Matching IT Resources to Application Requirements
The application requirements topic center helps IT operations experts and SysOps professionals ensure adequate application capacity planning to enable high performance, scalability and reliability throughout the app lifecycle.
Top Stories
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News
15 Feb 2022
F5 distributed cloud security services strike a trendy chord
As talk of multi-cloud management gives way to distributed cloud, which also ties in edge computing, F5 bundles application security services to expand its appeal to enterprises. Continue Reading
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News
31 Jan 2022
Enterprise AIOps quietly gets real
Machine learning algorithms are being used to automate some aspects of enterprise IT operations, but the original goal of advanced self-healing systems is still a long way off. Continue Reading
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E-Zine
20 Apr 2016
Container trends fuel storage needs
In life as in technology, there is no free lunch. We've seen this time and again. Every time a technology seems to be too good to be true, we do a little digging, and it turns out we were right.
Containers are just the latest example of a technology that IT must scrutinize. Sure, containers offer a ton of benefits -- density, portability and low-cost -- but what's the catch? Storage may very well be it.
And now that more IT organizations are "doing" DevOps, it's become clear that DevOps isn't some magic pixie dust whose mere mention makes everything right with the world. Meanwhile, over in the cloud, enterprises have learned that it's not all sunshine and roses. Notably, it's dawned on them that migrating legacy applications to an infrastructure as a service provider like AWS or Google Cloud Platform can be more trouble than it's worth.
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E-Zine
16 Mar 2016
Mad about microsegmentation
The tech industry seems fixated breaking things apart into ever-smaller units for greater levels of "granularity." Traditional standalone applications are maligned as "monoliths" that must be broken apart in to their component pieces, or "microservices." Broad brush security that covers an entire network is deemed insufficient, to be replaced by "microsegementation" -- applying security policies on a per-workload basis.
But breaking up is hard to do. In his story, "Mad About Microsegmentation," senior technology editor Stephen Bigelow lays out the pitfalls that will befall operators as they go down this road.
Breaking with tradition is hard too. For decades, one of IT's primary responsibilities has been to protect its systems from catastrophic failure by performing regular point-in-time backups that can get back to a known good state.
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E-Zine
17 Feb 2016
Windows workloads leap to cloud
Regardless of hype, there are quite a few areas where cloud remains very much a work in progress. Take cloud bursting. This has long been IT's holy grail for cloud -- the ability to seamlessly expand capacity constrained workloads to outside of your data center to meet unexpected demand. But while it sounds good on paper, it's not as easy as it sounds.
Running Windows rather than Linux in the cloud also hasn't been easy, but things are getting better. Technically, any infrastructure-as-a-service provider whose hypervisor exposes x86-based VMs should be able to run Windows.
Speaking of Windows, you'd think that Microsoft Azure would be a shoe-in with developers looking for an easy-to-use cloud platform. Based off our recent #Hashtag feature, however, it seems Azure has its fair share of discontented developers.
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E-Zine
20 Jan 2016
The 2016 MI Impact Awards
It's January, people, and you know what that means -- awards season! Not one to be left out of the party, Modern Infrastructure is happy to announce the winners of its third annual Impact Awards, where readers, industry experts and editors weigh in on the products and technologies that will have the biggest impact on IT operations in the coming year. Congratulations to all the winners.
Part of the fun of holding an awards program is watching the returns roll in (over 800 readers participated in this year's voting). But for me, the fun comes much earlier -- back in the summer when we're thinking about which categories to keep, which categories to add, which categories to tweak, and which to retire. We don't want to boil the ocean and recognize every conceivable product category on which IT spends time and money. The idea is to highlight the technologies that are effecting the most change in the data center -- and the areas where infrastructure and operations folks can use a little help from their friends. And now, the winners are!
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E-Zine
17 Nov 2015
The merits of white box switching
Modern infrastructures are based on commodity, non-proprietary hardware. People have used commodity servers for a long time, but now we are seeing commodity switching gear too, on which we layer open network operating systems. This is a promising area, writes Ethan Banks in "Why White Box Switching?" An offshoot of software defined networking, "white box switching might survive on its own merits -- even if SDN falls by the wayside."
Modern infrastructures run on open source software, finds Ed Scannell in "Opening Up to Open Source." The reasons for today's surge of open source projects aren't the same as yesterday's -- whereas open source used to be about saving money, now it's about exploiting "the latest Web-based technologies for mobile, cloud and analytics platforms."
What makes one infrastructure "modern" and another not so much? That is continually up for debate, but there are definitely some common themes. Read on to learn more.
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E-Zine
20 Oct 2015
Collaboration moves beyond email
We have some nice examples of thinking out, not up, in this issue of Modern Infrastructure. Take data-aware storage -- a topic explored by contributing writer Alan R. Earls in "Not Your Average Disk Array." Conversations about data storage can be fairly predictable, centering on performance and capacity. Some storage vendors are stretching the bounds of traditional storage by leaning heavily on metadata and analytics, so as to give operators much more advanced management capabilities.
Then there's email. Given its shortcomings, a lot of people like to think, let's get rid of email altogether and just rely on new and exciting social messaging and collaboration tools. But that's impractical. In "Beyond Email," I talk to organizations augmenting existing email systems with complimentary tools that reduce our reliance on email, but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Read all these stories and much more in the October issue of Modern Infrastructure (we promise -- no corny Halloween jokes!).
