EMC Consulting Blogs

All things VMworld: Day 2

Gregg Robertson — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:42:00 GMT

As you would expect day 1’s announcements were the biggest ones due to the keynote speeches and it being the first real day of VMworld.But even so there was still some really interesting news coming out yesterday , some additional information about previous announcements and an exclusive video of an iPad application.

First just due to it being a really exciting application and another tick on my list of why I feel I need to get my hands on an iPad is the exclusive video of the vSphere Management app for the iPad. I’ve pasted the video below and don’t hold me to this but Duco Jaspars of www.vconsult.nl/ has said he has been told first hand by Srinivas Krishnamurti, (the guy in the video) that the ETA for the iPad vCenter client is VMworld Europe.I really hope he’s right but it does beg the question as many people I follow twitter have commented , when is the client for Macs coming out seeing as they can do one for the iPad. I’m not a Mac fanboy myself so it doesn’t bother me too much but if VMware want to keep all the Fanboy's happy surely making a client is a good idea?

Next is another video from VMworld TV's YouTube channel interviewing Eddie Dinel, who demonstrated the new vCloud Director product during the Keynote with Steve Herrod all about the announcement on Monday. There is also already a new VMware KB article on How to create External Networks in VMware vCloud Director

Next is the video with Steve Herrod VMware's CTO where he explains all the new acquisitions VMware has made and are planning to make in the future. A very very interesting interview and I always like to hear where companies like VMware see a need to grow and strengthen and what new technologies they are looking at.

Next are two videos also from the VMworld TV's YouTube channel (yes I really am enjoying these videos and it’s a nice rest bite from reading blog after blog) with their review of “day 3 at VMworld” and for those of us who are still puzzled as to why VMware bought Zimbra their VP (Zimbra’s that is) explains what VMware is doing with their products.
Next is just a reminder of the link for the keynote speeches happening today at VMworld. For all those geeks and sci-fi fans out there the keynotes are going to be extremely interesting with:
Andre Leibovici has posted a very interesting article explaining all about the storage tiering for VMware View 4.5. I’ve added this to my list of VMware view resources to read up on when I get some time to do it :)
Next is a great summary of all the other announcements and ones I left out of my list seeing as they are described here by John Rath of datacenterknowledge.com from day 3(my day 2) of VMworld.
Last is just a geek fact posted on twitter by Duncan Epping of Yellowbricks.com fame which shows the sheer size of the VMworld labs: “112166 VMs deployed at the #vmworld labs, that is more in 3 days than Citrix managed to deploy over the last 3 years.” *I don’t know about the Citrix claim so don’t quote me on it or send me hate mail, I'm just reposting his tweet :) * Also it was great to see my last posting for All Things VMworld:Day 1 getting onto the official VMworld buzz page :). Yes I got the screenshot as my tweet about being on the page was also in the VMworld 2010 on Twitter stream.

Gregg

Technorati Tags: VMworld,VMworld 2010,VMWorld keynote,VCD,VMware View 4.5,iPad vSphere management app video,Zimbra,VMware

vBeers – September 2nd 2010(That’s right this evening)

Gregg Robertson — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 09:31:23 GMT

Just a very quick posting to remind/inform all of those in and around the London area who weren’t fortunate enough to be allowed to go to VMworld US or like myself are going to the one in Copenhagen that vBeers is tonight. If you’ve never heard of vBeers before here is the “official” definition of vBeers:

vBeers is an informal get together of virtualisation enthusiasts and professionals to meet and discuss all things IT. It's a great opportunity to network, learn and meet like minded people.

The following is quoted from Simon Long’s Website:

vBeers

Every month Simon Seagrave and I try organise a social get together of like-minded Virtualization enthusiasts held in a pub in central London. We like to call it vBeers. Before I go on, I would just like to state, although it's called vBeers, you do NOT have to drink beer or any other alcohol for that matter. This isn't just an excuse to get blind drunk.

We came up with idea whilst on the Gestalt IT Tech Field Day back in April. We were chatting and we both recognised that we don't get together enough to catch-up, mostly do to busy work schedules and private lives. We felt that if we had a set date each month, the likely hood of us actually making that date would be higher than previous attempts. So the idea of vBeers was born.

London

The London vBeers is held on the first Thursday of every month starting at 6pm in ‘The Cittie of Yorke’ pub which is placed centrally to both London’s West End and The City. This venue serves a fine of selection of English beers along with soft drinks and bar snacks.

Location: The ‘Cittie of Yorke’, London
Address: 22 High Holborn, London, WC1V 6BS
Nearest Tube: Chancery Lane
Time: 6:00pm
Location: Map

Sadly yet again i can’t make it due to me writing a Microsoft exam early tomorrow morning (blog posting forthcoming on this) and therefore even though extremely tempting from past experiences I know I shouldn’t be going out drinking the night before an exam.

Gregg Robertson

Technorati Tags: vBeers,Virtualisation,VMware

Silverlight UK User Group [September 2010] Agenda

Mark.Mann — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 08:14:00 GMT

School holidays over so it’s time for another meeting! Heralding a call to return back to some of the more fundamental aspects of Silverlight development, I’m pleased to announce that the next meeting will feature Guy Smith-Ferrier (who organises the .Net Developer Network) talking about Internationalizing Silverlight.

In case you missed it - Silverlight 4 underwent a service update yesterday too. It’s optional for end-users because it depends on the settings in the plugin on whether the user wants to silently accept all updates or be notified. The latest version of Silverlight 4 is now 4.0.50826.0 and the full details can be found in the Microsoft Knowledge Base article KB2164913. Tim Heuer has given a concise roundup of the more important aspects of the changes/fixes, more so because the SDK has been updated too.

For those that have been head scratching at the positioning of Silverlight and the massive advances in the forthcoming HTML5, the Silverlight Team have published their view of when to use Silverlight to complement HTML5 or vice-versa. Read it all here.

Finally, keep your eyes peeled for a Windows Phone 7 (WP7) handset coming to a shop near you. Some lucky developers out there have been given exclusive use of pre-release handsets to test their new apps out on (I can only say that I have handled a test WP7 handset for a couple of hours… I had to give it back afterwards!) However, there is a noticeably growing hubbub of excitement as the news that the consumer release of Windows Phone 7 will be expected very soon! After playing about with the developer handset (an LG model) I was delighted that the touch screen was responsive and the applications quick – the form factor was a bit on the chunky side, but this model features a slide out keyboard. I was not sure if I could publish any photos of the handset, so take a look at the photos by pocket-lint.com instead!

Meeting details are below:

Date:	Wednesday 15th September 2010
Time:	Registration @ 18:00, Kick off @18:30 – please don't be late! Till about 21:00
Where:	EMC Consulting, (formerly Conchango), Notcutt House, 36 Southwark Bridge Road, London, SE1 9EU.
Registration is required, space will be limited, so please register by sending us an email.
Registered attendees will be notified with any final details by Monday 13th September.

AGENDA

Registration @18:00

Welcome/Kick off @ 18:30

“Internationalizing Silverlight 4?”
with Guy Smith-Ferrier

So you’ve written your Silverlight application and you want it to work in another language ? Then this session is for you. World-Readiness is all of the work that a developer needs to do to globalize an application and make it localizable (ie: capable of being localized). Whereas these concepts are well established in Windows Forms and ASP.NET, Silverlight is not only a cut-down version of the .NET Framework but also cross platform and client-side. In this session you will learn how to localize Silverlight applications using .resx files, download culture-specific resources on demand so that users only download resources for the culture they need, understand what System.Globalization types and properties Silverlight does not support and why, what globalization and font support you can expect on Windows and the Mac, what the Silverlight installation user experience is for non-English users and what language support you can expect from the Silverlight framework.

End.

Most of our user group are Tweet’ers, so if there’s anything you want to share amongst the group, then check out our Twitter hashtag or user accounts:

@mark_mann

#sluguk

@michelleflynn

Please register and I hope to see you there!

mark.

About Guy Smith-Ferrier
	Guy is an MVP in ASP.NET. He is the author of ".NET Internationalization" published by Addison-Wesley (http://www.dotneti18n.com). He is a Microsoft Certified Professional developer, author, trainer and speaker, has spoken at many European and US conferences and is an INETA Speaker. He runs The .NET Developer Network (http://www.dotnetdevnet.com), a free .NET user group in the South West of England. He co-organises DDD South West (http://www.dddsouthwest.com), a free one day technical event in the South West of England. He has written over 50 articles for numerous magazines and has co-authored an application development book. You can read his blog at guysmithferrier.com and catch him on Twitter at @GuySmithFerrier
twitter.com/GuySmithFerrier \| guysmithferrier.com

Want to join the discussion?
The event is geared to please/interest/inform both developers and designers alike, so if you are interested in coming along then please contact either myself or Michelle Flynn (here) and we will be glad to add you to our events mailing list.

Want to present or showcase?
We are always on the lookout for presenters for future sessions - whether it be a high or low level coding walk through, a workflow perspective or showcase demo. If you think that you have a topic/presentation that ought to be shared with the community then please contact me (here) and I'll see if I can get you scheduled in!

