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Editor’s Letter

Automate or Else EDITOR’S LETTER SERVER VIRTUALIZATION

Survey Says Automate or Else 2014: The Year

of Tape Storage
When Two
Hypervisors Are
It’s not easy, but nothing worthwhile ever is. Better Than One
GPU Virtualization (Really!)

When Two
Hypervisors Are
Better Than One

DATA CENTER PERFORMANCE FIRST LOOK

Five New Devices

How to Get GPU Virtualization

Leaf-Spine
Better Uptime
Architecture

How to Get Better

Data Center Uptime

AWS re:Invent 2013

EXPLAINED COMMENTARY

Plankers:
Less Is More Leaf-Spine • Less is More
SURVEY SAYS FIRST LOOK OVERHEARD Architecture • The End of
Eunice: The End
Cloud Nirvana
Mobility
of Cloud Nirvana New Devices AWS re:Invent
• Better Late Than
+8472s

for 2014 2013

Madden: Better Never
Late Than Never

JANUARY 2014, VOL. 3, NO. 1

 EDITOR’S LETTER

Home

Editor’s Letter

Automate or Else The Year of Thus far, that’s been hard for other cloud providers.
Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure and Google Compute Engine
Survey Says
Tape Storage charge around 8 cents per gigabyte per month for their
disk-based object storage services. The now-defunct Nir-

(Really!)
vanix cloud storage service charged as much as 18 cents
GPU Virtualization
per gigabyte per month.
When Two
Using tape as the basis of a cloud object store could
Hypervisors Are change all that. This fall, tape library manufacturer Spec-
Better Than One tra Logic introduced Black Pearl, a front end that provides
a RESTful object storage interface to the tape library.
Five New Devices I’M NOT A big fan of prediction stories. They’re usually bor- The appliance also contains a solid-state cache for near-
ing and almost always wrong. With that said, I’m going to real-time access to recently stored data, and it promises
Leaf-Spine
make a prediction. This year, we’ll see a resurgence in the retrieval times of no more than two minutes.
Architecture
use of enterprise-class tape library systems. Yahoo is already beta-testing the product. They’re ex-
Let me explain. Amazon Web Services has competition ploring ways to move away from traditional file-system
How to Get Better
Data Center Uptime for most of its services, with one notable exception: Gla- backups while tapping tape’s low cost and reliability, said
cier, the ultra-low-cost object storage service priced at a Kevin Graham, Yahoo principal storage architect.
AWS re:Invent 2013 penny per gigabyte per month. “The physical properties of tape are fantastic—it has
“Organizations that claimed they would never use the near-zero Opex, it has a good bit error rate and it’s cheap,”
Plankers: cloud for security reasons tell us, ‘At a penny per gig per Graham said. Yahoo’s initial plan is to use Black Pearl in-
Less Is More month, I don’t have a compliance problem anymore,’” said ternally, but Graham doesn’t rule out opening up its tape
Rick Faris, director of product management at Riverbed, infrastructure to outsiders down the road. “We’re going to
Eunice: The End
whose customers use Glacier combined with its Whitewa- start small,” he said, “but my hope is that we can open it
of Cloud Nirvana
ter cloud storage appliance. up and turn it in to a data center platform service.”
But Glacier drawbacks such as five-hour retrieval times For the sake of my prediction, I hope it succeeds! n
Madden: Better
Late Than Never and penalties for retrieving large amounts of data leave
room for competition on price and lack of restrictions. Alex Barrett, Editor in Chief

MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • JANUARY 2014   2

IT OPERATIONS

The New
Automation
Imperative IT’S HARD TO argue with the wisdom of automation. With
it, IT professionals can eliminate time-consuming and
The instinct to automate IT is anything but error-prone processes, improve uptime and customer sat-
automatic. But it’s becoming a necessity. isfaction, impose standards and even save money. What’s
BY ALEX BARRETT not to love?
Well, for starters, there’s cost. Then there’s complexity.
Then there’s the battle between legacy and modern auto-
mation tools. Then there’s the learning curve. Then there’s
the acceptance curve. Last but not least, there’s the small
concern of automating oneself out of a job.
“To a certain extent, everything we do in IT is a form
of automation,” said Glenn O’Donnell, principal analyst
at Forrester Research. “And yet, we resist automation
because we want to remain in control.”
Or maybe IT resists automation because it’s hard.
“Automation is always a great idea, until someone real-
izes it’s super complicated,” said Robert Green, principal
cloud strategist at Enfinitum Consulting, which uses
automation to create cloud environments.
But whether it’s fueled by sluggish budgets, the rise of
cloud computing, or the Agile and DevOps movements,
interest in IT automation is at an all-time high, experts
say.
“IT is being asked to do more things faster and in
shorter windows,” said Ronni Colville, a Gartner vice