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E-Zine
16 Jul 2015
Lift and shift vs. re-platforming cloud apps
When evaluating a new technology, some people like to go all in, with gusto, and adopt it hook line and sinker. Then there are folks whose MO is to take baby steps: Dip a toe in the water and do a lengthy proof of concept. What's right for any given organization depends on its temperament, needs, budget, skills -- any number of factors. One thing's for certain, there's no right answer.
This cover story in this issue of Modern Infrastructure delves into the different ways organizations implement cloud applications, whether replatforming or "lift and shift."
Sometimes, the question isn't how to implement this new technology, but whether to bother implementing it at all. "I'm a big believer in the natural balance that forms based on how people actually use things versus planning for how people might use things," Brian Madden said. So sit tight. What you need to do will become clear soon enough.
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E-Zine
16 Jun 2015
Can hyperconverged systems transform the enterprise?
It's hard to predict which novelties will become mainstays, and which will be has-beens. One current hot technology is hyperconvergence, the subject of Alex Barrett's article in our May issue, "The Hyperconvergence Effect." Is hyperconvergence a transformative approach to delivering IT, or just a nifty way of packaging compute and storage?
There are also many operational implications to a microservices route, says George Lawton: service discovery, network provisioning and release automation. Microservices has its challenges, but some say doing so can deliver significant ROI.
And virtualization has been transformative over the years, even as it's evolved. We've seen a shift away from hypervisor-based server virtualization to containers popularized by Docker. But it's hard to imagine a world without virtualization -- if only for the management and automation opportunities it brings to the table.
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E-Zine
19 May 2015
Container technology thrives for IT
Just when you thought you had driven the last nail in the coffin of old-school IT, you find out it's back -- albeit with a twist.
Remember operating system-level virtualization? This method of server virtualization is back with a vengeance as containers, with Docker leading the charge. But whereas the old-school containers were used largely by service providers to eke out every last drop of capacity from their server farm, today's containers are an application-portability play.
As for data center infrastructure, not only has the entire world not moved to public cloud, but many organizations use that consummate old-school IT model: the data center co-location facility.
Ethernet, meanwhile, never left the data center. Still, tomorrow's Ethernet doesn't look much like the Ethernet you know and love.
Read all about this and more in the May issue of Modern Infrastructure.
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E-Zine
14 Apr 2015
Big data workloads live on-premises
Seven years after its birth, the frenzy around cloud is beginning to subside. IT organizations have embraced public cloud for some workloads, and built private clouds for others.
IT is having productive discussions about which applications to leave where they are, and which applications to re-platform. They're considering the pros and cons of renting shared infrastructure rather than buying dedicated on-premises resources.
You may not get the raw performance from a virtualized cloud instance that you could from dedicated bare-metal hardware -- you need to weigh that against the cost of hiring data center operations staff.
Meanwhile, the hype around big data and social media has just begun. The technology for doing this kind of analytics exists today. You can build a Hadoop-based repository to store the untold amounts of raw data that can later be used to discover unimagined relationships and patterns. It all sounds very promising, but for now, the jury's still out about the value of these initiatives.
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E-Zine
17 Mar 2015
The new face of scale-out storage
There are plenty of new approaches to address ever-growing data needs, including scale-out vs. scale-up designs, the shift from hierarchical file systems to object storage, and the Hadoop Distributed File System. Pretty soon there will be absolutely no excuse not to store every crumb of data ever created.
Delivering Windows applications remotely is another area that could use some improvement, especially in today's age of tablets and mobile devices. App transformation takes existing Windows applications and intelligently delivers them to the target device, similar to how responsive web design principles package web pages differently depending on whether the client is a traditional PC, tablet or smartphone.
VMware, meanwhile seems to have hit a home run among users with its latest release to its venerable vSphere virtualization platform. Some things, it seems, get better with age.
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E-Zine
16 Feb 2015
Hybrid cloud command and control
Expectations set by the public cloud around self-service and speed of deployment are beginning to creep into the enterprise. In the early days of cloud, developers were so wowed -- and the controls around accessing it were so loose -- that many organizations didn't even bother to try to control it. That's changing.
Social collaboration and sharing paradigms have revolutionized consumer behavior and habits. Consider the effects of sites like Facebook, Twitter-esque notions of followers and crowdsourcing knowledge on Wikipedia. IT is usually at the forefront to embrace new ideas, but it has been relatively slow to adopt these constructs.
No longer does every application require its own dedicated hardware; with server virtualization, IT pros can could simply package it up in a virtual machine and make better use of precious resources.
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Tip
02 May 2014
DevOps overhauls app dev scripts
Applications don't run in a vacuum. Operations -- the last step of app development and maintenance -- actually belongs in every stage of the cycle. Continue Reading
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E-Zine
09 Dec 2013
Modern Infrastructure Impact Award winners
The votes are in, and the winners determined. The first edition of the Modern Infrastructure Impact Awards gave prizes to winners in eight categories, which reflect the big topics affecting data center professionals today. Cloud computing, converged infrastructure, enterprise mobility management, hybrid flash storage and desktop and application delivery are all in the spotlight for the Impact Awards. The winning companies and products are those that really stood out for their innovation and intelligence in solving the problems of today’s IT teams.
In addition, the Modern Infrastructure Bright Idea award recognizes an emerging technology concept or product with the potential to really shake up data center operations. The inaugural winner of the Bright Idea award reflects the changing market around using flash storage to improve virtualization practices. Continue Reading