Dave Oliver's Technical Blog

What is Live Mesh?

2008-08-21T15:26:3801:00:00

Live Mesh seems like a simple thing, perhaps that is the point? But what 'Mesh offers me is of great personal value in that it gives me is a little part of my day back and one less complication in my life.

So what is so great about it? Well I can work on documents, blog posts, spreadsheets, any file, from work or working from home, seamlessly without having to transport them via USB key or emailing them to a home or work account and run the gauntlet of quotas and cumbersome filters.

Live Mesh is currently in beta but promise seamless interaction with Mac and Windows Mobile devices. The killer features that is already here is the ability to ‘mesh’ i.e. connect with other people which is a pretty handy thing if you’re working in team that is geographically dispersed and doesn’t have ready access to a single corporate LAN and storage hanging off it.

However Live Mesh at the moment does come with concerns about security which Tech Tidbits eloquently points out with the paranoia siren turned up to full volume. A narrow-minded InfoSec Robot will freak-out at the thought of Live Mesh but perhaps the more pragmatic and thoughtful InfoSec Expert would be more pleased. Why? Because transporting files around is something that does happen and nothing is going to stop that short of a dictatorship, in essence it is an essential of modern business and everyday practice, so would you rather send files from place to place via …

A) Electronically – by using security protocols that are the same as the ones used to send credit card details when purchasing online?

… or …

B) Physically - By a laptop, CD-ROM or USB key that can and will get lost, as the UK Government knows all too well?

Live Mesh is the equivalent of setting up a private VPN between you and your other devices and colleagues. This VPN has the added advantage of a 5GB storage cache! Be warned, don’t get hung up on the reliability and robustness of the storage cache, remind yourself it is a product in beta and a free-bee so don’t expect a gold plating SLA.

Of course you do have to be a bit smart and realise that any information that is remotely sensitive shouldn’t be anywhere near Live Mesh and point your anti-virus software to check the Mesh folders several times a day just-in-case would be prudent.

The last thought on security is to check your organisation IT acceptable use policies, or equivalent, that the use of Live Mesh doesn’t land you into any hot water, maybe worth running it past your local friendly InfoSec Officer for the all clear before setting up your Mesh.

If you want to know the security setup of Live Mesh I would highly recommend reading The Live Mesh teams blog post on the subject here.

A bad point about ‘Mesh is that it currently takes up 150MB of RAM which I’m not so impressed about. Ok so I have 2GB in all my boxes but still, it does seem to be a large footprint.

My last thought for the post is on the future of Live Mesh. MobileMe from Apple is a similar service which I admit I haven’t tried purely because I was up using ‘Mesh before I heard about Apple’s offering. I have also heard that MobileMe is going to be a subscription based service, I have no doubt that ‘Mesh is heading in that direction. So would I pay for it? Well the simple answer is, depends on the price and what I get for me money. I wouldn’t be prepared to pay more than the price of USB key which is essentially the competition. I think that £10 p.a. would be about right and less if you already subscribe to over Live services. However, if a free basic service is what you are looking for then Dekoh could be enough for you.

Live Mesh is another demonstration that Microsoft is into ‘Cloud Computing’ and looking to make revenue from it. I am pleased that they believe the future is on as well as off the 'Cloud' as I can’t see many organisations enjoying the idea of having the Internet between their users and essential services, however this won't be the same story with none-essential services.

Anyway, whilst it is still free, ‘Mesh is worth trying out.

The lovely Eileen has also been using ‘Mesh as well. Obviously a women of good taste.

Confirmed! Microsoft is going to lift the VM licensing restriction!

2008-08-20T08:31:1801:00:00

Yesterday, Microsoft confirmed they would be lifting the licensing by physical server restriction that made using features such as VMotion & XenMotion an expensive option if Microsoft software was used. I spoke about in a previous post. The license restriction will be lifted on 41 server products, exactly which ones it isn't yet clear.

Also, the EULA isn't available just yet so the exact T&C aren't known, so lets hope there isn't any nasty caveats that spoil this good news.