HOME
MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • JANUARY 2014   3
 president and distinguished analyst for IT operations
management. “Automation is what everybody’s seeking
Home
right now, and we’re seeing a big increase in the number
of projects.”
Editor’s Letter
Automate or Else
THE AUTOMATION MATURITY CURVE
What organizations are automating today depends on
Survey Says
what they have already automated, and how much expe-
rience they have with the tools and technologies.
GPU Virtualization
“Automation is more of an evolution of trust between
vendors and implementers than a revolution of tech-
When Two
Hypervisors Are nology,” said Forrester’s O’Donnell. In the long list of
Better Than One frequently automated IT processes, for example, patch
Five New Devices
automation is seen as low-hanging fruit.
“No one in their right mind does that manually any-
more,” he said.
Leaf-Spine
Beyond that, which processes get automated differs
Architecture
depending on the company, its resources and personnel.
One large automotive insurer is slowly but surely auto-
How to Get Better
Data Center Uptime mating key IT processes using Microsoft System Center
Orchestrator. The IT staffer who supervises the monitor-
AWS re:Invent 2013 ing project is starting with alerts generated by the firm’s
BlueStripe performance monitoring tool. The goal is to
Plankers: take network operators out of the loop as much as possible.
Less Is More “In the past, an alert would happen, and would contact
the application owner at 3 a.m., who would then spend
Eunice: The End
30 minutes restarting a Web service,” the monitoring
of Cloud Nirvana
supervisor said. Today, that process has been automated
such that within 120 seconds, the problem is detected, an
Madden: Better
Late Than Never action is performed and the problem is resolved—without
ever having to wake the application’s owner.
But while automating faults and events has been a suc-
cess, the monitoring supervisor worries about alienating
his peers. “The [automation] tools are in good shape, but
it’s harder to get the IT teams on board.” Not everyone has
welcomed the sudden surge in emails they receive thanks
to the newly automated system.
So he’s taking it slow, trying not to annoy colleagues.
“I don’t want everything I do turned into [a coworker’s]
email rule that says ‘Delete everything this person sends
me,’” he said.
IN THE LONG LIST OF
FREQUENTLY AUTOMATED
IT PROCESSES, PATCH
AUTOMATION IS SEEN
AS LOW-HANGING FRUIT.
Others, in contrast, see extending their automation
know-how as a key way to curry favor with other IT teams.
The engineering architect for a global financial services
company said that the focus of automation in his shop has
moved beyond simple infrastructure provisioning and
patching toward higher value processes such as closed-
loop remediation and building out private cloud environ-
ments for the test/dev and quality-assurance teams.
“It’s really about helping to speed up the development
teams so that they can be more agile,” the engineering
architect said.
To that end, the firm uses a bevy of tools from Hewl-
ett-Packard, including the old Opsware technologies now
MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • JANUARY 2014   4
 known as HP Server Automation and HP Operations see how it would respond. “The system started at 11 serv-
Orchestration. ers, and we watched it move to 20, then 25, and all the
Home
Indeed, provisioning cloud environments—public or way up to 60,” he said. “As claims popped off the stack, the
private—is an increasingly popular form of automation, number of servers went all the way back down.”
Editor’s Letter
said Gartner’s Colville. That’s the thrust of many con-
temporary automation and orchestration platforms on
Automate or Else
the market, including offerings from traditional vendors PROVISIONING CLOUD
such as VMware with vCloud Automation Center and ENVIRONMENTS—PUBLIC
Survey Says
BMC with Cloud Lifecycle Management, or those from
newer players such as RightScale, Dell Enstratius and OR PRIVATE—IS AN
GPU Virtualization
ServiceMesh, recently acquired by CSC. INCREASINGLY POPULAR
When Two
“Event management is where it all got started, but these FORM OF AUTOMATION.
Hypervisors Are days it’s all about cloud and self-service provisioning,”
Better Than One Colville said.
Armed with simple-to-use automation tools, a lot more
Five New Devices organizations would right-size applications according
SCALE UP, SCALE DOWN to demand, said Nand Mulchandani, ScaleXtreme co-
Leaf-Spine
There’s also a significant opportunity to use automation founder and CEO. For example, now that test and dev
Architecture
not only to build out repeatable cloud environments but environments are increasingly in the public cloud, users
to take advantage of cloud’s scalability and elasticity. should find ways to automate the tear-down of those en-
How to Get Better
Data Center Uptime Enfinitum’s Green described a recent project in which vironments, he said.
he moved a claims processing application for a large U.S. “Before, people didn’t turn stuff off, but now that you
AWS re:Invent 2013 insurance company from a managed services provider to pay by the hour, you have every incentive to turn it off,”
Amazon Web Services’ public cloud, saving the company Mulchandani said.
Plankers: $750,000 per year.
Less Is More The savings came in large part from being able to shrink
the environment substantially, from 35 servers at the MSP A CROWDED IT AUTOMATION TOOLBOX
Eunice: The End
to a base of just 11 servers on AWS, Green explained. That If you find yourself nodding your head at this vision,
of Cloud Nirvana
environment is now auto-scaled up in response to client the next question is: How do you get there? What tools
load using monitoring and orchestration software from do you need?
Madden: Better
Late Than Never ScaleXtreme. There are two schools of thought when it comes to IT
In one test, Green threw 1,000 claims at the system to automation tools: adopt a big automation framework and

MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • JANUARY 2014   5

 augment it as needed with point tools, or rely heavily on for needsthe larger player doesn’t meet.
low-cost/free open source automation tools to cobble to- “Think of it as a shopping mall with a big anchor store
Home
gether your IT systems. and lots of smaller boutiques,” O’Donnell said.
Forrester’s O’Donnell recommends that organizations Costs, however, may put those products out of reach
Editor’s Letter
align with one of the large automation “anchor vendors.” for a lot of shops, hence the popularity of open source
At the same time, it’s not possible to standardize com- tools like Chef, Puppet, Salt and Ansible, said Michael
Automate or Else
pletely, in which case, you can augment with niche tools Coté, research director for infrastructure software at 451
Research.
Survey Says
“With open source, you don’t need to spend any
money—if you know what you’re doing. That’s a lot better
Pick Your
GPU Virtualization
than the seven figures you’ll spend with BMC,” he said.
When Two
Hypervisors Are
Automation Poison But low-level tools only go so far, and O’Donnell said
that users should expect to see those small companies
Better Than One AMONG AUTOMATION BUFFS, there’s a mini-debate evolve their products to focus more heavily on process
raging on which is better: procedural- or model- automation—“where the big guys have dominated.”
Five New Devices driven automation. Meanwhile, large vendors are increasingly opening
At a high level, procedural languages like Chef their environments to support open source tooling. For
Leaf-Spine
describe how to get to a desired state; mod- instance, VMware vCAC handles process orchestration,
Architecture
el-driven languages like Puppet describe what but turns to Puppet Lab’s Puppet to do actual provisioning
a desired state should look like. In the words of work, Coté pointed out.
How to Get Better
Data Center Uptime Puppet Lab’s Scott Johnston, “Chef dictates the Automation users say to focus on what you’ve got.
how; Puppet dictates the what.” “Our guiding principle is Just Enough Technology, or
AWS re:Invent 2013 The lion’s share of legacy scripts are proce- JET,” said the engineering architect at the large finan-
dural, and thus probably the most familiar. Ad- cial services organization. “If an open source tool does
Plankers: vocates say they provide the most flexibility, too. enough, then we leverage those things. If we already own
Less Is More Others argue that a more model-driven ap- comparable software, then we use that.”
proach is easier to maintain. “[Procedural] if-then- If this approach sounds like it will leave you with a lot of
Eunice: The End
else can get very brittle, because there are a lot tools, you’re right—but you’re not alone. Gartner’s Colville
of Cloud Nirvana
of downstream changes that you need to make,” said she routinely talks with customers considering nine
said Derek Townsend, ServiceMesh vice president or more automation tools. “Our prediction is that enter-
Madden: Better
Late Than Never of product marketing. n prises will have no less than four separate automation
tools in their shop through 2017,” she said.

MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • JANUARY 2014   6

 THE INEVITABILITY OF AUTOMATION With that on the horizon, IT professionals should heed
Just because automation is messy and complex is not a that warning and wherever possible automate the tasks
Home
reason to avoid it. they do today, to become more like application developers
For one thing, you don’t need to automate everything themselves.
Editor’s Letter
you do, right away. It’s easy—and advisable—to start small.
“We tell customers to automate just one thing. Don’t try
Automate or Else
and boil the ocean,” said Scott Johnston, director of strat- “AUTOMATE JUST ONE
Survey Says
egy and marketing at Puppet Labs, the force behind the THING. DON’T TRY
Puppet configuration management language. “Start with
something that is causing you pain, like root password
AND BOIL THE OCEAN.”
GPU Virtualization
administration or LDAP configuration, and once you get —Scott Johnston, director
When Two
value from that, go up the stack.” of strat­egy and marketing
Hypervisors Are But it would be a mistake to stop there, said Forrester’s at Puppet Labs
Better Than One O’Donnell.
“We’re in the midst of an IT industrial revolution, and
Five New Devices a lot of cherished roles in IT are going away,” he said. In “Who better than you to automate the job that you
the future, building repeatable, scalable systems through already do?” O’Donnell asked. In the end, “it’s better to
Leaf-Spine
automation will be at the core of what every system ad- become the automator than to be automated.” n
Architecture
ministrator does, if it isn’t already, and there will be a
much greater emphasis on software-development skills. ALEX BARRETT is editor in chief of Modern Infrastructure.
How to Get Better
Data Center Uptime

