IT Management 2.0

Rise of the Machines

The movie “The Terminator” paints a picture of computers and automation

Don't Panic: Machines and Automation Don't Mean Termination

 as a bad thing.  But nothing can be further from the truth…Unlike the bleak future portrayed in the movie, one thing is becoming perfectly clear:  machines do things faster, more efficiently, and with fewer mistakes.  And that’s good news - especially when you’re managing IT resources.

A Brief History

From the first time our ancestors wrapped their opposable thumbs around a stick and used it for increased leverage, reach or impact - humans have been figuring out how to build machines to make life easier.  Some will claim to miss the “good old days” but there’s a reason why everyone eventually ends up adopting forms of automation that are effective.  The most successful machines are the ones that introduce a fundamentally different way of doing things.  This is true even when it takes a long time for people to discover those new ways of doing things. 

For instance, the first cars were literally “horseless carriages.”  They looked just like a normal carriage, but instead of a horse, they had a motor with a chain driving the rear wheels.  Since you couldn’t steer the motor like you could a horse, the early cars adapted the tiller concept from a boat.  The tiller was pretty quickly swapped for a new feature - the steering wheel.  However, it took a long while for the “body-on-frame” construction technique of horse drawn carriages to give way to the more effective monocoque construction with its low weight and low center of gravity.  Computer systems, and how we build them, are no different.

A New Revolution:  Automating Computer Systems

When RAID storage arrays became the dominant storage approach, IT organizations pretty quickly stopped trying to manage and control the low-level formatting of the disks.  However, it took a long time for those same IT organizations to stop freaking out about where exactly on the disk their LUNs were located.  Honestly, it also took array manufacturers a while to figure out that striping everything to make all I/O average was not what people were looking for.  Eventually, vendors figured out that it really was better to tell the array what the I/O requirements where and let the array decide where to place the data (not coincidentally, EMC’s FAST technology takes this to a whole new level).

The Next Revolution:  Unified Computer Platforms

Unified platforms (those that combine network, storage and compute elements) represent another opportunity for doing things differently.  There are some benefits to be gained from the hardware integration alone - just like there were benefits from replacing a horse with a motor.  There are further benefits to be gained by using and automating the provisioning capabilities of the platform.  For instance, you can use software to logically configure a blade with the needed resources when it’s required rather than designing and procuring a physical server.

It’s only when you rethink your overall process of managing capacity and allocation of that capacity that you can truly achieve exponential gains in efficiency and agility.  To that end, EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager 2.0is introducing a service-driven automation approach to managing and provisioning capacity leveraging the VCE Vblock Infrastructure Platform.  It allows you to “grade” your Vblock resources according to the services you want to offer, then provisions from the infrastructure according to the requirements you specify.  Not only does this execute provisioning faster and with fewer errors, it reduces the amount of time figuring out what to provision in the first place.

Wrapping it Up

As you take your journey to the next-generation of the computing infrastructure, you should embrace the revolution taking place and not be put off.  The reality is not portrayed by movies like The Terminator.  The fact of the matter is, this next-generation of automation is going to make your lives better.

And as you approach this next-generation, you really have to ask yourself - do you want a tiller, or a steering wheel?  Do you want to trade time spent executing tasks for time spent micro-managing provision decisions?  Or would you like to spend your time on more productive things like managing resource capacity. 

Whatever you do, make sure you don’t try to manage your next-generation infrastructure with an outdated approach to automation.

I’d love to know what you think.  Let’s keep the conversation going!!!

I’ll be back,

Phil

Change and Configuration, Cloud, Configuration Management Database (CMDB) Population, Data Center Automation and Compliance, Dependency Mapping, Network Management, Private Cloud, Service Management, Service Providers, Storage Resource Management (SRM), Virtualization Management EMC, Ionix, Ionix UIM, VCE, VMworld

Service Providers:  An Eye To the Cloud

In Part I  of this blog, we began to tackle the issue of infrastructure management solutions, their importance to service providers - especially in the era of cloud services.   As we stated in the first post:

The point is that new services are essential to help all service providers overcome shrinking revenues and compete effectively.  Telco providers, in particular, need to look to new services to bolster their legacy network income.

As always, the issue is helping customers overcome the challenges associated with launching new services and managing this ever-expanding

The Big Question: Service Providers and the Cloud

 and increasingly complexIT infrastructure.  Now we’ll look at how EMC Ionix approaches the situation and offers a solution for service providers.