The news licensing comes into force on September 1st so you don't have to long to wait. I will keep you updated to whether there are any surprises.

Nice one Team GB!

2008-08-17T10:54:3601:00:00

Ok so this post is all about being a very proud Brit!

As of 10:47am BST we are third in the medal table! Nice one team GB!

Lara Wins Gold!

2008-08-16T17:24:2101:00:00

My wife's cousin, Lara Davenport, was one of the swimmers involved in the Gold winning Women's 4x200m Freestyle Relay! Nice one Lara!

Microsoft may lift the VM Licensing Restriction on the 19th August.

2008-08-15T18:57:4801:00:00

The word on the mean streets of Rumoursville town is that Microsoft is going to lift the licensing restriction where currently software is licensed to a physical device.

Why? With technologies such as VMotion and XenMotion, a VM is moved around a farm automatically to where it can make the best use of available resources such as CPU and memory.

With Microsoft products you are required to license all the physical machines that the software is likely to run on, this isn't just Windows but SQL Server, Exchange, Biztalk etc. If it does move to another physical machine by rights it's going to be another 90 days before you can move the software again. A nightmare when in reality you are only using it once in a VM.

So a costly exercise? Potentially but in reality it doesn't happen. Infact what does happen is that other vendors are chosen instead and the migration from Microsoft software starts.

I'm hoping the change in licensing will also help in cold & warm standby DR (Disaster Recovery) scenarios when a license is transfer with the VM via things like Symantec Veritas Netbackup solution.

This rumour is unconfirmed so don't shoot me if it doesn't happen. However it would be an extremely popular move on Microsoft part if they did this.

Microsoft is been behind in matters of VM, it's time for them to catch up and plug a hole that is making them lose out.

Technorati tags: Microsoft, VMware, Citrix, Symantec, VMotion, XenMotion

Which Enterprise Architecture Methodology do you use?

2008-08-10T10:24:0001:00:00

There is a bewildering array of Enterprise Architecture methodologies so it will be of great interest to me to find out which one people are actually using, if at all.

So to find out, I have put together a pick poll so please take the two minutes and leave your choice.

You get a chance to select up to 3 options because I suspect that people are using a combination of more than once approach, rather than following one prescriptively.

This is purely for interest purposes, I'm not going to use this data for marketing. I'm also sure it's not particularly scientific but it is chance for you to express your opinion.

The poll is here on the EnterpriseArchitecture.co.uk forum.

Technorati tags: Enterprise Architecture

The Athletes I've following in the Olympics 2008

2008-08-08T21:12:0801:00:00

I'm following the Olympics this time round with a bit more of an added interest.

Lara Davenport, the Aussie Swimmer, is family so the very best of luck to her.

Also, a fellow David Oliver, is a hurdler in the United States team, so the very best of luck to David.

SQL Server 2008 RTM is available now on MSDN

2008-08-06T20:50:2601:00:00

Need I say more? And to save time here is the link to MSDN Subscriptions Pages.

Enterprise Architecture: Data has a life and a death but should it?

2008-08-05T00:53:4501:00:00

I have this belief that understanding how to manage time is an essential task of Enterprise Architecture but oddly this is a principle that isn't spoken about much, if at all. Oddly some Enterprise Architecture software tools only seem to provide time management tools for software support life cycles. Hence a previous post that went in some way to start the debate with a mindmap to capture and categorise the elements that Enterprise Architecture would be interested in.

After reviewing this mindmap it became apparent to me that allot of data has a life. Take for example financially data, it has to be kept for x number of years then archived and/or deleted.

If it is lucky enough to get archived the data format that it is held in is going to get old and as technology moves on at a pace we soon won't have the equipment available to read it. But who cares about old data? Well actually as any historian will tells you, everyone should! Data held in electronic formats is the equivalent of ledgers and manuals written out by hand, printed or typed in previous times that provided a valuable history allowing reviews to re-examine what was going on so lessons could be learnt and history, in effect, didn't have the opportunity of repeat itself as previous mistakes made could be avoided in future.

