrella. There is not much to say about it other than it's impressive from a performance perspective. Just to give you a sense...

On Monday 16th Cisco unveiled its Unified Computing System (UCS). A few days ago I have been briefed by some local Cisco guys about the product (err, the architecture as they stressed). I assume that people reading this post know what Cisco is doing and...

A few weeks ago I wrote a tutorial on how to deploy Hyper-V R2 on the IBM BladeCenter S where I demonstrated, among other things, how to LiveMigrate from one blade to another. I didn't spend too much time commenting on the implications this will...

I have just got back from VMworld 2009 Europe in Cannes. It was an interesting week and not just because we were in Cote D'Azur (Azur, not Azure like in Windows Azure). There have been a few interesting announcements, demo and breakout sessions going...

My good friend at Microsoft, Giorgio Malusardi, noticed my post "Enterprise Virtualization in a Box" which was essentially an example of how to create a BladeCenter-contained VMware-enabled data center in a box (including servers, storage and networking)....

VMworld 2009 Europe is coming (last week of February). I was planning to go and I have just found out that they have also accepted one of the two topics I submitted for the break-out sessions. The title of the session that got selected is: Virtual...

In this post I am going to talk about a specific piece of hardware technology that is intercepting a specific virtualization industry trend. This piece of technology is called BladeCenter S. Those of you that have been reading my blog know I don't usually...

Early in 2007 I wrote a post whose title was "Will Microsoft Sunset VMware?". You can read it here. The closing of that post was: > This analysis is as of April 2007. I am sure many things can and will change and I might be proven wrong. Let's see...

I have been working in IT for about 17 years now, 14 of which at IBM. Since the first day I was immediately exposed to the concept of a centralized IT where everything is fully controlled, fully secured, fully automated and easy to manage within the data...

I think he did but, relax Paul, I am not going to sue you... ;-) Joking aside I was sitting at the VMworld 2008 Keynote in Las Vegas back on Monday last week and I was somewhat surprised (perhaps even pleased) to see Paul touching on many innovative...

So finally it happened. Hypervisors are (essentially) free. I remember the very first engagement I had with VMware technologies some 8 years ago; that was the ESX 1.1 (beta) time frame: we did a Proof of Concept and closed the deal with a very satisfied...

Virtualization is a disruptive technology and we all know that. With this post I want to share with you some scenarios about how server (and storage) virtualization can drastically change the landscape for "small IT shops" (aka SMB's) in the context of...

Lately, there have been many discussions on the Internet and on various forums regarding the implementation of HA clustering technologies (namely and primarily Microsoft Cluster Server) within virtual machine environments (namely and primarily VMware...

In the last few months I have been struggling to understand what is so different, in terms of mass adoption, between virtualizing server workloads and virtualizing desktop workloads (also known as "VDI" or "Virtual Desktop Infrastructure"). I have been...

VMware, at VMworld 2007, announced that next year they will provide an out-of-the-box solution/product for Disaster/Recovery scenarios. It is called Site Recovery Manager (SRM for short) and it is supposed to orchestrate and facilitate system administrators...

Hardware virtualization these days is a hot topic and we all know that. There are many customers looking into it for the first time and one of the problems they are facing right now is how they are going to size their new virtual infrastructure. Lately...

Last week I came across a hardware configuration requested ad-hoc by a customer to support their VMware VI3 setup. The hardware, an IBM System x 3950 M2 4-way (I know it's not yet generally available at the date), was configured with as many as 5 quad-port...

"I need to setup a VI3 solution. Which CPU should I choose from a performance perspective? Intel or AMD?". I have heard this ad nauseam. If I was to get one single cent for every thread discussion I have seen on the net regarding the matter... I would...

A few days ago Microsoft released Release Candidate 0 for Windows Server 2008. Apparently, in a last minute rush before the final RC0 build was "cooked", they wanted to give the industry a taste of how Windows Server Virtualization (aka Viridian) will...

Last week, at VMworld 2007 in San Francisco, VMware announced ESX 3i. There have been lots of speculations within the virtualization community about what ESX 3i would have looked like. And now it's here. So what (really) is this thing and what does it...

It's interesting that up until a year ago many people were showing their AMD tattoos claiming that Opteron was king of the hill and Intel was going nuts. Nowadays all these people seem to wear very nice shirts that hide these tattoos as there seems to...

For those interested the Session ID is WV27 and the title is "Virtual Appliances and the New Data Center - Changing the Rules" The bad news is that there is going to be a partner on stage (IBM). The good news is that I won't be trying to sell you anything...

A few days ago I was with a Business Partner at an event where one of the customers presented their own consolidation projects. This was not a shocking presentation for me as I have seen many customers moving from a physical environment to a virtual environment...

It is my feeling that there has been a bit of confusion lately around how hypervisors are being positioned by the various vendors. I am specifically referring to the three major technologies that seem to be the most relevant strategically going forward:...