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Tech Field Day

#VFD4 Live – Platform9

James Green · Jan 14, 2015 ·

This post is live-blogged from the Platform9 presentation at #VFD4. The structure and organization will undoubtedly be poor, since this is all captured on the fly from our chat.

About Platform9

Platform9 was started in 2013 and was founded by (surprise, surprise) ex-VMware, Cisco, etc. employees. They came out of stealth around VMworld 2014 time. Their goal is to make private cloud easy for organizations of any scale. Running a AWS-like system internally via OpenStack is possible, but requires lots of knowledge, skill, and frankly time invested. Platform9’s goal is to bring this service to companies who don’t have the skills or budget to create an OpenStack (or other) based private cloud with ease. According to CEO Sirish, public cloud gets too expensive at scale, and private cloud can provide the same services at less expense once you get to a certain scale. He says that TCO of OpenStack will be good if you have in-house OpenStack “ninjas,” but TCO will be too high if you don’t. This is where Platform9 will come in. You could use a hosted OpenStack offering, but at that point, why not just use public cloud?

Deep-dive/Demo

Platform9 is essentially a cloud-managed OpenStack as a Service model, which will manage on-premises resources. I noted in my prep post, and again during the presentation, that I have no problem with this model myself, but many customers are still uncomfortable with the cloud-management model. We’re still working on that paradigm shift. We walked through a demo of initial setup, where we saw the Platform9 agent downloaded and installed on a server to discover an existing workload and add it to your private cloud. Communication between the agent and the controller is all PKI based. We also saw how the system uses the concept of “host aggregates” to logically pool resources and show usage using key-value pairs for grouping. We dove into configuration of multi-tenancy and authentication (RBAC, 2-factor auth). It turns out that at this time there’s no approval process for workload provisioning, only quotas. That will work, but it’s little clunky. We discussed reporting and it seems that at this time, the insight/reporting may be a bit lacking.

Upgrades are handled by Platform9 from an OpenStack perspective. Of course, their agents will need updated, for which they install a few yum packages on managed machines. vCenter integration is by way of a downloaded OVA which is deployed and performs the discovery and mediation with the vSphere environment. Naturally, with a cloud-based management model, we spent a long time talking about security. It came down to the same thing it usually comes down to – what is required is really a paradigm shift; a cultural change in the organization will be required to make this a viable option. From a purely technical security standpoint, it’s not that scary.

That’s it for this one! Join us again in about an hour for VMTurbo!

#VFD4 Live – SimpliVity

James Green · Jan 14, 2015 ·

This post is live-blogged from the SimpliVity presentation at #VFD4. The structure and organization will undoubtedly be poor, since this is all captured on the fly from our chat.

Overview

Jesse St. Laurent kicked off the presentation by helping us understand where OmniCube fits in the market, where it fits in the data center, and what sort of workload it’s suited for. 65% of SimpliVity customers surveyed (out of 66 participants) run 100% of their enterprise apps on OmniCube! He told us that cities run their 911 app and banks run their ATM app on OmniCube. Backup to AWS is possible, but the standard model is to replicate between OmniCubes at different sites within the organization. The backups in AWS aren’t VMs that can be turned up, so you would need an OmniCube to restore to in the event of a failure. You can use the storage/replication/deduplication features of OmniCube with additional “computer nodes” (which would be an ESXi host for instance). This helps create the ability to scale non-linearly, which is a typical concern with hyper-convergence.

Demo

We got to see a sweet demo where we looked at the Federation View, the Data Center View, and the VM-level View. The OmniCube management is done through a vSphere Client plugin, and a vSphere Web Client plugin is coming with the next release of vSphere. (Who knows when that could be?!?) The Federation can operate in a hub-and-spoke layout, or a full-mesh layout, depending on your unique needs, and supposedly their federation technology is smart enough to figure out which is best. Backup and replication are managed via VM-based policies. They are notably very simple, and that’s part of the draw here. Policies are always VM-based, and at this time there isn’t a way to assign policies to a higher level construct like a folder or a resource pool. The deep integration with the vSphere Client is purposely designed so that an administrator familiar with managing a VMware environment will have an easy time jumping in. File-level restore is coming soon, it will mount removable media to the target machine and allow a user to copy off the requested data. It can’t automatically overwrite the target, which is by design. Better safe than sorry when it comes to data. 8 Omni nodes per data center, 32 nodes per federation.