All Things VMworld: Day 1

Gregg Robertson — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 12:06:29 GMT

As you can imagine the first real day of VMworld US has been massive and there has been some really exciting news, some of it unexpected(at least for me) and others not so unexpected (view 4.5)

First has to be the keynote speech by VMware Chief Marketing Officer Rick Jackson,Paul Maritz CEO of VMware and Steve Herrod VMware’s CTO. I’ve only managed to watch the keynote once so far(yes i like to watch it a few times to try absorb and understand everything :) ) . I think some of the top bloggers have already done a good covering of the keynote so instead of me waffling on and giving my take rather watch it yourself right here . The two blog postings I’m making my way through for the covering of the keynote is Scott Lowe’s and Brian Madden’s
As I said one of the not so unexpected announcements was the announcement that the latest version of VMware View, version 4.5 is not available. Chris Wolf from Gartner has done a brilliant review of the new version on his blog here.
As I mentioned yesterday one of the big announcements was the release of vCloud Director (VCD). Rodney Haywood has done a great posting all about it seeing as he is part of a major deployment of VCD in Australia and therefore already has a great working knowledge of the product. You can also now download VCD from the VMware website and as Rodney says “build an internal or public cloud (subject to licensing programs of course)”.
Barry Coombs has done a great posting about the Xsigo announcements at VMworld. I’ve only read a few articles on Xsigo myself so it good to learn more from his posting and hear about the new products being launched.
Scott Lowe has also done a very good liveblog posting for the View Composer Technical Deep Dive and Best Practices session.From my brief read of the posting it looks like the session was very very interesting and i plan to read through his posting a few times when I have a moment.
As I mentioned yesterday VMworld have created their own channel on YouTube and have posted some more really interesting videos in covering the “2nd day @ VMworld 2010 in San Francisco”,the highly debated question “Tier 1 Apps - Should you run them in virtual machines?” and a preview if the upcoming “VMware View iPad App with PCoIP support.”
Lastly on my list is the three postings by Chad Sakac on:
- DRS for storage where he shows and explains how VMware SIOC and EMC Fast allow you to have the DRS you have in your VMware environment now for your storage,
- His detailing of the VCD product and announcement and how he feels EMC Ionix UIM v2.0 is going to allow a vCloud “in a box”
- Last is his posting all about the EMC VPLEX and how VMworld attendees “can try VPLEX (it’s in the EMC hands-on-lab on the show floor), and can try it for 90 days” I’m very jealous of this as a number of the vSpecialists I'm friendly with have been working and testing the product and sadly I am yet to have fiddled with it myself. Hopefully i can get some time with it at the VMworld in Europe if they are still doing it, which I would be amazed if they weren’t. Also he mentions the preview of VPLEX Geo – aka vTeleportation and has posted a video of the preview which is really awesome in my opinion (no not because I work for EMC at all, seriously). Have a look at the video on the blog and tell me you aren’t impressed and excited by what it will allow.

Well that’s my list of things that I feel I need to read up on and that have caught my attention.

Gregg

Flickr Tags: VMworld,VMworld 2010,VPLEX,View 4.5,VMware,DRS for storage,vTeleportation,EMC,VMWorld keynote,VPLEX Geo.

Technorati Tags: VMworld,VMworld 2010,VPLEX,View 4.5,VMware,DRS for storage,vTeleportation,EMC,VMWorld keynote,VPLEX Geo.

The launch of The Fantastic Tavern website

Michelle.Flynn — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 11:25:00 GMT

I am pleased to announce that after many nights in local taverns debating hot topics The Fantastic Tavern has launched it's website.

www.thefantastictavern.co.uk

This is just the beginning and we have much more work to do but it is a good start.

On the site you will be able to find out about our events (old and new) as well as much more.

The big story on there at the moment is The Lock Inn and The Fantastic Tavern Awards.

The Lock Inn is being hosted on the 23rd Sept and we will announce the winners of the 3 awards. This is a chance to showcase your brilliance so enter now...

To keep up to date with all the live action follow us @TFTLondon

Monitoring Applications deployed on PaaS (Windows Azure) … Business as usual

Grace.Mollison — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 21:23:00 GMT

Monitoring applications provided by PaaS such as Azure should in theory be all about the application as the underlying platform isn’t your problem. Well it’s true that you don’t have control of the actual Platform (Platform in this context being the Virtual server host and the actual virtual machines), but you do still need to understand when there’s a problem with the underlying infrastructure even if it’s so you can harangue the supplier to sort the problem out; to implement contingency plans or to implement notification processes.

Obtaining alerts related to the state of the infrastructure applies whether it’ IaaS or PaaS. Both Amazon and Microsoft provide dashboards indicating the status of their services. Amazing how similar they look!!!

Amazon AWS dashboard :

Microsoft windows Azure Dashboard:

In the case of Amazon AWS you are responsible for the Virtual machine and there is an API that you can take advantage of as described in my previous post on monitoring Amazon AWS .

Whether you develop an application that is to be delivered via on Premise, IaaS or PaaS you still need to be able to monitor the status of your application and implement appropriate action. In addition to understanding what metrics would trigger some sort of scaling action you also need to understand the APIs that allow you to effect that scaling.

The monitoring/management requirements are the same whatever the cloud platform of choice. Being in the cloud does not remove this requirement all it does is require a slightly different approach to what one may be used to. Providing the ability to collate useful diagnostic data about an application is a development task no matter what the delivery platform. PaaS services generally provide API’s that allow your application to hook into diagnostic mechanisms. The data collated is then used to allow your application to scale appropriately ( e.g by starting more web roles) or to recycle.

The rest of this post I’ll be talking about the use of Windows Azure Diagnostics as an example of how one can accomplish the typical tasks of collating appropriate metrics on PaaS (I am assuming a basic level of familiarity with Windows Azure from here on in now though).

Windows Azure achieves this by providing access to Azure Diagnostics via an API. This allows you to collect diagnostic data from a service running in Windows Azure. Metrics that can be collected out of the box (with little bit of configuration) are detailed at : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee843890.aspx They include Windows Azure Logs, IIs 7.0 Logs, Windows Diagnostics Infrastructure Logs, event logs and performance counters . The sort of thing you’d expect from traditional deployments.

To access the diagnostics API is relatively painless as its part of the Azure SDK. Using Visual Studio to create an Azure Cloud application creates the stubs to allow you to hook into the Azure Diagnostics API.

The Screen shot below shows the generated code for the web role. You get a corresponding entry in the worker role

In the associated config file ( web.config for the web role or app.config for the worker role) you will see that the hooks to the Diagnostics listener is now also set .

Great so how do you use it?

I’ve got a simple application that queries SQL server for a bunch of security controls using a grid view to display the results. What the application does is irrelevant though for this post. It’s not pretty but at least I know my data and it’s one less thing to get to grips with as I re-familiarise myself with Azure ,which I have I admit neglected as I’ve been working with AWS recently.

The diagnostic data is written to Azure storage and this is where it’s analysed. The ServiceConfiguration.csfg file is where you change the storage account that is used. For this outline I’ll leave it pointing at Development storage

So what happens when I now start my simple web app?

In blob storage a container is created call wad-control-container which indicates what diagnostic data is being collated by default for your deployment

This data is stored as XML and indicates the default configuration data collated:

I want to be able to collect some data on IIs logs & from the event view so to do this I will need to go back to my application specifically the OnStart method of my Webrole which looks like this before I add any custom code :

To start collecting the log data I then modified this method so it looks like this:

The above example sets the transfer schedule of data to Table storage to 1 minute intervals.

(I did try and collect performance stats but wasn’t having much joy. I’ll revisit when I have more time maybe when the application has evolved somewhat beyond a simple WebRole)

The Log data gets written to a Table called WADLogsTable

The Infrastructure logs get written to a table called WADDiagosticinfrsatructureLogsTable

So now I know how to add code to my Azure Application to collect metrics. The next logical step is to alert on that data appropriately as well as take action when certain thresholds are reached like starting restarting a WebRole but that is probably best for another post.

There is now a fair amount of information on implementing Azure Diagnostics into your application so I won’t spend any more time on outlining the concepts but I would recommend reading http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ff714589.aspx as an excellent introduction to implementing Azure Diagnostics.

What is collected and how that data is used is intimately tied into the application and its behaviour. If you are ultimately responsible for service delivery then you need to build a relationship with the development team and make sure your requirements are incorporated as part of the deliverables. This requirement is the same whether the application is being developed for the cloud whatever particular flavour that may be or for on premise.

All Things VMworld:Day 0

Gregg Robertson — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 12:13:35 GMT

Yes I couldn’t think of a better title so I altered my normal title for this weeks proceedings :) .

Due to there being so much information coming out of VMworld and certainly a large amount more in the coming week I thought it may be helpful for myself and hopefully others to list all the interesting news and views that are coming out of VMworld each day.

First has to be the rap video by Chad Sakac’s EMC vSpecialist’s. Christopher Kusek (@cxi) was the first person I noticed who posted on his blog all about how the “vSpecialists get the job done! “. A hilarious video for anyone in the virtualisation field and the quality of it is remarkable. I’ve sadly watched it about ten times already today

As I said in my last All Things Virtual, VMworld have their own channel on YouTube and already the first Daily Wrap of VMworld 2010 is up and a very interesting video posted on their channel is the biggest news of the day about the not so secret news that vSphere 4.1 release is the last release of VMware ESX. As well as a video preview of the VMworld Solutions Exchange
Another big announcement is the release of VMware vCloud Director. As to not give wrong information and because I’m only learning about it now myself i won’t attempt to try explain but leave it to the professionals and both Eric Sloof and Duncan Epping have done two brilliant posting all about the release and what the product entails. Duncan’s posting is here and Eric's here.
Next has to be Microsoft’s open letter to customers attending VMworld telling them how Microsoft feels they are more/as capable to provide the best services for people wishing to utilise the cloud in the future. This is a great bit of publicity for VMware in my opinion as it shows how strong Microsoft feels VMware are in the cloud computing arena. The letter is here (*Warning* this is a link that downloads the letter in it’s pdf format). To be fair Microsoft do make a very good point in weighing up the positives and negatives of both sides(as well as other vendors) and it’s great to see they have their own stall at VMworld as everyone wants a fair competition and for the best products to be decided by the users on a level playing ground.
Last is the summaries of other VMWorld news by Scott Lowe here,Dan Kusnetzky on ZDNET.com here and a fairly amusing posting by Larry Chiang of “What They Don’t Teach You at Stanford Business School“ fame with his 9 Lies Told at VMworld. Most amusing to me is due to poor layouts of the page it only shows 7 :) I purposely left out some things due to them being covered by Scott and Dan as no one likes the same stuff being repeated numerous times.

Well that’s my day 0 of VMworld summary. I’m sure I’ve missed a few things but i think I got all the best and important stuff.

