Tag Archives: cloud usage

TechEd: Microsoft preps system software for cloud usage

TechEd’s first day unveils the Azure-friendly Windows Server 2012 R2, System Center 2012 R2, Visual Studio 2013 and SQL Server 2014

Microsoft is updating a number of its IT infrastructure and development tools to work more seamlessly with its Azure hosted cloud services, including Windows Server, System Center, Visual Studio and SQL Server.

Brad Anderson, Microsoft
Brad Anderson, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of Windows Server and System Center.

“You can think of all these products as being Azure-powered. We’re bringing the experience, code and design from Azure to our on-premise products,” said Brad Anderson, who is Microsoft’s corporate vice president of Windows Server and System Center.

At the Microsoft TechEd conference this week in New Orleans, Anderson will announce the pending releases of Windows Server 2012 R2, System Center 2012 R2, Visual Studio 2013 and SQL Server 2014, as well as an update of Microsoft’s Intune computer management service. Each of these products will be available in preview form later this month, and all will be available as commercial releases by the end of the year, except for SQL Server 2014, which will be released early in 2014.

All these releases share a familiar theme: They all work with Azure, or Azure-like cloud services from Microsoft partners, streamlining the process for organizations to shift their workloads between their own data centers and cloud services. Using these latest releases, organizations can back up their in-house Windows Server applications or SQL Server databases in Azure. Or they could use Azure for failover operations, where the cloud service could take over operations should the primary data-center servers fail for some reason, Anderson said in an interview before the conference opened.

“We have focused on enabling organizations to embrace the hybrid cloud, breaking down the barriers to seamlessly stretch your data center out to a service provider, or out to Azure,” Anderson said. “Rather than purchasing licenses from other vendors, you can now take advantage of what is in SQL Server and Windows Server to get these capabilities, which are covered in your existing licenses.”

The Windows Server 2012 R2 update will provide capabilities to copy applications and data on the server to Microsoft Azure, or to other service providers’ Azure implementations. The OS will also facilitate a way to replicate Hyper-V virtual machines on Azure. Also helping with cloud deployments is Windows Server 2012 R2’s new capabilities in storage tiering, which allows administrators to establish different levels of storage. This feature could be handy in using storage more cost-effectively, by providing an easy way to store the most essential data on the fastest storage devices, while squirrelling away the less consulted data on less expensive disks.

Microsoft is also updating its System Center IT management software for Azure use. The new version will allow organizations to establish policies for running Windows Server and Hyper-V virtual machines both in the cloud and on premises. Organizations can use the software to set their policies for backing up and conducting failover operations on large numbers of servers.

The new version of the software will be the first to offer management support for Android and Apple iOS devices, Anderson said. Administrators can manage the settings for features such as VPNs (virtual private networks), logins, wireless settings and other functionality required by the enterprise.

Along with Windows Server 2012 R2, SQL Server 2014 will also have hooks into Azure, Anderson said. SQL Server databases can be backed up to Azure. This new version of the database will be the first to offer in-memory capabilities, developed under the code-name Hekaton.

On the development side, Azure offers some new features for the upcoming Visual Studio 2013 release. For instance, Visual Studio will offer the ability to load test a new application on Azure. “As you are building your application, you can place a heavy load on it, by using Azure,” Anderson said.

In addition to the software updates, the company will also announce new services and features in its Windows Azure hosted computing offering. It will offer a preview of Windows Azure BizTalk Services, an online version of Microsoft BizTalk enterprise service bus (ESB). The company has also unveiled new per-minute billing for virtual machines.

The purpose of Microsoft’s TechEd is to educate administrators and IT professionals about Microsoft’s back office and enterprise software products. During his keynote on Monday, Anderson plans to reveal some adoption statistics for Microsoft’s enterprise products.

For instance, Microsoft’s server and tools division now is a US$19 billion business, and has been growing at 10 percent for the past four quarters. More than 75 percent of enterprise applications now run on Microsoft Windows Server. Anderson touted that the Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisor is growing at “three times that of VMware.”

The SQL Server user base is growing 1.7 times as fast as Oracle’s flagship database. By Microsoft’s calculations, SQL Server is the most widely used database in the world, possessing a 47 percent share of all SQL databases. And System Center sales have been growing as well — sales were up 35 percent in the last quarter, Anderson said.


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16 of the most useful cloud management tools

16 of the most useful cloud management tools
A growing set of services allow customers to more easily track their cloud usage

One of the biggest concerns users have with public cloud resources is not knowing how much they will cost, given the pay-as-you-go model.

“IT shops are becoming cost centers for service delivery,” says William Fellows, a researcher at the 451 Group. “But they’re looking for ways to determine how their clouds are running, how much it’s costing and whether it’s a good value.”

Vendors provide some services around tracking usage. Amazon Web Services, for example, last week announced more granular data, allowing users to track their services hour by hour.

But there is a growing ecosystem of cloud management tools. Some help companies manage, track and optimize their use of public or private cloud resources. Others help companies automate and deploy cloud resources. And others act as a platform for managing public cloud resources.

Below is a list of 16 cloud management tools, broken up by category: cost tracking, automation and provisioning, and cloud management platform. This is not intended to be an all-inclusive list, but rather an overview of some of the players.

Cost tracking

Cloudability: Provides cost usage metrics, as well as predictions of how much of certain resources users are consuming and which ones are under-utilized. The company’s application programing interface (API) allows users to import metrics into various other tools for storage and analysis. Cloudability works across multiple public cloud providers as well.