EMC Ionix Can Help

1. EMC Ionix Eliminates Errors:  Automation allows service providers to remove the manual process from their day-to-day activities as they are both error-prone and time-consuming.  It will help them eliminate the cost of manually making the relationships between components on network and entire service infrastructure, including servers, applications and storage.  This becomes even more important within a growing and highly dynamic infrastructure.  Automation can save up to 70% of the time to isolate the problems, and these resources can then be re-deployed from fire-fighting to supporting the business.
2. EMC Ionix Accelerates Infrastructure Management:  By automating infrastructure discovery and problem identification, service providers can reduce the length of many management tasks by upwards of 90%.  Having a holistic approach to discovery, configuration management and fault management dramatically speeds finding and fixing problems on the infrastructure.  And by being able to execute day-to-day changes on the infrastructure, service providers are able to deliver new services much more quickly and easily.
3. EMC Ionix Optimizes Infrastructure:  Service Providers are able to optimize their infrastructures by avoiding unnecessary outages and service downtime due to mis-configurations and unplanned changes in their environment.  Manual change management causes more than 80% of infrastructure problems, so it’s essential to prevent configuration errors, such as mis-typing or interoperability issues by validating changes before execution.  In addition, it allows them to run “what-if” scenarios to understand what impact a particular configuration change might have on the infrastructure.
4. EMC Ionix Consolidates Silos:  By having a management platform that can work across silos, service providers are able to consolidate toolsets for server, network, storage and application configurations to avoid finger-pointing and a swivel-chair management style.  Proactive fault management allows benchmarking of normal network behavior so that action can be taken if it deviates from the norm.  In addition, the information will be useful to help different entities within the service provider to collaborate together, see their impact and make support handover easier.
5. EMC Ionix Helps in Compliance with Internal/External Regulations:  Finally, automated configuration checking will allow the service provider to ensure their infrastructure is in compliance with both their own IT policies but also with regulations such as PCI, HIPAA, and SOX.  It allows them to improve security by having automatic policy

Participate and See For Yourself

Hopefully by now you have a better idea about infrastructure management and its importance to service providers - especially in the era of the cloud.  But don’t just believe us.  We have some great customer testimonials from such companies as Swisscom and Interoute to better illustrate our point.  In addition, we’re opening up to service providers to tell us what they think.  If you’re a European service provider, we encourage you to take our survey here.

Additionally, I’d love to hear what you think.  Please feel free to send comments and feedback.

Suhela

Cloud, Private Cloud, Service Management, Virtualization Management EMC, Ionix, IT Management, Private Cloud, Virtualization

This week, I’m part of a team staffing EMC’s presence at Cisco Live in Las Vegas.  At big industry events like these, the pace is always frenetic:  It seems

The Vegas Buffet and IT management: Believe it or not, there are parallels

like never more than two minutes pass before someone comes by the booth, wants to talk about their IT management challenges, seeks information, or attends a theater presentation.

The Magic of the Buffet

One secret I learned long ago to help ensure I have enough stamina to make it through the eight-hour days is to have a really good breakfast in the morning.  It puts enough fuel in my tank to ensure I can last the day.  As such, that puts the breakfast buffet at my hotel a high priority.

Now, I won’t bore you with a complete list of the food options - this isn’t a dining blog, after all.  But for whatever reason, the muse that is the inspiration based on observation visited me at that buffet.  And I kept connecting the dots for me between the buffet and IT management.

That’s right:  IT management - probably the last thing you’d expect to find parallels to at a Vegas-style buffet.  But they’re very much there.  There are a lot of them and if I spent more time pondering it, I’d probably think of more than just these.

You Need a Lay of the Land

As every buffet veteran knows, the first thing to do is not pick up a plate right away start loading up on the first food encountered.  That’s a rookie mistake.  Veterans know to first canvass the entire buffet area - end-to-end and thoroughly - to see what food options are available.  And where the lines might be to avoid, before even thinking about grabbing a plate.  If you don’t do this, you could well miss out having enough room in your stomach for one of the better food options.

I was somewhat guilty the first day.  I did go around and look at everything first.  But I found it surprising that I did not come across donuts or muffins or pastries.  In my mind, I made the assumption that a purposeful decision was made not to offer these less healthy options.  It turns out these bakary items were just hiding in plain sight albeit in a separate, dimly lit section.

