August 2011 - Page 2 of 2

TBL Sponsors RichTech’s Annual TechLinks Golf Tournament

Posted on August 15, 2011 by Steve Glissman

TBL Networks, Inc. announced today that they will serve as a Reception Sponsor for RichTech’s Annual TechLinks Golf Tournament . This event is held on Monday, September 12 at the Hermitage Country Club in Manakin-Sabot, Virginia.

“TBL Networks is very happy to serve as sponsor for this great event,” said Alan Sears, President and CEO of TBL Networks, Inc. “RichTech is a vigorous advocate and outstanding facilitator for the technology community in Central Virginia, and the TechLinks Golf Tournament provides another chance for members of this community to get to know each other.”

RichTech is the premier technology association in Central Virginia and serves over 300 companies and 3,000 people from all sectors of technology. RichTech’s mission is to be a catalyst and a resource to connect these talented individuals within business, industry, government and education who work daily to provide growth and sustainability of the Virginia economy.

To learn more about RichTech and to become a contributing member of Central Virginia’s technology community, go to www.RichTech.com.

To purchase your tickets for RichTech’s Annual TechLinks Golf Tournament, click on this link.

vSphere 5 Profile-Driven Storage: Get VM Placement Right the First Time

Posted on August 8, 2011February 11, 2019 by admin

We all get in a hurry. When we get in a hurry we make mistakes. The following scenario has been played out plenty of times in a virtual infrastructure.

VM Administrator gets a request for a new VM to be deployed ASAP, which usually means yesterday.
VM Administrator looks through multiple datastores to determine a datastore with a sufficient amount of capacity.
VM Administrator picks the datastore and deploys the VM.

What if this particular VM was a database server and the log volume needed to be provisioned on a RAID1/10 datastore. Hopefully the datastores are named with the RAID level in the naming convention. But, what if they are not? Even if they are, it can be very tedious to wade through multiple datastores to find an appropriate datastore that meets both capacity and performance requirements. What if there was a way to “tag” certain datastores with characteristics that are meaningful to the VM administrator? That’s where the new “Profile-Driven Storage” feature comes in with vSphere 5.

Profile-Driven Storage allows user-defined “tags” and automated storage property discovery through the vStorage API’s for Array Awareness (VASA). Let’s take a look at the user-defined “tags” first.

User-Defined Storage Profiles

Very simply, the user-defined “tags” allow one to “tag” a datastore with meaningful text. In the example above, we could define an appropriate datastore as “RAID 1” in the datastore’s storage profile. Then, when the VM administrator provisions the VM, he or she simply selects the “RAID 1” storage profile as being applicable to the VM that is being provisioned. This ensures that the VM will be placed on an appropriate datastore because only those datastores that fit the “RAID 1” storage profile will be available as choices during the provisioning process. If more than one virtual hard drive will be in the VM then multiple storage profiles can be used. For example, you could use a “RAID 1” profile for one virtual disk and a “RAID 5” profile for another virtual disk.” The storage profiles ensure compliance and make it easier for the VM administrator to provision a new VM without human error.

VASA Storage Profiles

Arrays that can take advantage of VASA can provide storage characteristics for the VM administrator. Examples might be RAID Level, Deduplication, Replication, etc. One of these characteristics can be assigned by the system to the storage profile. This further eliminates human error and helps to ensure compliance during and after provisioning.

As you can see, Profile-Driven Storage ensures that VM’s get provisioned correctly the first time. No need to Storage vMotion the virtual machines around after the fact unless their storage requirements need to change. The above is a very simple example of what can be done with Profile-Driven Storage in vSphere 5. Profile-Driven Storage is flexible enough to fit many different use cases. It’s up to you VM admins out there to fit it to your particular use case.

Data Mining Drives Storage Requirements

Posted on August 7, 2011 by Alan Sears

I recently saw a YouTube clip of Erik Brynjolfsson, director of the MIT Center for Digital Business, discussing the concepts in his book, Wired for Innovation. Erik believes that we are only at the beginning of an era of IT-driven productivity gains. He cites companies like Harrah’s casinos that gather information on their customers with rewards cards who then use this data to model incentives to increase patronage from their clientele.

Erik talks about a recent trend in company data he has seen when comparing the top performers to the bottom performers that shows that the gap between these groups is widening at organizations that make better use of IT technologies to track historical business data. This is significant as the productivity of these two groups had paralleled each other until the current decade.

So what does this mean for a company’s storage requirements? With the competitive advantage Erik has shown in mining this data, there should be excellent justification in keeping more data around.

Check out the interview with Erik Brynjolfsson:

Developing Your Own Video Strategy

Posted on August 1, 2011 by Patrick Tredway

Following on the heels of our latest Lunch and Learn event, I wanted to share some of the thoughts and discussion points discussed therein. We must first recognize that video is here – like it has never been before. Having said that, video is most certainly not a new technology. In fact, many organizations have been utilizing some sort of video within their walls for decades now. So what’s different, and why now?

I argue that the proliferation of video enabled consumer devices will spawn a mass adoption of video related technologies in our personal lives. Think about it, if you had to run to an “email machine” every time you wanted to send an email, you probably wouldn’t use it as much. Proliferation and availability are intrinsically linked user adoption. This inevitably will translate into our professional careers à la instant messaging or social media (facebook, twitter).

Ok, so video is here, your user base is primed for its use, what does this mean for you? First and foremost, companies must begin developing a strategy and providing the technology base to host video services. Without doing so, corporate video content will most certainly make its way to internet based services that most certainly don’t have your corporations best interests at heart. I previously have used a few examples from YouTube of internal sales meetings and holiday parties. With a few keyword searches, I’m sure you could find many of the same.

Secondly, video isn’t something you can just get a quote for and subsequently buy. Video has an incredibly wide definition which forces us to plan for which use cases we are to tackle first, communicate that effectively, and then execute. A solution to provide point to point room based video will quickly spawn questions on how that can be connected to external parties or bridge multiple parties into the same conference. Each of these requires different technology investments and the last thing you want to do is tell your CEO that he can’t do something shortly after writing a big check!

Finally, you have to be able to provide this solution and compete will services that are provided on the internet free of charge. Now that’s a challenge!

Business Video: Not Just for Teleconferencing

Posted on August 1, 2011 by Steve Glissman

For the July edition of TBL’s Lunch & Learn, Patrick Tredway discussed the topic of “Business Video: Not Just for Teleconferencing.” Patrick explained that business video is now a medium used as a day-to-day aspect of business. More importantly, your employees are probably already using it. After showing the power and grace of Mr. TBL, Patrick showed examples of how some companies have already listed confidential information for the whole world to see on YouTube. These examples included a “how to” internal company policies, a sales meeting and the results of too much drinking a company Christmas party.

Patrick then discussed the proper methods and avenues for businesses to address video, in addition to demonstrating how it affects your network and infrastructure.

A special “thank you” to all those who attended our meetings in Richmond and Virginia Beach. Our guests provided a great questions which prompted several insightful discussions.

Our August Lunch & Learn topic is “Security in a Virtualized World.” Co-presenting with TBL’s Harley Stagner is Bryan Miller of Syrinx Technologies. Our two experts will explore the challenges and compliance issues regarding security and your virtual infrastructure. To learn more and to reserve your spot for either the Richmond or Hampton Roads date, please RSVP at TBL’s Lunch & Learn Eventbrite site.