ForeThought - RCV Innovations

Private Cloud is a secure, stable, scalable and simple shared services model deployed within enterprise network boundary adhering to cloud computing principles. Primary Goal of Migration to Private Cloud is Seamless transfer of Application Services from Current Data Center to the new facilities built using Shared Services Architecture for Private cloud. AppsCloud – A Methodology for migrating to Private Cloud The Emphasis of this methodology is on: Understanding application workload Behavior Ensure Security Leverage technology innovations Adherence to Cloud Computing Principles The Goal is to de-risk the datacenter migration, reduce disruption due to change and simplify the path to Private cloud adoption. Understanding Application Workloads Application Infrastructure in a large organization is inherently difficult to comprehend as a single entity due to diversity of Application workloads (Email, Database, Data warehousing, ERP, Analytics etc). D...

Cloud computing is loosely used to describe the convergence of servers, storage, network unified with a common automation framework. In order to create a sustainable and successful team, there is a need to invest into a SOLID cloud team with clear objectives of creating a SIMPLE, STABLE, NIMBLE and CAPABLE Engineering Leadership. Service Orchestration, Logistics, Infrastructure Design & Deployment (SOLID 2 ) Cloud Team Server Technology Automation & Build Lead Engineer (STABLE) Storage Infrastructure Management Practice Lead Engineer (SIMPLE) Network Infrastructure Management & Build Lead Engineer (NIMBLE) Capacity Availability Performance Automation & Build Lead Engineer (CAPABLE) This could be winning team.... on lighter vien...

The Management challenges, Eco-Consciousness and Escalating costs are driving the Technology providers to move from discrete solutions for Compute, Storage and networking to Unified Information Infrastructure. The Unified Information Infrastructure as a framework builds on Unified Compute, Unified Network, and Unified Storage. There is a need to incorporate the management and security services to complete the Data Center 3.0 requirements. The Advancements in network technologies and Standards (10 G Ethernet, FCoE, IPMI etc) are fuelling the Vision of a Unified Network. It is practical to unify the management traffic, inter-process (cluster)-communication- IPC, Storage area network (SAN) and Local area network-LAN traffic onto a single unified fabric. Some solutions are driving this to the realm of reality today. With the advent of in Blade server technology and Virtualization at the access network layer for these solutions, there is a clear shift toward Unifieds Compute. Unified Compu...

Cloud adopters should consider the following key elements when implementing Cloud service delivery frameworks: Leverage existing infrastructure within the prospective Cloud providers. Use a graduated adoption from semi-automated to fully automated processes. Balance between customization and standardization while making an effort to have differentiated services. In order to help cloud adopters realize the value of this approach, It is better to walk the talk....A Cloud Lab can be created and evolved in the same manner as a Production Cloud deployment. As a Physical Manifestion of a cloud, there are three critical components Core Network and Shared Data Center Workload Execution Engines Resource Pool Management, Securty, SLA Analytics and Automation Infrastructure (on-going development/enhancement roadmap) A Practical Deployment plan for Core Data Center Network Services is as follows: Core Network Services such as CRS, Nexus 7k Cat 6k Services complex with Service blades for Firewall/L...

It is nice go through the grind once again for this VCP certification... Now I am VSP, VTSP, VCP... Don't mean to be bragging here... :-) Quoting from Frost "Miles to go before I sleep"... Cisco UCS certification is on the horizon... Watch out...

We are installing UCS...It is probably the easiest blade system to bring it into the network In a UCS system - Upstream ---> UCS Manager/Fabric Interconnect ---> Fabric Extender in each Blade Chasis ---> Mez card on Server Blade Connect to the Interconnect through serial cable and configure Managment IP address by completing the setup steps... http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/unified_computing/ucs/sw/cli/config/guide/b_CLI_Config_Guide.html We need to connect to Mgmt0 port - of the Fabric interconnect to Mgmgt net and access it throught the IP set to the Management port Once you are able to launch the gui... it is familiar territory http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/unified_computing/ucs/sw/gui/config/guide/GUI_Config_Guide.pdf The Rest of the setup can be very specific to your special needs... The simplicity of UCS is refreshing...

Ideas are are like channels on Radio/TV. They are on air 24/7. All you need is the sensitivity to tune in to them. Once in tune encourage the torch bearers. Walk with them for couple of rounds of execution. This is a story of innovation that impacts the bottom of the pyramid. Our team is proud to be part of simple yet critical innovation that continues to improve healthcare for millions of below poverty line patients. About One and half year ago...We had opportunity to work with a organization called aarogysri (www. aarogyasri.org). We had won a contract to provide a email platform for this initiative. Providing a email platform was nothing more than a product sale, however we started engaging with different stake holders and over casual conversations. We understood the Business Model where Aaroagyasri trust(funded by government) pays a contracted amount to third party insurance company on behalf of below poverty line family, each hospital provides services to pat...

