Archive for the ‘Designing the Future’ Category

After years of slumbering the VMdamentals.com blog has now officially become an archive. Just like technology moves on, I am moving on the new stuff as well… Cloud Native! This time just not from a pure VMware perspective, but more around Cloud Native as a whole. Containers, Kubernetes, persistent storage… All of that jazz!

The VMdamentals blog dried up years ago. As I no longer had access to a real lab it was hard to maintain the technical deepdives I once did on all of the cool (mostly storage related) geeky subjects.

Although I have been part of the EMC / Dell family for quite some years, I only recently moved into the Technologist team at Dell ISG. This move means I now one again have access to an extensive lab, so I am once again getting my geek on!!

#DemoDemoDemo !

Whether you are new to the world of Cloud Native or a seasoned expert, I will continue to share knowledge and help you stay up-to-date with the latest trends and best practices in the industry. Join me on this exciting journey and let’s explore the fascinating world of Cloud Native together!

Take a peek at the new Konversations blog site!

Wow that was LOADS OF DUST.

Hi to anyone who might still be lurking here! After many years of blogging on vmdamentals.com, at some point I ran out of capabilities and time to do all of these techie/nerdy things and blog about it. Even though I had tons of fun building out all of this stuff, at some point this blog site died a slow death. Move along, nothing to see here…

OR IS THERE?

With me recently moving into a new roll within Dell Technologies, I once again have access to a lab, and even better… I am given time to play around with all kinds of nerdy stuff! So yes: There will be a jumpstart where I will start blogging again! It won’t be VMdamentals.com, as that name has served its purpose for many years when I dissected the world of Virtual Machines (VMware Virtual Machines specifically). As the world has progressed since then, the tip of the spear today lies in the world of Containers… And you say Containers today you say Kubernetes. So guess what will be “coming next”…!!

YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENED NEXT 😉

A very exciting announcement was made at VMworld today: EVO:Rail. I’ve known for a while about this under the codename “Marvin” (and EMC’s appliance related to this codenamed “Mystic”), now it is out there with it’s official naming. But what is it? Disclaimer: I work for EMC, but what I write here are my own opinions.

First things first: A quick intro to hyper-converged

First we had converged infrastructure. Converged infrastructure operates by grouping multiple components together into a single, optimized computing package. Components of a converged infrastructure may include servers, data-storage devices, networking equipment and software for IT infrastructure management, automation and orchestration. VCE’s Vblock is a prime example of converged infrastructure. Below that we have reference architectures like EMC’s VSPEX and NetApp’s Flexpod.

So on to even higher integration and automation: “hyper-converged”. Hyper-converged architectures consolidate and manage compute, Read the rest of this entry »

I recently get more and more into discussions around Software-defined storage and storage virtualization. Is it the same, is it partly the same, is it something totally different? In this blog post I’ll try to shed some light on the technologies of today around these buzzwords and try to make some sense at the same time.

What we used to call virtualizing storage

Before we launched the idea of the Software-defined Datacenter (SDDC) and Software-defined Storage (SDS), we were already putting hardware between storage and hosts creating an abstraction layer between the two. Good examples of this technologies are IBM’s SVC and EMC’s VPLEX.

These technologies look south for their storage requirements, abstract this storage and Read the rest of this entry »

Nowadays the air is filled with the Software-defined Datacenter or SDDC for short. The idea behind this is awesome: As soon as we are able to define and manage compute, storage and networking using software only, we can define, build, scale and destroy virtual datacenters at the press of a button. On top, there’s a web portal. Underneath, there is just a generic x86 hardware platform.

Software-defined Storage

Software-defined compute is something that has been going on for years already. Most vendors that sell hypervisors, especially VMware have a lot of work into the software-defined pillar that is called “compute”.

But when we look at the storage component of the Software-defined Datacenter (often called SDS or Software-defined Storage), things aren’t as advanced as in the compute pillar. Or are they? Read the rest of this entry »

Last week I did a presentation at the Dutch VMUG event around SDDC with a techical focus on the storage bits and pieces you could build inside the hypervisor to accomodate this. I want to share this presentation with you together with a little background on the subject.

Software Defines Virtually Everything

VMware has taken a big step towards the Software Defined Datacenter (SDDC). This is where things are going for sure (also see my related post Cool Tech Preview: VMware’s distributed storage). The idea is that since “everything” runs on x86 anyway, you can potentially run all code on a common platform. From that view, everything will run in software. Read the rest of this entry »

Looking through VMware’s newly announced things at VMworld 2012, the one thing that stood out for me was vSAN or (vCloud) Distributed Storage technology. From what I’ve seen at VMworld sessions, the vSAN technology creates a “distributed storage layer” across ESX nodes in a cluster – yes, up to 32 of them. Disclaimer: Even though I work for EMC, I have NO further insite into this development, nor do I blog for EMC. These are my own thoughts and ideas.

Just a VSA on steroids or way more?

So what is this distributed storage technology? At the first glance, it would appear to be something much like the VSA, but its implementation would be more comparable to Read the rest of this entry »

At VMworld 2012 vSphere 5.1 was introduced. One of the features is “Enhanced vMotion”. Using Enhanced vMotion you can migrate between “shared nothing” hosts. Yes, you can now migrate live between local storage and shared storage as VMware has combined the storage vMotion and vMotion all-in-one. Cool new feature that can’t be missed, or just another tick in the box to keep up with Hyper-V in the announced Microsoft 2012 server?

Enhancements on vMotion called “Enhanced vMotion”

What a catchy name! 😉 So what does it do? Well, for one it allows you to Read the rest of this entry »

Announced this year at VMworld 2012 (Watch the Monday general session from 51:26) were several cool technologies coming from VMware in the near future that focus on storage, or rather vStorage: Virtual Volumes (vVols), Virtual SAN (vSAN) and Virtual Flash (vFlash?). So what is this all about, and where is it going?

Virtual Volumes or vVols

How SAN and NAS systems work today, is something that they have been doing for years: Take a bunch of disks, stripe data across Read the rest of this entry »

The cloud vision of both VMware and EMC are very much aligned. Nothing new here. What is new, is that both VMware and EMC have now joined forces by delivering the “Cloud Readiness flight check”, a quick but effective way of giving businesses a quick view into their own cloud readiness.

The history of Cloud Readiness

Started some time ago, EMC introduced the “Cloud Readiness Accelerator” program. This program consists of a 2 day workshop Read the rest of this entry »