Gregg

Technorati Tags: VMworld,VMworld 2010,VMware,vSpecialists,ESXi,vSphere,vSphere 4.1 release,cloud

Flickr Tags: VMworld,VMworld 2010,VMware,vSpecialists,ESXi,vSphere,vSphere 4.1 release,cloud

Windows 7- Virtual Desktops… the way to go (Part 2)

jaspal.dhalliwal — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 16:00:00 GMT

What Does Gartner have to say about this?

In the blog Windows 7- To Virtualize or not to Virtualize - that is the question! I talked about a golden opportunity for organizations to move to virtual desktop infrastructures (VDI) instead of following a traditional desktop OS upgrade path.

As an update to this pressing concern for IT departments everywhere, Gartner has weighed in on the issue. observing (quote):

"Whether replacing or upgrading PCs, it is clear that Windows 7 migration will have a noticeable impact on organisations' IT budgets,"

"Based on an accelerated upgrade, we expect that the proportion of the budget spent on PCs will need to increase between 20 per cent as a best-case scenario and 60 per cent at worst in 2011 and 2012,"

"Assuming that PCs account for 15 per cent of a typical IT budget, this means that this percentage will increase to 18 per cent (best case) and 24 per cent (worst case), which could have a profound effect on IT spending and on funding for associated projects during both those years."

This clearly hits the nail on the head – a standard desktop OS refresh is going to make a serious dent on the ‘CIO purse’ if done following the traditional approaches that are prevalent. This is serious money that could be spent on projects that actually generate direct revenue for the firm!

What does this mean for Corporate IT ?

Essentially, Corporate IT will lock up significant resources in simply performing this upgrade. Those that delay will be well behind the curve (according to Gartner at least), although not being an early adopter has its own intrinsic advantage. The cost of upgrading hardware, either for performance or compatibility reasons, is predicted to be a significant cost.

This is not simple CAPEX, but the opportunity cost of not pursuing those projects/programmes that will directly influence the firm’s bottom profit line. An innovation cost if you will.

Organizations, in a move to innovate, are still employing traditional approaches to solving their desktop OS challenges and the corresponding application stack. However, the dynamics of our time almost mandate a complete rethink of the traditional ‘it’s time to refresh our desktop OS/desktop suites – let’s start a BIG project’ approach. This is a lost opportunity for a CIO to radically shake-up the IT structures/behavior built up over decades in-house.

Such a lock of resources, wholesale disruption of existing revenue generating projects and the outlay in performing the Windows 7 upgrade itself would suggest that ‘alternatives’ to the migration should be seriously examined.

I use Windows 7 extensively – and like it! On the other hand, I absolutely hate the upgrade process, and finding applications that work, new generations of software, and of course the now ‘mandatory’ hardware upgrade – although everyone always insists this is not necessary. I did this for Windows 3.1x/ME/ XP / Vista 7 – well you can understand the desktop OS fatigue. Imagine what the Corporate-OS-Upgrade-Fatigue for thousands of users!

At a time where leanness has been emphasized; cost-saving/cost-avoiding projects having priority over innovative projects; a general focus on optimizing the IT infrastructure and the pairing down of IT personnel numbers would suggest another approach is needed than the current mass exodus from Windows XP to Windows 7.

Companies are not moving to Windows 7 simply due to a lack of support in the future for the platform, or the fact that Windows 7 is ‘shiny’ and attractive. There is an element of ‘anxiety’ in not being left behind. The group/herd instinct to follow the others. However, distinctness and variety are the drivers of sustained competitive advantage and long term relationship-focused revenue streams.

The CIO almost owes it to the organization to ‘think out of the box’, be a maverick, look for distinctiveness, not follow the 'herd' instinct prevalent in the organization and ensure IT is truly a partner to the organization to achieve organizational goals. This includes providing an excellent work environment for employees, and breaking the shackles of the desktop and the men-in-grey attitude still plaguing large organizations. Learn from the smaller guys. Be nimble, agile and creative!

So why is all this important for CIO’s and Organizations?

Innovations streams mandate a series of upgrades to reach that end-state that was originally desired. The main product to roll out should be the capability to have virtual desktops located within the virtual infrastructure that should already have been designed in a rock solid fashion. For exceptions requiring a mobile offline desktop, allow the virtual desktop to be delivered as an offline desktop (but still encapsulated using the virtualization technologies). This can be synchronized back with its online counterpart – replication technologies are really advanced these days. Communication technologies are also powerful and usually available in one form or another. At the very end of the chain, should be the absolute need to have a pure local traditional OS install on the user device. Essentially virtual desktop infrastructures provide an enterprise class functional container for desktop OS’s.

These are the same great features that are partially driving server virtualization – why not use them on the desktop! Applications should also clearly be virtualized to allow them to be independent of hardware and user profiles. They should be simple to upgrade and rollout – with the minimum number of images being used. Why have thousands of variants to support?

This opportunity should also be taken to do a complete cleanup of the existing environment. Windows XP left a lot of rubbish hanging around in registries, file systems, home profiles and questionable applications installed locally.

The new virtual desktop should be lean. There should be a complete decoupling of the OS and the user data/profile. The desktop should be really simple in future to upgrade. Applications should be containerized so that they can run on different OS versions. VMware ThinApp technologies support this notion very well, and Citrix/Microsoft also provide their own encapsulation technology (e.g. App-V).

Indeed the encapsulation technology providing the virtualization should also be independent of the desktop OS and provide complete freedom to choose – that should allow organizations to break out of the straight jacket of the traditional desktop OS vendors. The more desktop OS’s supported in the VDI solution, the better. Mainstream OS support should of course be available, but support for up and coming important variants such as the Ubuntu or Apple variants will allow an organization to rapidly re-engineer their IT to suit the needs of the organization – and negotiate tough discounts on the OS – the prime cost component currently in virtualization solutions.

It does not really matter that there is not a 100% match of VDI solutions to the functionality of local desktop OS installation – there will always be some odd hardware/software that does not quite work out. That is why innovation streams are important – use a hybrid approach with the mass of desktops in the virtual environment.

Over time as more functionality becomes available in VDI solutions (and there is already a 98%+ match), the sheer number of features regarding delivery efficiency and data security will mandate this as the principal solution to deploy a Windows X or whatever desktop OS is your favorite.

Choice and control coupled with efficiency. Doesn’t sound too bad! Welcome to the Private Cloud and Desktop-as-a-Service! Make the jump to VDI now and not lose this golden opportunity!

Best Practice Analyser (BPA) introduced in SQL Server 2008 R2

chris.testaoneill — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 10:44:00 GMT

SQL Server 2008 R2 Best Practices Analyzer (BPA) was released in mid June. Here is a release announcement: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlreleaseservices/archive/2010/06/19/sql-server-2008-r2-best-practices-analyzer-is-now-available.aspx

BPA is designed to allow Administrators to validate their SQL Server instances against Microsoft established best practices. It includes best practices validations for SQL Server, SQL Replication, Analysis Services, Integration Services, Reporting Services, and Setup. BPA examines your SQL Server instance with roughly 150 validations of system events, login permissions, SQL Metadata settings, error logs, and reports those items that don’t conform to best practices. For each non-compliant error or warning there are detailed descriptions of the best practice and instructions for becoming compliant.

For more information and to download SQL Server 2008 R2 BPA go here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=0fd439d7-4bff-4df7-a52f-9a1be8725591

It runs on both SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 R2.

Chris

Nordstrom: Tweaks, Stories, Mobile & Social

paul.goode — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 05:21:00 GMT

Just some general notes around this retailer, after finding a news article (linked ahead).

Nordstrom's new approach to combining web-based and store-based inventories is earning them some significant success - Nordstrom Links Online Inventory to Real World. If there's something out there that you're interested in buying, their online shop will help the user reserve it for pick up or seamlessly get someone at the store to ship it to the customer.

After a quick jump into their site, I stumbled into a campaign, Career Mode, centered around documentary-style stories from professionals - Melissa: Interior Designer. I normally despise auto-play video, but the pace, personality and warmth of these clips seem like a perfect fit for their (fantasy) audience of rich, mature, creative, design-sensitive professionals.

The clips remind me of matchmaker tv ads, offering the perfect story/sound/person that you want to be like (and apparently shop like). Melissa has a link to her favorite online shopping areas, like skinny pants, adding a nice dynamic.

These docu-interview videos are 99% fake, but I don't care right now. They've painted some believable portraits and stay fluid with their image/brand. I assume this campaign was launched in the past few days, but there are already some "coming soon" stories listed (smart to bring visitors back).

Hope that they continue to invest in the overall production quality of these videos, guessing they could easily run on HGTV or Travel Channel. Maybe keep them an online surprise to some degree. (Again, the "skinny pants" favorites link, mentioned above, was a pretty awesome and clever manuever. Makes finding these videos online worthwhile.

There are some users complaining about their use of Adobe Flash. Too bad that the "No Flash" screen instructs users to download the plugin, when it could improve by indicating that Flash is not available for the user's device. Potentially, the users could be directed to the content that is already existing on YouTube.

