The Virtual Data Center

I’m headed out to take the VDC message on the road next week. This trip will be focusing on the business benefits of “Future-Proofing” the Data Center and blowing out the smoke that the vendors are telling customers today. The basic premise is to architect your Data Center and your long-term Virtualization plan around your applications, not around single-point virtualization solutions like OS virtualization and the hypervisor. I’ve been working out the kinks in my “VDC as a Service Model” presentation, and it’s almost ready for primetime, so it’s going to be nice to focus on the business benefit of the VDC on this trip and talk about what happens after you adopt the Service Model.

I’m sure I’ll come back with all kinds of stories, rants, suggestions, etc…

Just a quick note: I’ll be going dark next week as I head down to the Bay area for a few days for RSA, and then even farther south to Palo Alto to present the Virtual Data Center at SAP Virtualization Week.  It’s going to be a fun week…

With all the exciting announcements in the last couple weeks of all the new gear available you would think there would be entries all over the place.  But many of the new data center switch announcements from Juniper and Cisco were met with a sort of “what’s the big deal” attitude.  I think no one was too excited because customers have way too many options when they look to basic enterprise networks infrastructure components. Of course when we talk about advanced enterprise a network infrastructure component that’s a different story and there are some announcements people can get excited about, but I didn’t want to discuss today. I do, however, have to ask, is there anyone else out there thinking that the new Nexus 7000 operating system NX-OS name is an acronym for noxious? According to Merriam Webster’s definition we can include “constituting a harmful influence on mind or behavior…” Ok, I’m bending the definition a little bit because I dislike harmful influences on my mind.  But, wouldn’t you would think that Cisco could have stuck with an operating system that thousands of certified engineers already know.  Some of the discussions regarding the reasoning for a new OS and its origins can be found at a Cisco blog site. The arguments for creating NX-OS are well reasoned and I supposed the individuals commenting here have argued this many time before.  Omar S. in his comments says. “We gave you an internal architecture that you can build upon for the next decade, but wrapped it in familiar, comfortable packaging.” Let’s hope what he said is true, otherwise we’d all need to learn yet another syntax!

I read Shamus McGillicuddy’s discussion on Server Consolidation and I am blown away about the idea of enterprises still having servers under desks and in accessible locations due to physical lock down of buildings! Haven’t those guys heard of remote access? Ok, I’m being factitious, but if they don’t have a systems management server that can verify system health and configuration, can’t they ssh/rdp/telnet/something to those remote boxes?  Ok, even if the admins had to go to the server for administration why can’t they get a key?  

FULL DISCLOSURE: This blog runs on software from wordpress.org, which is completely different than the software at wordpress.com that offended me below.

Prior to becoming the management and virtualization junkie that you read here, I worked in data security. I was a security freak. No, strike that: I still am a security freak. I’m overly paranoid. I shred everything. I only use one credit card for online shopping. I get in arguments with my family when I find out that they use weak passwords. We don’t even say passwords out loud in my house, it’s that bad. I have passwords for securing other passwords in password “safes”. I keep my GPG keys on write-once media in a safety deposit box. Yes, I’m a freak when it comes to security.

So you can imagine my shock and horror a few days ago when I created a WordPress blog. I thought it was about time I had a personal, non-technology related blog, so I created both WordPress and Blogspot sites to compare features and usability. So I did my thing, created blog/site names for each service, matched those to an account name, and waited for my respective confirmation emails. With Blogspot, it’s tied to one of my GMail accounts, so no problems there. Google’s SSO Dashboard environment is awesome (btw, I’m addicted to iGoogle).

WordPress has an email confirmation system, notifying me when my account was set up and ready to go. However…and it’s a HUGE HOWEVER…the confirmation email from WordPress included my username, links to manage my blog, and MY PASSWORD IN THE CLEAR! THE FULL PASSWORD…IN THE CLEAR! If I seem aggrivated, well, welcome to my world. It’s freakin’ 2008, and a site as pervasive as WordPress is sending full passwords in the clear, via the most insecure data transport system ever devised, email?! C’mon!

I promptly logged into WordPress and changed my password, and will most likely end up at Blogspot b/c of this snafu. So kudos to WordPress for making my decision much easier.

And for your viewing pleasure, here’s the email from WordPress (pertinent user information changed, obviously).

New WordPress Blog: ExampleBlog
Your New WordPress.com blog has been successfully set up.

You can log in with the following information:
Username: exampleblog
Password: alice123
at http://wordpress.com

We hope you dig your new weblog. If you have any questions or comments, please let us know!

Here we will discuss the future of the data center and define the benefits this new paradigm will provide to organizations of all sizes. This blog is not affiliated with any company, but is the musings and rants of 4 industry veterans in order to give you a broad perspective on the industry and the vision that we all share for the future of application delivery.

Thank you,

Warren