Data Efficiency in Hyper-convergence

The OmniCube Accelerator is what allows deduplication of data at inception, and then not have to rehydrate/dedupe again moving forward. Offloading CPU cycles and IOPS to the card allows inline processing without taxing the resources used to run VMs. The card is designed by SimpliVity – definitely purpose-built and not an off-the-shelf card. Every write to Omni storage goes to multiple cubes. As such, a card failure will be handled gracefully by the system.

Architecture Deep-Dive

The components of their Data Virtualization Platform are Accelerated Global Predupe (via the aforementioned card) and Global Unified Management. These things allow the delivery of true hyper-convergence. Part of what makes the efficiency possible is that the DVP organizes disparate sized writes into full stripes before writing down to disk. Also, hot blocks are cached (not tiered) so there’s no overhead in moving data back and forth. Changing gears – there is no additional software licensing. Everything is included. Global data-efficiency is achieved in part by leveraging metadata references in an “object storage” sort of fashion, although this isn’t exactly object storage. Due to this design, substantially less data needs to be sent across the wire during replication. Also, backups are more efficient, because a copy of the metadata tree can serve as a point-in-time to restore to.

That’s it for this session! I’ll have more thoughtful follow up info later. Join us again in about an hour for Platform9!

#VFD4 Live Stream!

James Green · Jan 14, 2015 ·

Streaming live all week long! When the stream is active, you’ll be able to watch right here!

#VFD4 is Upon Us!

James Green · Jan 13, 2015 ·

It’s finally that time – Virtualization Field Day 4 kicks off this week in Austin, TX! Today’s post will include a primer on both the delegates and the vendors that will be present, and finally a schedule of the events to come. After reading this, you should be prepared to attend (virtually) the event and understand what’s going on!

Wait, Step Back!

If you’re here and you’ve never heard of Tech Field Day (I was that guy a year ago, so no worries!) let me quickly fill you in. In their words:

Field Day events bring together innovative IT product vendors and independent thought leaders to share information and opinions in a presentation and discussion format. Independent bloggers, speakers, freelance writers, and podcasters have a public presence that has immense influence on the ways that products and companies are perceived and by IT practitioners. The world of media has changed, with social media and blogging gaining special importance. Our Field Day is an opportunity for tech companies and independent writers to meet, update and discuss products and form new communications.

We provide a valuable forum for engagement, education, hands-on experience, and feedback for vendors. And the attendees get access to the best information, high quality resources that lead to informed, more nuanced discussion about the marketplace.

So in my own words, what’s going to happen over the course of the next week is that we (the delegates) are going to meet with eight presenting sponsors and have an in-depth, highly technical discussion about the company and their products with insiders at the company. This is one of the best ‘win-win’ events I’ve ever been a part of. The vendors win because thought-leaders in the industry will give honest, thoughtful, expert feedback to folks who have the power to do something with it. And the delegates win because we get an inside peak at some of the coolest, most cutting-edge technology in the market, and we also get to network, and we get social engagement surrounding the event. “Everybody happy!”

#VFD4 Details

Okay – now that we’re all on the same page, below are some important links to all the information you could need to prepare for VFD4. Each link will take you to a more detailed post on the subject at hand.

Live Stream

Every session at VFD4 will be streamed in HD video for your consumption. If you’re unable to watch, all the sessions will also be recorded and available to watch online (usually within a day or two). View the Live Stream here!

Delegates

The VFD4 delegates are a powerful team of bloggers and community members, and I’m honored to be able to be a part of this panel. The delegate panel includes: Amit Panchal, Amy Manley, Christopher Kusek, Emad Younis, Jeff Wilson,Julian Wood, Justin Warren, Larry Smith, Marco Broeken, Matt Simmons, and Mike Preston. See the #VFD4 Delegates post for a summary of the delegates including pictures, Twitter handles, etc.