AWS re:Invent 2013

Plankers:
Less Is More

Eunice: The End

of Cloud Nirvana

Madden: Better
Late Than Never

MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • JANUARY 2014   7

Home
Survey Says The latest from IT pros on mobility in 2014

Editor’s Letter

Automate or Else
D What is the primary reason D What is your main goal
Survey Says
you will not provide mobile devices with tablets?
to your employees in 2014?
22% n n n n n n n n n n 28%
GPU Virtualization 100 n n n n n n n n n n
Reduce cost Implement
of computing n n n n n n n n n n a dedicated
for personnel
n n n n n n n n n n
When Two device for
n n n n n n n n n n
Hypervisors Are with limited mobile
n n n n n n n n n n
Better Than One computer n n n n n n n n n n workers
needs n n n n n n n n n n
80
35% — Only specific n n n n n n n n n n
Five New Devices departments will be n n n n n n n n n n
given mobile devices 50%
Leaf-Spine Accommodate end-user demand to
Architecture 08% — We’ll provide them in 2015 integrate into corporate network
60
N=742; SOURCE: 2014 IT PRIORITIES SURVEY

74
04% — Other
How to Get Better
05% — We don’t have the budget
Data Center Uptime
08% — They don’t need them
AWS re:Invent 2013 40
40% — They already use them
Plankers:
Less Is More The percentage of companies
that will be giving more employees
20
Eunice: The End mobile computing devices
of Cloud Nirvana (laptops, tablets, smartphones)
in 2014.
Madden: Better
Late Than Never 0
N=632; SOURCE: 2014 IT PRIORITIES SURVEY N=861; SOURCE: 2014 IT PRIORITIES SURVEY

MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • JANUARY 2014   8

 FIRST LOOK

Home

Editor’s Letter

Automate or Else Virtualized Technology Advisors.

“CAD doesn’t work in VDI without this technology,”
Survey Says
GPUs Bring he said.
Before GPU virtualization came along, VDI was primar-

VDI Home
ily used by task workers. Desktop virtualization from Ci-
GPU Virtualization
trix and VMware could be deployed for about 60% to 70%
When Two
of users before coming up against pockets of users that
Hypervisors Are
What GPU virtualization is doing required more GPU power, according to Justin Boitano, a
Better Than One for virtual desktop infrastructure. director of marketing for Nvidia, the primary provider of
BY ALYSSA WOOD virtualized GPU technology.
Five New Devices “They would hit users that have these graphics needs,
and they weren’t able to fully meet those needs,” he
Leaf-Spine
said.
Architecture
To keep up with the increasing needs of power users,
desktop virtualization providers have jumped at the
How to Get Better
Data Center Uptime chance to support Nvidia’s GRID technology. Citrix re-
GPU VIRTUALIZATION MEANS VDI can go where it’s never cently added hardware GPU sharing to XenDesktop 7,
AWS re:Invent 2013 gone before—and that’s big news for the still-niche desk- and VMware introduced the virtual dedicated graphics
top delivery technology. acceleration feature in View 5.3, both based on GRID.
Plankers: Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) has become viable Plus, Amazon Web Services in November released a G2
Less Is More for more types of users, thanks to virtualized graphics instance of its Elastic Compute Cloud with support for
processing unit (GPU) cards, which offload graphics pro- GRID, to enable GPU acceleration in the cloud.
Eunice: The End
cessing to the server, improving application performance.
of Cloud Nirvana
Users that access 3-D or computer-aided design (CAD)
applications, as well as video-intensive and gaming apps, WHERE THE VIRTUALIZED GPUS ARE
Madden: Better
Late Than Never won’t see solid VDI performance without some kind of Florida Atlantic University’s IT department began using
processing offload, said Todd Knapp, the CEO of Envision VDI four years ago in an attempt to provide remote access

MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • JANUARY 2014   9

Home

Editor’s Letter

Automate or Else

Survey Says

GPU Virtualization

When Two
Hypervisors Are
Better Than One Nvidia’s GRID technology is leading
the way for GPU virtualization.

Five New Devices

Leaf-Spine
to 3-D apps for students and professors in graphics and because we’re able to deploy the image using VDI
Architecture
game programming classes—a group that makes up nearly and provide virtual desktops with 3-D acceleration to
30% of its user base. They installed physical workstations those students regardless of where they are,” Neelakanta
How to Get Better
Data Center Uptime with ATI graphics cards and Teradici Hardware Accelera- said.
tor chips—but it wasn’t enough, said Mahesh Neelakanta, With virtualized GPUs bringing desktop virtualization
AWS re:Invent 2013 a director of technical services at FAU. That setup caused a to more users, VDI could see higher adoption in the com-
high physical footprint and only allowed for a one-to-one ing years. Still, companies must make sure that GPU virtu-
Plankers: connection between user and machine. alization will actually provide them benefits. For example,
Less Is More “GPU virtualization is changing all that,” Neelakanta if you’re delivering video, you may simply need remote dis-
said. play protocol optimization instead, Knapp said. There has
Eunice: The End
The university installed Nvidia K1 and K2 boards earlier been a lot of hype around this technology, so businesses
of Cloud Nirvana
this year, which provide more flexibility and consolidation should choose virtualized GPU technology wisely. n
by allowing IT to run about eight to 12 users per shared
Madden: Better
Late Than Never GPU board. ALYSSA WOOD is site editor for SearchVirtualDesktop.com. Write to
“We’ve been able to lower our own IT requirement her at awood@techtarget.com or follow @VirtDesktopTT on Twitter.

PHOTO CREDIT: NVIDIA CORPORATION/FLICKR MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • JANUARY 2014   10

SERVER VIRTUALIZATION

2>1 VMWARE’S VSPHERE HYPERVISOR remains the dominant

player in the server virtualization market, but as alterna-
tives like open source KVM and Microsoft’s Hyper-V ma-
ture, some enterprises are hedging their bets by running
multi-hypervisor environments.

When Two
The major benefit enterprises glean from the heteroge-
neous approach is usually financial savings.

Hypervisors Are
“It has the potential to save us hundreds of thousands of
dollars,” said Searl Tate, director of engineering for inter-
national law firm Paul Hastings LLP, based in Los Angeles.

