Vendor lock-in, severity across cloud architectures

Several people have asked me in the recent past about the vendor-lock-in issue with various deployment architectures. The below picture should be self-explanatory on the amount of lock-in across SaaS, PaaS and IaaS. The lock-in that I am referring-to here is a combined aggregate of Vendor lock-in + data lock-in + dev environment lock-in + data lock-in.

Java platform as a service for cloud

I used to think about the alternatives for Google platform for the java world and came across CloudFoundry today. They provide the java stack, similar to SpikeSource' LAMP stack, on the cloud. Though the stack is not very flexible for various types of Java apps (4 layer models, server types, EJBs etc) - it works for the common deployments. You just make the .war file and upload it - watch it to get deployed in a couple of minutes.

Microsoft & RedHat sign deal on Virtualization interoperability

Red Hat and Microsoft have signed reciprocal agreements today to enable increased interoperability for the companies' virtualization platforms. Each company will join the other's virtualization validation/certification program and will provide technical support for their mutual server virtualization customers.

Server virtualization is moving towards the commodity model and this is a natural transformation. Crucially, Red Hat's interoperability deal with Microsoft does not include any patent covenants.

Gartner Report - Virtualization to grow 43% in 2009

Cost reduction, resource utilization and management advantages drive market growth - says Gartner Report.

... Global virtualisation penetration is on pace to reach 20 per cent in 2009 from 12 per cent in 2008...

...Virtualisation helps organisations to cut costs, better utilise assets and reduce implementation and management time and complexity, all of which are crucial in this economic environment...

Gartner recommends that vendors take advantage during this disruptive period by introducing leading-edge management tools in support of virtualisation initiatives and ensure that virtualisation-specific management products can integrate within existing management frameworks.

Cloud Computing - Top 10 Obstacles & Opportunities

Quick Preview of Top 10 Obstacles to and Opportunities for Growth of Cloud Computing (from UC Berkeley's Research Publication, Feb 10 2009).

# Obstacle Opportunity
1 Availability of Service Use Multiple Cloud Providers; Use Elasticity to Prevent DDOS
2 Data Lock-In Standardize APIs; Compatible SW to enable Surge Computing
3 Data Confidentiality and Auditability Deploy Encryption, VLANs, Firewalls; Geographical Data Storage
4 Data Transfer Bottlenecks FedExing Disks; Data Backup/Archival; Higher BW Switches
5 Performance Unpredictability Improved VM Support; Flash Memory; Gang Schedule VMs
6 Scalable Storage Invent Scalable Store
7 Bugs in Large Distributed Systems Invent Debugger that relies on Distributed VMs
8 Scaling Quickly Invent Auto-Scaler that relies on ML; Snapshots for Conservation
9 Reputation Fate Sharing Offer reputation-guarding services like those for email
10 Software Licensing Pay-for-use licenses; Bulk use sales

Bespin - Cloud based application development

Mozilla's Bespin, released today, is a cloud based development environment that acts as a collaborative working space. This has HTML5 Canvas, runs the tools in the cloud and pretty response - see the screen capture that I posted here.

There is a very decent editor on the hosted & extensible dev environment. There is also an integrated CLI, emacs and collaboration features.

What is missing are the publishing, caching capbilities, ability to do version control, client-side customizations and the standards enforcements. Hence - but this is just version 0.1

Kidaro - Microsoft Desktop Virtualization

Microsoft released the beta version of a enterprise desktop virtualization, MED-V, based on Kidaro. This would allow execution of any Windows OS applications on Vista.

MED-V is a solution for Application-to-OS incompatibility and accelerates the usage path on Windows Vista and any future OS. You can download the beta of MED-V here.

This is a step towards IT management of OS images across the corporate on any type of hardware (including flash drives) and data management using Active Directory controls.

The picture here would be self-explanatory on the architecture & lifecycle of virtual images:

Best practices for zoning in SAN

Ever wondered if the same best practices of SAN zoning are applicable with or without server virtualization? Let me give some pointers to create a stable, manageable & secure SAN zone.

• Always go for Zoning, even if LUN Masking is being used
• Always implement a default zone
  
• Disable any unused storage ports on the switch to increase security and avoid potential problems
• Use pWWN identification for all Zoning configuration unless D,P identification is required
  
• Create Zoning aliases and names with only as long as required to allow maximum scaling
• Single Initiator Zoning are to be used with separate zones if a HBA is carrying both types of traffic (eg for tape and disk traffic)
• Use accurate Zoning terminology
  
• Describe Zoning by enforcement method and identification type
• Always use the vendor given software to validate the zoning configuration
• Zones should use frame-based hardware enforcement

Business benefits of deploying & central management of OS images

In the first look, it might appear just as any other Desktop Virtualization or Application Virtualization - but the key difference is in the ability to manage OS images and in giving offline access.

The LivePC solution from MokaFive allows to create and distribute controlled OS images across the group with a single click. This helps in identical image replication across users, and control images from a central place.

Business benefits are to user OS images dynamically, work anywhere, and start up in an instant. As with any other virtualization, this technology works onl for x86 OS images. Task based users & test organizations would be the greatest benefactors of this!

Virtualization (in Real-time) for mobile devices

I was always a strong proponent of Virtualization on mobile devices from a criticality perspective (imagine a lost call from your spouse, because of calendar app hanging!). VirtualLogix has now announced a real-time virtualization solution for ARM based SoCs. The picture is self-explanatory on how multiple execution environments run on a single core. The critical phone service runs in a real-time isolated environment, while other apps run in regular OS – Linux/Windows/Symbian.

This solution also guarantees the reliability & performance of critical phone services, while advancing features for other apps. This also provides device management functions eg OS monitoring and automatic restart, allowing the system to be repaired or restored independently of the rich OS.

Dispersed storage - save costs on replication for DR

Did you know that there is an optimized way to achieve storage replication & reliability via "dispersed storage"? Essentially, the data resides behind a gateway which disperses data across physically separated storage units and reassembles it when needed. Based on the solution you use - this would be efficient, flawless & quick.

Traditional replication is achieved by maintaining duplicates of data, at 200% or more storage capacity needs. Attached picture from CleverSafe explains the concept of dispersed storage.

The average storage savings are about 60% with this mechanism for the same reliability.
Even if some of storage servers fail, one can get your entire, uncorrupted and undamaged file back, as long as you have access to a minimum threshold for retrieval [example, if six of 16 slices are down, you can still get the entire file back]. One also doesn't need to worry about the security of individual storage, because the data on any individual server cannot be interpreted!