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Support At the end of last month (the 23rd), Xen and Symantec announced an OEM agreement to embed Symantec Storage Foundation into XenEnterprise.
What does this bring to Xen and Xen users?
To quote the press release this gives XenEnterprise users the following benefits:
* Leverage your current Symantec storage investments, processes and environments, avoiding the “forklift” upgrade required with other virtualization options
* Simplified deployment of server and storage virtualization infrastructure allows you to dramatically reduce your capital and operating expenses
* Upgrade easier and faster since retesting and recertification of independent software packages isn’t required
* Reduce over-provisioning and downtime
* XenSource-based systems will have optimal performance and recovery characteristics which are ideal for Windows production workloads
So what does this really tell us?
Well, for a start it shows that XenSource is becoming a real competitor to VMware .
From a product perspective, "XenEnterprise HighAvailability" is going to be developed which will compete with VMware's HA and DRS offering. It is going to be tested for certification by both Symantec and XenSource, so promises to be a robust product, suitable for enterprise deployments.
Symantec are also going to test for certification NetBackup for XenSource. Also, Veritas Storage Foundation will ship with XenEnterprise as a standard component.
All in all, it bodes well for Xen and for virtualisation generally. A little competition never hurts. Xen's selling point in the past has been "80% of the functionality, for 20% of the price", as their feature set grows the argument the argument that they have not got what enterprise deployments require will decrease.
It will be interesting to see how VMware responds.
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Antony Savvas wrote an interesting piece in Computer Weekly this week about one of our favourite products – Presence Networks Networker talking about the AJAX (Web 2.0) no client install version of their secure IM product.
The problem is so many organisations turn a blind eye, even if they don’t encourage, the use of public IM services as they realise the benefit of IM but try to ignore the inherent risks of their actions.
He said “Webmail-based instant messaging accounts, from the likes of AOL and Yahoo, are inherently open to security breaches as they are based on peer-to-peer technology that transports data over the public internet, leaving users susceptible to hacking and malware.”
With Networker the instant messaging client is hosted on a dedicated central server that offers 128-bit encryption combined with an integrated anti-virus system, meaning that remote workers can communicate instantly and securely from any number of computer terminals.
With Networker technology, the public instant messaging gateway communicates with the Networker Server, which in turn communicates with the Networker Client. At this point, the data passes through the Networker Server and the communication is cleansed and recorded, ensuring the highest level of security and eliminating direct peer-to-peer communications. This means users of the Networker system can safely communicate with users of webmail-based instant messaging systems, along with others using Networker.
His article is here
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Forrester Research Wave report of July 2007 titled “WAN Optimization Appliances, Q3 2007” defined the WAN optimization market as “red hot” and identified Packeteer as “currently the largest WAN Optimization vendor” and a “Strong Performer”.
We have to admit, some of their technology is quite sexy. People can get really emotive about what is important to them – the box is too big, it’s the wrong colour, it doesn’t have any of these pretty but pointless graphs – but to us, the most important considerations include – is it a strategic solution or a band aid, does it do what it says on the tin, is it easy to manage, does it corrupt data, does it apply appropriate techniques to the particular protocol or application. On that basis we reckon Packeteer do pretty well.
Key findings of the Forrester Research Wave report include the following:
• “Packeteer has the strongest QoS feature set and, as a result, the best management console for monitoring and measuring application performance.”
• “[Forrester Research] recommend[s] Packeteer for companies that are highly distributed and require the granularity to classify and accelerate hundreds if not thousands of applications across the WAN.”
• “This is especially critical for companies moving to application-level SLAs for chargeback models, outsourcing, or providing more relevant IT metrics for lines-of-business.”
Regarding Packeteer’s recently introduced iShaper™ appliance and extended partnership with Microsoft, Forrester Research offers the following observations:
• “Since the [Forrester Research market] evaluation, Packeteer has launched iShaper, which [provides] a unified WAN optimization appliance based on Microsoft Server technology. This strategy…positions Packeteer extremely well for capitalizing on mainstream WAN optimization customers that are looking to Microsoft-integrated solutions.”
• “Packeteer’s iShaper accelerates all apps, but more importantly, it provides the ability to consolidate branch assets by removing unnecessary Microsoft infrastructure without trading off performance. This is especially critical if you want to run a full suite of Microsoft services but can’t afford to remove local processing, for example because of disaster recovery purposes.”
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Recently we have been working quite often helping architects in particular make CAD drawings available in remote offices through the use of Wide Area File Services (WAFS).