Better Than One
Multi-hypervisor environments are becoming
common, but will they end up as collateral
damage in the virtualization war?
BY BETH PARISEAU
The firm is rolling out Windows Server 2012 R2 Hy-
per-V in a newly built European data center. That plat-
form, released to manufacturers just last August, is widely
regarded as bringing Hyper-V to full competitive strength
against vSphere. It enables features such as shared-noth-
ing live migration of virtual machines and built-in repli-
cation through integration with System Center Virtual
Machine Manager (SCVMM).
“We’re a Microsoft shop by way of entitlement—we
have an enterprise licensing agreement—but like a lot
of others we haven’t run Hyper-V historically except in
the lab,” Tate said. “The indirect savings comes from not
having to add VMware licenses—in our European data

HOME
MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • JANUARY 2014   11
 center, that would’ve been $250,000.”
But these savings can come at a cost of their own; oper-
Home
ational challenges are also inherent in managing two dif-
ferent IT infrastructure platforms in the same data center.
Editor’s Letter
Automate or Else
FANTASIZING ABOUT TRUE
FULL MANAGEMENT TOOLS
Survey Says
Enterprises considering heterogeneous environments
need to weigh the potential capital expenditure (Capex)
GPU Virtualization
savings against the operational expenditure (Opex) neces-
When Two
sary to manage multiple hypervisors, according to David
Hypervisors Are Kinsman, national technical solutions architect for World
Better Than One Wide Technologies Inc., based in St. Louis, Mo.
“We’re moving into a time where customers will have
Five New Devices more than one hypervisor in their data center, siloed off
potentially into different application pods based on Capex
Leaf-Spine
costs,” Kinsman said.
Architecture
Tools that can manage multiple hypervisors under one
console include SCVMM and HotLink Corp.’s SuperVI-
How to Get Better
Data Center Uptime SOR software, which is used by heterogeneous hypervisor
shops to manage other hypervisors under the vCenter
AWS re:Invent 2013 Server management console.
“Now that everything is tied into vCenter, we only have
Plankers: to teach new admins one platform,” said Michael Warchut,
Less Is More senior network engineer for Monsoon Commerce, an
e-commerce firm based in Portland, Ore. which uses Su-
Eunice: The End
perVISOR to manage some 300 vSphere VMs, 35 Hyper-V
of Cloud Nirvana
VMs and about 40 XenServer instances, as well as Amazon
Web Services’ Elastic Compute Cloud.
Madden: Better
Late Than Never “We’re able to keep a record of who does what and
manage our security notifications [through HotLink] as
well,” he said.
But these tools also have limitations, Kinsman pointed
out.
“You’re never going to get the real feature parity you’d
get if you were managing a given hypervisor with its own
manager,” Kinsman said.
Until there are virtualization management platforms on
the market that offer full feature parity when managing
heterogeneous hypervisors, there will be inefficiencies
to running more than one hypervisor in the data center,
Kinsman said, and predicted that without this type of
management platform the market will move back to more
of a homogeneous hypervisor state.
“The odds of such a manager existing in the next two to
three years are slim,” he said.
Paul Hastings’ Tate said his team will keep vCenter
to manage vSphere and SCVMM to manage Hyper-V as
separate consoles.
“We have also rolled some of our own tools, some in
PowerShell, some in C#, and we wrote our own infra-
structure portal manager,” Tate said. “We’re going to have
to live that way.”
Because of the hassle involved in managing heteroge-
neous hypervisors, some industry watchers believe hetero-
geneous hypervisor environments are a transitional phase
in the deployment of virtualized infrastructure, rather
than a permanent state of affairs.
“We’re eyeing the possibility of Hyper-V everywhere,
but you’ve got to start somewhere,” Tate said.
Despite its cost, some industry watchers say the win-
ner of that movement back to homogeneity will still be
VMware, because of the way it’s branching beyond the
MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • JANUARY 2014   12
 hypervisor and into infrastructure services such as soft-
ware-defined networking and storage.
Home
“Part of the pull back toward VMware is going to be
VMware and Nicira together, as well as a whole bunch of
Editor’s Letter
companies recently founded by people who used to work
at VMware supporting VMware’s hypervisor first,” said
Automate or Else
Andy Brown, an entrepreneur who until recently served
as group CTO at global financial services firm UBS.
Survey Says
Others see a very different picture over the next few
years.
GPU Virtualization
“Hyper-V is not going anywhere anytime soon, and
When Two
neither is vSphere,” said Warchut.
Hypervisors Are
Better Than One
WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE
Five New Devices As cloud computing comes online, infrastructure intelli-
gence is moving up the stack, beyond the hypervisor to the
Leaf-Spine
overall cloud orchestration or application layer—amping
Architecture
up the debate about heterogeneous IT management as a
transitional or permanent state of being all over again,
How to Get Better
Data Center Uptime with some new players added to the mix.
There are also cloud management tools on the market
AWS re:Invent 2013 today which can manage both multiple cloud environ-
ments and their underlying heterogeneous hypervisor
Plankers: environments, but it is still early days for cloud in the
Less Is More enterprise.
For now, experts say, keeping options open is a wise
Eunice: The End
choice as the cloud market continues to evolve.
of Cloud Nirvana
“I think what happens is that the conversation moves to
the next level up, which is that I need to manage multiple
Madden: Better
Late Than Never clouds as well as multiple hypervisors, and how do I do
that?” said Brown.
While the enterprise virtualization market is divided
primarily between VMware and Hyper-V, cloud comput-
ing platforms are also bringing open source KVM into the
spotlight at some companies.
“Whenever anybody’s starting or they have the ability
to start from scratch, they’re running KVM,” said Mark
Shirman, president and CEO of cloud migration firm
RiverMeadow Software, based in San Jose, Calif.
“So much of the cloud is still being architected by
geeks,” Shirman said. “They love the open source environ-
ment … everybody wants to get into the weeds.”
Unlike Hyper-V, however, open source KVM is far
from feature parity with vSphere. Under the much-hyped
OpenStack cloud management platform, for instance,
KVM doesn’t offer live migration, distributed resource
scheduling or automated restarts of machines for high
availability, according to Kenneth Hui, open cloud archi-
tect with Rackspace Hosting based in San Antonio, Tex.
Still, Hui argued before a meetup group of OpenStack
enthusiasts in Minneapolis on Oct. 22 that these features
will belong to the cloud orchestration layer eventually,
rather than the hypervisor.
“Servers are fragile, but the cloud is not,” Hui said.
“Resiliency should be handled at various layers of the
cloud, primarily at the application layer and not the server
layer.” n
BETH PARISEAU is senior news writer for SearchCloudComputing.com.
Write to her at bpariseau@techtarget.com or follow @PariseauTT
on Twitter.
MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • JANUARY 2014   13
Home
Five New Devices
Coming soon to an office near you
Editor’s Letter
Automate or Else
Survey Says
GPU Virtualization
When Two
Hypervisors Are
Better Than One
AMAZON KINDLE FIRE HDX
Early Kindle Fire tablets
Five New Devices weren’t exactly ready for
the enterprise—they didn’t
even have a native email
Leaf-Spine
client. Amazon has wised
Architecture
up since then, to the point
that the new Kindle Fire
How to Get Better HDX carries the tagline,
Data Center Uptime “Built for work and play.”
The new tablets ship with
AWS re:Invent 2013
the OfficeSuite productivity
app installed, and addi-
tional enterprise features,
Plankers:
such as built-in VPN and
Less Is More
hardware-based encryp-
tion, are on the way.
Eunice: The End
of Cloud Nirvana
Madden: Better
Late Than Never AMAZON KINDLE FIRE HDX: BUSINESS WIRE;
APPLE PRODUCTS: TIM RT/FLICKR; MICRO-
SOFT SURFACE 2: MICROSOFT; SAMSUNG
GALAXY NOTE 3: KARLIS DAMBRANS/FLICKR
APPLE iPAD AIR SAMSUNG GALAXY NOTE 3
AND iPHONE 5S The mobile worker who
Most of your company’s doesn’t want to carry a
Apple users have likely phone and a tablet makes
updated to iOS 7 by now, a good candidate for the
so the post-holidays influx phablet. The Galaxy Note is
of the iPad Air and iPhone the most popular of these
5s won’t pose much of a hybrid devices, and Sam-
MICROSOFT SURFACE 2
challenge for IT. But there sung has aimed the latest
The Surface Pro 2 is Mic-
are some device-specific version squarely at busi-
rosoft’s enterprise-class
features to pay attention ness users. The screen is
tablet, but its little brother,
to, like the Touch ID finger- big enough to have multiple
the Surface 2, was the big-
print scanner in the iPhone apps open at once, and the
ger seller during the holi-
5s. Business leaders should S Pen stylus offers ways to
day season. The Surface 2
also consider how these interact more effectively
comes with the RT version
new devices can enable with those apps’ data. The
of Windows 8.1, which runs
more productivity. Buyers Galaxy Note 3 also offers
on an ARM-based proces-
will receive a free copy of Samsung’s SAFE set of en-
sor and therefore can’t
the iWork suite, which lets terprise security features,
run Windows desktop (i.e.,
users create documents, and it’s compatible with
legacy) applications. This
spreadsheets and presen- the KNOX secure container
architecture means the Sur-
tations with Microsoft Of- technology. —COLIN STEELE
face 2 can’t join a domain
fice compatibility.
either, but a new feature
called Workplace Join lets
the device connect securely
to certain corporate assets.
With a mobile device man-
agement tool, IT can then
exert some controls over
the tablet.
MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • JANUARY 2014   14
 EXPLAINED

