Tag Archives: Virtualization

Making Data Centres Lean and Mean

December 4, 2015 Rob Mackle

Storage visualization is becoming much more prevalent these days. Almost everyone now understands and accepts the concept of storage visualization, fueling its expansion. Analyzing the whole system involved in visualization, CIOs are working harder than ever to transform their data centres, re-positioning their storage as the main and integral part of their cloud policy and strategy. In the process, companies are grasping the real benefits and the pros of the technology they are embracing.

Problems associated with competence, consistency, supervision, performance and enhancement of data are discovered to be issues that can simply be resolved just as they cross the conventional data storage thresholds and also transform their data centres into lean, mean centres in the cloud. In addition, it has turned out to be a feasible answer in a space that has become border less. It also needs to be kept in mind that business mobility can only be harmonised by data mobility.

For that reason, transformation of data centre comes into view as a comprehensive process with demands that are conflicting. Extraordinary scalability pre-requisites struggle with reduced management involvement, and seamless mobility. Bear in mind that this is not a “rip and replace” exercise, rather a holistic approach to solving issues. Convergence and seamless integration are considered to be interdependent components of the evolving and ever changing network.

Investment in storage visualization has become extremely alluring for companies due the following reasons:

Reduces operating cost
Reduces capital expenses
Consolidates servers and storage
Uses server resources more efficiently
Enhances disaster recovery capabilities
Allows flexibility to dynamic business needs
Improves reliability and availability of systems

Nevertheless, storage virtualisation is not only the case of establishing a plan and taking required action. Really, it is not as simple as most people think it is. It is a must for CIOs to take a deeper look at the capabilities in order to make current investment perfect and create transformed tomorrow’s data centre infrastructures. Therefore, CIOs accept that the most requirements are to realise the current technology considering the company’s particular environment. They accept that structural design planning, developmental road maps and requirements are not the talent that possibly be available. It may be essential to engage external skills in the initial phases of the transformation to perform procedure successfully to obtain all advantages that follows storage visualization and data centre transformation.

Obviously, the bigger image can by no means be allowed to cover the base line of business, which is profitability. More so, there is no change in the cost effectiveness in data centre transformation strategy driver. Extending the entire process, CIOs accept the data policy due to the fact that it creates spin-offs, enhanced use of resources, improved dependability and suppleness. Consolidation and possible disaster recovery are extra remuneration that can be predictable.

The trouble connected with inefficient use of existing storage and server resources can be reassured through transformation of data centre. This further establishes an environment of availability and reliability. Viable workloads, ever-changing business needs or aging infrastructure need no more become problems to the company that has gone in for all-inclusive data centre transformation. As a result, tomorrow’s mean data centre will be realised today!

Facts Behind Re-Purposing Outdated Hardware

September 21, 2015 Stewart Parkin

Hardware failure is not a day to day issue for most of users. If, however, hardware failure happens on constant basis, you must need to think about it seriously. Due to hardware failure, important files and folders can be lost. Survey about hardware failure is conducted to discover ratio in IT departments.

In past, almost 99% of IT experts faced troubles due to hardware failure;
At time of data loss, above 70% IT professionals have given their services to clients;
80% are of the view that hard drive is the basic reason of hardware failure.

Hardware failure affects business continuity. Many companies are using old hardware, and this could cause hardware failure. It is concerning why computer users have old hardware. When a piece of equipment completes its life span without getting out of order, why it is used until it stops working completely? How long, do you expect a hardware to continue to work? How do you use old equipment?

IT professionals state that re-purposing of hardware gives a number of benefits to users. However, at the same time, there are some drawbacks associated with re-purposing. If you have made up your mind for re-purposing hardware, consider these facts:

Time Span for Hardware
IT professionals agree that it is good to re-purpose a machine that is used for few years. However, parts such as thermal paste, battery, RAM and fans should be swapped. Five years old hardware is good for home use, such as media server. Conversely, it will create troubles if much older machine is re-purposed for production. IT experts recommend that old hardware should not be used as production machines.

