Thoughts on Virtual Infrastructure Management

Cloud Conference Freebie from Akorri

By Lisa Crewe

Akorri is offering Free Registration ($2500 value) for the Cloud Computing Conference & Expo on April 19-21, 2010 at the Javits Convention Center, NY.

While you’re there, attend Rich Corley’s session, Optimize While You Virtualize to Get to the Cloud.

Use the cloudspeakerguestVIPgold (case sensitive) coupon code to receive full conference pass for FREE!

Register here

March 1, 2010 | Filed Under Virtual infrastructure management | Leave a Comment 

Akorri Channel Chief

By Lisa Crewe

Congrats to Akorri’s own Vice President of Worldwide Sales, Bill Simpson, for being named a 2010 Channel Chief by the Everything Channel’s CRN. Channel Chiefs are leaders in creating effective channel programs for solution providers.  They consistently defend, promote and execute effective channel partner programs and strategies.  This is Simpson’s second consecutive year being named as a Channel Chief.

CRN selected Simpson as a Channel Chief because of his recent accomplishments leading Akorri’s channel team. In the past year, Simpson helped grow Akorri’s channel program 120% and added over 30 partners in his first 6 months at Akorri.   Under Simpson’s leadership, Akorri launched PartnerPoint, its new channel partner program. The tiered program offers premier channel members additional marketing and sales support benefits as well as giving all channel partners better online education and certification, additional marketing resources, deal registration and margin protection to support the growth of Akorri’s channel partner business. Since Simpson joined the company in the second half of 2009, Akorri increased its Q3 2009 revenues by 50 percent over third quarter 2008 and Q4 2009 revenues 250% over Q4 2008 in a very difficult economic environment. Akorri’s BalancePoint software also recently was awarded Gold Storage Product of the Year by SearchStorage.com / Storage Magazine. 

As a 100% partner-focused company, this is a huge award for Akorri.  Congratulations again, Bill!

February 23, 2010 | Filed Under Virtual infrastructure management | Leave a Comment 

Managing Virtualization on MSPtv

By Lisa Crewe

I just watched a new program from MSPtv called “Around the Channel.”  This month the topic is Managing Virtualization with special guest, Heather Clancy, a business journalist we’ve had several conversations with over the past year including a recent discussion on virtualization management.

This video presentation is a nice round up of the challenges, current state of virtualization, future plans and recommendations for solving the management conundrum.

A fact I found interesting is that one recent IDC market survey indicates that close to 80 percent of all organizations grappling with more than 50 virtual machines are planning to apply some sort of management discipline to the mix. I think any organization deploying virtualization should be considering a management solution even before virtualizing.  It’s an opportunity to baseline performance of your physically hosted applications before you virtualize so you can show you’re still delivering good application performance after vritualization.  It can also ward off some of the challenges later by putting performance metrics in place from the beginning.

Heather highlights the fact that virtual and physical servers are co-existing in the State of Affairs in the slide below.  This is something Akorri has recognized from the beginning and why BalancePoint monitors both virtual and physical servers as well as the storage environment together to give you control of the complete infrastructure.

Heather Clancy's Virtualization State of Affairs

Heather Clancy's Virtualization State of Affairs

So if you’re trying to figure out how virtual infrastructure management will fit into your overall services mix, check out this presentation.  You can also read Heather’s blog here.  Enjoy!

February 22, 2010 | Filed Under Industry News & Opinion, Virtual infrastructure management | Leave a Comment 

From Virtualization to Cloud Computing: Are You Ready?

By Rob Strechay

If you’re thinking about deploying an internal cloud for your organization then you might find this article interesting. The article explains the three stages of virtualization from Akorri’s perspective based on our work with customers including the evolution and steps to take to assure performance and manage service levels.  This is good stuff to use when you are going between the reality of deploying virtualization and the hype of cloud.  It may give you a few good ideas on line items for your resume too … as you are now a “Cloud Architect” … check it out.

 
Optimize While You Virtualize to Get to the Cloud
— Virtualization is the key technology for the cloud. Its ability to separate the OS and application from the hardware enable it to best deliver on-demand cloud services. Charles King, Principal Analyst at Pund-IT, said it best: “Without virtualization there is no cloud – that’s what enabled the emergence of this new, sustainable industry.” But, how can IT organizations leverage virtualization to create their own private cloud?

February 16, 2010 | Filed Under Industry News & Opinion, Virtual infrastructure management | Leave a Comment 

What does VMware know about storage?

By Rob Strechay

The answer is probably about as much as you do!  Why do I say that?

As we all know, they are owned by EMC and the two are close.  But much like the cobblers children not having shoes, VMware doesn’t seem to have  integrated EMC’s storage expertise yet.  My case in point is how you have to go through and configure different alerts for the different types of VMDKs.  This seems a little tedious, non-descriptive, and almost useless.

95% full for the first alarm when you are running out of space?  Doesn’t that seem a little high?  What seems to be a learned attribute between the two companies are tons of alerts … many, many alerts.

I thought the reason EMC bought SMARTS was to really bring alerts out of ECC under control?  Alerts without context make little or no sense.  Don’t you want to know “who” is filling up the datastore?  Is this normal?  How long do I have before I run out of space?  Did the Storage vmotion case the alert?

I am sure they will add some of this in the coming releases of vSphere.  But how will they keep all of these alerts from just becoming background noise?

Having been on the other side of the fence, it seems to me that VMware is stealing a page from Cisco and others, keep the technology mystical and complex as a barrier to competition.  Now, will Microsoft seize on this and make things simpler to manage?  Time will tell.

Bottom line is that third-party management solutions, specifically those that function as IT referees, will be in high demand for a long time to come based on the way the market is maturing.

February 8, 2010 | Filed Under Virtual infrastructure management | Leave a Comment 

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