More information: Cloudability


Cloudyn: Israeli-based Cloudyn provides tracking of cloud resources and recommendations of how to optimize cloud usage. It offers a free reserved instance calculator, which helps customers calculate costs related to reserving virtual machines in AWS’s public cloud, and has a premium enterprise version that will provide recommendations of which cloud resources to use and alerts of underutilized cloud resources. The company claims that it helps customers avoid an average of 40% of their costs by optimizing their cloud usage. Cloudyn recently announced a partnership with Scalr to help customers automate the provisioning of cloud resources based on recommendations from Cloudyn’s analysis tools.

More information: Cloudyn


Cloud Cruiser: Venture-backed Cloud Cruiser provides cost tracking and optimization analysis across a variety of IT platforms, from on-premise systems to colocation to private and public clouds. The Cloud Cruiser system allows users to measure usage and allocate costs, creating a chargeback billing model within an IT organization. The company was founded in 2010 by Dave Zabrowski, a former HP enterprise division vice president and general manager.

More information: Cloud Cruiser


Newvem: Israeli startup Newvem has focused its efforts entirely on Amazon Web Services and providing cloud metrics and optimization recommendations. Newvem Analytics software collects data from customers’ use of AWS resources and provides metrics of usage patterns, as well as recommendations of more efficient resource allocation based on past use. Newvem recently launched a partnership with Datapipe, which is a provider of cloud and managed hosting services that also customizes cloud deployments for users, acting as a “gateway” to public cloud vendors, including Amazon Web Services.

More information: Newvem


Provisioning/automation
Chef: An open source systems integration framework that includes a library of configuration management tools. Developed by venture-backed Opscode, it integrates with existing applications, including various databases and LDAP directories, and allows for the discovering and provisioning of public or private resources. It has “cookbooks” which include “recipes” for launching OpenStack private cloud instances and AWS public cloud resources, for instance, and it also works across VMware and Rackspace environments, among others.

More information: Opscode Chef


enStratus: Based in Minneapolis, enStratus’s technology enables consumption of multiple types of cloud resources from a single platform. Key features include the ability to manage public or private cloud environments, including security controls such as key management, automation of cloud resource provisioning and installing spending caps for specific projects. It’s delivered either as an on-premise application or a software-as-a-service hosted platform and works across most of the leading cloud providers including: Amazon Web Services, AT&T Synaptic Storage, Bluelock, Cloudscaling OCS, Citrix CloudStack, CloudSigma, EMC Atmos, Eucalyptus, GoGrid, Google Storage, HP Cloud Services, Joyent Cloud, Nimbula, OpenStack, OpSource, Rackspace, ServerExpress, Tata InstaCompute, Terremark, VMware and Windows Azure.

More information: enStratus


Puppet Labs: Puppet Labs’ software is meant to help users automate repetitive tasks, such as deploying applications and managing infrastructure. Within the Puppet Enterprise software, users can discover resources, provision them, configure and manage operating systems and applications, and update patches across public or private clouds. A trial version of the software allows users to manage up to 10 nodes for free.

More information: Puppet Labs


RightScale: Founded in 2006, RightScale is a platform for managing and deploying cloud resources across public and private environments, providing users tools to configure, monitor, automate deployments, and govern controls and access. It works across a variety of public and private platforms including Amazon Web Services, Rackspace, Software, Microsoft Azure, Datepipe and private cloud platforms including CloudStack, Eucalyptus and OpenStack.

More information: RightScale


GigaSpaces Technologies: GigaSpaces is a platform for automating application deployment to a variety of environments, including public and private clouds, as well as physical hardware. The company’s newest product is Cloudify, which it markets as a private platform as a service (PaaS) for deploying applications to public cloud environments without requiring changes to the code. It uses a relationship the company just inked with Chef to automate these tasks.

More information: GigaSpaces


Cloud management
BMC:
Fresh off news of a partnership with Amazon Web Services that certifies BMC as a manager of AWS cloud resources, BMC seems armed with ammunition to take to the enterprise market by being able to enable management of various private cloud platforms and AWS’s public cloud.

More information: BMC


Capgemini: Another AWS Partner, Capgemini provides similar services to BMC, including consulting and tools for migrating applications or starting new workloads in AWS’s cloud.

More information: Capgemini


CA Technologies: CA Technologies cloud management tools, including CA AppLogic, allow users to deploy and scale existing applications across public and private cloud environments with build in monitoring features using a graphic user interface (GUI) that requires no changes to the application’s code. CA has recently enhances its support to deploy management of AWS workloads too.

More information: CA Technologies


Hewlett-Packard: HP has been making a lot of announcements recently about its Converged Cloud Strategy, which it says is a common platform across public and private clouds for users. Based on OpenStack code, the idea is to manage private clouds build on HP servers and have the ability to scale up into HP’s recently launched public cloud, all with the same platform. The company has emphasized its support for multiple types of hypervisors on the private cloud side, but has not talked as much about enabling workloads across multiple public cloud providers though.

More information: HP cloud


IBM: IBM SmartCloud is the omnibus suite of services that provide a range of features, from monitoring the health and status of cloud resources, while also allowing automated connections to compute and storage resources from IBM or other vendors.

More information: IBM SmartCloud


ServiceMesh: ServiceMesh manages public, private and hybrid clouds across a common platform, but allowing separate policies for different environments based on access controls and auditing. It charters on a per-virtual machine basis.

More information: ServiceMesh


VMware IT Business Management Suite: Optimized for VMware environments, the company’s ITBM provides usage metrics for centralized management of a private cloud, allowing CIOs to become “IT service brokers,” the company says. ITBM allows users to set alerts based on cost and service level, and it allows granular information about past, present and predicted future use by individuals and departments as well.

More information: VMware ITBM


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