Disaster Recovery as a Service Considerations

This cloud is definitely getting cloudy and has been for the last few weeks. I can't help it, as the conversation I'm having with customers is all about the cloud.

Many organizations are exporting certain workloads -- like messaging and collaboration -- to the cloud. You can throw disaster recovery in with them. Many of my clients tell me that they cannot justify paying a hefty price for a secondary DR site to protect against disasters that may never happen. For those clients, DR is a workload that is well suited for the cloud.

Posted by Elias Khnaser on 05/15/20132 comments

DaaS vs. IaaS for Desktops

Let's continue the cloud conversaton that I brought up in last week's blog, but this time on another topic that has garnered steam in the last few weeks among my customers: Desktop as a Service. Customers are now asking, why DaaS instead of VDI?

I don't want to turn this blog into a comparison between them and this fight has been discussed to death in other forums. Still, I'd like to highlight a few things that DaaS needs before it is a viable alternative to VDI. The biggest hurdle is Microsoft licensing. At the moment, the company doesn't have a Service Provider License Agreement for its desktop operating system products and that means customers have to provide their own Microsoft licensing to their DaaS provider. I have a problem with that -- without one, it gets very complicated, even more so than VDI Besides, it then is no longer provided in an "as a service" model.

Posted by Elias Khnaser on 05/06/20137 comments

Enterprise IT Will Be Out of Infrastructure Biz in 5 Years

If your blood is boiling and you want to skip to the comments section and let me have it, that's fine. Just keep in mind that I purposefully wrote the title to be controversial and to open up a conversation that I believe is very relevant and that will shape enterprise strategies and the entire ecosystem of supporting product and services.

Let's examine the facts, shall we? Today, most (and, no, not all) datacenters are colocated and typically "lights-off" datacenters. That is, while we still purchase, lease and manage the infrastructure, it is very much hands off. Most of our operations are focused on the virtual infrastructure and what is left of legacy systems, like AS400. If you compare and contrast this situation with what enterprise IT was like in the late 1990s, you will find it very different. Back then, the focus was heavily on the hardware. I still remember that all the jobs I was applying for had requirements to have experience on specific hardware. Now, that requirement has almost disappeared.

Posted by Elias Khnaser on 05/01/201313 comments

Why Enterprise Content Management Systems Matter

Data is the most important asset an organization has. So, users getting immediate access to relevant data is the most important enabler an organization can offer its employees for competitive and sustained success in the marketplace. Today, enterprises are struggling with the amount of data that they have to work with and how to properly classify it and deliver it to end users. I had a conversation with one of our customers about specifically this topic and the customer had many valid questions:

Posted by Elias Khnaser on 04/22/20137 comments

Automate Certificate Replacement with vCenter Certificate Automation Tool 1.0

It's time to stop "ignoring" SSL certificates in your VMware vCenter environment and start replacing them with valid secure SSL certificates. I know that many of you just don't want to deal with SSL certificates. As a result, you simply choose to ignore the problem as the process of replacing these certificates is tricky. With the release of vSphere 5.1 the number of certificates that we now have to manage or replace has increased. It's a good thing VMware released vCenter Certificate Automation Tool 1.0 to help automate the replacement of the default SSL certificates with your own valid and secure certificates. You can use it with the following systems:

Posted by Elias Khnaser on 04/17/20133 comments

Do You Need HP Moonshot?

The answer to that question is no, especially if you're virtualized. In its current iteration, it would not make any sense. Besides, it has no support for most hypervisors. Right now, it only supports RHEL 6.4, SUSE 11 SP2 and Ubuntu 12.04 from an operating system perspective. That being said, HP's Moonshot is not aimed at virtualization workloads, it is more niche focused on massive , cale-out computing that would suit big data, cloud providers and even grid computing-enabled applications. 

Posted by Elias Khnaser on 04/10/20131 comments

Windows XP: The Day After End-Of-Life Support

Windows XP debuted in 2001 and it's still in wide use today. Despite the April 8, 2014 end-of-life support date looming, it is estimated that roughly 40 percent of desktops still run it. That is staggering.

