Views from the other side

/ / @Mike_Colson, Cloud Tiering Appliance, EMC, ScaleIO, ViPR, vSpecialist / Leave a Reply

For those of you who have read my few blog posts know that I have had several jobs within the IT industry. As my first week as a vSpecialist at EMC is coming to a close I am reflecting on just how different the vendor side really is. Let’s start with WOW.

EMC has a robust product set, that isn’t to say they touch on everything that I think they should, but that might be asking too much. But I think the solution sets are vast enough and cover so much that I will have plenty to learn and talk about with customers for the foreseeable future.

Just to highlight some of the cooler things than I learned about in week one that I am sure to be posting about more in the very near future.

ViPR – is what I believe will be the standard bearer in SDDS (Software-Defined-Datacenter-Storage) currently it supports EMC and NETAPP storage but as more API’s are testing and brought into the fold the single pane storage management and self-provisioning tool will be the SDDC admins best friend. Ranking storage by tier and providing user self-service storage provisioning guidelines and capability.

ScaleIO – this is a very recent purchase by EMC but the possibilities seem to be limitless. Seemingly infinitely scalable storage in an itty bitty package. This could be the scaled storage solution for the datacenter that marks a transformative time in SAN and storage management.

Cloud Tiering Appliance – while I had at least heard about ViPR and ScaleIO before Cloud Tiering Appliance or CTA is one of those jewels in the rough. Where ViPR provides management and provisioning, it doesn’t manage the file locations or automated storage level tiering of data. Cloud Tiering Appliance picks that ball up and runs it into the endzone. While it is only file level management, the ability to provide your virtual hosts a single mounting point for a file and allowing the appliance to manage any multi-vendor storage tiering on the backend and automation of this process is something that large dispersed organizations are sure to want.

There are a lot of great products, and solutions within EMC, I have only scratched the surface. But as I learn more I am only too eager to share. The future of IT is bright and with great knowledge comes great responsibility to educate. Check out the links below for more on EMC’s platfolio.

ViPR – http://www.emc.com/data-center-management/vipr/index.htm
ScaleIO – http://www.scaleio.com/
CTA – http://www.emc.com/archiving/cloud-tiering-appliance.htm & http://www.emc.com/collateral/software/white-papers/h10777-vnx-cloud-appliance-wp.pdf

VMware View Security Server Limits

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The VMware View architecture with regard to Security Server has some confusing info. The documentation states that “Only one Connection Broker can be paired with a Security Server. Multiple Security Servers can be paired with one Connection Broker.” The confusion surrounds how many does “Multiple” mean.

I was initially asked this by an online acquaintance who has a unique View design challenge. They have an environment where there are providing virtual desktops to their users who work at various locations where they do not own the networks. This means multiple subnets accessing the View environment through NATs and Firewalls. Each subnet is then assigned a Connection Server, this design limits the number of connections per connection servers. Because of the configuration Security Servers are not necessarily required for connectivity they were deployed for security. Load-balancers are used to help route some of these connections and provide fail-over.  So it all comes down numbers for this specific question, how many Security servers can front a Connection server?

The answer came from Andre Leibovici via twitter, “as long you don’t channel connections via the CS there should not be a hard limit.”

So there you have it, the use cases for this are going to be few and far between, but other than the twitter exchange between Andre and I, I could not find any other mention of this on the interwebs. I hope this helps!

New Job and New Challenges

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 I have been with Tec-Pros aka Technician Professionals for the last 3 years, and it has been a wonderful experience. The friends I have made in the industry; vendors, co-workers, partners and customers have been amazing. But as all good things shall come to an end so to has my time here. I will be starting with EMC on Nov 4th as the newest edition to the vSpecialist team.

 I have worked for several types of companies throughout my career but never for a vendor. I am excited by this opportunity and can’t wait to see the new challenges that it will bring.  There have been a ton of smart and awesome people who have been vSpecialists before me and I can only hope to live up to the title. Whatever this next challenge brings my experiences at Tec-Pros have prepared me to face them.

 No doubt there are probably going to be questions I should be answering about where I am going and why, but the reality is it’s a great opportunity to do something that I love to do. I get to work as a strategic adviser for virtualization, talk about the technology and help customers make smart decisions about their IT road-maps. It’s what I do and what I am passionate about and as the saying goes if you do what you love for work it never seems like work. While I am sure there will be some cultural shifts going from a small professional services company shifting to a VAR to a massive vendor corporation, I will continue to talk about how the future of technology will help shape the enterprise. Plus I get the added benefit of some more time home with my family.

As I am very fond of saying the IT industry is a small community so no doubt our paths will cross again at some point and I will be just as willing to have a beer than and joke about whatever craziness is going on at the time. Until then I will see you on twitter.