A fascinating new report from Enterprise Strategy Group reveals that one particular hypervisor is suddenly capable of running tier-1 applications on just 3 virtual CPUs and a mere 12GB RAM — power and efficiency at its finest.  Not only that, the New Tier-1 App no longer requires application-level clustering to meet stringent SLAs!  Simply throw your mission-critical SQL Server database on a stand-alone hypervisor and skip the shared block storage entirely — you just don’t need it anymore.

Comprehensive lab scalability testing has demonstrated and proven once and for all that it is indeed possible to put not one, not two, but eight mission-critical tier-1 applications on a single stand-alone hypervisor host with no need for HA protection of any kind.

Beyond the obvious cloud computing use cases one would envision NASA and other high-performance compute environments benefitting immensely.  Customers using other hypervisors can only hope their vendors are feverishly working to provide similar performance and availability features so that the remaining universe of tier-1 applications can also be effortlessly virtualized on just 3 CPU cores and 12GB of memory.

The timing for this breakthrough is actually perfect, as SQL Server 2012 introduces a new per-core licensing model that would have sent costs through the roof if not for this remarkable advancement — bullet dodged!

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If you know that VXLAN offers a better approach to network virtualization than NVGRE and you listen to Packet Pushers during your Silicon Valley commute, dust off your resume and take a look at the job description — contact me directly with any questions.

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I spent some time talking to these hosting providers, expecting to hear about how they have System Center 2012 deployed and ready to integrate with App Controller for amazing Infrastructure-as-a-Service hybrid cloud nirvana.  Much to my surprise, none of these companies were talking about this at all.  One was promoting an OpenStack initiative and all of them were happy to rent dedicated physical servers to customers — running Windows, Linux, VMware ESXi, etc. — but mostly the focus was on pay-by-the-month virtual servers.

Even offering Windows VMs and System Center management doesn’t make a true private cloud.  While private clouds can be hosted externally, the one attribute that makes them private is dedicated infrastructure.  By and large, shared infrastructure means public cloud.

This is the very thing Gartner analyst Lydia Leong discussed recently:

Given the widespread use of NIST cloud definitions, and the reasonable expectation that customers have that a provider’s terminology for its offering will conform to those definitions, calling a multi-tenant offering “private cloud” is misleading at best.

Once again, Microsoft has demonstrated that it is perfectly comfortable playing fast and loose with facts when characterizing product offerings, leaving customers — and the media — to believe that System Center hybrid and hosted private clouds are a reality today when they really nothing more than marketing.  One might expect more substance from a company that has dumped tons of cash on advertising campaigns that accuse a competitor of merely “talkin’ cloud.”

Related posts:

1. Missing: System Center 2012 Hybrid Cloud
2. Microsoft Management Summit 2012 a.k.a. “MMS 2011 for real this time”
3. System Center 2012 — “Now it’s a cloud!”
4. Cloudy with a chance of vaporware

The National Institute of Standards and Technology took the initiative to provide recommended definitions of cloud computing models.  They’re probably not perfect, but it looks like the industry is starting to converge around this de facto standard.  You might be surprised to learn that the U.S. government could even produce a document like this, let alone have it consist of a mere three pages! Download Special Publication 800-145, NIST Definition of Cloud Computing, September 2011 and see for yourself.

Since you’re reading this article, you are probably clear on public cloud versus private cloud and Infrastructure-as-a-Service compared to Platform-as-a-Service.  But have you considered what qualifies as a hybrid cloud?  Microsoft has generously proclaimed that System Center 2012 enables “a hybrid cloud you can manage from a single pane of glass.”  A quick check of the facts tells a different story.

The truth is, System Center 2012 doesn’t offer capabilities that match the NIST definition of hybrid cloud:

Hybrid cloud. The cloud infrastructure is a composition of two or more distinct cloud infrastructures (private, community, or public) that remain unique entities, but are bound together by standardized or proprietary technology that enables data and application portability (e.g., cloud bursting for load balancing between clouds).

When it comes to hybrid cloud, System Center 2012 App Controller is two half-solutions in one.  The product is a web interface that allows provisioning PaaS applications to the Azure public cloud or IaaS service templates to a Virtual Machine Manager private cloud.  No mixing and matching — IaaS private cloud workloads cannot be moved to the public cloud and vice-versa.  Remember that the next time you hear Microsoft talking hybrid cloud.

But there is a cloud computing leader with true hybrid cloud computing solutions today: VMware.  Thanks to the large ecosystem of VMware vCloud providers, customers can integrate one or more public clouds with a vSphere/vCloud Director private cloud for true hybrid cloud computing.  And one more thing: VMware has offered this capability for over a year already!

Trust VMware for all your cloud computing needs: private, public, and true hybrid.

