!Breaking News! !Breaking News! !Breaking News!

I came across something disturbing so I had to inform you the public BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE!   This morning while showering, I saw something which I felt needed to be shared.  I have a shower curtain which happens to be a map of the world (Hey, don’t judge! :)) and I noticed something… OMG LOOK OUT, WHAT IS THAT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE MAP?!

That’s right! LOOK AT THAT! THE LENGTHS EMC WILL GO TO SPREAD IT’S MESSAGE OF VIRTUALIZATION!

I immediately rushed to WikiPedia to find out details about what this means – And according to WikiPedia:

Chad Sakac, Officially known as the “Republic of Chad” is divided into three major geographic regions.  (Storage, Networking, Compute?!?)

Apparently, the demonym of these folks are called “Chadians” (which is a far stretch from vSpecialist, but hey, I’m not WikiPedia…)

And then, outrageously.. I read this, “Beginning in the 7th millennium BC, human populations moved into the Chadian basin in great numbers. By the end of the 1st millennium BC, a series of states and empires rose and fell in Chad’s VCElian strip, each focused on controlling the Cloud”

Obviously, this entry in WikiPedia is making reference to one by one all of the top tier talent in the Virtualization, Computing and Networking industry were joining one by one to be a member of Chad’s forces.   So what does this all mean? Let me sum it up for you in a few points…

• Chad Sakac apparently has FAR more reach and influence than previously realized.  The fact that his blog gets so much attention is definitely understandable now!
• I came to this realization of Chad’s influence on the WORLD days leading up to EMC World! Coincidence?! I think not! (I’ll see you at EMC World if you’re attending @cxi/emcworld2010 )
• And if you think this revelation and announcement is paramount, keep your eyes on the blogosphere come the rest of this week, Chad’s overtaking a country will look feeble in comparison!

See you at EMC World 2010! Be sure to follow on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and whatever! :)

Hey big datacenter, I think “booyah” is in order, with this almost stealth announcement of UIM for Ionix!  

Look at the big picture and see what this means for your datacenter!

So, out of box today UIM fully supports management of the whole Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) stack, with evolution to support the rest of the Vblock infrastructure!   Which means taking your Pain of glass you have today and truly turning it into a comprehensive datacenter wide pane of glass for managing the entire stack from a single interface.

What this can mean is consolidated views of your entire Vblock infrastructure..

In the first release your datacenter will be cooking with Service Profile Catalogs enabling a “recipe” for building services and the basis for truly delivering infrastructure as a service.  Yea I know it sounds like lip service but when was the last time you truly had this level of ‘cookie cutter’ capability to deploy what you want, where you want it without having to reinvent the wheel every single time – Service Profile Catalogs will be the answer to let you take control of your datacenter again.

Though, if you feel that even creating recipes is a recipe for disaster – Policy-based management helps keep your environment honest to ensure configuration policies are set and enforced to ensure system-wide compliance to avoid configuration drift.   Oh, did I mention this functionality is also fully supported in this release of UIM with Cisco UCS Network infrastructure, such as Nexus and MDS? I say sweet! :)

What helps to complete this story is Unified Provisioning, configuration, change management – and a simplified integration.

What I’m particularly floored by is the deployment, bare metal provisioning which includes automated provisioning of the disaster recovery site! (Whoa, he did not just say Automated DR!)

The story around provisioning, configuration and change management will be the foundation of your success in the datacenter of the future.   Think about it! unlimited revision history, fine-grained tracking, traceability, and reproducibility! This isn’t the datacenter of 2010! This sounds more like the datacenter of 2100!     Out the gate this first release of UIM will focus on the unified provisioning, configuration and change control of Cisco UCS and the related network infrastructure.

You aren’t going to get away so easily though! I did say simplified integration and I mean it!   UIM Element management integrates with your existing enterprise management solutions on the floor today, providing change and compliance events to help track critical changes.   Furthermore, it leverages Cisco UCS manager APIs and EMC storage management systems allowing you to take advantage of existing instrumentation and component configuration.

So, putting all the marketing jibber jabber aside what does this mean for you, the datacenter owner?   This means that old fashioned model of “Is UCS ready? WTF is this VCE thing? Why do I even need a simplified datacenter operation? What do you mean Private Cloud, it’s sunny outside!”  It means welcome to the future of your datacenter.   The days of silo provisioning, configuration, management and troubleshooting are over!   You know that the top of mind conversation for the 2010 datacenter and on ever C-class’s lips will be  datacenter virtualization, reshaping the data center, and enhanced security – Take a look at that Gartner list and you tell me that VCE isn’t the answer to 5 or more of them ;)

So, the future is most definitely here (hey, 14 days ahead of schedule! How can you go wrong?!)  So there’s no better time than the present to educate yourself about this opportunity and what the rest of the future lay in store.  if you’re looking to discuss the future of your datacenter, let me know because your priorities are my priorities!

