Once you have decided that leveraging the public cloud is right for your business there are many phases that need to happen to ensure that you remain compliant, in control and more importantly your IP (data) remains accessible and relevant. One area that needs to be top of your agenda is data integration.
The most cost effective cloud architecture is built upon public cloud services such as Rackspace and Microsoft. But that means your data now sits on cheap storage and multi tenanted server architectures.
When you move data to a public cloud, you need to appreciate the need for synchronisation with on-premise enterprise systems. Otherwise, users will duplicate data, save to USB and more worryingly have inaccurate data to manipulate. This typically is a stumbling point for cloud deployment and can hold up the project.
Like many architectural issues that need some face time when you move to the public cloud (such as security, governance, and performance), data integration requires upfront thinking and planning. Here's some of what you need to consider:
The amount of data to be placed in the public cloud
The type of data moving between architectures and the rate of change
The logging and auditing requirements
The exception-handling needs
Many enterprises don't like to think about data integration but if you do the upfront work, your public cloud deployment will work well.
Saturday, 25 August 2012
Thursday, 23 August 2012
Microsoft to release Smb server by the end of 2012
Equanet were lucky enough to attend a partner briefing session yesterday with Microsoft to discuss Windows 2012; the technologies and the versions. Firstly the technology is a game changer and secondly they have simplified the licensing models completely. One of the server workloads discussed was the new SMB Server.
Windows Server 2012 Essentials is Microsoft's replacement for Windows Small Business Server. The Essentials product is a combination of on-premises/cloud server.
The free RC of Windows Server 2012 Essentials can be downloaded from Microsoft's download site.
The final version of the Windows Server 2012 Essentials will be released to manufacturing and made generally available before the year is over, officials said in this week's blog post.
Windows Server 2012 Essentials is Microsoft's replacement for Windows Small Business Server. The Essentials product is a combination of on-premises/cloud server.
The free RC of Windows Server 2012 Essentials can be downloaded from Microsoft's download site.
The final version of the Windows Server 2012 Essentials will be released to manufacturing and made generally available before the year is over, officials said in this week's blog post.
Wednesday, 22 August 2012
Citrix Enriches VDI in a Box
Citrix has announced this week the release of Citrix VDI-in-a-Box™ 5.1, an ideal solution for the SMB markets or discrete VDI projects within the mid market. The latest release of VDI-in-a-Box delivers end-user personalisation with personal vDisk technology that allows end-user applications and data to be preserved while adopting the single master image concept (again saving costs).
This version also includes several feature enhancements to improve ease-of-use, flexibility, and performance such as optimisations for Google Earth, support for Active Directory failover, and beta support for the upcoming
Windows 8 operating system.
VDI-in-a-Box is built upon a grid architecture without any shared storage requirements. The architecture runs on inexpensive off-the-shelf servers. Scaling simply involves adding another server, with nothing to rearchitect or reconfigure. New features within this release are:
Personalised Virtual Desktops:
VDI-in-a-Box 5.1 eliminates the need to create separate static desktops to carry forward end-user customisation by coupling single-instance management with the ability to have individual user workspaces for their applications and data.
Single Instance Management:
IT can maintain one master copy of desktop images while preserving the personalisation of user applications and data. This dramatically reduces maintenance efforts and cuts datacenter storage costs up to 90 percent.
VDI-in-a-Box 5.1 continues to simplify management; the new touchless desktop agent automatically propagates upgrades across all the images in a VDI-in-a-Box grid.
Support for Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 8 (Beta): VDI-in-a-Box 5.1 manages Windows 2008 R2, Windows XP, Windows 7 and Windows 8-based virtual desktops).
All features of Windows 8 including the new Metro interface are fully supported. This feature is currently in beta pending the general availability of Windows 8.
Looking at virtual desktops, interested to know more? Contact us to see how we can help.
This version also includes several feature enhancements to improve ease-of-use, flexibility, and performance such as optimisations for Google Earth, support for Active Directory failover, and beta support for the upcoming
Windows 8 operating system.
VDI-in-a-Box is built upon a grid architecture without any shared storage requirements. The architecture runs on inexpensive off-the-shelf servers. Scaling simply involves adding another server, with nothing to rearchitect or reconfigure. New features within this release are:
Personalised Virtual Desktops:
VDI-in-a-Box 5.1 eliminates the need to create separate static desktops to carry forward end-user customisation by coupling single-instance management with the ability to have individual user workspaces for their applications and data.
Single Instance Management:
IT can maintain one master copy of desktop images while preserving the personalisation of user applications and data. This dramatically reduces maintenance efforts and cuts datacenter storage costs up to 90 percent.
VDI-in-a-Box 5.1 continues to simplify management; the new touchless desktop agent automatically propagates upgrades across all the images in a VDI-in-a-Box grid.