Take for example the current 'Credit Crunch', could we better understand more about the lead up to previous economic down-turns if we had access to more data from those times than just the summaries and analysis performed at the time without the benefit of using the knowledge and tools we have now? Yes, this way we could put in better economic markers allowing a greater degree of fine-tuning and less likely to lose large amounts of money on a bad idea constantly hidden, because it take such a long time to reveal itself and kicking us up the butt.

So old electronic data siting on a tape real or floppy disk in a store-cupboard is a waste as it provides insight into your organisations history, how did it get to where it got to today? What mistakes did it make? What did it do very right? All this information is more than just useful to historians but can actually become a handy revenue stream as Analysis companies will pay good money to write case-studies and books about what your organisation did right which they can package up and sell that doesn't do your business reputation any harm whatsoever, all helping the share-price. Also allows you to discover if faltering area of your business every did work right allowing you to play back to when it started going wrong. Also when mistakes are made with more access to more data won't it be easier to spot trends?

With data storage being so ridiculously cheap it could be well worth dusting off that old media and loading and transforming it into something that can be used. Yes, this all will take time and where exactly is the ROI? Well, I think this will actually be an easy sell as many friends that work in finance have spoke to me that they wished they still had access to old data, so I don't think this will be a hard fight.

I believe that data should never be deleted and if it is archived will then it should be into systems where it can easily be retrieved that are kept up to date, invested in and brought forward.

The fly in the ointment is software vendors and their constant games to provide some kind of lock-in or incentive to upgrade. These tactics will effect the ability to retrieve historical data so we must look to either taking matters into our own hands and transforming data to vendor neutral data formats or avoid software vendors that use proprietary data formats all-together. We need to pick our vendors wisely and put format neutrality into our 'must-have' requirements rather than 'nice-to-have'.

When you think about this, it is a serious issue, an elephant in the room that no-one sees.

Technorati tags: Enterprise Architecture, Data

Enterprise Architecture Scheduler

2008-07-25T22:36:5201:00:00

Many Enterprise Architecture methodologies talk about the management of time but I haven't found one that tells you how to do to that. For a practice that is about understanding the now and the step to achieving the to be, I find this an amazing oversight.

Anyway, so what I decided to do was to have a go at capturing all the relevant timing information that an Enterprise Architect would be interested in. Hence the attached Mindmap, which you can click into.

If you prefer you can come and join in the discussion on the EnterpriseArchitect.co.uk Forum.

Technorati tags: Enterprise Architecture

Help your organisation to go Green, use Enterprise Architecture?

2008-07-24T11:33:0101:00:00

Paul Homan recently commented on Green EA which set my mind thinking ... 'being more Green' is a strategic ambition and what is the process and practice for generating strategic change? Enterprise Architecture! When EA's are struggling to find some ROI reason to justify their existence in the economic down-turn amazingly one of the main ROI reasons is one of the biggest issues of our time as the 'Return' doesn't literally mean monetary and also doesn't necessarily mean more? ... it can also mean less, as in less carbon release, less waste produced and less energy used.

Often companies are looking for quick, hand-to-mouth change to make an immediate impact but often these changes are to radical or not radical enough, either way will need draconian measures to keep them in effect. Good strategic change happens in steps and not sweeps.

A good example is the profile of electricity consumption throughout the day. As you can see from the graph of total electricity generated in the UK in MW over half hour periods taken from today's Elexon's BMReports website yesterdays power consumption profile is similar to today's.

Much of the electricity is generated by coal and gas power-stations, by reducing the amount of electricity generated by these power-stations is the goal.

The two pronged attack is,

1) Reduce the overall demand for electricity

2) Replace whole or inpart the electricity generated by coal and gas power-stations with generation methods that do not give off large amounts of green-house gases.

I should say that many would like to take this go a step further and use generation methods than have little environmental impact such as wind, wave, solar and thermal to name but a few. I personally love this but am aware that to get here a lot more research and investment from everyone is required.