Sponsors

The VFD4 sponsors are an exciting mix of all things related to virtualization, including (but not limited to) hyperconvergence, private cloud, monitoring/insight, and virtual storage appliances. The sponsor list for this event includes: CommVault, Dell, Platform9, Scale Computing,SimpliVity, SolarWinds, StorMagic, and VMTurbo.

Organizers

None of this would be possible without the awesome team that organizes the event and the media team the streams and records the happenings. Please make sure to give them some love, and recognize all of their efforts in putting this sort of event together time and time again. The event team includes Stephen Foskett (@sfoskett), Tom Hollingsworth (@networkingnerd), and Claire Chaplais (@cchaplais). They also bring in the fine folks from PrimeImage Media (@PrimeImageVideo) to do the broadcast/recording, and other services like a local transportation service, caterers, etc. All these people make the event possible, and we really appreciate them!!

Session Calendar

The presentations will take place according to the following schedule. A link is included to the Tech Field Day website which will show all posts and videos related to the session. Please note that this schedule could change between today and the event, so always reference the official event page for the lastest!

Wednesday, Jan 14 09:30 – 11:30 SimpliVity Presents at Virtualization Field Day 4
Wednesday, Jan 14 13:00 – 15:00 Platform9 Systems Presents at Virtualization Field Day 4
Wednesday, Jan 14 15:30 – 17:30 VMTurbo Presents at Virtualization Field Day 4
Thursday, Jan 15 08:00 – 10:00 StorMagic Presents at Virtualization Field Day 4
Thursday, Jan 15 10:30 – 12:30 SolarWinds Presents at Virtualization Field Day 4
Thursday, Jan 15 13:30 – 15:30 CommVault Presents at Virtualization Field Day 4
Friday, Jan 16 08:00 – 12:00 Dell Presents at Virtualization Field Day 4
Friday, Jan 16 13:00 – 15:00 Scale Computing Presents at Virtualization Field Day 4

The #VFD4 Delegates

James Green · Jan 12, 2015 ·

The delegate panel at a regular Tech Field Day event is typically 12 individuals, and this time is no different. Below is a summary of the delegate panel, including their Twitter handle in case you want to reach out to them before, during, or after the event. There’s also a picture, so if you’re watching the live stream (or the recordings afterward) you can identify who’s who! I swiped this table from the hard-working folks that put on this event, so all credit to them for doing the legwork for me 🙂

 

Amit Panchal @AmitPanchal76
Technical IT Manager and blogger at apanchal.com.
Amy Manley @WyrdGirl
12 years in IT, vExpert and an automation junkie
Christopher Kusek @cxi
CTO at @Xiologix – EVP of Engineering, Technology Evangelist, vExpert, EMC Elect, BDA, CISSP, MCT, Cloud, Ninja, Vegan, Single, Father, Cat, Humorist, Author
Emad Younis @Emad_Younis
Emad is a datacenter enthusiast, 2 x vExpert, and blogger @ emadyounis.com.
James Green @JDGreen
James is an independent blogger at www.virtadmin.com, a 2014 vExpert, and works as a virtualization consultant in the Midwest.
Jeff Wilson @Agnostic_Node1
Passionate yet disciplined virtualization & storage engineer in the SME market.
Julian Wood @Julian_Wood
Julian is a London based enterprise infrasstructure architect and blogger.
Justin Warren @JPWarren
Justin is a consultant and freelance journalist who enjoys coding in Python and words that are fun to say, like ‘llama’ and ‘shenanigans’.
Larry Smith @MrLESmithJr
19 yrs. in IT | 11 yrs. VMware virtualization | VMware NSX Nut
Marco Broeken @MBroeken
Dutch Virtualization Admirer and DaaS Lover, Blogger at www.vClouds.nl
Matt Simmons @StandaloneSA
Small Infrastructure IT Administrator in Academia
Mike Preston @MWPreston
3 x vExpert, blogger @ mwpreston.net and a typical Canadian eh!

 

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