Bladewatch.com

http://dellworld.com/

Participate in a hands-on solutions experience by engaging in idea exchange sessions following these keynote presentations:

Unlocking Opportunity through Innovation

Review how innovation is fueling the next chapter for cloud computing, data management and mobility.

Driving Data Center Innovation in the Virtual Era

Explore current and emerging data center trends that are driving the next wave of organizational efficiency, growth and innovation.

Supercharging Productivity through Workforce Innovation

By addressing the needs of today’s digitally savvy, mobile workers, organizations can accelerate productivity and improve the creation and sharing of ideas and information.

The Business of Results through the Cloud

Technology has always been about driving real-world results. But what are the implications when the IT continuum is disrupted by a fundamental shift like cloud computing?

Accelerating Innovation in Pursuit of Your Organization’s Mission

The urgency for today’s IT organizations to improve efficiencies and accelerate innovation is a driving force in today’s connected global economy. So how do you innovate with a clear purpose of helping the organization achieve its goals

I wonder what we will see discussed at the conference, it will be interesting to hear how Dell is helping address enterprise challenges across the technologies, networks, storage and server. At the same time I want to know how Dell is going to continue innovating its products and services, how we can extend the possibilities of cloud technologies for those small businesses that ‘want service’ and provide the right range of offerings to help those that want their own internal cloud, their own infrastructure to deploy and host their services.  There are some interesting speakers from Intel, VMware and Microsoft, not to mention several members of the Dell leadership.

My key area of interest across vendors and service providers is how they can transform their offering to meet me and my business, from a marketing and a real end user empowerment standpoint, could a little bit of money spent transform your end user relationship, the service and pleasure your end users derive and not necessarily effect the dollar cost of the product or service. How can the vendor differentiate their offering, align with my needs and illustrate what as an end user, a business and an individual be thinking about going forward. So I’m buying R710s for ESX and looking at cloud in the near future, but in the next three years what should I be thinking about? Virtualization of the application, further remote working and cloud technologies both internal and external – fine but how do I achieve this, what do I need to know and what are the economic drivers for doing so? The issue so often is not a lack of interest, but a lack of understanding how to justify it, and how it can be an enabler to my business goal rather than “IT having a day out”.

So it was time for us to install Windows 2008 R2 Foundation on Marjorie our beloved HP MicroServer which I have been using with VMware in our labs.

Windows 2008 as a small business or a normal end user is not exactly cheap, however the vendors are offering Windows 2008 R2 Foundation Server, which is an entry level version of the Windows Server operating system which you can read about here. It is locked to a vendor specific bios, so if you have a HP server, you buy the ‘HP edition’ or the Fujitsu edition for Fujitsu servers etc.

So how long did it take?

About 40 minutes from putting the dvd in to completing the configuration.

How easy?

It’s very easy and automated to a large degree. You insert the dvd, follow the setup, selecting the language and the drive the setup then does the rest, finally prompting you to set an administrator password.

What’s next?

I then installed Microsoft Security Essentials (the free anti virus and spam software. Completed Windows Update and started setting up our shares, very, very cool.

The pictures:

• Starting Windows setup – (booting off the cd) http://twitpic.com/6igyqg
• Loading the Windows files from cd – http://twitpic.com/6iga9z
• Select language – http://twitpic.com/6ih063
• Press the install button (there is an upgrade option as well) – http://twitpic.com/6ih0mz
• Read and accept the license agreement – http://twitpic.com/6ih0v6
• Select the install you want to install – http://twitpic.com/6ih1hk
• Drive partition created and formatted – http://twitpic.com/6ih2dd
• Copying files and installing Windows 2008 R2 Foundation Server – http://twitpic.com/6ih2u0
• Now set the password – http://twitpic.com/6ih372

I had an interesting conversation talking with a Project Manager working for a corporate in Edinburgh, he’s up on assignment delivering infrastructure solutions for the business unit he works for, the following is  the summary transcript of the conversation he had with a vendor’s Consultant.  The vendor is in italics, the vendor had to be flown up to Edinburgh and all costs paid as part of the due diligence work to get this bought in application working in order to obtain funding to deliver the application as part of a project.