Whilst I'm on the subject we may as well talk about nuclear. Here in the UK we have had a good safety record with nuclear mainly due to the very British safety obsessive attitude brought about by culture. Nuclear cannot ramp up or ramp down in energy production as fast as coal or gas so is used for the large volume sustained underlying amounts of energy which is called the Base-load. The idea in the UK is to reduce the amount of Base-load produced by Gas and Coal and replace it with nuclear.

My very personal view is that I am happy about this as long as nuclear itself is a medium term answer and will itself be replaced by other forms when they are suitably advanced enough and man enough for the job. So whether you believe in global warming or not it does make common sense to reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere to improve air-quality and it does make sense to reduce the amount of electricity we consume. These are noble ambitions no matter your political stance.

Anyway we haven't strayed away from the point, just merely demonstrated it. Good strategy comes from providing goals and coming up with board solutions which launches initiatives, then programmes of work, then projects. All the time testing whether things are right and have the strength to stop them when they are wrong, even testing whether the strategy is right. However the basic misnomer is that strategy is a plan.

So can you imagine the chaos if the Government decided to solve the problem by rationing electricity? Ok so this wouldn't happen because Government understands the criticality and how much is dependent on electricity, the steer is that it is obvious how much electricity is relied upon. We as Enterprise Architects could learn many lessons then successfully communicate them about what is the critically of things purely by understanding what is dependent on them.

The challenge is that Enterprise Architects really do need to become the green champions of our organisations by understanding what is consumed and wasted, then working with the business to decided on goals then formulate strategies and place in measures and governance to ensure these strategies and tested and the goals met. We are after all ideally placed to take on this responsibility so we shouldn't hide from it.

So here is my challenge to all Architects that have blogs, write about going green as we need to spread the message that solving these problems is everyone's responsibility.

Technorati tags: Enterprise Architecture

Lite EA is renamed Coherent EA

2008-07-21T21:57:2901:00:00

John Wu is a good guy. Out of respect for Fenix Theuerkorn and his work on Lightweight Enterprise Architecture, John has decided to rename his EA Methodology from LiteEA To Coherent EA.

Coherent EA is a actually a better, more descriptive name for John’s work IMHO and as a regular contributor to the ITToolbox conversations his methodology has the benefit of faster development from genuine experience than most of the others I could mention.

I certainly have benefited from Coherent EA in the past and think that it is a great resource, so I for one will be updating my book-marks.

EnterpriseArchitecture.co.uk

2008-07-20T00:29:4501:00:00

EnterpriseArchitecture.co.uk is my new blog for taking deeper dives into the practice of Enterprise Architecture.

Don't worry I will still be posting on GWB but this is an effort to reach out to a new audience who are also Enterprise Architects, this will also be a place for them to get involved and interact as this space will not just be my blog but will grow into complete reference resource. Once I have work it out, I will be starting a forum and letting other bloggers co-habit this cool URL with me.

If you are an Enterprise Architect and would like to join me on EnterpriseArchitecture.co.uk, please get intouch. If you are a developer, I would say stay here as GWB is cool.

So what will I be posting to GWB? Just loads of stuff that this community is more interested in, technical and development related which goes down well and I enjoy writing, but the EA stuff hasn't been going down well on here and I am an EA, hence my decision to branch out allowing both blogs to become less confused.

Anyway, wish me luck! Take Care. Dave Oliver

Farnborough Airshow 2008

2008-07-17T21:11:5301:00:00

Today I managed to sneak into the Farnborough Airshow under a trade pass to sample the delights of this bi-annual event without the public crowds of the great unwashed in my continuing search for innovation. After all, the defences, aviation and IT industries are joined at their respective hips as innovations in one are keenly felt in the others. Take for example the Eurofighter Typhoon Cockpit, it is pretty uncomplicated and has far fewer switches and buttons than most jet fighters. Pretty amazing when you think there is only one person to flying, navigate and use the weapons, when it's predecessor, the Panavia Tornado had two pilots. This is because computing power has taken the job of one man away and made the remains pilots job far easier as well, he doesn't even need to fly the plane as the computers do a lot of that for him (and sadly I do say he as, as yet no women has) . Infact after a catastrophic power failure the plane will not be able to fly or even glide so the only option is to eject.