What is the Purpose?
Most of users select old hardware either for testing or storage purposes. As far as storage is concerned, you can perform a few things with old hardware. It can be used for backups, as well as for shared storage. Whatever is your target, it is good to keep copy of backup data to use in critical situations. On the other hand, old equipment is good to use for testing purpose in laboratories like virtualization, training or any other purpose. If hardware is old, it does not mean it is useless.

Consideration before Re-purposing Hardware
Everyone wants to get benefits from hardware as long as it is in working condition. Nobody wants to throw away hardware equipment just for the reason it has covered its expected life span. As compared to other equipment, computer hardware are highly superseded; therefore, users do not need to get in trouble for re-purposing, repairing or refurbishing. IT professionals note that repair and ownership cost may result in waste of time and effort.

Recycling is another form of re-purposing hardware. Visit local electronics that accept old computer hardware or you can also try to design some thing new using the old hardware. You can find interesting projects online for old computer components.*

* – http://www.zdnet.com/pictures/upcycled-tech-24-new-uses-for-your-old-hardware/

Cloud Computing & Virtualization: Counterpart in Information Technology

August 7, 2015 Stewart Parkin

Virtualization has some basic characteristics which help organizations to reduce hardware investment, operating cost, maintenance charges, and consumption of energy. It improves performance of system, as well as capability to recover data in disaster. Virtualization plays an important role in the growth of cloud computing.

Abstraction is important for cloud computing; therefore, virtualization separates applications as well as operating system from underlying machines. Decoupled procedure makes them able to travel across clusters, data centers, and servers. Side by side, virtualization brings together memory, resources and storage into particular virtual environment, and makes it easy to share applications and computing capacity through cloud.

Infrastructure Management
As far as cloud computing is concerned, it is linked with notable features. Some of familiar characteristics are as follows:

Scalability
Automation
IT Management
Agility
On-demand Delivery

Virtualization is recognized as primary source to help with the growth of cloud computing. On the other hand, the cloud offers a variety of benefits to virtual environment. When resources are librated and organized in virtual settings, they are dispersed and provisioned as needed. The cloud offers on-demand access, automated delivery and flexibility to particular resources and accommodates growth requirements. As a result, complexity and cost are reduced; and resources can be best utilized and extra attention can be directed towards business operations.

Growth of Non-Virtual Clouds
It is a fact that the cloud does not need virtualization to flourish; however, pairing of these two help in harvesting maximum benefits easily. It is the basic reason why the cloud platform is assisted through hypervisors like Hyper-V, as well as VMware Sphere. Moreover, there are a variety of technologies which are targeting to authorize the cloud to grow without assistance of virtualization any more.

Open source community has presented CoreOS as simple and easy to use operating system. It is based on Linux Kernel, which is familiar to may around the world. Services which are not important are stripped and Linux allocation makes use of particular containers to deliver security, performance and dependability advantages of virtual machines by using similar abstraction parts for which virtualization is renowned for. There is no use of hypervisor to get maximum advantage. Conversely, CoreOS assures nominal performance operating cost, as well as capability to strap up the cloud power by utilizing a few machines only.

One more open source alternative is Docker. It is best for those who are concerned to tap into cloud with no virtualization hassle. It is a particular type of tool, planned to containerize applications in an environment (Linux) without the need to virtualize the whole operating system. Cloud deployment is given power from Docker to enable the delivery of processes, tasks and application easy across a single physical machine or group of virtual machines. It works flawlessly with system CoreOS and improves the efficiency, speed and flexibility of available containers, as well as their significant applications.

If your organization is getting benefit from virtual environment, it means you have taken initiative for an infrastructure (cloud based) for an easy conversion. Though virtualization administration come with their own challenges, technologies such as CoreOS and Docker can be adopted as alternatives.