The CO2 talk! Action or “Business as usual?”

Do we care , or do we just pretend to care?

It is not my game to jump into talk about politics, and tells who is right and who is wrong. Due to the line of business and the company I work for, some things become more obvious than others, and the same question pops up in my mind from time to time. Can we make a differences? Can change? Will we change?

Reading Tom Deweese’s website http://ilovecarbondioxide.com/2009/11/barack-obamas-suicide-mission-to.html many new questions see the light of the day, but do we even dare to talk about what and how we can change?

Could we / should we enforce changes that will make a difference to the climate, and can we make it globally? Here is a list of items we could talk about enforcing to change

1-person-driving-the-car: We could enforce that in rush hour you would only be allowed to drive if there is 2 or more people in the car

every-second-street-light: We should switch off every second streetlight in the major streets and in industrial areas

truck-on-the-train; We should demand that trucks that needs to travel more than a defined distances must go on a train

datacenters-must-be-virtualized; We could enforce that industries must have a virtual first policy, and demand that every physical server must have min 10 virtual systems

Cut the power consumption by 50%, easily!!

if all organizations looks to use virtualization software in their datacenters then we could easily save 50% of the power used in our datacenters today, imagine what that could / would do to the environment!

IS YOUR DATACENTER USING VIRTUALIZATION? If not WHY???

Virtualization: Smart IT Investment in a Tough Economy

Given today’s weakened economy, CIOs are naturally reconsidering their IT budgets, wondering if the spending priorities they set earlier in the year are still appropriate. But if the CIOs interviewed for the Goldman Sachs IT Spending Survey of July 2008 are representative, those priorities make even more sense now than they did before the recent downturn.

They identified their top three spending initiatives over the next 12 months (in order of priority) as server virtualization, server consolidation and cost cutting.

Considering the well-known advantages of data center virtualization, which arise in large part from its ability to support server consolidation and reduce operating expenses, there’s certainly no reason to reprioritize that spending mix.

But CIOs who focus solely on those aspects of virtualization could still find they have the wrong investment mix after the economy emerges from its slump. That’s because consolidation and cost-cutting are just the first step in the virtualization journey that leads eventually to cloud computing: a completely abstracted, highly flexible and agile IT infrastructure that can deliver any content to any device (servers, storage, applications) anytime, anywhere.

interesting article from

January 27, 2009

By Dave Trowbridge – read more here; http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2009/ts_012709.html

Two Tips That Pay Dividends

• Look at all aspects of server virtualization potential to define ROI benefits that might be overlooked if they are not specifically enumerated. For example, virtualization might let your agency toss out old, outdated equipment that’s too expensive and difficult to maintain, while concurrently allowing new functions that previously had not been considered because of the legacy equipment’s limitations.

• Although virtualization can help squeeze more output from less equipment, it won’t do anything to alleviate the reluctance of some organizations within an agency to share space on the same equipment. Bottom line: To reap ROI, you will need to resolve any culture, turf or security issues.

ROI/ROD/ROE – the basics!

So let us begin, I thought about this post as a starting point to the ROI part of my blog, my intention is to add much more about ROI and it should all be related to virtualization from a management perspective – it is after all what my blog is about. It does not hurt to define what I am talking about.

ROI is ‘return on investment’ and is the CXX’s (CIO/CTO/CFO) yardstick for revenue generated from investment made. It is a strict quantitative measure.

ROO is ‘return on objectives’ and is probably more widely used in the event space. I look at the two as being complimentary. The former is lot more difficult to measure at events.

ROE is ‘return on engagement’ and is an extremely powerful metric for events. Tradeshows and events are face to face opportunities and the engagement factor as it relates to future purchase is significant.

Apart from accountability and justification of your program, it’s important to measure because trade shows do show positive return on objectives, investment and engagement

Inspiration and thoughts;

• Mr Ian Sequiera, Executive Vice President, Exhibit Surveys, Inc – interview about his session that he was going to deliver in “Total Solutions Marketing” show.
• ROI’s Dirty Little Secret by Michael Shoemaker – good dive into the ROI talk.

If the Data Center Is the Computer the Fight Is on to Control the Ecosystem

If the Data Center Is the Computer the Fight Is on to Control the Ecosystem .

Try these six steps for getting more from your deployment.

Just like their federal counterparts, state government IT organizations have been adopting virtualization. In Yuma County, Ariz., we were an early adopter and began using server virtualization technology more than three years ago. Now, nearly half of the county’s 99 servers have been virtualized.

The technology has matured to the point where we’ve developed best practices for successful implementation. Yuma uses VMware ESX 3.02, but the advice that follows could apply to whatever virtualization technology your organization has implemented or is considering.

#1: Tap templates and customizations for rapid deployment.

Virtualization gives you the capability of creating a virtual server or desktop once, saving it as a template, and using customization scripts to ease a mass rollout of similar servers and desktops.

By using Microsoft’s Sysprep, which integrates with VMware’s Virtual Center, you can create a master image, customize it, and then script the cloning process through VMware’s APIs. Without using customization and scripts, IT would have to clone the master image manually, then boot up and make changes to each cloned image. Depending on the image size, this process could take upwards of an hour or more. With customization and scripts, you need only a few minutes to create custom specifications and execute the script.

#2: Build clusters of physical servers with shared storage.