I’ve taken the liberty to consolidate all of the Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager 1.0 documents here for your ease: (Powerlink credentials required)

? EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager Release Notes
? EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager Data Sheet
? EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager Installation Guide
? EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager Report Advisor User Guide
? EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager Backup and Recovery Guide
? EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager System Management Console Guide
? EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager Regular Expressions User Guide
? EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager Infrastructure Driver Release Version Support Matrix
? EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager Non-EMC Software Read Me
? EMC Ionix Device Services Engineering DASL Language Changes

I’d also like to thank Chad Sakac for this great YouTube Video and post More VCE Vblock Details including EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager and Storagezilla for their post Vblock and Ionix Unified Infrastructure Management

I remember in the early days of UCS, the competitive question on the table was “I don’t see why I’d want to do this, noone is using it” and I also imagine to hear that echoed here today.

So, who DOES think that this whole VCE coalition is a good idea? Is anyone willing to put their name against it? (Other than the CEO’s of 3 of the largest and best of breed innovative companies on the planet?)

Certainly, Steven Tally – CTO of Purdue University wouldn’t go on record saying:

“Purdue is a research university and the majority of our IT needs are spent on high-performance computing, which requires strong computing, massive amounts of storage, and high-speed networking fabric,” said Steven Tally, CTO of Purdue University.  “The Vblock solution offers these elements in a single pre-tested, pre-integrated solution which will be easier to deploy.  VMware, Cisco, and EMC are ideal partners to respond to this problem because they offer complementary tool sets and have a history of delivering good products in the market space.  When these solutions are tied together in a coherent and systematic way, it is very good news for an environment like Purdue.”

I mean, frankly that’d be ridiculous! That’s  because no one is obviously using this ‘untested’ ‘untrained’ and certainly ‘unplanned’ initiative of aligning three worldclass businesses together around efforts to improve the experience in data centers and making the private cloud a reality?   I frankly know of many other businesses leveraging VCE, as well as many getting ready to sign off on it, and thus I will not share that information until I have something external to reference on it (I do like keeping my job, kthx! ;))

Today was the big day! The launch of the Virtual Computing Environment coalition, also known as the VCE Initiative!

CNN Broke the news as far as the link to the Webinar would go, with announcements being made by:
John Chambers, chairman and CEO for Cisco
Joe Tucci, chairman and CEO for EMC Corp
Paul Maritz, president and CEO for VMware

There has been a lot of chatter about this, over the weekend and even moreso leading into this announcement, with some highlights:

The launch of Privatecloud.com is only the beginning in the mass of places to find out information and content on this amazing initative.

VCE Beats out IBM with Melbourne IT

Cisco and EMC, Together with VMware, Form Coalition to Accelerate Pervasive Virtualization and Private Cloud Infrastructures

In unveiling the Virtual Computing Environment coalition, Cisco and EMC also introduced Acadia, a joint venture focused on accelerating customer build-outs of private cloud infrastructures through an end-to-end enablement of service providers and large enterprise customers. Acadia’s unique “build, operate, transfer” model for delivering the Vblock architecture, addressing people, process and technology, will offer customers further choice, flexibility and cost advantages as they seek to virtualize their IT infrastructures and evolve to private cloud environments. In addition to Cisco and EMC as the lead investors, the build-out of Acadia’s expanded capabilities in 2010 has also been capitalized by investments from VMware and Intel. Because the Vblock architecture relies heavily on Intel Xeon® processors and other Intel data center technology, Intel will join the Acadia effort as a minority investor to facilitate and accelerate customer adoption of the latest Intel technology for servers, storage, and networking.

Cisco, EMC, and VMware join hands and plunge into cloud: Acadia, the power of three

In fact, many partners – both systems integrators, and service providers have all started lining up behind Vblocks.    Here are just a few examples:

Most of the vCloud Express launch partners are using the VCE coalition, and want to move forward with a formal Vblock model.   Examples are Terremark, Alphawest, Savvis, Orange and SunGard. (Thanks for this Chad!)

Virtual Compute Environment – an insider’s take.

Virtual Compute Environment – Vblock Partner Ecosystem

Virtual Compute Announcement – Integrated Sales/Service/Support

Virtual Compute Environment – Solutions Venture and Investment

Virtual Compute Environment – Technology Innovations

Also, looks like there is some Twitter presence too! So, represent! @privatecloudcom

Today, is quite an exciting day, and while all of this is high level, I’d be glad to go into much more depth about this – something I’m sure many of those linked and referenced here can say and do the same.   This is not intended to be a tutorial, but an advisory of what’s new, where to go, and I’ll have separate blog posts to go into the details :) It’s an exciting day! :)