How To Configure Hybrid Clouds with System Center App Controller

If you have not had a chance to play in the public cloud yet, I invite you to give it a test. To do that, point your browser to www.windowsazure.com and sign up for a free 90 day account. With the cloud fever going into full force this month, especially after the VMware-Amazon "extravaganza" and the rumored VMware public cloud offering, it is clear that what I've been saying on this blog for a few years now is beginning to come true: That the public cloud will take away workloads from enterprise data centers, and for good reason.

Posted by Elias Khnaser on 03/11/20132 comments

Citrix Nails Its Enterprise Mobility Strategy

I have been very pleased with the strategy, execution and the road map that Citrix has developed around Enterprise Mobility. With the announcement of XenMobile MDM and the Mobile Solutions bundle, I can very easily say that the Citrix solution is the most complete and feature-rich offering on the market today.

XenMobile MDM is simply a name change for Zenprise, which Citrix acquired a few months earlier. I expected Citrix to simply change the "Z" to "X" and keep the name, but I guess Citrix marketing did not find that as amusing. That is not the only change that occurred: A new version of "Zenprise" also accompanies this release, and XenMobile MDM now brings it to version 8.0.1.

Posted by Elias Khnaser on 03/04/20138 comments

How To Back Up Hyper-V VMs Natively in Windows Server 2012

Did you know that with Windows Server 2012 you can now backup Hyper-V VMs with very little effort and very little configuration? Now, I'm not recommending that you throw out your existing enterprise backup system and standardize on Windows Server Backup in 2012, especially if you are using products like System Center Data Protection Manager (which is fantastic for backup) or Veeam or others. But, in a pinch Windows Server 2012's backup is quite handy.

Posted by Elias Khnaser on 02/27/20134 comments

VMware Brings Horizon Nearer

VMware and Citrix simultaneously launched their enterprise mobility management suites last week and if you are a follower of this blog you will know that I have been singing the tune of an end-user computing strategy for a while now that includes physical and virtual desktop management, MDM/MAM/MIM and collaboration. VMware and Citrix both are coming very close to realizing this strategy except they both are insisting on ignoring collaboration for some reason.

Posted by Elias Khnaser on 02/25/20131 comments

Ask These 6 Important Questions of Your Cloud Providers

If you are considering workloads for the cloud or an entire cloud strategy or moving your entire datacenter into the cloud, I think you are already on the right path for success within your IT organization. The cloud, when properly leveraged, could be a huge cost cutter and a significant ally to deliver services in a timely manner to meet business expectations.

While the decision to offload certain workloads to the cloud is a good one, spotting and understanding the fine print of what each service provider offers can be the determining factor between a successful cloud project and a disappointing one. So what are the questions you should be asking your cloud service providers? Here are a few that are imperative:

Posted by Elias Khnaser on 02/11/20132 comments

Consumerization of IT is Bigger Than Mobile

When I mention consumerization of IT, many people immediately think of mobile devices. Some might even think the conversation even goes towards desktop virtualization. Others might say it's both. They are all correct, but CoIT is more than just about mobile and devices and desktops. It's also about cloud and a new, agile, faster services delivery model. CoIT is also about Big Data Analytics.

CoIT represents a seismic shift in technology approach. It changes the way we do, well, everything! Many years ago, technology companies marketed their products and solutions to the enterprise customer first and foremost, and only some of these technologies made their way to the average consumer. This trend gave birth to our industry, where everything is enterprise-focused. In the not too distant past, this trend has shifted, it has changed drastically in the opposite direction. Technology companies now market directly to the consumer. In it, they have found a bigger market that adopts their technologies much more quickly and in smaller transactions that collectively represent massive income.

Posted by Elias Khnaser on 02/04/20132 comments

Tech Support, Streamlined: VMware vCenter Support Assistant 5.1

VMware recently released a new virtual appliance for vCenter Server. VMware vCenter Support Assistant 5.1, which centralizes and streamlines the creation of technical support tickets, is a free download that once registered with vCenter Server gives you access from within the vSphere client or vSphere Web Client to open and manage technical support tickets, generate and upload logs, and even scrub any potentially sensitive information out of these logs automatically. It's a pretty nifty tool for administrators, if you ask me. I despise opening tickets and uploading logs, and so this appliance makes it easy, convenient and accessible.

Posted by Elias Khnaser on 01/30/20130 comments

Cloud Orchestration: What It Is, Why You Need It

The cloud is going to arrive in bits and pieces, not in a large uprooting of environments. When I try to explain that to some customers, they automatically change the conversation because they are not interested in cloud. Some of them view the cloud as a threat or they simply don't understand it.

The irony comes when some of them change the conversation and they want to discuss orchestration. (VMware vCenter Orchestrator and Microsoft System Center Orchestrator are examples, and are both great orchestration products.) I can't help but smile at that point because they are going down the path of a private cloud without realizing it.

Posted by Elias Khnaser on 01/23/20137 comments

Is Mobile Device Management Dead?

Lately, I have been asked about my thoughts around Mobile Device Management and whether or not I thought it was a valid and valuable solution in the enterprise or whether it was a passé -- essentially an outdated solution. My answer? Well it's not that cut and dried, it's not that simple.

I have heard the arguments about how MDM is dead, that Mobile Application Management is the wave of the future and I agree with that. What I don't agree with is when bloggers, analysts, etc. deal in absolutes. I'm not just a blogger -- I also consult and deal with enterprises daily and I can assure you that, as of right now, MDM is not dead. But, it's also not a smashing success at any organization.

Posted by Elias Khnaser on 01/16/20136 comments

How To Enable Shared ISOs in Hyper-V

I'm wrapping up my TrainSignal course (shameless plug) on Microsoft Exam 70-247: Configuring and Deploying a Microsoft Private Cloud with System Center 2012 and I've come across a few tips that I thought would be useful. Let's start off with a useful how-to around ISOs.

When you create a VM, the default behavior of an ISO attached as a virtual CD/DVD is to copy that ISO into the VM's directory. This is Microsoft's way of avoiding Live Migration failures when you try to move a VM with an attached virtual CD/DVD from host to host. As you should be aware, in both Hyper-V and ESX/ESXi an attached ISO would prevent a vMotion or a Live Migration.

Posted by Elias Khnaser on 01/09/20132 comments

My Big 5 Virtualization, Cloud Predictions for 2013

It is now tradition to kick off the new blogging season with predictions for the upcoming year. Last year I made some pretty good predictions, so let's see if my crystal ball is even more finely tuned for 2013.

The Private Cloudd
This year is, without a doubt, the year of the private cloud. We will see VMware, Microsoft and others make a huge push for automation and orchestration at every level and the technologies resulting from acquisitions made in 2012 by Cisco and others will find their way into products in 2013. I predict that automation and orchestration at the converged infrastructure level will play a major role in data centers. I also predict that Microsoft, VMware and other companies' private cloud solutions will go mainstream, with enterprises rushing to upgrade from highly virtualized environments to private cloud environments.

Posted by Elias Khnaser on 01/07/20130 comments

How To Power on a Hyper-V VM with Corrupt/Missing Drives

I was engaged with a customer recently that was recovering from a SAN meltdown and unreliable (or, more like non-existent) backups. To make a long story short, while we were trying to power on Hyper-V virtual machines, we found quite a few of them were in a saved state with corrupt or missing hard drives.

We found ourselves in a bit of a pickle -- we could not power on the VMs as it would throw an error because one or more hard drives were missing, and we could not delete the missing disks from the VM settings as that was not allowed either.

Posted by Elias Khnaser on 12/19/20122 comments