This week has been interesting, mainly in that I was reminded about the simple things in Active Directory and how much harder they become when you dont pay them enough attention. Replication is much like Ron Burgundy – kind of a big deal. If you do not pay enough attention to replication between domain controllers in Active Directory, bad things happen.
Storage Migration Tools: RoboCopy
Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 and kicking tires
Flexible IT and the Path to the Services Future
I’m an IT revolutionary. I talk all the time about the quaint backwards “state of the art” in enterprise IT, what with its (many) decades old protocols, paradigms, and practices. What we call modern is really just a charade of faked-out old-fashioned open systems infrastructure: Pretend servers talking to fake disks over frankenstein networking technology.
Cloud Fight – OpenStack Steps Up
Much has been said about virtualization platform interoperability. VMware is constantly pushing forward with trying to achieve ANSI standards for common virtualization components and functions. One of which is the most useful… the virtual hard disk format. In theory, I should be able to take a virtual disk from my Hyper-V environment and import into my vSphere environment. I have seen this work on my workstation when I imported my Windows XP Mode drive into my Workstation setup!
The Enterprise IT Acquisition Game
Today is the (a?) day of reckoning in the 3Par saga, with Dell widely expected to make a counter-offer higher than HP’s bid. But this mega deal, like the Data Domain war before it, sends a strong signal to the enterprise IT world: It’s open season on data storage companies! But the rising superpowers are also likely looking at networking as an area of expansion. The game is afoot!
Gestalt IT Seattle Tech Field Day – Day 2 Summary
Windows Virtual Desktop Access Licensing – What is it?
I try and avoid licensing at all costs, it’s a horrible subject and one that strikes fear in to many. When you add virtualisation in to the mix it tends to get a little more complicated and you often find that the rules change on a reasonably regular basis. I was involved in a discussion today about Citrix XenDesktop and an interesting point came up when discussing licensing Virtual PCs. Someone mentioned something called the Microsoft VDA, I hadn’t a clue what they were talking about so I did a little digging around to find out more.
My take on the stack wars
As some of you might have read, the stack wars have started. One of the bigger coalitions announced in November 2009 was that between VMware, Cisco and EMC, aptly named VCE. Hitachi Data Systems announced something similar and partnered up with Microsoft, but left everyone puzzled about the partner that will be providing the networking technology.
The Stack Wars Have Begun!

Just as public cloud computing is beginning to catch on, the enterprise data center world has been shaken up by the biggest IT product vendors. Rather than sit back and watch their wares commoditized, companies like Cisco, EMC, HP, and now HDS are stepping up to the plate with integrated “stacks” that include server, storage, networking, and management software. The next-layer players, VMware and Microsoft in particular, are joining hands, too, eager to support these stacks. To paraphrase the wise Jedi master, Yoda, “cloudy, the future is.” So, the stack wars have begun!