The Geek side of me couldn't wait to see the Airbus A380 and watch this Goliathan nimbly roll around the sky. This was such a treat. I suspect however that it wouldn't pull half the stunts it did at the airshow on a normal flight as people and luggage would get thrown about everywhere, weight allowing!

What I found hard to believe was the A380 green credentials which are 50 mpg per person. And as it uses a jet kerosene and 40 percent gas to liquids (GTL) fuel so there is far less sulphur which improves air quality over existing planes, still the same amount of CO₂ so no winner there.

So does the A380 herald a time of larger but fewer planes? Well this is the promise, however I suspect that it will really end up being more larger planes which in-effect is what the 747 did back in the 1960's. Boeing however have taken a different track with the 787 which is wide-bodied and will hold upto 330 seats using mostly composite materials, it's aim will be to be more fuel efficient.

To the important stuff now, the level of 'swag' at the show was much lower than other years, however a fan with a LED display was the coolest thing I was given (by a very nice Texan) on the National Utilities Co. stand.

I also found rather ironically that UK Trade & Investment Agency, which is a Government body, was giving away squigy brains, obviously freshly sucked from civil-servants heads that morning and USB keys. Sadly mine didn't have any bank-details of single-mums just a Quicktime movie that didn't work but at 512MB I'm not complaining.

What I found very sad this year was that some of the larger companies didn't have stands in the main halls but displays in stands of their own. Many of them could only be visited by Invitation only which I thought was particularly bad in the case of Northrop Grumman who are the beneficiaries of many UK tax pounds thanks to the purchase of the F-35 Lighting II and all we got to see was a nice full-sized model tucked out the way so I thought a little more effort could have been made so we can see what we are getting and an explanation why this plane is so great.

The next point I would like to make is for the red-blooded readers. The 'Booth Babes' were out in force this years and in particular were the 'TRAC girls' from Trac Group Ltd (or I suspect some modelling agency), or should I say army! For such a small stand tucked away at the back of Hall 4 they generated attention by marching these girls around the show, luring unsuspecting males to their stand like sirens. The stand itself was pretty unassuming apart from the crowd of pilots and army soldiers desperate to get digits. I have to say all joking aside, this kind of thing is so twenty years ago. I do wonder if it did infact work and Trac got some orders out of it, however it couldn't have done their credibility any good? As Trac did seem a little tacky?

The highlight of the day was seeing the restored Vulcan bomber, a pity I didn't see it flying but this will be a treat for the weekend visitors. What will also be a treat is that they are between corporate sponsors so an advertising opportunity for a beautiful machine that is generating a lot of interest. I for one have parted with my cash and become a member of the club to keep it flying as I prefer my national heritage better off in the sky than a museum.

Anyway, I would actually recommend going this weekend if you can, there is plenty there to fill aday and well worth the £28 entry which seems rather cheap for a day-out these days. Also if you have kiddy-winks it is a dream come true as this kind of thing will turn them into future Geeks and the swag is cheaper than a trip to Toy R Us and may last as long.

All said and done, a good Geek day out.

Update: I can't believe that I've had 150 hits from 'airshow+trac+girls' Google searches! What is up with you? The girls were rediculous! If you wanted any proof here you go! NOw pass this link round all your friend because this is not one Google search I want to bet at the top of.

Technorati tags: Farnborough, airshow, northrop grunman, F-35, airbus, a380, geeks

The Open Groups SOA Ontology

2008-07-16T21:51:5201:00:00

The Open Group has recently released a draft version of a SOA ontology.

The Open Group has always had a mandate to help boundaryless information flow and the ontology (specification of conceptualisation) for SOA is a demonstration of just that. The ontology is written in the Web Ontology Language (OWL) defined by the World-Wide Web
Consortium and this for me is what makes it a hurdle to learn as it's not an intuitive meta-language but then is any? Perhaps if it wasn't for the graphical tools we would get stuck.