While iPad and iPhone users might be grumbling there, the Nordstrom homepage uses Adobe Flash too, but they've solved the problem (at first glance). Instead of breaking the experience, the desktop and mobile experience is extremely simlar. They've worked in some of the fluid interactions/animations and the content is the same at both access points. #impressed

Not to pass it up lightly, their integration of social tools is great. There are comments from (seemingly) real users complaining about Flash, plus a good use of a simple "like" feature. Users can "like" both the content and the comments. Too bad they're not taking time to talk to the iPad users and point them to that YouTube content. #missedopportunity

If the user wants to "post a comment," they will have to register online. Nordstrom treats the user like a potential customer and even gives a nice list of registration benefits. If I were interested in shopping, seems like they're presenting a good case for me to share my info. The process is not filled with content that comes off fake and strategic, it just seems to state the facts with some sense of respect. I am not going to sign up, but can tell via the URL that it will send me back to the original "post a comment" page after registration. #thoughfuldesign

All Things Virtual 16

Gregg Robertson — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 15:47:28 GMT

As you would expect the virtualisation communities are abuzz with talk of VMworld US starting next week in San Francisco. I’m going to be watching with a very keen eye to all the news and tweets from fellow virtualisation experts(not that I am an expert) about the event as most of the information that will be coming out of the US event will most likely be repeated and re-covered at the one in Copenhagen(of which i am attending :) ). Hopefully I can learn what the best sessions were and make time to try get to as many of them as possible if they are replicated at VMworld Europe.Ed Grigson of vexperienced.co.uk posted a very interesting article about how VMworld Europe is shorter,costs more and has a staggering amount less unique sessions. Thankfully as Ed mentions the sessions from VMworld San Francisco should be online by mid September so if you have registered to attend either of them you will be able to see all the sessions online at VMworld.com.Also the VMworld 2009 sessions and labs are now open for public viewing. I have heard that if sessions go well at VMworld US then they will be asked to present at VMworld Europe. Don’t hold me to this as it is just what i heard but it does make sense and will hopefully bring some of the top unique sessions.

Whilst most of the news is about VMworld there has been a large amount of news not directly related to VMworld.

As mentioned by Eric Sloof on his blog,the VCAP4-DCD Exam Blueprint Guide has become available for those who are keen to get the ball rolling on their studies for the certification. I’ve personally started building up my home lab for my preparations and learning for the VCAP-DCA exam. A friend of mine asked me if i knew what exams VMware recommend for the VCAP examinations and funnily enough i had received an email from VMware telling me exactly this. Here is what they recommend:
VCAP-DCA Preparation Courses
VCAP-DCD Preparation Course
- VMware vSphere: Design Workshop [V4]
Also a big congratulations to Eric Sloof(@esloof) on being awarded as the best freelance VCI of the quarter. Eric's blog is always a great source for any kind of VMware related course or news and is a blog i would recommend adding to your RSS feeds.
Talking of the courses to prepare you for the VCAP exams i asked the same question on twitter to see what people recommended and Jonathon Medd(@jonathanmedd ) pointed out his belief that there would be no need for the PowerCLI course due to himself,Alan Renouf, Arnim van Lieshout and Glenn Sizemore currently writing a PowerCLI book that should teach you everything you should need to know to be able to utilise PowerCLI in the environment. As Alan says in his blog posting the book will be be written by “4 vExperts and a MVP” so you know it is going to be a brilliant resource. Jonathon has told me to stay tuned for news of it’s release.
Talking of books the much anticipated HA and DRS Deepdive by Frank Denneman( @frankdenneman) and Duncan Epping ( @DuncanYB ) is due to be released very soon. These guys are two of the top guys in the industry and for anyone that has tried to read through the whole of Duncan HA deepdive posting will know he is the perfect person to write about the topic. This book is on my list already to buy and I will be keeping a keen eye on it’s release.
As you would expect there have already been a few videos and a page dedicated to all the new about VMworld. Due to lack of time I haven’t had the time to look through them yet so here they are as they are on my “to do” list:
- VMworld 2010 Preview - Storage I/O Control http://youtu.be/KXfZzISshJo?a
- 2 new videos for #VMworld 2010. "Performance Best Practices" and "VMware Storage Vision" http://www.youtube.com/vmworldtv
- Our #VMworld coverage page is live! Check it out before, during & after the show for complete news & analysis: http://is.gd/ep3uC
- Performance and Storage breakout session preview videos by Kaushik Banerjee and Jay Judkowitz http://bit.ly/9ns2hR
Greg Stuart (@gregwstuart) has posted all about a competition where you can win the "Ultimate vSphere Library", with titles from Scott Lowe (@scott_lowe), Eric Siebert (@ericsiebert) and David Davis of trainsignal fame ( @davidmdavis) to name but a few of the things you will win if you are the winner. So get following and good luck :)
Mike Laverick (@Mike_Laverick) at RTFM-ED.co.uk is also running a competition to win the trainsignal (@TrainSignal) VMware vSphere Pro Volume 2 video series.- find out the details at www.rtfm-ed.co.uk.
Eric Sloof has also posted a nice little posting with two slide decks by Iwan Rahabok who works as a Senior Systems Consultant at VMware all about the differences between vSphere 4.1 and 4.0. I always love finding these kinds of things especially when you have to try provide reasons why “upgrading to the latest version of x is a good idea because of these advantages…”
A big congratulations and thank you to Stefan Jagger for the passing of his VCP4 exam and for mentioning and linking to my VCP4 resources pages. always nice to get a bit of traffic from different blogs :)
Frank Denneman has posted all about the VCDX application form and how it should be filled out correctly so that your application is accepted and has the correct amount of information in it. I’ve added this one to my VCDX list for future reference when I am ready to put in my application
While on the VMware communities this morning seeing if i could help answer any questions I came across an unusual thread where someone asked for the 10 most common issues in VMware with the steps to fix these problems. True to form a few people replied and i thought their answers were actually quite interesting. Especially the one by Petri all about the ten best ways to increase performance for your VMware environment. Also the top ten KB articles at the time is a great page I've added to my favourites to frequent to try keep up to date on the latest problems and solutions happening with VMware products.
Last but not least is a posting by Maish Saidel-Keesing all about him creating a VERY useful Google spreadsheet of all the VMworld sessions and the information about them. This is going to come in handy for sure especially when I'm sure I’ll arrive at a session at VMworld Copenhagen and it’s full already and i have to find another sessions to attend.

Well that’s everything that has caught my attention for the past few weeks since the last All Things Virtual. As I’ve said numerous times I'm on twitter at @greggrobertson5 if you want to follow me/ask me questions/give feedback/abuse me :)

Also any comments are welcome

Gregg

Let the creative juices flow...

Michelle.Flynn — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 14:11:00 GMT

Some members of our team have been busy designing and building an online portfolio that we can use to showcase our creative work.

It is still work in process but we decided to release what we have to date so you can watch it grow

www.givenspaceandtime.com

Enjoy

Windows 7- To Virtualize or not to Virtualize - that is the question!

jaspal.dhalliwal — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 08:33:00 GMT

Whether 'tis nobler to rollout a standard Windows 7 desktop,... OR to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by virtualizing desktops end them?

Many of the current discussions we at EMC Consulting (Cloud & Virtual Data Center Practice) are having with IT Managers, CIOs, CTOs and Architect/Designers are typically focused on understanding the Cloud notion, its consumption and management models, and of course ‘how to build one’ . Frequently the ‘what does it mean for us?’ pops up.

Depending with whom you’re speaking the answer will vary in terms of granularity. An administrator asks regarding daily activities, an IT Manager in terms of service delivery and orientation, and the Cxx level is focused more on the realization of sustainable competitive advantage of Business IT amongst other themes.

With the current need to phase out Microsoft Windows XP on the CIO radar, engaging IT resources/personnel for the foreseeable future, and so many other areas of IT strategy still to realize, the move to Microsoft Windows 7 is rather significant. Many are taking the approach of a ‘simple’ desktop operating system (OS) upgrade. There are yet others utilizing the opportunity to replace parts of their desktop estate with long overdue PC/laptop replacements. These strategies are fine if the end result is simply to get rid of Windows XP and come back into the Microsoft ‘circle of trust’. Compounding the situation is the application stack (Ask-not-what-you-can-do-for-your-cloud-but-what-your-cloud-can-do-for-you) - and yet another migration.

Windows 7, different perhaps from the advent of Windows Vista in terms of its timing, comes at a turning point in the IT industry. The desire and interest to move away from traditional models of IT, resource consumption, and device form factors has never been so strong. Indeed the very notion of a desktop operating system is being challenged. We often hear in envisioning workshops this very same thought and if it can be done right now! Not an easy question to answer.

Don't get me wrong here. I am myself an ardent user of Windows 7, coming from Vista (yes I installed that too), and of course the venerable XP. The functionality is fine, and Microsoft have done a good job of creating something useful. However, it is not really Windows 7 that I use daily. It is the applications and the browser that I mainly use. Certainly then, the OS could perhaps be a bit leaner - or as some virtualization vendors are doing - practically remove the need of an OS by creating bare-metal desktop hypervisors (Citrix and VMware initially).

Corporate IT Missing A Trick?

Based on the macro movement in the industry, the Cloud tsunami, Everything-as-a-Service and unprecedented levels of connectivity to the Internet, perhaps the idea of rolling out Windows 7 needs to be thought of in a different light.

We have discussed with many organizations embarking on virtual desktops as a part of their desktop estate mix, if Windows 7 should not indeed be treated as an innovation stream. One stream of many that would herald the move to the ‘digital-nirvana’ user workspace end-state (which is of course different for every organization).

By treating Windows 7 as an innovation stream, a collection of features desirable for an organization to possess, we come closer to the idea of Windows7 being a stepping stone on a path. The implication is that constant change will be accompanying the ‘desktop’ estate for all organizations - in that new features can be bundled and released rather than a colossal OS upgrade.

The very term ‘desktop OS’ is starting to look tarnished and is in all probability a complete misnomer these days.

EMC Consulting has a very strong practice supporting the migration to Windows 7, and together with customers, a different product mix is being implemented. Large swathes of virtual desktops hosted in a private cloud are being rolled out, with some use-cases mandating a traditional local install approach in the interim. However, in most cases the applications are being virtualized to ease the move to delivery via Cloud technologies. Some applications have already moved lock-stock-and-barrel to Private/Public Clouds.

How does this pan out with the ‘desktop OS’ developers?

Well. Microsoft itself is planning to refresh desktop OS’s more frequently than in the past (Windows x details were leaked onto the Internet this year). Microsoft itself is starting the move to Cloud offerings in partial/full form through its Azure offerings amongst others to come. Microsoft Exchange Server, long the province of corporate IT, is itself being considered to be ‘handed over’ to Microsoft in the form of Exchange Hosted Services (EHS). This of course leads to the question of whether there are other email/collaboraton technologies that can be used? Microsoft is embracing this sea-change after a fashion. It does not really have a choice anymore!

