The first time we used the Storage QoS capabilities in Windows Server 2012 R2 it was done in a trial and error fashion. We knew that it was the new VM causing the disruption and kind of dropped the Maximum IOPS to a level that was acceptable. We also ran some PerfMon stats & looked at the IOPS on the HBA going the host. It was all a bit tedious and convoluted. Discussing this with Senthil Rajaram, who’s heavily involved with anything storage at Microsoft he educated me on how to get it done fast & easy.
IT Strategy
15
Jan 14
WorkingHardInIt – How To Measure IOPS Of A Virtual Machine With Resource Metering And MeasureVM
13
Jan 14
Forrester: Sorry – But Cloud Really Doesn’t Matter
The way we deploy software is changing. Our research and others shows that enterprises are moving away from on-premise apps. and moving to private and public cloud offerings. But here is the basic question that is seldom asked. When a company deploys to the cloud does that boost revenue and returns to stockholders? Are high performing companies separating from low performers by their knowledge of and use of cloud technologies? Our recent Business Agility study says clearly that they are not.
Let me give some context for this statement. Forrester is putting significant effort into Business Agility – what it is, how it relates to the success of companies within industries, and what foundations business agility is built on. We’ve identified the three types of agility that companies must develop — Market, Organizational, and Process agility – and evaluate ten separate dimensions that make them up. We found out which of the ten dimensions were the most important, defined as driving growth in revenue and profit (see the Agility Performancereport).
And here’s the point. Infrastructure Elasticity – which is our agility dimension for all things cloud, accounted for almost no difference in enterprise performance. Enterprises aggressively embracing cloud solutions did not perform better than their peers. In fact in some industries, they performed worse.
More of the Forrester post by Craig Le Clair
10
Jan 14
CloudStack: An Overview of the Open Source IaaS Platform
Here’s an open source IaaS platform to set up an on-demand, elastic cloud computing service. It enables utility computing services by allowing cloud service providers to offer self-service compute instances, storage volumes and networking configurations, and to set up a private cloud for internal use.
Apache CloudStack is an open source, multi-tenanted cloud orchestration platform, which is used to build private, public and hybrid IaaS clouds by pooling computing resources. It manages computing, networking and storage resources. CloudStack is hypervisor agnostic; it uses multiple virtualisation platforms such as KVM, vSphere and XenServer. It supports the Amazon Web Services API, apart from its own APIs.
Features and use cases
CloudStack supports Citrix XenServer, VMware vSphere and KVM on Ubuntu or CentOS. It can manage multiple geographically distributed data centres. The CloudStack API gives programmatic access to all managed resources and hence it is easier to create command line tools. Multi-node installation support and load balancing makes it highly available. In addition, MySQL replication is also useful for maintaining high availability.
09
Jan 14
GigaOM – This nifty database shows how apps suck up your data plan
Do you know how much apps can drain on your phone? This website will help you find out.
Apps actually come at a greater cost than the price tag on the app store: drains to battery life and data plans, especially from resource-heavy programs, can ultimately be a total money suck. But a new database, assembled by mobile trade group CTIA, helps inform users about the data usage of mobile apps for iOS and Android, according to PC World.
Know My App is a database that archives the amount of data for apps on all platforms, but currently lists just the Top 50 Paid and Free apps. Each app is measured based on pre-defined “average” interactions. For example, Facebook’s data measurement is based on ”3 sessions of the following scenario: Posting 5 Comments, “Liking” 5 posts, viewing one embedded video, viewing 3 embedded photos, scroll through Timeline, 1 Check-In, Uploading 1 photo.” Average usage for Netflix, on the other hand, is defined as “2 sessions of the following scenario: Search for TV show, Watch TV show (for 9 minutes), Add TV show to favorites, pause video, turn on captions, rotate device, adjust volume, rewind/fast forward, view category.”
08
Jan 14
CIO.com – State of the CIO 2014: The Great Schism
CIO — When CIOs live in the IT house on the hill, they live well.
In our 13th annual State of the CIO survey, 25 percent of the 722 CIOs we surveyed report that the IT group is perceived by colleagues as a true business peer–or even a game-changer–that can create and launch new products and open new markets.