One of my friends Karthik and I were talking about Cloud Marketplaces and his boss/my friend Raj Buyya (www.buyya.com) has written academic view on Cloud Market place. I had worldview that was grounded in reality of today's state of the art in cloud technology. In Today's Cloud Providers are very weak in providing B2b interfaces, there is no single window for: Uniform API's or Standards for Provisioning for SaaS, PaaS and IaaS Monitoring and Management frameworks Delegated Administration portals or mature Reseller Relationships Model for ISV relationships for Pay-per-use deployment of Applications Model for Engaging Consulting and SME' resources Model for Management platforms and Managed Service Providers Promotion and Adoption models - Monitization of Assets in Muliple Business Models(Free, Fremium, Ad-Supported, Premium, Concierage) Training and Certification Federated Identity Management Comprehensive Services Catalog A Practical approach is to Create a Cloud service...

The Cloud Announcement of Sify did not come as a big bang one shot deal...It has lot to do with the Sound strategy, Business acumen and Persistent Execution of our Business Team. At the the outset there is a lot of hardwork and confidence of various technical teams to pull it off...There are several things that were done on the technology camp(Network, Storage, Servers and Data Center teams) for over two years that culminated into facing this deployment with conviction, courage and grace... The Major emphasis in cloud computing environments on how to execute the key processes such as Fulfilment(order processing and Provisioning), Assurance(monitoring, managment & SLO/SLA's) and Billing (usage reporting and Billing) with as as much automation as possible. These process famework has been established with our early SaaS initiatives. The First forray in to building a SaaS platform came about somewhere around March 2007. This was just before I joined sify... the leadership saw the v...

Amozon EC2 is probably the most widely adopted User Centric API for cloud services. Google, SalesForce and other Providers expose api for transfer users and information into their own cloud platform. There are approaches such as simple cloud api from Zend to focus on helping the development of cloud native (php) applications using resources available in the public cloud. VMware created a comprehensive vCloud API to cover both user centric and provider centric functions of the cloud. vCloud API provides the necessary abstraction for automation of subscription/management activities by medium to large enterprises and forming inter-cloud relationships. The User centric API elements available in vCloud API include: Inventory Listing Catalog Management Provisioning Application Configuration In addition to the above, The API includes Service Provider activities for managing Organizations, Users, Roles and Product Catalogs. There is a need for open standards to evolve and cover S...

There are active Cloud computing initiatives by several service providers. This is article is an attempt to address the pains of jumpstarting, Ramping up up such initiatives along with providing a long term roadmap for sustainable management of large muti-site cloud computing infrastructures. Most of the Service Provider Environments have a well defined Business Support Systems-BSS(Customer Portal, Service Delivery and Rating/Billing Systems. The Operation Support systems-OSS for Service Resource Management/inventory/CMDB, Customer Account/Profile/Identity management and Equipment Provisioning Systems. These systems are generally optimized to handle Network services and Hosted Services.

The Service Provider Economics have been driven by RADIUS from the early days of Dialup internet services. Over the years, RADIUS gained prominence as vital standard supported almost every networking device for Authentication, Authorization and Audit. There are Many Successful deployments of RAIDUS as enabler of Billing and Reconciliation. Good RADIUS article

I had a chance to meet Senior Telcom Executives. There was a healthy discussion about the first/last mile challenges. The conversation lead to challenges faced by ISP's due to growth Video streaming and download traffic. The Problem statement: - Bandwidth consumption of on Conumer network due to video traffic both due to streaming and download Detailed Description: There was a discussion about how consumer business is negetively impacted due to the popularity of Online Video. Added to this, The Content providers are not willing to colocate the content with the SP. there are consumer who consume gigabytes of bandwidth from residential customers due video download services such as netflix. Technical background: HD Video takes anywhere between 1 to 20 Mbps bandwidth for streaming the video(MP4,MPEG2, SD, HD) . the current experience is jerky with wait times to accomadate for the download capability and congetion. The video rental sites have a different behevior due to the need to down...

The Choice of a Data Center location is largely influenced by emotional need for security, Business Sense and Technical Prudence. As one of the largest data center provider of India, our team is constantly juggling between these factors. It is important to understand the emotional needs of user community. Even in this age of borderless commerce and cloud based virtual infrastructure; there is still a premium for secure and accessible data center facilities. Users continue to feel safer if their servers are close to the work location. They are willing to pay a premium for accessible and secure locations. In addition to emotional needs, there may be regulatory and political factors for locality of the data. The recent drive by government of India to fund State Data Centers(SDC) in many of the Indian states under the National e-Governance Program is a visible example to fulfill these needs. In my Experience, It was easy to convince the datacenter users/customers to move-in the computing a...