It looks increasingly as if change is going to be the new norm. Change is good – and the ability to rapidly change and reconfigure resources is a fundamental competitive advantage in an ever more dynamic cyber-verse.

Essentially, the change to an innovation stream starts to focus organizations internally on features and capabilities they value - not which version of a desktop OS they are installing next. The capability set essentially underpinning their varied business needs is identified and pursued.

In the move to the virtual desktop, this starts to yield real benefits in a very lean composed desktop (separated user profiles, applications, base OS). Initially we had the first wave of this in the form of server based computing models simply shipping out a shared Windows desktop surface. This was inflexible and required great operational control to ensure adequate features for all users (e.g. Citrix MetaFrame/Presentation Server/XenApp, Microsoft Terminal Services/RDS). This model still has its place in organizations today.

Virtual desktops in comparison, being wholly independent of other users’ workspaces, allow a greater level of flexibility, allowing users to continue to be productive in traditional ways, innovate and indeed generate new methods of working. This wave seems to be making a home for itself in the Private Cloud. Offerings such as the VBlock support near on 10,000 concurrent virtual desktops. This is unprecedented in a single offering. These desktops can be created for all users in seconds/minutes from scratch, and remain always patched, protected, and available 24 hours/day accessible from anywhere! The level of control from Corporate IT and level of freedom for users is a real boon in management terms.

We are seeing in parallel the rise of ‘Platforms and Applications as-a-service’ models in full swing on the Internet. Indeed it is possible to get a pre-purposed virtual desktop with the latest greatest Windows 7 (or Linux, Apple OS etc.) as a complete remote service.

Extend this further to the application stack above the OS, and we start to see exponential gains in manageability and long-term sustainability in terms of user-experience and operations. This is being felt in the wake of offerings such as Salesforce.com. This in turn is being extended to corporate applications being built on these platforms. There is choice here with Google, Microsoft, Amazon and others providing similar capabilities. The speed of building new business applications is remarkable in that the time-2-value has shrunk drastically! Good for consumers and definitely good for business!

We haven’t yet talked about how this desktop is consumed. Ever more capable devices are emerging (netbooks, tablets, iPad, iPhone, smart phones etc.) finding captive audiences initially using these virtual desktops for private purposes, and over time morphing to fully-fledged personal productivity assets equally capable of being plugged in at ‘work’!

This brave new world indicates a net movement away from stuffy large desktop OS deployments on the narrow palate of PC/notebook hardware that organizations are typically still working with.

The consumer experience is driving the need for change within organizations. Organizations everywhere are waking to the clamor of their own users wanting a better experience in the digital workplace (after all they can easily afford a better experience as a consumer – so why can’t the firm do it!).

So why is all this important?

Well if innovation is the lifeblood of an organization, then all the available means to ‘spark’ innovation should be exploited. By reframing the traditional desktop OS deployment approach, an organization may be able to fundamentally change the digital workplace.

There are plenty of examples of companies working to redesign office layouts, use more capable telephony-over-IP, manipulating light and environmental conditions to put the brain ‘in-a-better-state-of-mind' These approaches are working (Back in 2007 this is how things were - Google Headquarter - Amazing Work Place 9/19/07 )! Why would we not do the same for the ‘desktop operating system’?

Thinking about that long term transformation of an organization, every person has at least one good idea in them. The idea may be the one that drives your industry for the next decade. Well is that not worth putting in a little more thought about the Windows 7 migration?

Is it not worth thinking about virtualizatiing your applications? Is it not worth thinking about how the jump to the Cloud will be made for desktops? Does it not make sense to virtualize now to allow some/all of those benefits to stream into an organization?

Some careful thinking now – moving away from the traditional 'administrator/IT group's worldview in ‘rolling out yet another desktop OS & the time is not right for Cloud - there's no other way’, and keeping your eye firmly on the ‘big picture’ will invariably be a sure bet!

Cloud is here today! The desktop is a prime candidate to consider for mass virtualization, and a complete rethink about ‘desktop+applications’ should be on the Corporate IT radar!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BTW - this was written in Germany, connected to a virtual desktop hosted in Ireland, through a home ADSL link, using virtualized applications located someplace in America, and finally posted on the Blog which is located...it does work well!

I was wrong....

matthew.bagwell — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 10:44:00 GMT

So yesterday, I wrote a blog about an advert I had seen. That blog is here. The advert had angered me because I thought it represented poor process and execution around centralised marketing. In fact, it appears I was wrong. On further research the headline - "I am such stuff as dreams are made on" - is a paraphrase of a Shakespeare quote from The Tempest.

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits and

Are melted into air, into thin air:

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve

And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

As dreams are made on, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.

So this wasn't a hugely obvious copywriting fail, a lazy marketing director or a bad process. It just another pretentious car ad that might not encode well for drivers and is being decoded incorrectly by creatives and the odd Creative Director. Sadly, my blog entry on this subject is only 14th on a google search.

What's wrong with this advert?

matthew.bagwell — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 13:11:49 GMT

It's an ok car. In fact, it's probably quite an attractive car, despite the rather unconventional angle of this pack shot. It's even got red brakes like a real sports car. She has red lipstick too. See what they did there?

Hey, I'm not going to criticise this ad for its obviousness. That's a rather unimaginative agency for you.

No, the problem with this ad is the headline copy. Actually it's not the copy itself, it's what it represents.

"I am such stuff as dreams are made on"

Really? What exactly do you mean, Giulietta? Maybe, you mean, "I am the stuff that dreams are made of."

Oh really? Centralized marketing strategy, templated ads, cheap - even automated translation services and local marketing directors that signed this off to appear in local magazines, 48 sheet posters etc without correcting some simple grammatical errors.

What does this represent? Not my next car that's for sure. For me, it represents poor thinking, poor process and poor execution - all too often the outcomes of globalization.

Is this the stuff dreams are made of? No Giulietta. Nightmares.

Consuming data from Windows Azure Table Storage using the Repository-Mapper-Command pattern

simon.evans — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 11:27:17 GMT

Back in May I presented to the UKAzureNet group about how we at EMC Consulting had developed the See The Difference website using many technologies including Windows Azure.

Part of this session included some information on how we had consumed data we were storing in Windows Azure Table Storage. In this post, I am going to describe the patterns I designed for this in much more detail.

The challenge of consuming data from Table Storage

The Windows Azure SDK provides an API out of the box to consume table storage data. This API is built on top of WCF Data Services (formerly ADO.NET Data Services), and thus uses OData messaging to execute queries against table storage.

Table storage uses an implementation of OData with the following key characteristics:

It adds table storage specific authorization HTTP headers to each message which map to your Windows Azure account.
$expand does not work, because table storage provides a simpler, schemaless entity-attribute-value model.
Entity group transactions only work against a single table in a single partition.
$orderby does not work, because table storage cannot reorder data (data is ordered on its partition and row keys only).

These constraints of table storage provide many challenges as to how you design your table storage implementations. Choice of partition keys, row keys and the granularity of each table is key to designing effect table storage. Other people have already blogged heavily on how to solve such issues.

When you have successfully designed your table storage model, the next challenge is how to consume this model in an effective manner. Yes the Windows Azure SDK provides you with an API, but you have to figure out the following:

How can I make this testable using BDD specs?
How do I handle exceptions and diagnostics?
How do I make my data access code maintainable?
How do I encapsulate my table storage access in a way that calling code is ignorant of the implementation?
How do I work with transactions across entities?
How can I effectively implement retries and compensation for failure?

Faced with all these challenges, I ended up architecting a Repository-Mapper-Command pattern, which I will describe below.

An overview of the Repository-Mapper-Command pattern

The Repository-Mapper-Command pattern is, as the name suggests an implementation of three well known design patterns chained together:

Pattern	Formal Definition	Motivation for use
Repository	Conceptually, a Repository encapsulates the set of objects persisted in a data store and the operations performed over them, providing a more object-oriented view of the persistence layer. Repository also supports the objective of achieving a clean separation and one-way dependency between the domain and data mapping layers.	To ensure that calling clients are ignorant of storage implementation details. To provide an API that works using the domain layer objects as currency. To provide a testable layer that enables interactions with data to be articulated using BDD specifications.
Mapper	To map from one or more objects to one or more objects.	To map the contents of domain objects passed into the repository layer into table storage entity objects required for persistence and vice versa.
Command	Encapsulate a request as an object, thereby letting you parameterize clients with different requests, queue or log requests, and support undoable operations.	The enable the reuse of table storage operations by chaining commands together within a repository. To enable the command interactions being executed within a repository to be tested using BDD specifications.

From a calling clients perspective, the repository is called to either retrieve or persist domain object(s). The repository will call mapper(s) classes to translate between domain objects and table storage entities. The repository will call command objects to execute commands against the table storage context. The command objects use table storage entities as currency and not the domain objects.

For the rest of this article, a Comment domain object will be the subject of this pattern. A comment domain object represents a single comment stored in table storage, which requires retrieval and persistence using this pattern.

An important aside on the role of data service context and transactions

Before describing each part of this pattern in more detail, it is worth recapping on the role of DataServiceContext in WCF Data Services (used by TableServiceContext).

The best way to think of DataServiceContext is to consider it as a constructor of an OData message or messages. For example, if you read an entity, update this entity and insert another entity in a single batch operation (by using the MergeOption on SaveChanges), this will execute as a single request-reply message. This message is the boundary of what can be done in a single transaction.

An instance of a DataServiceContext object is not thread safe. The ramifications of this is that each transaction (unit of work) should be executed using a new instance of the context. It also means that the contents of an acidic transaction needs to be represented in a set of domain objects using composition. For example, if I needed to transactionally insert a customer entity and the customer’s address within the same transaction, the domain model must represent this in a single object graph.

One final gotcha when using Table Storage entity group transactions; the build in retry policy mechanism build into the table storage client does not work when using entity group transactions; I had to implement my own retry mechanism within a repository and this was a key motivator in implementing the command pattern.