These first-class CIOs identify their top activities as driving business innovation, cultivating partnerships and developing business strategy. They control the majority–65 percent–of spending on IT. They have an excellent relationship with the CEO, reporting to him and sitting on the executive committee. They draw on deep bench strength in the IT group and focus on external activities, such as meeting with customers. And like the CEO and the rest of the C-suite, these CIOs enjoy extra pay when the company reaches sales and profit goals. That’s good stuff.
07
Jan 14
CIO.com – Traditional vs. Digital CIOs: Survey Reveals a Growing Divide
CIO — In our 13 years of conducting our annual State of the CIO survey, we’ve never seen anything quite like this year’s results. Our profession has become a house divided, with traditional service-provider CIOs on one side and business-focused, digital-strategist CIOs on the other.
“As we plow through this period of digital disruption, where established rules for competing may no longer apply, some CIOs now question what they want for themselves,” Managing Editor Kim S. Nash writes in our cover story (“State of the CIO 2014: The Great Schism”). “The profession is changing fast in an atmosphere where colleagues sometimes look upon a traditional IT group as a hindrance to corporate success.”
Nearly half of the 722 CIOs and IT leaders responding to our global survey say their IT groups are viewed by business colleagues primarily as cost centers or service providers. That’s a deflating statistic to report after so many years of strategic business talk from CIOs everywhere.
06
Jan 14
CFO.com – How the Cloud Will Be Capitalized
In December, Google announced its launch into the public cloud as a direct assault on Amazon, IBM and Microsoft, betting it can be the systems infrastructure for corporations. Businesses of all kinds will be built on top of such computing power and storage capacity. But how are SaaS (software as a service) and IaaS (infrastructure as a service) vendors (other than the giants) going to be capitalized and financed to enable the next leap in cloud computing?
Relative to the enterprise software sellers of the past, SaaS companies require less upfront dollars to build infrastructure (e.g., servers). By some estimates, the application company of the past required 10x to 100x the capital to realize the same enterprise value. But SaaS companies confront greater working capital challenges. Those challenges come from client acquisition and on-boarding.
04
Jan 14
GigaOM – Amazon Workspaces: What lies ahead and beneath?
Amazon’s WorkSpaces — ostensibly a Desktop-as-a-Service offering — may end up being a lot more than that. It could bring a whole new class of customers into the Amazon Web Services fold.
On the surface, Amazon’s newly introduced Amazon WorkSpaces is Desktop as a Service. But it may represent a strategy that is actually much deeper than that, and one that could bring whole new customer segments into the Amazon Web Services Marketplace.
Today, in order for enterprise applications to move to the cloud, they have to achieve an “escape velocity” to break free from the company’s data center. Firms often use scorecards to rationalize which applications will escape to the public cloud and which remain in house. Even in firms where the CIO mandates “cloud first” deployment, entrenched corporate culture and fear of cloud often preserves the status quo and hinders a move to the cloud. That is not good news for AWS.
02
Jan 14
InformationWeek – IT’s Reputation: Broken Bad
If Coca-Cola had a brand that was the equivalent of IT today, they would kill it and start again, says Blackstone Group CTO. He shares 4 processes IT leaders can use to change IT’s bad rep.
William Murphy, CTO of the investment firm Blackstone Group, seemed like a pleasant enough fellow when he came onto the Interop New York tech conference stage this week. He even promised to kick things off on a high note.
Then he proceeded to describe the perception of IT departments as at best adequate — a cost center and a back-office necessity at many companies. Worst case, “we’re categorized as people who say ‘No’ first and ask questions later,” Murphy said. IT’s too often considered defensive, late, overprice, uninformed and unhelpful.
“If Coca-Cola had a brand that was the equivalent of IT today, they would just kill it and start again,” said Murphy. At Blackstone, Murphy changed the name of IT to Innovations & Infrastructure, and took some meatier steps (more below on that) to reshape the perception of IT.
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Dec 13
Online Backup Mag – VMware and the Corporate Hybrid Cloud
2014 is being hailed by trends analysts as the year of the hybrid cloud. VMware has emerged as the leader of the hybrid cloud market. Reports from Gartner suggest that in 2015, nearly 70% of big corporations will implement the hybrid cloud in their environment. The move to hybrid is an eventual next step for businesses who have heavily invested in private cloud infrastructure. As large corporations become more comfortable using the public cloud to operate non-mission critical infrastructure, the hybrid cloud model will gain in popularity. Cost savings and efficiency will become the key drivers behind companies wanting to move into this direction.