Take advantage of the virtualization software’s native clustering and disaster avoidance capabilities by attaching physical servers to a storage area network (SAN). If you’re currently clustering database and application servers, you may be able to greatly reduce and simplify those clusters.

Hardware upgrades for a cluster are as simple as migrating the virtual machines from the old hardware, shutting down the old server and powering up the new server. Using a SAN also allows faster and easier disaster recovery if your physical server fails.

#3: Use pre-built virtual machines.

Ask the manufacturer if it has any pre-built VM images that you can deploy directly to your virtual environment. There are a wide variety of pre-built VMs available for web servers, databases, systems monitoring and more.

You can save a significant amount of time and reduce the possibility of human error by using a pre-built image when migrating to a platform.

#4: Create a cost-effective test environment.

You’re going to need a dedicated test environment for your critical systems, even after they’re virtualized. In fact, all critical systems should have a test and development environment, but even your non-mission-critical applications could benefit from snapshots.

A snapshot lets you save a virtual machine at a point in time, so you can then begin moving the previously tested system changes to production. If the new patch proves troublesome, fixing it is as easy as rolling back to an earlier snapshot.

#5: Control virtual-machine sprawl.

One of the pitfalls of virtualization is the ease with which new VMs can be created. This can lead to significant inefficiencies in a virtual environment. It isn’t necessary to create a separate virtual server for everything. For example, you don’t need to create a new virtual Apache web server for every web application; just use Apache’s virtual host configuration.

#6: Migrate your existing physical servers to virtual servers without the hassle.

Most virtualization software has some form of physical-to-virtual system migration tool, such as VMware Converter, which can copy a physical server bit for bit to your virtual environment. There are typically a few different versions of the tool with varying capabilities. Often the migration tool will be free, if only in a limited version. Assess your needs to determine which tool can do the job well.

Every unneeded VM uses system resources that could be used elsewhere and adds to the number of VMs that your support staff will need to manage.

To controlling virtual-machine sprawl, assess the performance requirements of a new service. If the load is expected to be low, and there is an existing VM that can handle it, then use that machine. Make sure to use the built-in performance monitoring tools, which will give you an indication of when it’s time to begin splitting services onto new VMs. Proper change and configuration management is key.

http://fedtechmagazine.com/article.asp?item_id=621&sv=eoa – By Jeremy Jeffcoat

We all know them; Server huggers!! do they still exists?

“The guy who likes to walk into a data center and say, ‘Yeah, that’s my server,’ and points to it. Technically, installing server virtualization software is relatively simple. Much more difficult may be getting the server hugger to give up his server and trust running the application on a virtualized infrastructure.”
— Mark Bowker

Virtual Strategy Magazine – What You Need to Know about Virtualization and Availability

Should you be afraid to go virtual?

Virtualization brings many IT benefits: better server consolidation and utilization, lower capital and operating expenses and greater flexibility to meet business needs among them. But virtualization also brings with it some unintended consequences. One of the unintended consequences is that virtualization dramatically increases the need for rock-solid availability. Because server consolidation can result in the server becoming the single point of failure for multiple applications, the implications of downtime are much greater

Great article by Jerry Melnick pub. November 2007

Virtual Strategy Magazine – What You Need to Know about Virtualization and Availability.

Why Your Company Should Virtualize

Virtualizing your IT infrastructure lets you reduce IT costs while increasing the efficiency, utilization, and flexibility of your existing assets. Around the world, companies of every size benefit from VMware virtualization. Thousands of organizations—including all of the Fortune 100—use VMware virtualization solutions. See how virtualizing 100% of your IT infrastructure will benefit your organization.

Top 5 Reasons to Adopt Virtualization Software

1. Get more out of your existing resources: Pool common infrastructure resources and break the legacy “one application to one server” model with server consolidation.
2. Reduce datacenter costs by reducing your physical infrastructure and improving your server to admin ratio: Fewer servers and related IT hardware means reduced real estate and reduced power and cooling requirements. Better management tools let you improve your server to admin ratio so personnel requirements are reduced as well.
3. Increase availability of hardware and applications for improved business continuity: Securely backup and migrate entire virtual environments with no interruption in service. Eliminate planned downtime and recover immediately from unplanned issues.
4. Gain operational flexibility: Respond to market changes with dynamic resource management, faster server provisioning and improved desktop and application deployment.
5. Improve desktop manageability and security: Deploy, manage and monitor secure desktop environments that users can access locally or remotely, with or without a network connection, on almost any standard desktop, laptop or tablet PC.

Vendor support ? do you need it?

Leverage a Technical Account Manager (TAM) program can be the strategic program to maximize your virtual infrastructure ROI. TAM’s are the vendors insiders that work as an extension of your staff, maintaining a consistent knowledge of their environment, collaboratively assessing project plans, helping to identify risks, and providing best practices guidance throughout the deployment life cycle. With your assigned TAM, you can also rely on them to work externally with vendors to achieve holistic support, and internally for priority support.

Your TAM also provides insider access to vendors rich base of virtualization knowledge, facilitates interaction with vendors product teams and experts, and advocates your feature requests.

Furthermore, the Technical Account Manager will work with you to understand your requirements both business and technically related. The Technical Account Manager will proactively address all issues, especially with your production and disaster recovery systems.

By engaging the collective technical expertise of the vendors Technical Account Manager Program, your technical staff will not only have a single reference point, but will become more productive and better educated on vendors Virtual Infrastructure products.

Can you afford not to engage with the vendors TAM program?