Open Group explains the benefits as:

1. It defines the concepts, terminology and semantics of SOA in both business and technical
terms, in order to:

Create a foundation for further work in domain-specific areas,
Enable communications between business and technical people,
Enhance the understanding of SOA concepts in the business and technical
communities, and
Provide a means to state problems and opportunities clearly and unambiguously
to promote mutual understanding.

2. It potentially contributes to model-driven SOA implementation. The ontology is designed for use by:

Business people, to give them a deeper understanding of SOA, and its use in the
enterprise;
Architects, as metadata for architectural artifacts; and
Architecture methodologists, as a component of SOA metamodels.

The full draft can be found here:

http://www.opengroup.org/projects/soa-ontology/doc.tpl?gdid=16940

After reviewing the draft I am left cold. My first opinion is that business will find this difficult to adopt in the same way they found UML difficult. Why because they are both coding languages, you may as well stick in a 'Print' command. The gap between logical design and executing code is a large as ever.

I still hold the belief that business and IT can only really align on the logical level. Business doesn't want to know about detail they will want to be abstracted away from that, this is actually a key SOA deliverable, just a very unspoken one, hence why REST services appeal. I believe that IT cannot handle business logic detail on it's own, so alignment between business and IT will come when hybrid groups formed of technologically minded users and business oriented IT exist to make, maintain and specialise in services that support their business area based on IT standards and underlying IT technologies and services.

Why I believe these groups need to exist is because business and IT can never align because they have very different goals and therefore different headings. Align the destination and the groups will align, not possible with business and IT as they are very different by reson d’etre. You can't marry creatures of different species. You can however translate and interface.

These groups do actually exist all over successful organisations they just lack boundary, form and recognition perhaps even by the very people that make them up. E.g. So you code in a Spreadsheet? So do you report to the Sales-Manager or Dev Team Leader?

Back to the Ontology, I think the Open Group need to ask a fundamental question, how does business see and understand logic? I really do think we need to revisit DSL's.

Technorati tags: DSL, SOA, Open Group, Ontology

Why Developers and Testers will LOVE VMLogix LabManager MORE !

2008-07-15T23:12:5001:00:00

VMLogix LabManager is in same space as VMware Lab Manager what I reviewed recently. However, its key differentiators is around automation – enabling developers, testers and IT Pro staff to entirely automate the process of setting up synchronized multi-machine deployment (including the software stacks in the virtual machines) no matter what virtualisation technology.

Yes, VMLogix LabManager is virtualisation platform agnostic! So if you decided on VMware, Hyper-V or Citrix you will still be able to benefit from using this product.

Feature for feature the VMLogix product does compare favourable against the VMware product, however I haven't as yet determined the difference in price and when I do I will update this post.

So the moral is, if you are going to eval VMware LabManager you will want to compare the VMLogix product against it especially if you haven't made the jump to ESX.

Anyone like to guess how long it will be before Microsoft or Citrix will buy this company?

Technorati tags: Developers, Development, Testers, VMware, VMLogix, Virtualisation, Testing, LabManager

Western Spaghetti

2008-07-13T22:06:2101:00:00

... is the latest short film from PES who are the makers of the excellent film Game Over! which I very much enjoyed and I hope you will to.

Why Developers & Testers will LOVE Vmware's Lab Manager

2008-07-13T21:02:2001:00:00

Vmware currently is going through the wars. A change of CEO, a plunging share-price and a competitor getting alot of attention with their new product, that being Microsoft with Hyper-V. However, I just don't get it!? ESX Enterprise is still out in front in terms of features and pricing is very competitive. Any organisation performing their own unbiased product comparison evaluations is going to be hard pushed to discount Vmware's flagship product. The killer feature for many is ofcourse Vmotion that sadly none of the competitors have an answer for. So Vmware has it all to play for.

Another area that the competition hasn't got an answer for is meeting the specific virtualisation needs in the development and testing arena's. Vmware has an offering here with the Lab Manager products.

