Author: Scott Moonen

What’s new with IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions

What’s new with IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions

IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions just released the following updates:

Don’t forget that Zerto Disaster Recovery also remains available as a service for IBM Cloud for VMware. Zeb Ahmed provides some guidance on thinking about backup versus  disaster recovery, and Zerto recently received an award for their ransomware protection capabilities!

What’s new in IBM PureApplication System

The PureApplication System 2.2.3 release introduced exciting developments in workload management and replication. Previously you could replicate disks from one system to another, but now you can replicate entire applications.

vmware-cloud

You can find details on how to use these new capabilities in a three-part developerWorks series on hosted VMware environments and replication written by the PureApplication engineering team.

Leadership and success

Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy says of leadership that:

[T]he one thing you must know is that you have been exalted into a position, you see, of privilege, because of an historical chain of events, which dignifies you beyond your own merits. . . . [Y]ou know that you are not up to the occasion. You are less than the quality history bestows on you. . . . Ceremonies warn all men that they are less than the office that has fallen upon [them]. . . .

He goes on to caution that success is necessarily connected to and builds upon (even if it transforms or transcends) that which comes before.

Blockchain

For some time now I’ve been a bit skeptical about the promises of blockchain in the business world. I’m a computer scientist and mathematician by training and by instinct, so I have gotten caught up in questions such as the suitability of different forms of blockchain proof, the difficulty of seeking Byzantine fault tolerance, and transaction database [in]efficiency.

However, I have come to realize that the value of blockchain technology does not lie so much in its solving multi-party transaction problems in some provably ideal way, but rather in its solving them in a suitable way—with well-defined interfaces, strong security, and backed by open software and algorithms. This in turn allows it to become a standardized platform. And that standardization is the real value of blockchain: it will both create efficiency and allow for easier innovation on top of it. Of all the solutions we could standardize on, blockchain has the most going for it.

Viva blockchain!

What’s new with IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions

This week IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions released our May version 1.6 release. The most significant changes in this release are the availability of new hardware choices, and the move to our new vCenter Server architecture, which allows for high availability deployments and aligns with our premier Cloud Foundation offering architecture.

Zane Adam, VP of IBM’s dedicated private cloud offerings, writes to share more details about the IBM, HyTrust, and Intel partnership to offer IBM Cloud Secure Virtualization on top of our VMware offerings.

IBM Cloud also recently announced the general availability of Veeam Availability Suite on IBM Cloud. This offering is independent of the VMware offerings, meaning that you can deploy it in IBM Cloud for our VMware automated offerings, your own custom VMware environments in IBM Cloud, or your own Hyper-V environments in IBM Cloud.

I’ve written two blog posts on the IBM Bluemix blog, highlighting the importance of considering all of the options and factors in migrating to the cloud, and also exposing some common security myths about the cloud aren’t true of IBM’s dedicated private cloud offerings.

IBM Cloud at ZertoCON

IBM Cloud offers Zerto Virtual Replication as one of the add-on services for our VMware Solutions offerings, enabling VM replication and migration between IBM’s cloud and on-premise installations in either direction. IBM Cloud’s Zerto service is a compelling foundation for disaster recovery of VMware workloads, whether you are looking to replicate your own workloads or provide disaster recovery services to your own customers. We’re proud to be one of the sponsors of ZertoCON 2017 and one of Zerto’s featured cloud service provider partners.

Don Wales discussing Zerto's cloud partnerships
Don Wales discussing Zerto’s cloud partnerships at ZertoCON 2017

If you’re in Boston for ZertoCON 2017, be sure to check out Zeb Ahmed’s presentation on Tuesday, How to Master Disaster Recovery for Enterprise Applications in IBM Cloud.

Hybrid cloud management

Hybrid cloud management

My colleague Andre Tost wrote recently on the problem of hybrid cloud management and on IBM’s vision to solve hybrid cloud management challenges in our new Cloud Automation Manager offering that was recently announced at IBM InterConnect.

Andre discusses the workflows that are addressed by a hybrid cloud management product. He carefully differentiates hybrid cloud management from related tools, such as deployment managers and configuration managers, and shows how they fit together to support comprehensive application and infrastructure lifecycle management.

IBM Cloud Automation Manager