Related posts:

1. Missing: “Private Clouds” at the MMS 2012 Hosted Cloud Pavilion
2. System Center 2012 — “Now it’s a cloud!”
3. Microsoft Management Summit 2012 a.k.a. “MMS 2011 for real this time”
4. Cloudy with a chance of vaporware

Back at MMS 2011 we heard about System Center 2012 — which was supposed to ship by the end of 2011 – and how the various products would revolutionize private clouds everywhere.  The sessions in 2011 demonstrated a range of new features such as Server App-V, Service Templates, SMI-S LUN creation, etc.

What a difference a year makes.  In the world of selling futures and beta software — the world Microsoft lives in — the keynote presentation in 2012 showed us amazing new demos of features such as Server App-V, Service Templates, SMI-S LUN creation, etc.  Sound familiar?  Perhaps just reality catching up with marketing.

To be fair, there were some new announcements as well — MCSE, the flagship certification of the 1990′s is back, this time for cloud! Oh, there was also this terrific coffee mug thing… must see.  And kudos for no obviously fake technical demos this time around.

One of the unexpected disclosures during the keynote was that next year MMS would not only be in a different location but at a different time: New Orleans in June 2013.  That seems awfully close to that other annual conference, Microsoft TechEd.  Connecting the dots could lead one to the conclusion that these two annual conferences are going to be getting a little cozier.

Whether Las Vegas in April or New Orleans in June, one thing’s for sure — it will be a perfect place to start talking about beta software that will solve all of your private cloud dilemmas.  You know, the one that’s really going to work; the one that solves all the problems with that old 2012 version.

Related posts:

1. Missing: “Private Clouds” at the MMS 2012 Hosted Cloud Pavilion
2. Missing: System Center 2012 Hybrid Cloud
3. Cloudy with a chance of vaporware
4. System Center 2012 — “Now it’s a cloud!”

Kind of reminds me of the System Center 2012 cloud.  It’s a disparate collection of legacy management systems loosely coupled together, working with a hypervisor that is based on a general-purpose operating system.

Private infrastructure-as-a-service clouds based on yesterday’s technology will never measure up to purpose-built solutions from VMware.  Don’t take the wrong path for your cloud.

Related posts:

1. Missing: “Private Clouds” at the MMS 2012 Hosted Cloud Pavilion
2. Missing: System Center 2012 Hybrid Cloud
3. System Center 2012 RTM
4. Microsoft Management Summit 2012 a.k.a. “MMS 2011 for real this time”

This one is on the topic of vMotion performance — a critical aspect of meeting SLAs in a production datacenter.  Todd and Sreekanth were kind enough to include me in this episode, taking the opportunity to highlight the crushing advantage vMotion has over Microsoft Hyper-V Live Migration.

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Cody’s writing style is easy to read as he breaks down the various concepts into easy bites, even inventing a notional company to provide examples for some of the tasks.  These real-world examples really add value to the book and will help new users understand concepts and procedures.

I thought it was especially useful to include a section on how Onyx can be used to generate scripts to tackle more advanced tasks.  Several interesting appendices cover things like troubleshooting and deploying a vCO virtual appliance (vApp).

All in all, this is a useful read for vSphere administrators and is a reasonable length for reading cover-to-cover.

Win a Copy and Start Automating vSphere!

Pearson has generously offered to give away 10 copies of this new book to VCritical readers.  Here are two ways to win:

Leave a comment on this post - Describe one idea for vSphere automation with vCO in a comment below; 5 winners will be randomly selected.

Like VCritical on Facebook – Go to the VCritical Facebook page, “Like” it, and write something on the wall that has to do with vCO; 5 winners will be randomly selected.

Fine print:  Contest ends March 14, 2012 at 23:59 PDT.  Winners must respond by March 16, 2012 23:59 PDT or prize will be forfeited.

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Last year I posted a similar article here and ended up hiring a top-notch candidate as a result.  Will you be next?

Please see the official job posting and contact me directly if interested.

Note these key points:

• This is a hands-on position for a seasoned professional — expertise with Linux is required in order to deploy and analyze a wide range of products that compete with vSphere and vCloud Director
• An important aspect of this job is communication: you’ll need to provide some writing samples, why not start with a cover letter?
• Position is at VMware HQ in Palo Alto, CA

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Countdown to “2H CY11″

Update: Microsoft finally announced the General Availability of System Center 2012 at Microsoft Management Summit in April 2012, also known as “Q2 CY12.”

Related posts:

1. Microsoft Management Summit 2012 a.k.a. “MMS 2011 for real this time”
2. System Center 2012 — “Now it’s a cloud!”
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4. Misleading documentation or none at all? I’ll take the latter, thanks.