Vmware Lab Manager enables Software Developers, Testers and Support Personnel to suspend, then capture to a shared storage library, a complete state of configurations – or collections of running interdependent systems that span multiple servers.

Over time, a library of configurations, including test scenarios, production environments and system configurations can be built. When a configuration in the library is needed later for development or test purposes, for example to test a new software build in the context of an .Net developed environment, Vmware Lab Manager can deploy an exact copy of the entire configuration to the best available resources in a pool of managed servers, running and ready for use. Further, the network fencing technology of Vmware Lab Manager can let multiple users deploy copies of the same library configuration simultaneously, without having to change machine characteristics such as IP addresses, MAC addresses, or security IDs and have normal network access.

The main benefits of Vmware Lab Manager are,

Reduce equipment-related capital and operating expenditures
Accelerate integration and system testing
Shave time off software development projects
Increase the number of configurations a new system supports
Enabled for unit and functional testing
Reproduce bugs and reduce time spent in the debug phase
Reduce the number of latent software defects that slip into production
Reduce upgrade breakage
Better management of joint resource across teams

Indirect benefits are,
Delivering better product support
Easer troubleshooting for customer production problems
Improved productivity and efficiency
Reduce time finding spare servers
No need to hoard servers and storage
Save power, space & HVAC

The technical benefits are,
Provision systems quickly.
Restore previous configurations.
Restore previous sessions “in state.”
Quickly make changes to a configuration, possibly via user self-service.
Dynamically expand and contract resource allocation
Quickly save existing configurations via hot-saving capabilities
Schedule usage
Recycle system resources for other uses.

With VI3, systems are handled as single images (i.e., not as an interconnected “set” of systems that comprise a particular multi-tier environment), so there is still a lot of manual configuration required. Further, without Lab Manager’s centralized library of multi-tier systems, organizations run the risk of “VM sprawl” – that is, VMs that are randomly stored on file servers, which are difficult to manage and share effectively.

The key components in a Lab manager configuration are,
Lab Manager Server – A server that provides Web and SOAP interfaces to interact with Lab Manager. The Lab Manager Server system manages and deploys configurations against a pool of Managed Server systems.
Lab Manager Managed Server – A server running Vmware ESX Server and the Managed Server software. The Lab Manager Server system uses the Managed Server system to deploy configurations and their virtual machines. You can have multiple Managed Server systems.
Lab Manager Storage Server – Storage for virtual machines (for example, an ESX Server SAN or NFS server) and storage for media (CD, DVD, and floppy images). You can have multiple storage servers.
Lab Manager Client User – Clients who can use the Lab Manager Web console and the Lab Manager SOAP API. You can access the Lab Manager Web console with Internet Explorer (IE).

The licensing costs aren't horrendous being approximately £9000 for Lab Manager server and approximately £600 per Lab Manager Managed Server. However don't quote me as they are rough ballpark figures just to give you an idea.

This software is ideal for any developer or tester that has tried to stuff multiple applications on the same bunch of servers or screwed up servers trying to take them backwards to a previous released version to try and fix a live bug or the tester that wants to try things out without having to hinder anyone and any number of daily pre-production scenarios where you darn well wished you had your own private set of servers to figure stuff out on.

My last message is to Vmware ... pull yourself together and market this product because it is going to save a lot of good people a lot of hair.

Technorati tags: vmware, hyper-v, microsoft, development, developers, testers, testing, lab manager, virtualisation

A successful approach to SOA: Change one thing

2008-07-10T15:31:0901:00:00

Many of us did it, made one New Year Resolutions to many at the Millennium and didn’t managed to succeed in any of them. I tried to give up smoking, losing a bit of weight, drinking less beer, save up to buy a house and learning to drive. A lot of change there, to much infact, so unsurprisingly I failed. A common story.