Support for Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 8 (Beta): VDI-in-a-Box 5.1 manages Windows 2008 R2, Windows XP, Windows 7 and Windows 8-based virtual desktops).
All features of Windows 8 including the new Metro interface are fully supported. This feature is currently in beta pending the general availability of Windows 8.
Looking at virtual desktops, interested to know more? Contact us to see how we can help.
Monday, 20 August 2012
Want to test drive VMware vCloud?
VMware has announced a vCloud Service Evaluation which allows customers to “test-drive” a cloud built on the VMware platform.
The idea is that the vCloud Service Evaluation would give to VMware customers the chance to test drive a cloud built on the VMware vCloud platform as well as support for apps and virtual machines that VMware customers already have.
VMware strategy is to attract more potential customers giving them a free try and allowing systems admins to learn about the capabilities of vCloud.
The vCloud Service Evaluation gives customers the opportunity to add an enterprise cloud to their infrastructure and migrate workloads between existing private cloud, the vCloud Service Evaluation, and VMware’s extensive ecosystem of service providers.
Customers can register for VMware vCloud Service Evaluation, and beta invites will be sent out starting August 27, 2012.
The idea is that the vCloud Service Evaluation would give to VMware customers the chance to test drive a cloud built on the VMware vCloud platform as well as support for apps and virtual machines that VMware customers already have.
VMware strategy is to attract more potential customers giving them a free try and allowing systems admins to learn about the capabilities of vCloud.
The vCloud Service Evaluation gives customers the opportunity to add an enterprise cloud to their infrastructure and migrate workloads between existing private cloud, the vCloud Service Evaluation, and VMware’s extensive ecosystem of service providers.
Customers can register for VMware vCloud Service Evaluation, and beta invites will be sent out starting August 27, 2012.
Sunday, 19 August 2012
NetApp and XenServer get closer
NetApp has now released a version of its Virtual Storage Console for Citrix XenServer as a plug-in to XenCenter. The VSC allows you to provision, resize and destroy storage repositories, manage deduplication and provision VMs using FlexClone and then import them into XenDesktop.
One of the architectural principles about XenServer and XenCenter is you create storage at the pool level and it is automatically mounted to all hosts in the pool rather than having to provision the storage for each host individually like you need to do in vSphere clusters. This VSC now makes it even simpler by being able to create the volumes and exports on the array as well.
Need to know more read about it here.
One of the architectural principles about XenServer and XenCenter is you create storage at the pool level and it is automatically mounted to all hosts in the pool rather than having to provision the storage for each host individually like you need to do in vSphere clusters. This VSC now makes it even simpler by being able to create the volumes and exports on the array as well.
Need to know more read about it here.
Thursday, 16 August 2012
Citrix takes on Good Technology with CloudGateway 2
Citrix earlier this year announced a mobile email client, that would be native to a device. As time has moved on this year it is evident that Citrix are betting big on CloudGateway with the recent release of CloudGateway 2, and why not the concept is fantastic based upon the needs of an ever diverse workforce and disparate IT infrastructure.
With the latest release Citrix now has technology in their stack that competes with Good Technology leveraging their email client.
Email clients are a necessity on mobile devices yet they are full of security concerns as the clients built into the device are designed to share their information with other applications on the device.
Using a sandboxed third-party email client helps avoid this problem and Good was one of the first companies offering this technology even before the iPhone came onto the market.
Citrix's email client will be "MDX ready," which suggests that it will be able to plug into Citrix Receiver, ShareFile, and be managed using CloudGateway.
When we learn more, we will be able to tell you more. This could be an interesting ride based upon the focus that Citrix has on end user experience and the appetite they have for secure tablet computing.
Wednesday, 15 August 2012
Build your own OpenStack Cloud
Rackspace has today released what it calls Rackspace Private Cloud Software, allowing organisations to download a free (yet complete) version of Essex OpenStack that the company runs in its own hosted private clouds.
This is an approach that Citrix took when they released XenServer to the masses FOC in an attempt to gain a foothold in the server virtualisation market, and it was a gamble that paid off.
The Rackspace Private Cloud Software, code-named Alamo, comprises Rackspace's version of OpenStack, which is 100 percent open source Essex. A new version of OpenStack, dubbed Folsom, is expected in September. A new version of the installer that incorporates Folsom will be available about 60 days postrelease, according to the company.
Alamo includes Ubuntu 12.04 LTS host operating system and KVM hypervisor. Components include the Horizon Dashboard, Nova Compute, Nova Multi Scheduler, Keystone Integrated Authentication, the Glance Image Library, and various APIs.
All of the above comes out as a single installer, enabling companies to deploy a private cloud on bare metal in a matter of minutes.