These facts are fundamental to the design of a repository that uses WCF Data Services such as table storage repositories.

The Repository

The repository provides an API that works using domain objects, ignorant of the data access and storage technologies used. The interfaces enable the repository to work with an IoC container such as Castle Windsor, which enables repositories to be stubbed out for testing purposes.

The following diagram illustrates the repository classes and interfaces (click to open it in the original size):

The table below describes the responsibilities of each class and interface in the repository:

Interface / Class	Responsibility
ITableStorageRepository<T>	Defines a generic interface for all table storage repositories in the system, containing the methods: Single, for returning a single domain object. SelectPartition, for returning a list of domain objects from a table partition. Delete, for deleting a single domain object. Persist, for adding or updating a single domain object.
ICommentRepository	An implementation of the ITableStorageRepository<T> interface for the Comment domain object. Extensions to the standard methods listed above would be placed in this interface.
TableStorageRepositoryBase	Base class inherited by all Repository classes, responsible for encapsulating the following functionality: Creation of ApplicationDataServiceContent, including using the correct CloudStorageAccount settings. Logging exceptions from Command objects into Azure diagnostics.
CommentRepository	The concrete implementation of the ICommentRepository interface. Inherits the TableStorageRepositoryBase class. Executes commands and uses mappers to translate between domain objects and entity rows.
ApplicationDataServiceContext	Provides a strongly typed wrapper over the TableServiceContext object, providing easy access to tables and default settings for tracking options.
TableServiceContext	The Azure SDK provided class that is a Table Storage specific implementation of WCF Data Service class DataServiceContext. The TableServiceContext class provides additional plumbing to handle table storage additions to the OData messaging such as adding authentication HTTP headers to messages.
CloudStorageAccount	The Azure SDK provided class that represents an Azure storage account as set up via the Azure service portal.

The core currency of the repository API is a domain object. The repository exposes methods such as Single to retrieve a single domain object.

A transaction cannot flow outside of a repository, or outside of a method on a repository. This is good practice regardless of the type of repository, but it is imperative given the nature of the DataServiceContext class. Hence, if a calling client calls persist against two repositories, this will occur as two separate ACID transactions. Failure must be handled using a compensating transaction to leave data in a consistent state.

Each method on a repository must instantiate its own service context for thread safety. The creation of a service context with the configuration is handled by TableStorageRepositoryBase. The service context instantiated is of type ApplicationDataServiceContext, which provides strongly typed access (via IQueryable<T>) to each table service entity.

A single repository method will execute one or more commands against a single instance of the service context. Hence, a transaction can flow between commands within a single repository method.

In order for a command to be executed, the repository must map any domain objects into table storage entity objects using a mapper. Likewise the result of a read command requires a mapper to map the table storage entity back to a domain object.

The pattern implements a Persist method, rather than add and update. This means the repository is responsible for deciding whether to add or update the domain object(s), based in whether the object has an entity key set or not (when the entity key is null). For example the persist method will execute an AddToObject when the entity key is null.

The repository catches TableStorageCommandException objects, and actions the exception accordingly, including logging the exception against Windows Azure diagnostics via the TableStorageRepositoryBase.LogCommandException method.

The Mapper

The follow diagram illustrates the mapper classes and interfaces, including the related domain objects and table storage entities (click to open it in the original size):

The table below describes the responsibilities of each class and interface in the mapper:

Interface / Class	Responsibility
IMapper<TInput, TOutput>	The generic interface for mapping from an input entity to an output entity.
ICommentRowToCommentMapper	Implements the IMapper<TInput, TOutput> interface, to map from a CommentRow table storage entity to a Comment domain object
ICommentToCommentRowMapper	Implements the IMapper<TInput, TOutput> interface, to map from a Comment domain object to a CommentRow table storage entity.
CommentRowToCommentMapper	Concrete implementation of the ICommentRowToCommentMapper interface.
CommentToCommentRowMapper	Concrete implementation of the ICommentToCommentRowMapper interface.
CommentRow	A strongly typed representation of a single comment row in a table. CommentRow inherits from TableServiceEntity.
TableServiceEntity	The Azure SDK provided class which represents a single entity in a table.
Comment	The Comment domain object, passed into and out of the repository and used by all other layers of the application architecture.

The mapper classes above around mapping between the Comment domain object and the CommentRow table service entity object. The mappers are required to translate between the domain objects surfaced by the repository and the table storage entities executed by commands.

The Command

The command encapsulates a single operation against table storage and a table service entity (such as a LINQ query). The repository will chain together commands against a single ApplicationDataServiceContext, promoting reuse and improving the maintainability of your code. The command also provides a natural place to handle OData errors thrown as InvalidOperationException objects.

The follow diagram illustrates the Command classes and interfaces (click to open it in the original size):

The table below describes the responsibilities of each class and interface in the command pattern:

Interface / Class	Responsibility
TableStorageCommandBase	Provides implementation of common command logic, such as common exception handling for table storage failures.
IGetCommentRowsByProjectIdCommand	The interface for the GetCommentRowsByProjectIdCommand class. Defines the signature for returning a collection of CommentRow table entities from table storage for a single project id.
IPersistCommentRowCommand	The interface for the PersistCommentRowCommand class. Defines the signature for persisting (adding or updating) a single CommentRow table entity into table storage.
GetCommentRowsByProjectIdCommand	Concrete implementation of the IGetCommentRowsByProjectIdCommand interface. Uses the ApplicationDataServiceContext to execute a LINQ to Data Service query, returning a collection of CommentRow objects for a specific project id.
PersistCommentRowCommand	Concrete implementation of the IPersistCommentRowCommand interface. Checks if the CommentRow being persisted has an identity and adds or updates the CommentRow accordingly against the ApplicationDataServiceContext.
TableStorageCommandException	Strongly typed exception class used to throw exceptions back to the calling repository.

Each command represents a single unit of work executed against a shared service context. Commands do not use the domain objects; they are coupled to the table storage implementation details. Each command has an interface so that interactions can be tested in specifications.

By convention, each command exposes an Execute method, with at least one argument for ApplicationDataServiceContext. If an exception occurs, the TableStorageCommandBase class contains common exception parsing code to translate the OData error into a strongly typed exception (TableStorageCommandException).

Summary

Use of the Repository-Mapper-Command pattern for Windows Azure table storage enables you to implement storage access with:

Testable BDD specs.
Diagnostics logging and exception handling.
Reuse LINQ operations improving maintainability.
Provide an API that encapsulates all storage implementation details.
Works with entity group transactions.
Enables the implementation of retries and compensation where needed.
Centralizes object dependencies via IoC.

Useful Resources

What is The Fantastic Tavern?

Michelle.Flynn — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 12:46:00 GMT

I am often asked "What is The Fantastic Tavern?" I have my way of describing it but thought I would ask the man who founded it (Matt Bagwell, EMC Consulting's Global Creative Director) to describe it in his own words. I also asked him who it should appeal to. Here is what he said:

“The Fantastic Tavern is a meeting of minds online and at welcoming hostelries; a community of brand and agency digital planners & creatives who share insights, expertise, experience and beer. The TFT was founded in 2008 with the objective of creating a forum for sharing without any other intent (sales) and to bring an eclectic audience to bear on the content we discuss. There have been at least eight well attended gatherings of the Fantastic Tavern in both London and New York.

For each gathering, a theme is selected that we believe is relevant (to the digital zeitgeist) and will inspire both contributions and debate. The format of each gathering is dependent on the content but is always interactive (and often irreverent). Every theme could broadly fall into a broad category from Innovation, Effectiveness and Craft.

There are no real rules for inclusion in the Fantastic Tavern community as we’ve never needed to have any. However, there is a truth that we hold on to; this is a community for learning and sharing not selling. If attendees and members (we call them Taverniers) want to get more specific or have a more opportunistic conversation, that can be arranged – for example, we have run one very intense ‘VIP’ dinner about Multi-variate Testing as a consequence of a more general ‘optimisation’ debate.

Who should does The Fantastic Tavern appeal to?

Digital creatives and practitioners including animators, designers, UX, copywriters etc
Planners – both agency and client side
Ebusiness Managers
Ecommerce managers
ECRM managers
Multi-channel managers
Specialist agency-types
Interactive agency-types
Start ups and entrepreneurs
Anyone who is interested in what is hot and what is not in the digital space“

Sound like fun? I can guarantee it is. If you would like to become part of The Fantastic Tavern please email me on michelle.flynn@emc.com and I will add you to our special list.

You can also follow our chats on twitter, @TFTLondon

Details of our next event on 23^rd September can be found here

So what makes ideas stick? The Fantastic Tavern investigates (in New York)

matthew.bagwell — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 13:56:00 GMT

Last night, a gathering of New York flavoured Taverniers met at BUtterfield8 (thanks for the nachos) to discuss the nature of ideas and what manifesto might exist between creatives, agencies and clients to ensure that the right ideas make it.

I must admit that the combination of no sleep, a pitch and then a big business win meant I was pretty fired up. Maybe that’s a formula for successful ideation!

I did a little intro where we looked at Segway as an example of an idea that might be subjectively dismissed but that in the context of its purpose - US malls and urban spaces - it makes better sense (than say in London where they look really silly). I also described some of EMC Consulting's 'tools' that sit in our innovation framework. Here's a link to that ppt - no words I'm afraid but if you want the narrative, email me...

Tft nyc 2

View more presentations from MichelleFlynn.

We then split into three role play groups. The groups were to represent The Client, The Agency and The Creative and the challenge was to begin to develop a TFT Manifesto for creativity.

My thought on this is to create some kind of wiki type thing so that the Tavernier community can add, refine and edit this over time - watch this space for that.

