Although I’m not a big fan of the word “cloud”, I doubt that it’s going to go away anytime soon. So, for now, let’s look at some so-called cloud services with a bit of skepticism and see what’s behind the curtain before jumping in the deep end.
One area of the IT world that’s growing is pre-validated hardware and software architectures that are guaranteed to run certain workloads. I’ve previously discussed the VCE coalition’s Vblock, as has David Davis. In simple terms, a Vblock is a unit of data center infrastructure that consists of:
- Processing power and RAM via Cisco server.
- Storage provided by EMC.
- Storage networking hardware provided by Cisco.
- Virtualization software from VMware.
Not one to be left out, Microsoft is getting into the game a bit through their Hyper-V Cloud initiative. Microsoft has created a Hyper-V Cloud reference architecture that’s being used by six vendors to create “fast track” compliant architectures. The vendors include:
- Dell
- Fujitsu
- Hitachi
- HP
- IBM
- NEC
However, you can also go it alone using the Build Your Own reference materials available from Microsoft. It will be interesting to see how this initiative stacks up against competing options from other vendors.
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