Rackspace won't profit from licensing its Private Cloud Software, but they expect to make revenue through support and services. With this release, Rackspace is offering its Escalation Support services, which include 24/7 ticket and phone support. The company will continue to add more services, such as cloud monitoring, later this year.
This is an approach that Citrix took when they released XenServer to the masses FOC in an attempt to gain a foothold in the server virtualisation market, and it was a gamble that paid off.
The Rackspace Private Cloud Software, code-named Alamo, comprises Rackspace's version of OpenStack, which is 100 percent open source Essex. A new version of OpenStack, dubbed Folsom, is expected in September. A new version of the installer that incorporates Folsom will be available about 60 days postrelease, according to the company.
Alamo includes Ubuntu 12.04 LTS host operating system and KVM hypervisor. Components include the Horizon Dashboard, Nova Compute, Nova Multi Scheduler, Keystone Integrated Authentication, the Glance Image Library, and various APIs.
All of the above comes out as a single installer, enabling companies to deploy a private cloud on bare metal in a matter of minutes.
Rackspace won't profit from licensing its Private Cloud Software, but they expect to make revenue through support and services. With this release, Rackspace is offering its Escalation Support services, which include 24/7 ticket and phone support. The company will continue to add more services, such as cloud monitoring, later this year.
WAAD - Whats that then?
An area of cloud that is critical for maintaining single sign on activities that businesses have been busy implementing for many years is a directory service; welcome to WAAD. Windows Azure Active Directory. One of the biggest obstacles to corporate customers joining Microsoft in the cloud was the lack of an identity management platform that could join cloud and on premise solutions.
There are three major parts of the Windows Azure Active Directory (WAAD) service:
1. A Web service to create, read, update and delete identity information in the cloud. Developers can also use the SSO abilities of WAAD to allow individuals to use the same identity credentials used by Office 365, Dynamics and Windows Intune.
2. The developer preview allows companies to synchronize their on-premises AD with WAAD and support identity federation too.
3. The recently released developer preview supports integration of WAAD with consumer identity networks like Facebook and Google, making for one less ID necessary to integrate identity information with apps and services.
Currently the version of WAAD is a developer edition and so not all functionality is known yet.
WAAD is hosted by Microsoft in its data centers and is used largely by Office 365, the vendor's cloud Office suite. Information about users, groups and services that are part of the Office 365 offering are stored in a cloud-based AD instance that lives as a tenant on Microsoft's services.
Microsoft says that in the future, you'll be able to bring up an instance of WAAD as part of your overall Azure subscription, but for now, Office 365 is the entry point.
Setting up your cloud tenant instance of Active Directory this way allows the users and groups to come straight from your on-premises directory. This happens the first time that you connect your on-premises ADFS2 instance up to WAAD using DirSync.
This is good move by Microsoft and gives plenty of scope for developing and migrating to the cloud. Things that we don't currently know are as follows:
How will Group Policy work across boundaries?
Where does Intune fit in the overall scheme of things?
Will Kerberos be supported?
What's your thoughts on this? We think it is a pretty smart move by Microsoft to help pave the way to their cloud service.
Need help with your cloud strategy then contact us to see how it can take shape.
There are three major parts of the Windows Azure Active Directory (WAAD) service:
1. A Web service to create, read, update and delete identity information in the cloud. Developers can also use the SSO abilities of WAAD to allow individuals to use the same identity credentials used by Office 365, Dynamics and Windows Intune.
2. The developer preview allows companies to synchronize their on-premises AD with WAAD and support identity federation too.
3. The recently released developer preview supports integration of WAAD with consumer identity networks like Facebook and Google, making for one less ID necessary to integrate identity information with apps and services.
Currently the version of WAAD is a developer edition and so not all functionality is known yet.
WAAD is hosted by Microsoft in its data centers and is used largely by Office 365, the vendor's cloud Office suite. Information about users, groups and services that are part of the Office 365 offering are stored in a cloud-based AD instance that lives as a tenant on Microsoft's services.
Microsoft says that in the future, you'll be able to bring up an instance of WAAD as part of your overall Azure subscription, but for now, Office 365 is the entry point.
Setting up your cloud tenant instance of Active Directory this way allows the users and groups to come straight from your on-premises directory. This happens the first time that you connect your on-premises ADFS2 instance up to WAAD using DirSync.
This is good move by Microsoft and gives plenty of scope for developing and migrating to the cloud. Things that we don't currently know are as follows:
How will Group Policy work across boundaries?
Where does Intune fit in the overall scheme of things?
Will Kerberos be supported?
What's your thoughts on this? We think it is a pretty smart move by Microsoft to help pave the way to their cloud service.
