Tips from the Field

Nimble Storage Citrix Xen Desktop Verification

Nimble Storage, Inc. announced that its flash-optimized storage solutions have been verified as part of the Citrix Ready VDI Capacity Program Verified for Citrix XenDesktop.

Nimble Storage’s flash-optimized CASL™ architecture makes it a great fit for desktop virtualization in the datacenter because it accelerates both reads (such as for boot storms) and writes (for steady state I/O). 
Citrix and Nimble Storage have been working together to bring best-of-breed solutions to the market. 

Five Nines a Reality with Nimble Storage

System crashes are never pretty.  At best, they’re a nuisance for users who‘ve come to expect 24/7 access. More typically, system downtime means lost productivity, disaffected customers, and a hit to the bottom line. And, the bigger the organization, the greater the vulnerability ­ – and the damage they can potentially suffer.

Juniper Networks Contrail is here

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We're all hearing a lot about SDN, but usually it's discussed in the future tense!  Customers and vendors are promising major management and virtualization benefits, all of which will eventually be delivered by SDN.  Well, the good news is that SDN is becoming much more real every day!  For example, Juniper has supported programmable network elements (switches and routers) that can communicate with an SDN Controller for over a year.  These have been successfully deployed in several large-scale enterprise and cloud networks.

Data Center Bridging

The last bastion of proprietary networking is continuing to thrive within data centers. SANs based upon good old fashioned fibre channel still support 99% of the world’s storage resources. To their credit, fibre channel networks are extremely reliable, provide high performance, and are simple to administer. On the other hand, they are quite expensive (especially when compared to Ethernet), and they are truly isolated from the rest of the network.
 

Dell/Compellent SC8000 Controller

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Finally got to do our first Dell Compellent SC8000 SAN installation today.  The new SC8000 controllers are based on the Dell r710 servers, no more SuperMicro components.  The one thing that really stood out for me, even though it has nothing to do with technology, was the way the controllers were shipped.  The packing is much more efficient and probably more environmentally friendly due to the smaller/compact boxes.

Mobile Enterprise Security

We have all spent a lot of time talking about the perils of open-door BYOB policies.  The attached white paper by the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) takes a quantitative look at the impact of BYOB on typical enterprises.  This paper discusses the challenges (especially security) created by all of the new mobile devices and the “de-perimeterization” of organizations.  And finally it recommends some architectural solutions for these security issues.  In particular, the paper addresses – at a high level – mobile device management solutions.

IPv4 Address Depletion

I wanted to pass this along from a friend of mine at Juniper Networks - Bill Kine.  As you probably know, the Internet registry is completely out of IPv4 addresses. The regional registries are also running out of their meager supplies of addresses. So, why hasn’t the Internet World ended? 
 

Windows 8 Task Manager

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I've been playing with Windows 8 for a little over 24 hours and so far so good, I'm still getting used to the Metro UI.  One thing I do like is the new task manager in Windows 8.  You can now see the current state of the processor as it changes speed, if you have your computer configured to use the balanced power options.  I also like the new layout and performance graphs.  I think I'll give Windows 8 a full month before I decide whether or not to stick with it.  I do miss the start button and seriously hope the final version of Windows 8 has the ability to turn off the Metro UI.

Dell Storage Forum 2012 - Boston

I was lucky enough to get a chance to attend the Dell Storage Forum in Boston this year.  It was a great conference and lots of new product announcements were released revolving around the Dell Compellent SAN.  The new SC8000 controller looks sweet and I can't wait to get my hands on one to see it in action.

 

Tuesday Night Dell Storage Forum Reception at Fenway Park

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