So NYC. Thanks for the conversation. Next time bring your friends. Here's your work (copy written by me for the time being)

Dear Agencies (from the client)

• Make sure that we know what we will get back for the investment we're going to make

• Give us a map - being lost isn't nice

• Challenge my ideas. My products. My services

• Help me reconcile my internal conflicts

• Be my shrink

• Know me better than I know myself

• Inspire us to do things in a better ways

• Be relevant

• Know when to back off

• Make me famous and I'll reciprocate

• Surprise me once in a while, not just on the first date. Boo!

• Be honest with us

• Be fearless and when you trip and stumble, bounce back

• Don't be afraid to fail big

Dear Clients (from the agency)

• What problem are we really trying to solve here?

• Let us ask some stupid questions

• What's the budget? Go on, just tell us.

• Lets learn to crawl before we try to run together

• Do you want us to change what you do or make what you do better. They are not one in the same thing.

• Tell us all your dirty secrets. The business ones.

Dear Creatives (from creatives) (I didn't write this bit, creatives did)

• Observe the world

• Walk in the customers shoes

• Fear is OK

• Your idea is everyone's idea

• We can make a difference together

• None of us know everything

• Observe. Think. Create

EMC voted number 3 in the World's most admired companies

Michelle.Flynn — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 12:43:00 GMT

Fortune 500 has done their annual ranking and I am proud to announce that EMC were voted 3rd most admired in the computer industry. Well done team!!

Most Admired

Rank	Company	Overall score
1	Apple	7.95
2	Hewlett-Packard	7.74
3	EMC	6.86


4	Xerox	6.51
5	Dell	6.14
6	Canon	6.12
7	Seagate Technology	5.89
8	Western Digital	5.67
Contenders
Rank	Company	Overall score
9	Acer	5.60
10	Ricoh	5.22
11	Lenovo Group	5.21
12	Quanta Computer	5.16
13	Fujitsu	5.06
14	Asustek Computer	5.00
15	NEC	4.93

All Things Virtual 15

Gregg Robertson — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 10:22:06 GMT

It has been a crazy couple of weeks lately due to a data centre relocation I’ve been working on and due to this I haven’t had as much time to post new information and hence the delay of this next “instalment” of All Things Virtual.

Firstly a massive thank you to Simon Long for adding my blog posting to his “Recommended Reads” section of his blog. It’s a true honour to be mentioned on his blog for something I posted. I would highly recommend looking through his recommended reads as he’s added some really great postings from some of the top blogs. Also a thank you to Troy Clavell on the VMware forums for linking back to my posting on the Active Directory Web Services encountered an error while reading the settings for the specified Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services instance error and solution. It’s been the most read posting on my blog for the past week because of his reference.
Alessandro Perilli posted about VMware officially announcing the ESX end of life. So for those of you out there like myself who are still trying to perfect your PowerCLi,VMA and vCLI skills, we now have a date that those skills need to be perfected. I still don’t fully buy into the whole reason for the removal of the COS but no point moaning over something that has already been decided.
Next is something Darren Woollard ,who I follow on twitter tweeted about, which is a list of all the VMware twitter accounts. There was quite a few mentioned that I wasn’t following. As I’ve said before I believe the amount of knowledge to be gained from following people and organisation related to your field is priceless and it has certainly helped me gain better knowledge of virtualisation products and practices. I’m on twitter at @greggrobertson5 or http://twitter.com/greggrobertson5 if you want to follow me.
Mentioning social media there is now a document on the VMworld website for anyone who is attending and plans to use social media during their visit to talk about VMworld and their experiences. I’ve already added my information to the document. *NB* Edit the document as far too many people aren’t reading the steps mentioned at the top and posting comments instead of editing the document. VMworld have also created their own channel on YouTube for all the news and videos of the events here
Talking of VMworld ,Gestalt IT are doing a competition in which they’ll pay airfare, hotel, and registration for VMworld for two lucky winners. It’s a great idea as the winners aren’t just picked at random but rather have to motivate how they are going to “pay it forward” by describing how they are going to give back to the virtualisation community by them going to VMworld.Good luck if you have or are going to enter
Scott Drummonds posting a very interesting article on the idea of Designing VMs with Performance SLAs. The article is a very good one and is one that will encourage a very good debate on the positives and negatives of using limits which is one of the techniques Scott mentions in his posting to allow for Performance SLA’s.
Tom Howarth has posted all about the session himself and Cody Bunch are doing at VMworld this year and is asking for some questions in preparation for the sessions from the community. Adam Carter of HP,Vaughn Stewart of NetApp and Chad Sakac of EMC are three of his speakers so if you you can think of any I’m sure Tom will be very grateful for your help.
Duncan Epping of yellow bricks fame posted all about the ability now with vSphere 4 using ADAM to store the roles and permissions to have a standby vCentre Server in case of a disaster. I’m definitely going to get one of these built up having had the experience of a virtual centre server going awry and having to rebuild it all.
With the release of vSphere 4.1 one of the new features is memory management and compression. Gabrie van Zanten has posted all about this feature, how it all works and how it will bring benefits to your VMware environments. A must read!
If you are planning to upgrade any of your machines to vSphere 4.1 then I would highly recommend looking through and watching the video from the KB article all about…you guessed it vSphere 4.1 upgrade pre-installation requirements and considerations. I love finding and watching these kinds of things as it always feels as if I’ve actually been shown and taught it from a mentor or work colleague like you would in your daily jobs knowledge transfer. Vladan Seget has posted all about the Best practices KB on how-to install ESX 4.1 and vCenter which is another brilliant bit of information and reference if you are installing ESX4.1 and vCentre.
The Malaysia VMware communities has done a very interesting posting all about the VSI plug-in from EMC. The plug-in is a brilliant tool and is a very good example of the VAAI that ESX 4.1 is enabling storage vendors to create for people to utilise in their VMware environments. Chad Sakac has done a great YouTube video on vSphere4.1 and EMC VAAI capabilities. Richard Brambley has done a brilliant posting a while back all about what VAAI is and what it means for virtualisation here.
Talking of VMware and EMC Alan Renouf and Simon Seagrave of Virtu-al and Techhead respectively did a session at the last London VMUG all about Why EMC for VMware. Unfortunately even though the day was sponsored by EMC i wasn’t able to make it due to there being a mandatory quarterly results presentation on the same day, so as to not say the wrong information and because Alan covered it so well I encourage you to read his post :)
Elasticsky have posted a very helpful video on YouTube on how to reset a forgotten or lost root password on vSphere 4. I have posted these steps before but the video is a very helpful addition to this if you ever have the problem.

Scott Vessey has posted all about the Changes to VCP exam due to the vSphere 4.1 release.A number of people have been talking about if there are any changes to the vcp4 exams since the release of vSphere4.1 and Scott has answered it perfectly.
Kendrick Coleman has done a brilliant resource page for all the resources you may need in your preparations for the VCAP DCA exam. I’m hoping to start building up my own list of resources that I'll be using in my preparations for my VCAP exam/s once I get it under way :).
Lastly is one for anyone going to a convention or conference this year who will get themselves one of the customary backpacks. As Kevin Houston posted, if you aren’t planning to actively use the backpack why not donate it to a local school and fill it with some basic supplies. Great idea Kevin!

Gregg Robertson

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Consultancy Skills with Tim Barker and Pete Murphy

louise.convery — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 08:02:00 GMT

Consultancy Skills Event – Thursday 5^th – Friday 6^th August 2010

Last Thursday I made an early journey round the M25 to Sunningdale in Berkshire for a much anticipated Consultancy Skills course run by Tim Barker and Peter Murphy.

The course was held over two days in a 1930s Georgian-style Mansion called Northcote House, within the beautiful grounds of Sunningdale Park, a Civil Service College and the setting for some of Agatha Christie’s short stories.

Day 1 – Presentation Skills and Pitching For Business

The group of 11 consultants were given a company background to EMC, and encouraged to try out an

‘Elevator Pitch’ to help us convey to each other the breadth of work that EMC covers. The purpose was to set us in the mindset that every engagement can be an opportunity to create good company PR and encourage future business. Tim and Pete got straight into role play to demonstrate and after a short prep we had to do the same in front of the group.

The second agenda item was to encourage good presentation skills and teamwork. We were asked “define usability” and present this back to the group in a convincing manner.

The third, most intensive session had us working under the pressure of time within our teams, with Tim and Pete acting as the fictitious ‘Readydelivers’ sandwich executives who needed a digital strategy to help them turn around their business. This was a really thought-provoking exercise that relied on quick thinking and the ability to interpret limited data and work well as a team. The results then had to be presented back to the ‘busy executives’ who stayed in role to challenge us on our decisions and encourage us to improve and refine our pitches.

The evening gave us the chance to meet with other consultants and share learnings and experience, as well as getting to know the consultancy team better across the business.

Day 2 – Feedback and Team Dynamics

Following a long session on Thursday we started off with a light-hearted game called Pig Psychology to get everyone warmed up for the day, before moving onto receive feedback on our pitches from the ‘Readydelivers’ executives.

After this we were encouraged to give feedback to our colleagues with the focus on “you’re really effective because…” and “if you did… it would make you more effective”, helping us to develop feedback skills.

The last few sessions focused on team roles using the Belbin Theory. We discovered the difference between the role we play in teams and what our pre-course questionnaire told us. It led us to review our team strengths and look at what we could have done differently in the previous teamwork sessions to make us better team members.

Last, we learned about importance of profitability to the business and we looked at ways of improving profitability through our engagements, project delivery, accounting and effective client relationships.

The course wrapped up with a review of what we’d covered over the two days and a check to ensure we’d achieved the objectives we set between us at the start.

In late afternoon I left leafy Berkshire with a much better understanding of the role of the consultant and some new learnings to take forward.

I would encourage all new joiners and those looking for a skills refresh to go on this training course as it’s a great way to learn new skills and meet colleagues.

Search Is Everywhere and Frequently Poorly Implemented

alexander.holt — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 21:47:00 GMT

I am visited my parents last week and there was a large thunderstorm one night. Because of the thunderstorm, their cable-box/DVR died. The local cable company showed up in the morning and replaced it the old box with a new one. One of the first things that my father wanted to do, was setup the shows that they wanted to record. But he could not. The problem was one of search.