Home

Editor’s Letter

Automate or Else Leaf-Spine bottlenecks if uplinks between layers are oversubscribed.

This can come from latency incurred as traffic flows
Survey Says
Architecture through each layer and from blocking of redundant links
(assuming the use of the Spanning Tree Protocol, or STP).
In modern data centers, an alternative to the core/
GPU Virtualization A new type of network may shake up
the inner workings of the data center. aggregation/access layer topology has emerged known
When Two
as leaf-spine. In a leaf-spine architecture, a series of leaf
BY ETHAN BANKS
Hypervisors Are switches form the access layer. These switches are fully
Better Than One meshed to a series of spine switches.
The mesh ensures that access-layer switches are no
Five New Devices more than one hop away from one another, minimizing
latency and the likelihood of bottlenecks between ac-
Leaf-Spine
cess-layer switches. When networking vendors speak of
Architecture
FOR MANY YEARS, data center networks have been built
in layers that, when diagrammed, suggest a hierarchical
How to Get Better
Data Center Uptime tree. The bottom of the tree is the access layer, where hosts
connect to the network.
CORE
AWS re:Invent 2013 The middle layer is the aggregation, or distribution, layer,
to which the access layer is redundantly connected. The
Plankers: aggregation layer provides connectivity to adjacent access
Less Is More layer switches and data center rows, and in turn to the top
of the tree, known as the core. AGGREGATION
Eunice: The End
The core layer provides routing services to other parts
of Cloud Nirvana
of the data center, as well as to services outside of the data
center such as the Internet, geographically separated data
Madden: Better
Late Than Never centers and other remote locations.
ACCESS
This model scales somewhat well, but it is subject to

MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • JANUARY 2014   15

 CORE
Home

Editor’s Letter

Automate or Else
SPINE

Survey Says

GPU Virtualization

When Two LEAF

Hypervisors Are
Better Than One

Five New Devices an Ethernet fabric, this is generally the sort of topology
they have in mind.
Leaf-Spine
Leaf-spine architectures can be layer 2 or layer 3, mean-
Architecture
ing that the links between the leaf and spine layer could
be either switched or routed. In either design, all links are
How to Get Better
Data Center Uptime forwarding; that is, none of the links are blocked because
STP is replaced by other protocols.
AWS re:Invent 2013 In a layer 2 leaf-spine architecture, spanning-tree is
most often replaced with either a version of Transparent
Plankers: Interconnection of Lots of Links (Trill) or Shortest Path
Less Is More Bridging (SPB). Both Trill and SPB learn where all hosts
are connected to the fabric and provide a loop-free path
Eunice: The End
to their Ethernet MAC addresses via a shortest-path-first
of Cloud Nirvana
computation.
Brocade’s VCS fabric and Cisco’s FabricPath are exam-
Madden: Better
Late Than Never ples of proprietary implementations of Trill that could be
used to build a layer 2 leaf-spine topology. Avaya’s Virtual
Enterprise Network Architecture can also build a layer 2
leaf-spine, but instead implements standardized SPB.
In a layer 3 leaf-spine, each link is a routed link. Open
Shortest Path First is often used as the routing protocol to
compute paths between leaf and spine switches. A layer
3 leaf-spine works effectively when network virtual LANs
are isolated to individual leaf switches or when a network
overlay is employed.
Network overlays such as VXLAN are common in highly
virtualized, multi-tenant environments such as those at
Infrastructure as a Service providers. Arista Networks is a
proponent of layer 3 leaf-spine designs, providing switches
that can also act as VXLAN Tunnel Endpoints. n
ETHAN BANKS , CCIE #20655, has been managing networks for higher
ed, government, financials and high tech since 1995. Ethan co-hosts
the Packet Pushers Podcast. Contact him at @ecbanks.

MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • JANUARY 2014   16

DATA CENTER PERFORMANCE

Uptime:
The Heart
of the Matter
Data center uptime may be IT’s holy grail. A WORKING, ALWAYS-AVAILABLE IT platform is a core re-
Technology and people both play a big role quirement of any organization. However, IT’s goal of
in the quest. BY CLIVE LONGBOTTOM “dial tone” availability over the years has never quite
materialized.
Maybe we are getting closer to achieving this vision,
thanks to newer technical architectures such as virtual-
ization and cloud computing. But new technologies only
go so far. If organizations really want to improve their
uptime, they need to focus on three core principles: auto-
mation, modularity and redundancy.

TWO, FOUR, SIX, EIGHT, WHAT CAN WE AUTOMATE?

