• 1/4 of power consumption
• 1/4 of rack space requirement
• Integrated top rack switching, load balancing and server management

Their options around virtualization are also an interesting area since security and virtualization continue to be an ongoing issue. I am also looking forward to getting more data on the server management and top-of-rack infrastructure integrated into their platform – it’s always nice to reduce box count in the datacenter.

It looks like there is plenty of attention being paid to these technologies by other industry luminaries – Jame Hamilton from Amazon has some additional information on performance. Also keep a look out for Seamicro’s CTO Gary Lauterback at Structure 2010 talking about “What Comes After the Blade? Architectures for the Cloud.”

Title: NANOG 49
Location: Westin St. Francis Hotel, San Francisco, CA
Link out: Click here
Description: The NANOG community is returning to the home of the Golden Gate Bridge, and we invite you join us at the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco for NANOG49, which happens June 13-16, 2010. This will be the third NANOG meeting in San Francisco.

NANOG49 will feature presentations on networking advancements and techniques, educational tutorials, interesting tracks, and more. Whether you are new to the networking profession or a seasoned veteran, NANOG49 will educate and inform with a full agenda of interesting topics.

Start Date: 2010-06-13
End Date: 2010-06-16

Had an interesting conversation with the editors at SearchITChannel.com regarding UCS and the datacenter market in general.On the outside, UCS brings an attractive and integrated package. On the inside, UCS brings an integrated management suite. So what possible issues could there be? With a competitive price point, it seems like a natural migration path. What we have seen is reticence not simply based on hardware/power requirements – but also overall management. Current IT management systems are customized so heavily to the current “modular” infrastructure that it is a big question mark for any new vendor to address. UCS has some slick integration (similarity to IOS is a plus for the network teams also tasked with systems duties) but now the displacement of other legacy solutions doesn’t just come down to hardware, but how to integrate and manage this in an existing application environment (i.e. it’s NOT just about plugging in server). The presence of APIs and documentation is helpful – but in this challenging market with IT focused on “keeping the lights on” – any vendor displacement can be a challenge.

Of course, every datacenter is different, but the basic tenet is that in the current market, forklift upgrades are a tough sell in a retrofit environment. While there are plenty of promotions to encourage adoption of new technologies,  providing a migration path for clients is much easier with modular gear (not only on physical rack space, but power footprint and cooling dynamics). As noted in the article, HP appears to be taking this strategy to heart, but there are many bridges to cross.

2010 promises to be an interesting year for converged architectures! I am looking forward to see what these solutions inspire in terms of management tools and automation.

A RIPE Meeting is a five-day event where Internet service providers, network operators and other interested parties from Europe and the surrounding regions gather. RIPE Meetings are open to everyone and provide an excellent opportunity for attendees to discuss Internet policy.

See you there!

Start Date: 2010-05-03
End Date: 2010-05-07

The main points:

1) Documentation and sharing of best practices can be a challenge

2) Need a repository that is accessible and allows for “living documents” like a network BCP to live and be modified as requirements shift

3) Identification of peers and subject matter experts that can help collaborate on these documents

There are active discussions underway and we look forward to being a part of the group providing this resource to the community.

- The 6connect Team

The breaking down of technology silos in organizations has been a long time coming. Between engineering, production, research, accounting, operations, etc. – the same technology pieces (computing, storage and network) are everywhere. Fiscal oversight is increasing the demand for transparency. And this demand for transparency is a key driver to aligning IT to the organization.

But what does this mean as far as trends for the future? Here’s the short version:

1) Communication – getting your point across is crucial and often overlooked. IT can’t simply say “we need $X for product Y” – this has resulted in some interesting purchase decisions. Now it’s about communicating ideas and aligning a technology strategy to the business need. What is the value of a particular product or service? How/when does outsourcing make sense? Are there other departments that may be able leverage an IT investment (and thus share budget)? The IT end-user is not the same one from 5 years ago. The introduction of pervasive web technologies has opened plenty of eyes regarding how technology can be seamless and “just work”. This means that communication of IT challenges and goals is crucial to ensuring that internal/external customers all understand what is going on and buy-in!

Which brings us to #2…

2) Collaboration – It’s about looking outside existing silos and seeing how other groups get things done. What do their business processes look like? How do departments leverage IT resources? It’s tough to define the technology strategy for a company when you have never interacted with Human Resources, Accounting, Research or Product Development. Granted this is not an easy task – but it is crucial for companies to collaborate and create awareness in some way to further facilitate communication.

Unfortunately, businesses have to figure it out and align everyone behind a shared technology vision. They have the unenviable requirement of agility and stability. There are multiple examples of how a business leader “decides” on an IT vision without interaction across the business, and then ignores communication of the vision to focus on implementation.

