vBlock and Private Cloud

I'll be honest... when EMC announced the vBlock architecture alongside the VCE initiative, I didn't quite get its importance.  In my mind, there was very little benefit to these preconfigured stacks, especially at the price points that I heard rumored.

After a few weeks, I think I've got a handle on it and why this is potentially a big deal.

When technologies first come out, implementations are fairly complex and require quite a bit of trial and error alongside a fairly good breadth of skillsets.  VMware was no different... it required people who understood virtualization technology, networking, storage, Windows/Guest OSes, and security.  As time passed, the implementations become easier due to the toolsets becoming better and the availability of knowledge increasing.

After that, the difficulty shifted.  Beyond the politics of getting signoff for virtualizing as much of your environment as possible, the next challenge was taking the architecture and scaling it big.  As the technology progressed, this became easier (it is still not what I'd call "simple") and things start shifting towards "how do we backup/recover these large environments, and how do we leverage the technologies in play for Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity?"

But what strikes me is, as the challenges become greater, the importance of a good fundamental implementation remains.  Compatibility matrices still need to be kept up to date, documented, and tested.  Research needs to be done on new server hardware models and processor models, alongside updating any documentation/procedures that change as new VM farms are built on the new hardware.

What is really the kicker, though, is typically the people who originally brought in VMware are still at that level, making sure the implementations are solid rather than spending the time on the more difficult "next big thing."

So how does vBlock fit into this?  Simple.  If you are an organization where there is a large virtualized environment and you aren't allowed headcount increases, vBlock offers an opportunity... namely to take some of your best technical employees and allow them to be repositioned to where they can provide the most value.  Lets face it, an architect with 4+ years of experience is wasted on validating firmware levels.  Similarly, in these large environments where vBlock makes sense, churning VMware farms to stay supported isn't a great use of highly skilled resources time.

If you notice, the vBlock architecture does not cover the current cutting edge portions of leveraging the virtual infrastructure as much as possible to benefit DR/BC.

How does this play into Private Clouds?  Simple.  There are a lot of private cloud definitions floating around, but for the purpose of this, I'm going to drastically simplify it.

A private cloud is "self service IT."

A lot of people get edgy when you start discussing private clouds.  The foremost argument typically runs along these lines:  A private cloud, implemented properly, greatly reduces the time to deploy a server/system, increases the accuracy of the build process, and dramatically reduces the "friction" of implementation.  By "friction," what I'm really getting at are those things that take a 1 day server build and turn it into a 2 week process.  By reducing the friction and difficulty of implementing new systems, the total cost will go up because there will be a lower barrier of entry (easier/quicker build process = more systems being built = more money goes to VMware, Microsoft, and your storage vendor).

Not quite.  A good private cloud still requires strong processes.  Systems have to be sized, priced, signed off on, and someone with a budget has to agree to fund it.  None of that really changes (granted, depending on many factors, sizing exercises may be reduced in many cases).  All that changes is, once all of the appropriate approvals are attained, systems can be deployed in days instead of weeks.  Money still should not be spent without a good business and cost justification - but in either model, if someone gets the appropriate signoffs and funding, the environment is going to get built.

The second argument is fairly simple:  In order to implement a good private cloud, it takes automation, standardization, and virtualization. If things get to the point where it is extremely simple to deploy systems, then people could lose jobs.  Lets be honest with ourselves... if the only value IT resources provide is the ability to install a server, then their days of employment are probably numbered anyway.  If their only function is to ask "small, medium, large, or super-sized server," they are probably in the wrong profession.

The final bit is this.  The vBlock provides a couple things:

• A standardized, compliant "plug and play" architecture for virtualized environments
• The ability to free up valuable time to work on areas that provide true business value.
• A decent building block for private clouds, alongside software to (supposedly) streamline the administration of the cloud architecture and increase the number of systems a given admin can support.

VMWare/EMC/Cisco were first to market with these preconfigured building blocks.  NetApp recently announced something similar, and I assume Oracle will be coming out with a competitor eventually.  A good systems administrator automates as much as possible.  Fundamentally, all this does is just take automation to the next (massive, cross-vendor) level.