This is the age of IT savvy business executives. they have a keen insight into the benefits and pitfalls of IT. This crop of Business executives constantly challenge the IT departments/CIO's on both merit and value of implemented technologies. The recent downturn has further increased the scrutiny in to the exact spend and benefits of IT investments. This resulted in a significant reduction of spend on Big ticket/Big Toys(Large SMP servers, Storage and Network Overhauls) and Growth oriented Buzzword deployments(BI/CRM etc). The New Mantra for CIO's is to plan and execute growth oriented projects with S.A.M.E (Simple, Agile, Mobile, Efficient) and Greener IT : Simple – CIO's are looking for simpler more transparent closed ended deployments of software and hardware infrastructure at a predictable cost. This driving the adoption XaaS - (X as a Service -SaaS-Software, PaaS-Platform, IaaS - Infrastructure etc) in the Enterprise. Agile- The Projects generating unique Intellect...

When I was kid... We used to go on bicycle trips... one, two some time three people on one bicycle... the bicycle trip was more fun with more people sitting on them but painful for the driver. Sharing a Single user appliance with multiple users is generally painful for the primary owner of the resource. Let's take the case of Desktop computers. If you carefully analyse a desktop computer, there are three main functions: 1. Access - Keyboard, Video, Mouse, Sound, USB etc. 2. Storage - Harddisk and CDROM 3. Compute - Processor and Memory Let's take the bicycle analogy again of sharing access - this can be realized by software like VNC Server and VNC Viewer - here One Driver(VNC Server) and Many passengers (VNC viewers) can share the Access experience. In this case the passengers(VNC viewers) are the sufferers. So Sharing the Access layer may not be such a good idea. The same is not true for both storage and compute. The Capabilities and capacities of desktop storage and compute e...

A friend of Mine shared these question to help his friend to face the media... All the answers are straight from my heart... 1. Is cutting costs in the data center a priority for most of your customers? What are the key factors pertaining to cost that pose a problem in data centers? Security enforcement, Power Density and Cooling efficiency 2. How do you propose to go about helping clients cut costs without new investments? Reuse servers, Reclaim Storage and Consolidate Database/application workloads – this will help in cutting costs. 3. What are the key criteria to improve performance of the data center? - Balanced architecture with mixture of Dense(blade-like) and standard Workloads to balance power and cooling requirements. - Well planned storage foot print with balance of performance and capacity storage. - Plan a Flat low latency network core switching and routing with properly configured structured cable plant. - Simpler non-intrusive security infrastructure so that server cycle...

The Perspective in this blog is a first hand account from working for a network service provider under going a transformation. We are moving from simple bandwidth and data center services provider to a complete managed services provider(for IT Infrastructure) by partnering with several hardware, software and tools providers. Let me do jargon bursting for easier comprehension... SaaS - Software as a Service - Providing a in-house/third party software in a shared Multi-tenanted (apartment leasing type) model with automatic upgrades and technology refreshes in a Pay as you go model. Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Providing basic building blocks of IT like Servers, Storage and Networks along with some tools that enable hosting/running compatible applications on a pay as you go model. Cloud computing - Similar to PaaS in a pay per use model with more generic/abstracted platform services. What are Managed Services ? Managed services in general is the practice of transferring day-to-day relat...

There are hardly any tools to truely automate a Multivendor Storage Services Environment. Storage Admin's are stuck with Veriety of Independent Web interfaces or commandline tools with little or no common semantics for common configuration elements or a provisioning activities. The procedures are generally convoluted with myriad manual settings... This is the most realistic dipiction of Multi-vendor Storage Administrators Plight... I was a ECC( http://www.emc.com/products/family/controlcenter-family.htm ) user and large-size env.. EMC Storage admin.. ECC got very close... but it was pig... to slow. Good for Symmetrix..Weak for for Clariion and third party arrays.. There are tools like NetAPP SanScreen( http://www.netapp.com/us/products/management-software/sanscreen/sanscreen-service-insight.html ), Symantec Command Central( and HP AppIQ( http://h18006.www1.hp.com/products/software/bto/srmgt/index.html ), itheon's SRA http://www.itheon.com/solutions/storage_resource_analysis.htm...

Virtualization as a technology existed from the mainframe era in large glasshouse data centers. Transfer of virtualization technology on to commodity x86 based hardware has increased the adoption of virtualization. The first generation of x86 based Virtualization technologies had limited use in testing, development and re-hosting legacy applications. We are seeing rapid evolution of Virtualization technologies by the vendor community into what we know as Virtualization 2.0. What is Virtualization 2.0 ? In my view, Virtualization 2.0 is about taking the virtualization from development, staging and production servers to Desktop (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure - VDI), Mobile and affordable Cloud based Disaster Recovery/business continuity applications. Virtualization 2.0 signifies free/inexpensive access to advanced hypervisor based Virtualization technologies from various vendors. This is allowing the change in deployment models for virtualization from typical scale-up approach(SMP with ...