Need help with your cloud strategy then contact us to see how it can take shape.
Thursday, 2 August 2012
Citrix Releases CloudGateway 2
Citrix has announced the availability of Citrix CloudGateway 2, including its new MDX mobile experience technology.
With the addition of MDX technology to CloudGateway 2 Citrix provides mobile app technologies that enable centralised management, security and control over native iOS, Android and HTML 5 apps.
The four primary components of MDX include an App Vault, Web Connect (a secure mobile browser technology), Micro VPN (an app-specific secure access technology), and Policy orchestration for granular policy-based control over native mobile and HTML5 apps.
CloudGateway also supports not only native mobile apps delivered through MDX, but also integration with Citrix ShareFile. Using CloudGateway 2 with ShareFile, businesses can give employees access to their files on whichever device they choose through seamless role-based management.
Enterprises need to look beyond managing the device to managing the apps and data. With MDX Technology in CloudGateway, Citrix gives enterprises an end-to-end solution that securely manages the apps and data, leaving device choice to the users. The combination of CloudGateway, Citrix Receiver and ShareFile allows for the support of a mobile workforce while maintaining the right levels of security, control and aggregation of services across multiple delivery technologies (SaaS, Web, Mobile and Virtual).
With the addition of MDX technology to CloudGateway 2 Citrix provides mobile app technologies that enable centralised management, security and control over native iOS, Android and HTML 5 apps.
The four primary components of MDX include an App Vault, Web Connect (a secure mobile browser technology), Micro VPN (an app-specific secure access technology), and Policy orchestration for granular policy-based control over native mobile and HTML5 apps.
CloudGateway also supports not only native mobile apps delivered through MDX, but also integration with Citrix ShareFile. Using CloudGateway 2 with ShareFile, businesses can give employees access to their files on whichever device they choose through seamless role-based management.
Enterprises need to look beyond managing the device to managing the apps and data. With MDX Technology in CloudGateway, Citrix gives enterprises an end-to-end solution that securely manages the apps and data, leaving device choice to the users. The combination of CloudGateway, Citrix Receiver and ShareFile allows for the support of a mobile workforce while maintaining the right levels of security, control and aggregation of services across multiple delivery technologies (SaaS, Web, Mobile and Virtual).
Rackspace go OpenStack
Rackspace with a number of other contributing organisations have been developing an open platform for cloud services, this activity has been ongoing for over two years now and Rackspace has started offering its hosted servers and databases using the open source OpenStack suite of cloud software, showing that the organisation that is fanatical about support believes that the platform is ready for adoption.
Rackspace currently has over 180,000 customers of its hosted services. The company offers Windows and Linux servers, content delivery network services, and .Net and PHP hosting, all with associated management and monitoring services.
When new customers log into Rackspace to requisition servers, they will interact with Rackspace Open Cloud services, which is based on the OpenStack Nova compute component. Rackspace has run the Swift object storage component of OpenStack for over 2 years for its Cloud Files storage service; it created the technology in-house and then contributed its code when it co-founded the OpenStack project.
Rackspace is not alone in offering OpenStack cloud services. On Wednesday, Hewlett-Packard launched its HP Cloud Object Storage, also based on OpenStack.
Begun two years ago by NASA and Rackspace, the OpenStack project is an effort to create a stack of open source software that can be used to provide IaaS (infrastructure-as-a-service) cloud services, either to customers or for internal use. The project rapidly gained popularity, attracting
at last count the development efforts of over 3,300 programmers and 184 companies.
The OpenStack suite will allows users to provision resources much more quickly than they could have through Rackspace's previous console. An administrator can launch as many as 200 servers in 20 minutes.
Rackspace currently has over 180,000 customers of its hosted services. The company offers Windows and Linux servers, content delivery network services, and .Net and PHP hosting, all with associated management and monitoring services.
When new customers log into Rackspace to requisition servers, they will interact with Rackspace Open Cloud services, which is based on the OpenStack Nova compute component. Rackspace has run the Swift object storage component of OpenStack for over 2 years for its Cloud Files storage service; it created the technology in-house and then contributed its code when it co-founded the OpenStack project.
Rackspace is not alone in offering OpenStack cloud services. On Wednesday, Hewlett-Packard launched its HP Cloud Object Storage, also based on OpenStack.
Begun two years ago by NASA and Rackspace, the OpenStack project is an effort to create a stack of open source software that can be used to provide IaaS (infrastructure-as-a-service) cloud services, either to customers or for internal use. The project rapidly gained popularity, attracting
at last count the development efforts of over 3,300 programmers and 184 companies.
The OpenStack suite will allows users to provision resources much more quickly than they could have through Rackspace's previous console. An administrator can launch as many as 200 servers in 20 minutes.
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