The first aspect of the problem is that guide the shows had to be downloaded, so the informaiton about the shows was not on the local device. And then to add insult to injury, the search on the box was limited to the title versus the full text of the description about the show which was available on the old device.

It is very clear that the cable company and the device manufacturer could have done a much better job with the search on these devices. Frist there is absolutely no reason that the device could not be search a central service for programming information. I know that DVR's are remotely programmable and IP address-able. They have a cable modem in the device. Secondly the search interaction and subsequent ability to record shows should be able to work on description information.

This is potentially another reason why people are turning off their cable TV service. It is dramatically easier to find shows on Hulu, Boxee, or another web-based video service.

Automating Task Scheduler

alexander.holt — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 21:02:00 GMT

A few months ago I was on an engagement where I was trying to automate the setup of several batch jobs for the first time since the late 1990's. This was the first time being back directly administering a Windows Server box since 2000 as well.

On the development environment, we had created several batch jobs that periodically ran a SQL import script to bring content into the FAST ESP 5.3 instance. In preparation for going live, we had to duplicate the development environment and build the QA environment. To start, I exported the jobs on the development server, and then changed the appropriate parameters such as:

Server Names
User Name that script runs under
How often the script is run
Any directory information that differs between development and production

Unfortunately this where are things when wrong. The problem is that when you tried to import the job via the command line, it would error out immediately with an "access denied" message. The command line script was in the form of:

schtasks.exe /create /tn ImportJob /xml "importjob.xml"

However when you tried to import the job from the Task Scheduler GUI everything went perfectly. Just the command line was the problem. Searching the internet produced a wealth of information:

But none of that information solved the problem. For some reason, it worked on my local development VM, the team development server, but not the QA environment. After a long search, and no answer, I asked all my colleagues in EMC Consulting, and the answer showed up quickly. The command line needs to be a "Run as Administrator", even though the user account being used to do the install was an administrator account.

I took away a couple of pieces of information from this experience. The first being that you need to start basics. The second being is that you should always reach out to you coworkers early and often.

Mayday, Mayday, Cloud under attack!

jaspal.dhalliwal — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 11:25:00 GMT

In several recent discussions with security groups and agencies within private and public sector, the issue of security has of course come up. There are several facets to security, but the specific issue was regarding ‘breaking out of the hypervisor’ that facilitates virtualization and zero-day attacks. These are certainly points to consider amongst the euphoria surrounding Cloud models.

Cases, such as the Google attack in January 2010, reiterate the need for vigilance in the large scale constructs known as Public Clouds. That Google was able to determine attack vectors and attack surface indicate a high level of skill and diagnostic tool capability. However, note, this was ‘after-during’ the attack, not ‘before’.

One of the reasons that many organizations would like to go Private Cloud, ahead of the expounded benefits of the Public Cloud model, is exactly the sense that their data and systems are secure behind their own perimeter networks. Make no mistake; Public Cloud providers also have perimeter networks, firewalls and DMZs (demilitarized zones) as thick as picket fences around their infrastructure. Nonetheless, much of this is rendered useless, or at least of limited value, when an innocuous eMail or PDF document is sent to a user, who unwittingly unleashes ‘the Mother of all Malware!’.

These types of attacks can subvert the ‘goodness’ of the Cloud to absolutely insidious uses – imagine millions of systems in a Cloud Provider environment attacked, subverted, and then infiltrating other Clouds and consumer PCs – a veritable storm of trouble!

It is important to note that the attacks themselves are not always sophisticated attacks, but with the use of techniques commonly used to protect environments and data, such as encryption, malware/botnets can also start to cover their traces and make themselves ‘protected’. Panda Labs has the Mariposa-botnet analysis example of non-sophisticated but effective botnet activity. It is difficult to differentiate a program as being good or bad upon sighting aloe. A botnet can also be a benign entity in the form of a distributed program running across many different systems.

So what is happening in the Cloud to protect against such attacks?

Well actually, a lot of investment and research is going into precisely preventing or at least limiting the reach of these attacks. RSA, an EMC division, has its enVision suite that automates security event analysis and remediation across large networks. The ability to ‘perform parallel processing, correlation and analysis’ allows the security framework itself to use in parallel the same Cloud resources that are potentially under attack.

It should be clear that only software/hardware enhanced programs running on this mega scale allow us to proactively manage the environment from a security and risk perspective. The RSA enVision flyer says it all. The ability to analyse and draw in ‘tens of thousands of device log' entries in near real-time is an ability of paramount importance. To this is added the ability to use policies and advanced heuristics to determine ‘suspicious’ behavior.

There are other products and vendors out there offering functionality targeted at finding the proverbial ‘needle-in-a-haystack’ that points to an attack, and being able to lock this down asap. Network providers such as Cisco are offering network level awareness of attacks, and literally locking down the attacks ability to use the network to propagate. Cisco calls this MARS, the Cisco security monitoring, analysis, reporting system. Again, a very powerful tool that is integrated at all levels of the computing environment.

Effectively, even if a hypervisor has been compromised, the network itself would be able to potentially lock-out that node from the entire network. This blocks the ability to propagate the botnet/malware further. VMware, Microsoft, Citrix, Novell, RedHat, Oracle together with the myriad other hypervisor manufacturers are actually pretty careful to ensure that their code is rock solid. The fact that the dedicated hypervisors actually are focused on just the activity of providing virtualization means that they can be well locked down. There are many additional best practices to further harden the systems that are published.

VMware provides the VMsafe interfaces that allow virus scanning engines to interface to the hypervisor itself and prevent infection before reaching the virtual machine itself. Large scale protection paradigms are now beginning to materialize. This agent-free approach starts to link into the policy based engines that drive the clouds of today, such that new protection schemes, rules and filters can be applied literally across thousands of machines to stop zero-day attacks from gaining any form of ascendancy in the Cloud infrastructure.

The use of software firewalls that can actually process huge amounts of information with the increasing core density in the underlying infrastructure (‘Multi-Core Gymnastics in a Cloud World’) allow virtual machines to be protected on a per VM basis. This actually provides higher protection than in the physical constructs they replace. Policy driven engines can update firewall rules across millions of virtual machines in a very short space of time.

Other operating system enhancements, silicon-enabled security baked into the chip, protocol enhancements in IPv6, wide spread easily accessible encryption are paving the way for a myriad of ways to protect systems, the data, unauthorized access and detailed audit trails (privacy is still an issue here) to follow attacks to their source.

In conclusion, there are many existing and new technologies being integrated directly into the fabric of virtualization. This in turn is making the ability of security analysts in pinpointing and locking down attach vectors en masse far more efficient.

The best thing of all is the unprecedented level of integration into the hypervisor itself that allows these multi-layered defense mechanisms to be easily deployed and managed. So yes, Clouds can be safe to conduct business – but caution still needs to be applied. A lot of good common sense and expertise built up in organizations over time is still valid. However, good procedures, design, implementation and operations are still keystones of safety.

The Cloud paradigm itself is finding ways of protecting itself. The side-effects of cloud usage are themselves of benefit. With the move to virtual desktop and servers, the ability for an organization to patch its systems frequently without scheduling changes over months, has allowed one of the principal attack vectors, the compromised PC, to be protected.

That protection is gradually shifting down to the physical PCs in the form of free virus scanners (better than none at all – yes that still exists;-) reduced application software footprint and the use of SaaS offerings with frequently updated protection filters is slowing down the spread of infection.

The Cloud paradigm, and the evolving security eco-system, indicates large scale infrastructure can protect itself. The Private Cloud still prevents a very strong case for privacy, security and compliance as it is felt to be inherently secure. Clouds still need to be able to protect themselves and other Clouds at the same time. This stops/slows the movement of infection/malware until appropriate identification and removal countermeasures can be deployed. Get your feet wet in the Private Cloud first, security-wise, and then consider the Public Cloud. This is a perfectly valid Journey-Route to the Cloud!

August Recruitment Update

Michelle.Flynn — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 14:32:00 GMT

Since my last update we have recruited a number of excellent people (67 this year and counting...) and been given the go ahead to recruit a few more so here is an update for you.

Application Architect Design & Development

Microsoft Solutions Architect

.Net Technical Lead

Microsoft BI Architect

Microsoft BI Developer

Financial Services

Senior Project Manager

Interactive Media

Head of Planning

Senior User Experience Architect

User Experience Architect

If you would like to see the full job spec for any of these roles please email me at emccukrecruitment@emc.com.

You can also find out more about each of our teams and the roles we have at the EMC Consulting careers page.

EMC Consulting Blogs

All things VMworld: Day 2

vBeers – September 2nd 2010(That’s right this evening)

vBeers

Silverlight UK User Group [September 2010] Agenda

AGENDA

About Guy Smith-Ferrier

All Things VMworld: Day 1

The launch of The Fantastic Tavern website

Monitoring Applications deployed on PaaS (Windows Azure) … Business as usual

All Things VMworld:Day 0

Windows 7- Virtual Desktops… the way to go (Part 2)

Best Practice Analyser (BPA) introduced in SQL Server 2008 R2

Nordstrom: Tweaks, Stories, Mobile & Social

All Things Virtual 16

Let the creative juices flow...

Windows 7- To Virtualize or not to Virtualize - that is the question!

I was wrong....

What's wrong with this advert?

Consuming data from Windows Azure Table Storage using the Repository-Mapper-Command pattern

The challenge of consuming data from Table Storage

An overview of the Repository-Mapper-Command pattern

An important aside on the role of data service context and transactions

The Repository

The Mapper

The Command

Summary

Useful Resources

What is The Fantastic Tavern?

So what makes ideas stick? The Fantastic Tavern investigates (in New York)

EMC voted number 3 in the World's most admired companies

All Things Virtual 15

Consultancy Skills with Tim Barker and Pete Murphy

Search Is Everywhere and Frequently Poorly Implemented

Automating Task Scheduler

Mayday, Mayday, Cloud under attack!

August Recruitment Update