If the goal is uptime, the first area that needs to be ad-
dressed is not the silicon-based equipment that makes up
the enterprise data center, but the carbon-based life-forms
who nominally maintain and update it.
Unfortunately, people are the main cause of downtime
in a modern data center. Poor scripting, applying patches
incorrectly, unplugging the wrong piece of equipment—if
you need something done completely wrong, bring in a
human.
Fortunately, much of what is needed to keep systems
KANTVER–FOTOLIA

HOME
MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • JANUARY 2014   17
 running these days can be done in a lights-out environ-
Home
ment. It’s now possible to automate patches, updates and
any number of other software tasks, such as provisioning
Editor’s Letter
and deprovisioning applications.
Many problems are caused by attempts to apply a patch
Automate or Else
or upgrade to an ineligible system, such as when there is
insufficient storage on a server or when a specific device
Survey Says
driver is required but not available on the machine. Good
tools should automatically identify such issues before
GPU Virtualization
attempting any action. They should either fix them auto-
When Two
matically or raise an exception to an admin and skip the
Hypervisors Are action until a human has dealt with the problem.
Better Than One Automation tools should also be able to monitor and
report on the status of not only individual applications,
Five New Devices but also all the apps that that support enterprise processes.
It is a waste of time to start a process if the last part of the
Leaf-Spine
process cannot be completed because a downstream ap-
Architecture
plication or piece of hardware has failed. Better to identify
any problems early, and then look at remediating them in
How to Get Better
Data Center Uptime real time.
This may involve moving a virtual machine (VM) from
AWS re:Invent 2013 one physical environment to another, along with all of its
dependencies around storage and networks. Again, this
Plankers: can be done rapidly and effectively through automation.
Less Is More By catching problems at an early stage, the move can be
made in real time and systems switched over without any
Eunice: The End
noticeable change for workers. This proactive approach
of Cloud Nirvana
has so much more going for it than that of a standard re-
active response. Waiting for users to phone the help desk
Madden: Better
Late Than Never and then sending people into a data center to address a
problem is no good to a modern organization.
Again, avoid human intervention as much as possible.
Machines rarely do anything wrong—they carry out the
same activity time after time without deviating from the
rules provided to them. If the rule is programmed cor-
rectly the first time, the data center will continue to do
it correctly from there on, time after time after time. A
staffer may have done the same task correctly 99 times—
and then have an off day or just an off moment on the
100th occasion. Use automation, and get people to focus
on getting that first-time rule coded correctly.
MODULAR, NOT MONOLITHIC
In a virtualized, cloud-based environment, it is actually
quite unlikely that the failure of an individual piece
of hardware will cause a data center to have appreciably
lower overall availability. Older applications are generally
the problem. Having large, monolithic applications causes
difficulties even within the world of superfast virtual-
ized environments. Provisioning and spinning up a new
virtual machine containing a full stack, from operating
system through to a full instance of SAP ERP or Oracle E-
Business Suite, will take time because of scale and
complexity.
Moving towards a composite application approach
can really help here. The first job is to take the business
process, break it down into a set of tasks and then see
what technical capabilities are required to facilitate each
of these tasks. By finding the right technical functions as
small pieces of capability and pulling them together on an
as-needed basis, you can get a greater level of flexibility.
MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • JANUARY 2014   18
 Processes can be changed, and only the tasks that are
Home
affected require new technical components. In addition,
you gain much higher availability.
Editor’s Letter
For example, take a process that consists of five tasks.
Each is facilitated by a different technical function. One
Automate or Else
fails—for whatever reason. The same technical platform
can be spun up far more quickly than if that same function
Survey Says
failed as part of a monolithic application, where the whole
stack would have to be reprovisioned.
GPU Virtualization
Indeed, since the other four functions are still capable
When Two
of running, activities can be carried on while the failed
Hypervisors Are component is fixed. Assuming that the organization is
Better Than One storing and forwarding transactions correctly, individuals
can still carry out their own parts of the overall process,
Five New Devices even during an extended outage.
Leaf-Spine
Architecture
DOUBLE DOWN ON REDUNDANCY
Although I’ve said that hardware is not the real issue,
How to Get Better
Data Center Uptime don’t take that as an excuse not to protect the data center
against equipment failure. Engineering for uptime re-
AWS re:Invent 2013 quires a degree of equipment redundancy. This goes not
just for servers and storage, but for the network and the
Plankers: data center facility as well. Virtualized networks allow
Less Is More for dynamic reallocation of network connections should
a network interface card fail or a specific route become
Eunice: The End
congested. Modular chillers, uninterruptible power sup-
of Cloud Nirvana
plies and auxiliary generators allow facilities to survive
equipment failures.
Madden: Better
Late Than Never For basic uptime, go for one more piece of equipment
than is required (N+1). For higher levels of uptime, go
for more items of redundant equipment (N+M). For the
highest levels of platform uptime, consider long-distance
mirroring.
Businesses that cannot tolerate any downtime what-
soever need complete mirroring in real time of live VMs,
storage and virtual network dependencies across a suit-
able distance. Redundancy must be built into how the
two facilities are networked together, via multiple WAN
connections operated by different carriers. Obviously,
costs are pretty prohibitive, so make sure that this is really
necessary.
In many cases, the business will actually be well served
by live synchronized data backed up by on-demand re-
sources for spinning up VMs. Application images can be
spun up rapidly, matching against the data within minutes
in many circumstances. There will be a hit on availability
while the images do spin up, but the lower cost of not
having to maintain two hot facilities can make this good
enough for the majority of an organization’s needs.
The key is to automate wherever possible. Keep humans
away from IT systems wherever possible, and use suitable
tools to provide repeatable approaches to common tasks.
Architect for failure; use redundancy for failover, but
make sure that you understand what the business means
by “highly available.” In many cases, you will find that it
really means “minimize downtime and maintain data in-
tegrity.” This data center approach is different—and can
save an organization millions of dollars. n
CLIVE LONGBOTTOM is the founder of Quocirca, an IT research and
analysis company based in the U.K.
MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • JANUARY 2014   19
Home
Overheard at Amazon re:Invent

Editor’s Letter

Automate or Else

Survey Says
“Three years ago, “THERE IS THIS NETFLIX
every cloud
GPU Virtualization conversation was
DRINKING GAME GOING ON.
about security, EVERY TIME WE MENTION
When Two
Hypervisors Are and we wrote NETFLIX ONSTAGE, YOU’RE
Better Than One
stacks of white SUPPOSED TO TAKE A SHOT.”
Five New Devices
papers that are —WERNER VOGELS, AWS CTO, during the second-day keynote

now getting dusty.

