Storage Elasticity and the Cloud’s Noisy Neighbors

If you’re looking at setting up private cloud services — or public ones, for that matter — you should already to have a handle on how to automate the critical functions of creating, managing and migrating virtual servers. That’s because if you haven’t achieved this level of service elasticity, it is going to cost a [...]

Should We KISS Workload Management Goodbye?

I am always surprised at how IT goes around continually revisiting problems from the past.  For example, in the 1990s, the constant refrain seemed to be around homogeneity — the search for the universal system that could run any workload that was thrown at it.  Organizations eventually figured that there was a need for specialist [...]

The Need for Speed

A day in the life… Picture the scene. You’re a sys admin, lying in bed at 4am in the UK  Suddenly, you’re awakened by the shrill ring of your smartphone. The remote office in Tokyo can’t access the sales system – and prospective customers are getting restless. The remote office has its own server – [...]

Serenity Now!

One of my favorite Seinfeld episodes is the one in which Frank Costanza yells, “Serenity Now!” every time his blood pressure was in danger of rising. Clearly, he was using this “technique” to relieve his stress. Unfortunately, Frank’s method of relaxation drove everyone else crazy. While data centers and WAN infrastructures continue to grow in [...]