IT 2.0 :  Next Generation IT infrastructures

This is a presentation I did for a breakout session of VMworld 2009 Europe in Cannes. I am attaching the abstract hereafter:

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As virtualization is becoming mainstream many organizations are undergoing design efforts to properly deploy their new virtual infrastructures. These organizations usually want to do this within known best practices boundaries.

Two of the most common concerns in the design criteria surround the hardware footprint. Specifically two of the most frequently asked questions are:

1) Should I use many small servers or fewer bigger servers?
2) Should I use rack optimized severs or a blade form factor?

This session will briefly discuss the history of virtualization deployments in the context of the underlying hardware infrastructure and how it is morphing. Pros and cons of the Scale Up and Scale Out models will be discussed with real life examples and general recommendations for deploying many small boxes or few bigger high-end nodes. The session will also outline major differences and design considerations for deploying different form factors including rack servers, blade servers as well as non conventional x86 server footprints.

The objective for this session is to demonstrate that one solution doesn’t fit all needs and that each organization needs to assess its own requirements and pain points to determine the best hardware layout among the many. This session is supposed to empower these organizations with a list of design considerations in order to elaborate the server infrastructure layout that best meets their needs.

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Consider this is not exactly the same content I discussed during the breakout. This is a new revision based on feedbacks I have received regarding things I overlooked in the first version.

I hope you find it useful and, if you have any comment, I'd like to hear it from you.

Massimo.