The problem with CAD is that a drawing can be pretty huge in terms of both file size and number of files. You standard CAD drawing consists of lots of files which all come together. This in Bentley MicroStation includes the “reference files” which are in simple terms the blocks from which the drawing is constructed.
We have looked at a wide variety of WAFS solutions and especially for CAD we find that Packeteer (previously Tacit Networks) iShared solution works best. The reason being is that iShared is file-centric.
Products like Riverbed for example, which is a good product in some scenarios, does not have some key features; like pre-population which we have found really valuable for CAD. It is a network only solution, it does not integrate into your infrastructure like iShared which being Windows based is 100% compatible with your active directory and security configurations, iShared can also provide other services such as acting as a Domain Controller and/or DHCP/DNS server for your remote site (The marketing term for this is “Branch Office in a Box”) which competitors can’t do.
.For designers and architects, iShared is excellent as it provides at the remote site a “cache” of files which we can pre-populate with the files they need, typically all the reference files and the files of the specific project that remote site is working on.
We are able to pre-populate in a site specific manner with iShared, and also pre-populate some data to all remote sites. What this means for architects is we can pre-populate all the reference files to all the remote sites, then pre-populate on a project basis to the remote sites. So the bridge drawings to site A, skyscraper files to site B, etc.
Having the files on a local cache means that for the architects opening and saving files is fast as they are writing/reading from a local server disk.
Once the file is saved to the local disk (on the remote cache), iShared does its magic. For a start it does a byte-level check of the file on the remote cache and the original file on the data centre file server. It then sends only the changes back to the data centre in a compressed and streamed manner, saving bandwidth and time. The file is then updated on the data centre fileserver with the changes.
For the business, this means that staff don’t have long delays waiting for files to open and save. For the IT department it means less complaints from users and that they need only backup the data at the data centre and don’t need to worry about putting ever bigger disks in the remote office servers as users create drawings.
The caching function of iShared really helps the user get the speed of opening and saving files. The byte-level differencing, file streaming and compression functions help the IT guys use smaller bandwidth pipes and provide faster remote access to files even when not pre-populated. The pre-population (which can be run as a regular scheduled job) ensures that all the relevant files for the project being worked on are there in advance.
We have found the pre-population of the cache to be a key benefit, as it really saves a lot of time especially on new projects. Remote offices that do a lot of small sub projects are particularly benefiting from this as all the files for the new project they have been assigned can be pushed across to them overnight, ready for local LAN speed access in the morning. When the project is finished and they are assigned a new project, just push the new project files across.
Please do contact us if you would like to try iShared for yourself, we have evaluation hardware available which can be in place and working in just a couple of hours. There is no need to make big changes to your networks to evaluate iShared, we can simply bring in an appliance and plug it into your LAN somewhere. Then plug the remote appliance in on their LAN and after a little configuration is done “hey presto” a working system which you can test for yourselves.
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Martijn over in the Netherlands has been working on a migration to a virtualised infrastructure and has shared some of the direct financial cost savings his business has gained by virtualising.
As with our previous post on power savings Martijn has been able to easily identify over €7,500 (euros) per month of regular monthly costs.
That does not include the €30,000 one time cost for the physical space to put the servers! Nor does it include savings from not buying and maintaining all the physical servers he would require otherwise.
Recently we have done some consulting work for a client looking at using VMware and Wide Area File Services (WAFS) to bring their file servers back from remote offices whilst maintaining the file access speeds. Unlike Martijn, othis client is more concerned with lowering the administrative burden on their IT staff rather than lowering real estate or power/cooling costs.
One of the great things about a virtual infrastructure is that you can convert a physical server into a virtual machine (P2V). Then run these VMs on a single physical host server (in Martijn's case he has a 20:1 virtual to physical ration).
In a large project such as the one we have been working on this is a huge help, we are able to virtualise a server and leave whatever services it provides running. Then after we have consolidated the physical servers to virtual, it is much much easier to tackle the task of consolidating services/applications and decommissioning servers.
We tend to archive the servers we have virtualised from physical machines. Then if some months later a user asks where that piece of software they (and only they) run twice a year has gone we are easily able to bring the server back and migrate the application.
If we had to do that with physical servers... well it's too horrible to consider. When doing it with VMWare, we need only keep copies of three files per virtual server.
Both scenarios can really help an organisation. Be it making the IT guys lives easier or lowering the bottom line for the financial officer..
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