Telematique, water and fire.

HP's Data Center Transformation ... don't forget the network.

Reading through some of the articles commenting about HP's announcement of the their Data Center Transformation initiative, I came across this rather odd bit from Arthur Cole at IT Business Edge. He mentions that he's had the opportunity to speak with John Bennett, WW Director of Data Center Transformation Solutions at HP. After setting the stage for the conversation, he makes the point that, too often, data center refurbishments are done to meet short-term goals, and distinguishes HP's approach as being a good deal more strategic.

“Rather than think of it as one massive project, we’ll develop a strategic view first, and then use individual projects over time to build out the next-generation data center,” Bennett said. “You’ll achieve your tactical objectives on particular projects, but you’ll also lay out the foundation for years of compounded returns.”

Sounds right, and then Cole points out what, to him, seems problematic.

... About the only flaw in the plan that I can see is a lack of network support. With server, storage and virtualization as part of the mix, I was a bit surprised when Bennett said he hasn’t had many dealings with HP’s networking unit. It seems unlikely that a series of ProCurve switches couldn’t be brought in should the need arise, although that need could be substantial given the level of virtualization and consolidation that uses are likely to require. It might make sense to make networking a more integral part of the strategy.

(.... pregnant pause..... raised eyebrow.)

VMware: All (ok, some) your access network are belong to us.

Colin McNamara and Scott Lowe, two bloggers from Eplus Technology, have been doing an excellent job of pointing out the network gap created by VMware. McNamara, in a recent post, sets out the problem very well:

... Your access layer is no longer a top of rack Cisco switch, or end of row aggregation chassis. It is now a virtual bridge that exists logically within your VMware ESX server.

This causes an interesting question to come up in many customers - Who is responsible for the configuration and maintenance of this Vswitch?

...

We no longer have this well defined edge at the access layer. The access layer now exists virtually inside a server. More specifically, it is a logical devices running in a Linux server. This presents a challenge because it requires cross over knowledge. Whoever is responsible for this integration has to be fluent in Linux systems administration , and also fluent in network design and operations. Frankly this is a rare skill set to come across, as it requires and engineer who has attained high proficiency in both systems and network engineering.

I see this fuzzy line of demarcation often as a failing point for many VMware integrations. Many times I see network operations teams not involved in ESX cluster design because its a “server” , and systems operations teams generally don’t have the networking skills necessary to design and implement an fully functional system.. The solution to this problem is education and collaboration. ...

I'm not convinced that the solution to the problem lies only in "education and collaboration". It's the central, defining issue around which Replicate's products are being created.

HP and IaaS

Somewhere behind the shock of JPMorgan Chase buying Bear Stearns for $2 a share, there's the HP launch of a well considered Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offering.... a virtual data center for enterprise class computing. Larry Dignan and Dan Kusnetzky do a nice job of summarizing the announcements.

As for the competition, what caught my attention is Dignan's reference to the Forrester Research list of players. With the exception of Amazon's AWS (which has some heft but appeals to a long-tail part of the market), that list of Cloud Providers looks terribly thin... not exactly what I'd call competition for enterprise computing offers. Sorry... this is a not yet a competitive market ... not by a long shot. HP's stolen a march on everyone, with the possible exception of those parts of the ecosystem we rarely hear about ... the big services outfits like T-Systems and their Dynamic Services for SAP Applications. That's the competition.

I'm looking forward to digging into the details of HP Insight Dynamics - VSE and Operations Orchestration, the software enhancements HP is really going to deliver. The (rhetorical ?) question continues to be asked as to whether "... business will bite on data center in the cloud?" (to use ZDNet's turn of phrase). My simpleminded analysis says that, given its current reliance on in-house data centers, enterprise IT can't and won't rely on virtual data centers / outsourced data centers until they have a technical and operational means of integrating both forms in a (dare I say it?) form of infrastructure collaboration.

The idea is that, when reallocating load for a SAP application or scaling out to meet the requirements of the end-of-month analyses, the systems which manage the application should be blind as to whether the resources are in the cloud or in the enterprise data center. This ability to span or bridge the in-house and outsourced data center operation is almost impossible today unless the data center infrastructure is purpose-built for just that kind of operation. The solution relies on interoperability of the outsourced service and in-house data center: they must both operate as utilities and have the same or compatible infrastructures.

Perhaps, if HP's offer gets adopted by enterprise for the in-house, next generation data center, they will create a demand for their IaaS . That strikes me as a limited market. Rather than a single infrastructure technology on both service side and in-house side, the necessity is one of "compatible" or communicating infrastructures. In order for collaborative data center infrastructures to come about, a piece of network virtualization infrastructure needs to come into existence.

Free ESX 3i?

Virtualization.info has a post that appeared yesterday about the alleged VI3i giveaway by Dell. They cite the article that appears in the Inquirer , which (in turn) cites Martin Niemer, senior product marketing manager at VMware. In commenting on the approach, they state

If confirmed this decision will have a serious impact on the sales channel.

On one side other OEMs that have a distribution agreement with VMware (HP, IBM, Fujitsu and other) will be almost obliged to do the same to not give Dell any competitive advantage.

On the other side the VMware distributors and resellers will see their chances to sell ESX Server in the SMB market fall down near to zero.

It was expected that over the next few years VMware would lower the price of its hypervisor to compete with Microsoft aggressive strategy (the upcoming Hyper-V will cost $28) but it certainly wasn't expected so early.

Is this the beginning of the free hypervisors era?