The real challenge is seeing how IT can interact with business units and make their lives easier. Is it pooling IT budgets to evaluate a shared CRM platform? Is it consolidating hardware and networks to provide DR for multiple departments?

But lest we forget – this attitude can’t come solely from IT. Management also needs to understand the importance of communication and how a shared vision can result in a more productive and efficient company.

So the challenge for 2010 is understanding your business and the IT vision needed to be successful…easy

- Pete Sclafani, 6connect

Global Peering Forum – April 12-17th, 2010
Location: Miami, Key West, and Grand Cayman
Link for information: http://www.peeringforum.com/

ARIN XXV – April 18-21st, 2010
Location Toronto, Ontario
Link for information: https://www.arin.net/ARIN-XXV/

We will see you there!

- The 6connect Team

We are looking forward to 2010 want to thank all of our clients and partners for making 2009 such a success for us.

Best wishes,

The 6connect Team

1) Did some content updates to the website including adding our Services section. We have had numerous inquiries regarding a targeted service approach to help businesses. We will be fleshing out the details in this area and using some of our customers as potential case studies.

2) Putting the finishing touches on our demo environment. We are up to our elbows in technology guts and are putting together the ingredients that will be open to current clients and prospects. Goal is to showcase various virtualized/dedicated hardware options and show some of the initial migration pieces with live hardware. With our approach to monitoring – expect increased efficiencies, higher performance and the data points to back it up.

3) HIVECentral got another feature rollout! Have been testing some new integrated monitoring features that just passed QA and are now live. Also did some back-end authentication streamlining to make adding more portal features easier. By being able to deal with the variety of authentication mechanisms, we are ensuring simple integration of future functions and/or third party applications.

As always, if you have some unique ideas for portal features/functionality – let us know! We are also going to be rolling out a “demo” portal login that will show some actual data of live gear that you can play with. We will announce this feature when it’s live, but if you want the super early-bird notification – email us any time!

Thanks!

The 6connect team

Most recently on CIO.com, his commentary regarding a Forrester Research report was prescient since it relates to the concept of private/internal cloud computing environments.

The conventional reasons for an enterprise to migrate to a cloud infrastructure are outlined in the article – but are broken down below:

1) Private enterprise clouds allow use/re-purposing of internal infrastructure

2) Keeping computing assets inside enterprise datacenters ensure policies stay intact

3) Private clouds offer lower TCO versus 3rd party solutions

Some observations

Defining the Cloud…

In our customer interactions, cloud has been top of mind, but is still being thought of as a managed service! Since “cloud” takes on so many meanings, customers are still looking for discrete products/functionality since that is what they have bought in the past. There is an education process that has to occur in correlating a cloud infrastructure to the discrete pieces that make up expected functionality (i.e. network, security, load balancing, storage, backup, etc.). Surprisingly, we are seeing interest to migrate full production environments (not just staging and development) – so people are looking to leverage outsourcing partners as much as possible to control implementation costs.

ROI, TCO = Need to Save Capital

So what’s driving interest? IT Budgets. Companies are looking to simplify IT infrastructure and align their IT staff to competitive initiatives for the business. Also – CFO’s love the idea of off-setting hardware purchases and related capital expenses. With a hosted infrastructure environment, businesses take advantage of platforms/technologies that would be difficult to capitalize in a difficult economic climate.

It’s about kWh – not square footage!

When gauging a cloud implementation, power consumption is also coming under scrutiny. Datacenters use  lots of electricity – and the bills are a significant portion. As a key budget point, how can a business minimize power consumption and still get the same work done? Virtualization has the potential for this, but still requires management and customizing to get it integrated with “facility” instrumentation and start tying in power consumption data points. A private cloud might tackle this angle – but if the original equipment is still inefficient – cost savings will fall short of expectations. This is an opportunity for third party private datacenter clouds to shine. These computing environments bring in localized infrastructure that is built to be efficient and integrated with monitoring and consumption tools. Some offer standard “per-instance” costs while others are tackling the utility computing pricing model.

Computing is Delivered…Now What?

One of the biggest draws to a “cloud” model is ease of provisioning and management – but businesses still want to have choice and not be locked into a vendor. Companies like 6connect provide a standard operating environment that doesn’t require any application customization. There are no code language requirements or cryptic hardware limitations. Having an in-depth knowledge of system and network architecture help ensure that implementation questions are answered appropriately, and environments match what the customer is used to.

As architectures get more abstracted, the details of what makes a system efficient tend to get lost. The assumption of “It works – so don’t touch it” is beginning to fall out of favor with transparency in power and resource consumption. By working with environments that focus on the architecture and efficiency angle, businesses can leverage a smaller hardware footprint that is more scalable and less expensive than what they had before. In this economic environment of hyper competitiveness, businesses need every edge they can get.