Ontic Oren

New research report out from EMA today that’s well worth looking into.  SearchCIO-Midmarket.com has a great article on it.

Behind these figures are management challenges that companies are only starting to recognize, let alone address, the surveys found. Only 24% of respondents to an Enterprise Management Associates Inc. survey of 627 corporate IT decision makers published last April said they thought virtualization makes security administration easier — as compared with 42% in 2006. Just 32% said software control and distribution is easier in a virtualized environment, down from 58% two years ago. And configuration management numbers plummeted from 58% to 32%.

That’s exactly one of the problems we set out to solve with RDA.  We recognize that administrators are being thrust into administrative positions that challenge them to broaden their expertise dramatically.  Managing a virtualized datacenter requires deep network, storage, server, and virtualization skills, often in very short supply.  RDA helps, by providing clear guidance and prescriptive remediation to help administrators find and fix problems in their datacenter quickly and easily.

Another favorite quote:

ndeed, everything from performance and capacity management to troubleshooting and security administration becomes more difficult in a volatile, multilayered and often heterogeneous virtualized environment, Mann said. 

And finally:

Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of software tools that manage virtual and physical environments or multi-platform virtualized installations in an integrated fashion, the EMA report stated. Only 21% of management tools in use can integrate effectively with other enterprise system management tools, according to EMA’s Mann.

If this sounds like you, go check out RDA!

Here’s one that I’ve been thinking about for 6+ months:

Oftentimes when you’re going out, looking for a new job, you’re going to fight for highest salary.  I mean, of course, right?  Who wouldn’t?  That’s why we’re in this rat race – more money!

It’s important to realize that there’s are ramifications.  It may seem obvious, but I’m not sure everyone thinks this through.  If you are offered 70K, and negotiate to get 80K, your employer will likely be looking for 12% more work.  The boss may not come out and say it, they may think you’re a great candidate and want to get you on board, but every month, they’ll be looking at your salary, and thinking about what you are worth.  Frankly, it’s easy to negotiate yourselve into a position that you can’t actually perform at yet.

Keep in mind that your “job” at a new position is to make your boss happy.  Most of the time that means doing the work you signed up for, but there’s a whole host of other requirements you have to meet as well. Your negotiation isn’t just getting you more money, it’s piling on the requirements as well. I’d strongly recomend everyone who’s starting a new job read The First 90 Days.  

On the other hand, if that isn’t how your new employer works, you may be getting into the wrong job!  You want to work somewhere that puts personal responsibility on each employee.  If they’re free with the money, what else are they free with?  If they’re desperate to get you on at any cost, are they equally desperate elsewhere?

With the stroke of midnight, Sun xVM Ops Center 1.0 is launched to a joyous world.So what is it? It’s a highly scalable datacenter management platform that runs across cross-platform Linux and Solaris OS-based x86 & SPARC systems to help customers improve efficiency, and save time & money by:

• Better managing datacenter consolidation, keeping guest OSes up-to-date and monitoring for virtual assets on a network
• Automating provisioning & updating OS instances (Solaris & Linux) to increase availability & utilization & minimize downtime
• More effectively deploy, manage and monitor security and compliance in IT operations, either locally or remotely

You can see the features here, click the image for a bigger version.There’s a huge amount of cool stuff in here, but one of the enhancements we’ve put in place that I’m most excited about is the new network architecture. It’s cool for a few reasons:

1. Firewall friendly. All communication is up and out, and it’s all XML over HTTPS. So what? This means that the agent talks to the proxy, the proxy to the satellite. And it’s all over the same ports that your network admin already has open, and is managing. No custom firewall rules, no custom network config, no painful installations!
2. Scalability. You can now have hundreds of agents talking to each proxy, and hundreds of proxies talking to each satellite. Put a different proxy in each location, or use multiple in one location to really scale into the thousands of nodes.

So go ahead, check it out!