IT Management Lessons: Observe

OK, so here it goes.  Let’s link the Vegas buffet to IT management (didn’t think I’d ever get this this, did you?).  It turns out that effective IT management starts with having accurate, up-to-date information about the environment being managed.  Just like taking the time to browse all the buffet options before starting to take food, you should have a complete picture of your environment.  Once you’ve got your baseline, there’s a standard against which you can measure and track (which is important for critical processes such as change, configuration, and compliance management).

Even if you think you’ve got it all covered, you probably don’t.  Just like I missed the donuts, you can easily miss elements of your IT environment (such as end-user-installed wireless access points, rogue servers or open ports).  This is especially true if your process involves some steps of manual information gathering.

Automated discovery can go a long way here, helping provide an accurate baseline of your IT environment, and then help ensure that “go-to” information is accurate and up-to-date.  Given the ever-increasing pace of change in the IT environment - and its expected, almost-ridiculous acceleration as next-generation IT models (such as fully virtualized and private cloud infrastructures) are deployed - automated discovery has quickly moved from the nice-to-have column to a mandatory part of any good infrastructure management tool-set.

OK all this talk of IT management is making me hungry.  Time to head off to the buffet.  In part II tomorrow, I’ll cover the importance of prioritization and the need to resolve potential issues quickly (for both IT mangement and the buffet of course!)

I would like to know what you think.  Please leave a comment and let me know…

Brian

Cloud, Virtualization Management Cisco Live, EMC, EMC Ionix, Private Cloud

The Wait Is Over…

The countdown is over:  Cisco Live is now if full swing.  This will be my third straight year attending this conference.  Although the venue has changed, the thrust of the conference has remained predominantly on networking.

More than any previous year, I think that’s going to change dramatically for two big reasons:

• Strong interest in Cisco UCS and its compute capabilities brings a whole new “server-oriented” persona to this event that by and large wasn’t there in previous years.
• Unified platforms like Vblocks - which unify network, compute, and storage resources in one package - are now real and in production, amplifying that same “UCS effect” of bringing new people and interest to the event.

Registration numbers back that up.  Cisco says that year over year, overall attendance should increase by 40 percent, and the number of high-level IT execs is expected to jump by more than 33 percent.

Overall, I think we’ll see the embrace of more of a data center focus at Cisco Live - without necessarily shifting the emphasis away from the event’s traditional networking base.

Things I’ll be watching for and asking about:

• Do network operations and engineering teams believe they have a mature enough infrastructure management “foundation” on which to build a next-generation architecture like a private cloud?
• How will cloud computing plans impact current and near-term operations?  For example, will people be curtailing point tool acquisitions or adding a requirement that management tools must be able to port their value into supporting and enabling new, next-generation architectures like private clouds?
• Are people sensing an increase in end-user expectation of the network as a utility (and the service-related expectations associated with that perception) on par with “basic” utilities, like electricity, water and telephone dial tone?
• What management challenges need to be solved today before one can go ahead with increasing their percentage of IT environments virtualized and planning for delivering infrastructure as a service that leverages a private cloud infrastructure (and potentially public or hybrid clouds)?

I’ll also be supporting the EMC booth (#1671) in the World of Solutions, being available as a resource for all things EMC Ionix.  Look for my EMC colleagues and myself at something looks a lot like the rendering to the right- with a lot of people and activity centered around enabling all three phases of

Live from Cisco Live: EMC Ionix!!

the Journey to the Private Cloud!

I’ll be making these presentations in the booth throughout the week:

• Eliminate the War Room (Network Operations and Engineering Command and Control)
• How You Can Regain Control over Network Change

For more specific details on these, come by for a schedule of all of EMC’s presentations, or simply follow the “heads-up” Tweets posted on Twitter accounts @brianlett and @emcionix.

Expect to hear a lot more from me during the week - here at the blog, as well as via Twitter, and maybe some other channels - as Cisco Live unfolds.  Definitely stop by the booth and let me know you saw this post, and what you think.  A direct message (DM) via Twitter would be great too - I’d be glad to “Tweet-Up” somewhere.

Do you agree with my assessment that the attendee makeup and vibe - and overall conference tone - is going to be a lot different this year?  What about those questions I have in mind?  Are they the right ones?  Have I missed anything?  Post a response and let me know.

Brian

Cloud, Virtualization Management Cisco, Cisco Live, Cisco UCS, EMC, Private Cloud, Vblock