Leaf-Spine
Architecture
Today, the one “We’re engaged in a ‘proof of pricing’ exercise with AWS.
question is about We believe that the process efficiencies will be there,
How to Get Better performance.”  but we’re not so sure about the cost efficiencies.”
Data Center Uptime
—ANDRES RODRIGUEZ, CTO, Nasuni —Lead systems engineer for a US federal regulating agency

AWS re:Invent 2013

Plankers:
Less Is More “WE WILL PURSUE PRIVATE CLOUD
Eunice: The End DEALS IF THE OPPORTUNITY IS
of Cloud Nirvana
LARGE ENOUGH TO WARRANT
Madden: Better
Late Than Never THE DISTRACTION.”
—ANDY JASSY, head of AWS, when asked if private clouds similar to the one Amazon built for the CIA will be coming

MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • JANUARY 2014   20

 IN THE MIX

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Editor’s Letter

Automate or Else Less Is More FULL OF HOT AIR

Technology certainly drives some improvements that
The IT industry talks the talk on benefit the environment. But it’s hard to reconcile. And
Survey Says
green computing, but talk is cheap. the latest disk drives from HGST/Western Digital have
BY BOB PLANKERS brought these ideas to the forefront of my mind. Their
GPU Virtualization
new 6 terabyte disk drives are filled with helium, instead
When Two
of traditional air. That sounds interesting, until you think
Hypervisors Are about the nature of helium.
Better Than One The air inside a drive is a problem for manufacturers.
It’s a mix of gases, its density changes, and it holds heat
Five New Devices WHILE THE IT industry has paid lip service to the idea of and moisture and causes friction with the moving parts. In
“green computing,” the truth is that there is nothing en- turn, the drives need larger motors, which consume more
Leaf-Spine
vironmentally friendly about technology. From the toxic power and generate more heat. These factors also affect
Architecture
substances used in hardware to the vast amounts of power how close the platters in a drive can be, which directly
consumed by data centers, the only thing that is ever truly affects storage capacity and density.
How to Get Better
Data Center Uptime green is the color of the money we spend, at least in the Helium is a much lighter gas, and is considerably less
U.S. dense, so HGST can produce a drive with 50% more ca-
AWS re:Invent 2013 The public cloud changes things a bit, in the same way pacity than anything else using 23% less power at idle. He-
that electric cars change things. Electric cars still cause lium is also inert, so it won’t react with the metals inside
Plankers: pollution; it’s just that the pollution is centralized to where the drive. Nor will it catch fire, like hydrogen. (Hydrogen
Less Is More power is generated, and there is less of it per car because would perform better inside a drive because it’s even
of the economies of scale. Public clouds still consume vast lighter, so long as you didn’t mind your array blowing up
Eunice: The End
amounts of power, but that power is increasingly from from time to time.)
of Cloud Nirvana
places with capacity to generate it cheaply. Helium is abundant, but it’s too light to stay in Earth’s
In addition, there is also the concept of economy of atmosphere, and it isn’t cost-effective to make helium. Our
Madden: Better
Late Than Never scale, which forms the basis for all things related to public helium comes from radioactive decay inside the Earth’s
cloud. crust. Over millions of years that helium floats up through

MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • JANUARY 2014   21

 the Earth and gets trapped in the same pockets as natural helium. I can’t help but think about which I’d rather not
gas. It’s also harvested in much the same way. We owe our have: A party balloon, twice as many movies on disk, or
Home
latest innovation in storage technology to the same folks cancer.
In IT we’re all innately used to tradeoffs, but perhaps
Editor’s Letter
we don’t realize what we are trading. Are we trading disk
Automate or Else
LESS IT, IN ALL REGARDS, capacity and cost for the ability to cure cancers or do
IS TRULY MORE. science research? Are we trading disk capacity for clean,
nonflammable water in communities around the world?
Survey Says
There’s a saying among storage people that the best I/O is
that are in the news for hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking” the one you didn’t have to do. Perhaps that is also the key
GPU Virtualization
—arguably not the greenest of energy sources. to green computing: Less IT, in all regards, is truly more. n
When Two
At the same time, IT is competing with medical and
Hypervisors Are scientific uses for helium. As an example, many high-tech- BOB PLANKERS is a virtualization and cloud architect at a major
Better Than One nology medical scanners need to be cooled with liquid Midwestern university. He is also the author of The Lone Sysadmin blog.

Five New Devices

Leaf-Spine
Architecture

How to Get Better

Data Center Uptime

AWS re:Invent 2013

Plankers:
Less Is More

Eunice: The End

of Cloud Nirvana

Madden: Better
Late Than Never

MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • JANUARY 2014   22

 ARE WE THERE YET?

Home

Editor’s Letter

Automate or Else The End of clients they had just two weeks to retrieve their data
and make other arrangements. Two weeks would be a
Survey Says
Cloud Nirvana hellacious timeline for the most agile Web shop. But for
enterprise IT shops running databases, applications and
analytics that their businesses depend on day to day and
GPU Virtualization Cloud computing shows vulnerabilities
as technological reality sets in. minute to minute, that’s insanely little warning.
When Two
Even optimistically assuming that a suitable alternate
BY JONATHAN EUNICE
Hypervisors Are infrastructure or service was immediately available, two
Better Than One weeks isn’t much time to get data out of Nirvanix, onto
an alternate infrastructure, qualified for production use,
Five New Devices and then up and running. That’s especially true during a
high-stress period when every other customer is rushing to
Leaf-Spine
“CLOUD COMPUTING” IS often pitched as the ultimate in IT. do the same thing.
Architecture
Infinitely malleable, it’s whatever package of flexibility, This kind of failure mode, in which everyone freaks
economy and let-someone-else-deal-with-the-hard-parts out all at once, affects other shared services, such as
How to Get Better
Data Center Uptime the proponent wants it to be. those for Disaster Recovery as a Service. Recovering from
Events in recent months, however, have ripped deeply a single-business failure like a data center fire is a great
AWS re:Invent 2013 into the credibility of visions of cloud nirvana, reinforcing use for cloud computing. But if a storm, an earthquake or
the value of in-house IT capability. another disaster affects a wider area, everyone nearby will
Plankers: Not least is the failure of Nirvanix, a well-funded be forced to evacuate, fail over or restore simultaneously.
Less Is More provider of enterprise storage in the cloud. Suppliers fall The shared, amortized cost model that makes cloud look
in every industry, but Nirvanix departed in a way that magically cheap is less appealing when everyone bangs on
Eunice: The End
left customers deeply disappointed—not just about one that shared infrastructure at the same time. There proba-
of Cloud Nirvana
company, but about the prospects for cloud services bly won’t be enough resources to go around—at least not
overall. with the great performance and responsiveness one can
Madden: Better
Late Than Never Nirvanix appeared to be doing well, and then it faced see when those shared resources aren’t running at frantic,
sudden financial meltdown. With little warning, it told historic high-water levels.

MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • JANUARY 2014   23

 YOU CAN GO HOME AGAIN of all telephone records and data communications. One
Home
Nirvanix’s failure is noteworthy because we’re deep into program, “MUSCULAR,” apparently taps all Google in-
the so-called Cloud Age. But it’s actually just the latest ter-data center traffic. That shocked even Google. The
Editor’s Letter
in a series of failed storage service offerings going back once-theoretical risks around data privacy and security
a decade. See also Cirtas and StorageNetworks, among have become urgent concerns.
Automate or Else
others. “Go with big, proven, stable providers” is trusted
advice against the vagaries of startups. But Iron Mountain
Survey Says
and EMC also shuttered storage-in-the-cloud services in WHERE EXACTLY IS AN
GPU Virtualization
recent years. Where exactly is an enterprise supposed to ENTERPRISE SUPPOSED TO GO
go for safe, solid ground?
Home. Back to providing—or at least managing—those
FOR SAFE, SOLID GROUND?
When Two
Hypervisors Are services in-house. Or to a multisource strategy.
Better Than One Availability isn’t the only issue. 2013 also revealed a Now, cloud computing isn’t going away. Even with
widespread lack of network and data privacy. In June, Goo- proven privacy and availability exposures, the economics
Five New Devices gle argued its legal position: “A person has no legitimate and opportunities remain compelling for many uses. The
expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns extreme “Everything will be cloud!” mania, however, is
Leaf-Spine
over to third parties.” What?! This directly contravenes dead. Most enterprises won’t stand for it. It would be
Architecture
Google’s privacy policy, not to mention numerous laws, negligent to do so. They’ll use cloud resources but in
social norms and business contracts the world over. That measured, cautious, hybrid ways. That makes the ability
How to Get Better
Data Center Uptime a core provider could officially promote such a careless to provide flexibility, efficiency and elastic scalability in-
attitude is chilling to personal, much less business, use of house—in other words, modern infrastructure—central
AWS re:Invent 2013 cloud. At the time, I wondered if you could stab cloud’s to the enterprise IT mission. n
promise in the heart any harder.
Plankers: It turns out you can. Later in the year, we learned that JONATHAN EUNICE is principal IT adviser at analyst firm Illuminata Inc.
Less Is More national security agencies are siphoning off large swaths Contact him at moderninfrastructure@techtarget.com.

Eunice: The End

of Cloud Nirvana

Madden: Better
Late Than Never

MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • JANUARY 2014   24

 END-USER ADVOCATE

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Editor’s Letter

Automate or Else Better Late TOWARD UNIFIED DEVICE MANAGEMENT

For Windows desktops, Windows 8.1 has a new feature
Survey Says
Than Never called “Workplace Join.” Prior to 8.1, if you wanted to
manage a Windows client, you had to join it to a domain.
This worked fine for corporate-owned devices, but it didn’t
GPU Virtualization The device management world may
finally be catching up with its users. make sense for home computers or for users who wanted to
When Two
use their own devices. (Could you imagine domain-joining
BY BRIAN MADDEN
Hypervisors Are a BYOD laptop? It was the equivalent of the IT department
Better Than One “rooting” a user’s computer.) Windows 8.1’s Workplace
Join provides a middle ground between a full domain join
Five New Devices and a completely unmanaged device. A Workplace Joined
client can securely access corporate resources when it
Leaf-Spine
MODERN ENTERPRISES ARE awash in a myriad of platforms: needs to (giving IT some peace of mind) while still al-
Architecture
Windows, Linux, Mac, iOS, Android, BlackBerry. But lowing the user to have full control of their laptop when
there’s no single management framework that can manage they’re not accessing corporate resources.
How to Get Better
Data Center Uptime them all. Even if you focus just on the end-user devices, Windows 8.1 also adds support for the Open Mobile
you need System Center to manage Windows desktops, Alliance Device Management API, which allows organiza-
AWS re:Invent 2013 BlackBerry Enterprise Server to manage BlackBerrys, a tions to manage client settings via MDM and EMM tools
thin client management tool to manage your thin clients, like those from MobileIron, AirWatch or Citrix. This is
Plankers: and some kind of mobile device management (MDM) or great because it means you can use a single tool to manage
Less Is More enterprise mobility management (EMM) suite to manage your phones, tablets and laptops.
iOS and Android phones and tablets. Unfortunately, each Thin clients can receive similar treatment. While there
Eunice: The End
of these requires a different skillset, team and technique, have always been thin clients based on Windows Em-
of Cloud Nirvana
which ultimately leads to a fragmented end-user manage- bedded OSes, their cost and complexity limited them to
ment environment. specific corners of the IT world. The vast majority of thin
Madden: Better
Late Than Never Fortunately the winds of change are upon us, thanks to clients have traditionally been powered by Linux, meaning
several recent advancements. that IT shops had to run proprietary management suites

MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • JANUARY 2014   25

 to secure and manage them.
But now we’re starting to see thin clients running on
Home
Android. Sure, older versions of Android were built for
touch interfaces and small screens, but recent builds have
Editor’s Letter
broader support for physical keyboards, mice and track-
pads, and we’re starting to see Android-based laptops and
Automate or Else Modern Infrastructure is a SearchDataCenter.com publication.
convertible devices. Thin client makers are taking note,
and now there are several thin clients on the market that Margie Semilof, Editorial Director
Survey Says
run Android instead of Linux. These thin clients plug into
Alex Barrett, Editor in Chief
regular screens, keyboards and mice, and they use the
GPU Virtualization
Android versions of desktop client software to connect to Christine Cignoli, Senior Site Editor

When Two
remote computing environments via Citrix, VMware and
Phil Sweeney, Managing Editor
Hypervisors Are Microsoft. Android thin clients also have the ability to
Better Than One run Android applications locally, meaning they run main- Eugene Demaitre, Associate Managing Editor
stream Android doc sharing, file syncing and Web browser
Five New Devices Laura Aberle, Associate Features Editor
applications instead of obscure Linux desktop products.
The real benefit of an Android thin client, however, is Linda Koury, Director of Online Design
Leaf-Spine
that you can manage it with the exact same MDM or EMM
Architecture
Rebecca Kitchens, Publisher, rkitchens@techtarget.com
tools that you use to manage your phones and tablets!
Mac desktops and laptops can be part of this too. The
How to Get Better TechTarget, 275 Grove Street, Newton, MA 02466
Data Center Uptime latest version of the Mac OS X (Mavericks) has MDM-like www.techtarget.com
extensions that allow Mac OS X devices to be managed
AWS re:Invent 2013 with the same Apple Profile Manager software that you © 2014 TechTarget Inc. No part of this publication may be transmitted or re-
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use to manage iPhones and iPads. publisher. TechTarget reprints are available through The YGS Group.
Plankers: So overall, things are looking good for enterprise end- About TechTarget: TechTarget publishes media for information technology
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Eunice: The End
able to manage all the different platforms that your users to independent expert commentary and advice. At IT Knowledge Exchange,
of Cloud Nirvana our social community, you can get advice and share solutions with peers and
require. n experts.

Madden: Better BRIAN MADDEN is an opinionated, supertechnical, fiercely independent

COVER PHOTOGRAPH AND PAGE 3: GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKPHOTO
Late Than Never desktop virtualization and consumerization expert. Write to him at
bmadden@techtarget.com.

MODERN INFRASTRUCTURE • JANUARY 2014   26