Hi, We’re looking at buying your application and hosting internally, we had a few questions to ask you regarding this, about your standards and requirements. We’ve been speaking with you and sent our requirements. you’ve been brought on site to help with the scope of works so we can put the order in. As well as to help understand how we implement your application within our infrastructure, we only buy (specific vendor) servers, and there are several standards that we need to adhere to.

That’s fine, we support their servers and we’ve got your site specific details so what questions do you have?

We typically separate the application from the database, does that fit within your framework?

You can install everything on the one box, or both we don’t mind. I’ve done both.

We’re not allowed to install the application and the database on the same server. So we will need three Citrix servers, and one SQL cluster, do you support clustering.

A few clients have done it, we support it, but we don’t request it.

What are the system requirements?

We recommend a Pentium 600, 128MB RAM with 3GB for the application and logs, as well as space for the database, running on Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Windows 2003.

Ok, but this is an application so it will be hosted on a server. We want to separate the application and the database, we’re going to be buying Xeon processors, and those specifications what are they based upon, are they relevant for our installation? Are those the three users in a small office set up? What are your other clients deploying?

I can’t describe client installations, that would be a breach of trust and confidentiality. The application requires a Pentium 600MHz, most people these days are using Pentium Core Duo’s with a GB of RAM or so and a minimum of 3GB disk space for the app.

Whilst we are putting the environment together, are their virtual machine templates that we can view on a laptop or play with online so that I can get the application teams to get familiar with the setups and maybe see how it fits together? Is there an application training cloud or environment

Not really, I’ve got it on my laptop here. I’ve got the dvd’s and I can download from the office, it only takes about 1hr or so to build a virtual machine, so you can build one and then we can install the software on your server.

Do you support virtual servers?

Yes we support virtual servers, typically a 1 cpu 600mhz, with 128MB RAM, though the more memory and faster the cpu, the better for performance, we have been recommending 2.0GHz for virtual machines.

Ok for the application server, then we’re going to request one standard server, two sockets, 12GB RAM.

For the database, it will be on shared SQL. We separate the partitions for data/logs/dumps etc, do you have metrics on sizes and collation settings?

Well the database only needs 1GB to install, then some space for logs and dumps. That will be dependent on volume, you’ve got three hundred users so there will be large log files and it depends on how often you want to take backups etc.

What specification do we need for the SQL instance? Are their specific loads or requirements? Do you support the separate partitions and SAN?

Well the database, we recommend the minimum of a Pentium 600 with 128MB RAM, running Windows 2000 with 3GB of free disk space.

We didn’t pay £1300 + costs to bring you up here to read a minimum requirements briefing, I have technical guys that have done that already. We need value add, this application is being deployed to three hundred users both internal and external across sites and it therefore needs to work. If you are unsure of the requirements, I suggest we call support and escalate to get the answers from them.

At that point, with a degree of emotion, the Consultant phoned head office, got put through to support, got rejected initially because they didn’t have a call reference number and because they weren’t existing customers, until the Consultant explained the situation.

What surprised me and my Project Manager friend was the lack of common configurations. This was a well know vendor/application provider, but they seemed to lack awareness or were aiming to avoid liability (which is understandable). But the lack of a small, medium and enterprise offering was of genuine surprise. Statements throughout the meeting and the subsequent call to support in the meeting like these were made:

• “You can run the application and database on the same server”, it depends on client requirements – there is no typical configuration
• “It’s compatible with Unix” – when asked it’s compatible but they don’t have in house enivronments for regression testing, so support is more complex, but supported.
• “Windows 2003 is supported but not R2, but with SP2, Windows 2008 is supported but not with SP1″, these configurations have not been tested
• “SQL Express is supported as is SQL Standard and Enterprise”
• “We do not support SAN storage, but we support local storage in a RAID 5 volume set but only with this disk configuration”
• “Security patching is fine, but you can only install the patches that the vendor has signed off, otherwise you will be out of support”

The result was not only to question the application, but also the ‘business readiness’ of the company itself. How can they be providing an application which has such restrictions? Have they not come across enterprise clients with separate application and database environments, storage support comments and security patching would lead the operating and management costs of the application to be higher internally due to the deviation from perceived industry standard configurations.