What makes it even scarier is the fact that if organizations have not yet started their Windows XP migrations, it's highly unlikely they will roll out a new OS before the deadline. So what will happen when that date rolls around? Many of my customers say they don't care and that they we will continue to use Windows XP until they are ready to migrate. Basically they're saying, "We have been supporting Windows XP for a long time, we know its ins and outs and we don't need Microsoft's support."

Posted by Elias Khnaser on 04/08/201320 comments

Your Thoughts Are Valuable -- And Might Win You a Free Pass to Citrix Synergy 2013

Citrix has given me a free full pass to Citrix Synergy, the company's conference taking place in Anaheim, Calif. from May 21-24 (travel and accommodations are NOT included). I can give it away without any restrictions, but to make it interesting, how about we run a contest? Here's what you need to do to enter:

• Comment on this blog and tell me how the articles that I have written on Virtualization Review have helped you in your Citrix career.
• Comment on this blog if you attended my Synergy 2012 session on best practices for running XenDesktop on VMware vSphere; tell me what tips you used from that session (if any) that were helpful to you.
• Post a comment on the TrainSignal Web site, telling me how you used my video training to get certified, get ahead, or simply get better at administering your Citrix environment.

Posted by Elias Khnaser on 04/03/20134 comments

Confusing Story of the Week: PayPal Dumping VMware for OpenStack?

News that PayPal and eBay were dumping VMware in favor of OpenStack -- and the VMware stock price drop and media frenzy that followed -- makes me wonder about the influence of technology journalists and how they can so easily jump on rumors and make fools of themselves. The story was basically leaked by the consultancy firm that was supposedly leading the effort. That the leak came from an executive makes me wonder about the technical competency of this company. The story further goes to claim that 80,000 servers will move to OpenStack.

Posted by Elias Khnaser on 04/01/20133 comments

Can You Implement A Private Cloud Without Optimizing Business Processes?

It's been said that cloud is 80 percent business process and 20 percent technology. My customers continue to ask me, "How can we begin to entertain a private cloud before we begin by optimizing or in some cases defining and implementing our business processes and our ITIL framework?"

I agree that commencing a business process optimization or even implementation is critical and I also believe that good ITIL framework is a very important step in maximizing your private cloud deployment. So, what should you do? Hire consultants to begin an expensive and endless business process optimization or decomposition and wait until that project trickles down to the technology in order to begin that private cloud journey?

Posted by Elias Khnaser on 03/27/20132 comments

A Peek at Unity Touch in VMware Horizon View 5.2 Feature Pack 1

Not long after Horizon View 5.2 was launched, VMware followed up with Feature Pack 1. Boy, the company wasn't kidding when it said it would focus on EUC this year!

The FP1 release marks the official launch of Project AppShift, the technology that enhances the Windows desktop user experience on mobile devices. As you may be well aware, using a Windows desktop on a tablet can be challenging and difficult given the amount of zooming and scrolling that you have to do in order to execute the command. Project AppShift, now officially named Unity Touch addresses these challenges by decorating the Windows desktop with enhancements like larger icons and quicker, easier access to commonly used task and other tweaks to make it a much more pleasant user experience.

Posted by Elias Khnaser on 03/25/20132 comments

Who VMware Should Fear in the IaaS Public Cloud (It's Not Amazon)

Amazon is not the only IaaS Public Cloud that VMware should be worried about!

I am sure by now you have all heard the controversy around VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger's comments at the company's recent Partner Exchange. To paraphrase, he cautioned partners that any workloads on Amazon public cloud are lost forever and that no one wins in that situation, not VMware and certainly not its partners.

Some think his comments are short-sighted and unjustified. VMware does not have a public cloud offering, so how can it fault Amazon for having a service that his company doesn't and verbally attack them so blatantly? In any case, I'm one of those who believe his attacks are short-sighted and here's why: VMware see Amazon Web Services as an enterprise IaaS threat, but it is neglecting the fact that Google will most likely launch its version of an IaaS probably right around the same time as VMware Public Cloud.

Posted by Elias Khnaser on 03/18/20137 comments