8 years later, all those things on the list are (more or less) achieved and how I did that was by concentrating on fixing one thing at a time. Again unsurprisingly, psychologists have been giving us this advice for sometime. In the UK one of our major high-street brands, Boots, turned it into a successful marketing campaign. So why in business should this truism be any different? It isn’t, day in day out processes and projects breaking down complex tasks into smaller manageable chunks.

The SOA concept allows this to happen as layers and services are separated by discrete interfaces that are abstracted and/or facades, so why try and implement all the parts of SOA all at once. To much change happening at once.

It does make sense to create a SOA in parts, however this statement is caveated, there is a risk that an organisation may only then implement parts and not realise the benefits of completing the SOA stack. However if they are happy and they realise benefits then this is perhaps this is still all-good. No point on trying to aim for the text-book answer if your organisation isn’t text-book. Honestly, can’t answer this one for you, so the answer is be-smart.

This isn't a compromise, to me I see this as common sense. Trying to force a sea-change on a business isn't going to be easy a step by step approach will have more chance of successful change.

When things take time it's going to be easy to lose sight of the goals, I think that this will be inevitable unless there is an active Enterprise Architecture function to pass SOA strategic goals on to and ensure they stay alive from one budget year to the next, after all that's what it's there for.

So how does an Enterprise Architecture do that? Enterprise Architects (if they haven’t worked it our yet) plan for the future, well that very topic is going to be the subject of a future post!

There has always been a debate about which part of SOA do you do first? I’ve always thought that create a Governance framework and Service Management hand-in-hand with a change to development methodology, process and departmental changes as well as change in technology is the ideal starting point … but alot to takeon in one go, however I do hear the ‘chicken and egg’ debate of service management structure and standards first before writing production service so they don’t have to be re-written. Yes that would be great but many organisation *need* to find out the reason it’s done this way round, usually they won’t accept they have to do it until they have experience the pain first hand. Sadly the ‘So what if another company has learnt lessons so we don’t need to, that’s a different company, so we are going to be better?!’ mind-set is the norm, so just like a young child they learn that a pin is sharp and Coco is hot no matter how many times they are told. So if you really must run before you can walk consider the Data and Connectivity Services first as simple abstraction and interoperability can demonstrate real initial value. However business rules will be all over the place still and you won’t be able to govern, manage or standardise your services but I can guarantee that will all get learnt when the needs arise just need to experience a sufficient level of pain first.

Vendor support for the ‘Change one thing’ approach differs from vendor to vendor. Many have great difficulty in the concept of start real small and growing by adding penalties (or what feels like them) for not buying big upfront. When starting small and growing could introduce a lot more organisations to SOA so the vendor gets a steady stream on purchases over a few years which will take them up to the version upgrade if your vendor account manager/ess is lucky. So it is in Vendors interests to have a entry-level SOA offering, and the right price is free as well which is a great way to get vendor lock-in, start with a database or development environment that is fully feature and free, even Microsoft have been doing this for years, infact they may have even been the first.

Anyway, I believe that taking it one step at a time is the very best approach as this will ultimately manage complexity and easier to manage expectations, get funding and keeping it simple. It will however take longer but success takes time just like a fine food or wine, SOA isn't a Pot-Noodle!

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Avoid SOA becoming a ‘SO What?’

2008-07-08T22:30:2301:00:00

Analysts, vendors and end users alike appear united in their enthusiasm for SOA. Recently the Butler Group tells us that only 3% of organisations have rejected SOA. In a recent survey by systems integrator Griffiths Waite found that 2008 is a critical year for SOA implementation, with 15% of organisations already running SOA but a much larger 38% progressing towards it. Of the 47% still “contemplating” it, Giffiths Waite says “evidence suggests these will [start to] move into strategising and planning”.

However it has to be said that despite these figures scepticism about SOA is starting to appear along with news of the first SOA casualties. Anne Thomas Manes, VP and Research Director with the Burton Group, recently blogged about her ongoing research with enterprises implementing SOA. She says:

“…I think I’ve become a bit jaded from the interviews, …[because] it has become clear to me that SOA is not working in most organisations.”

She goes on to describe how despite the “stunningly beautiful” SOA infrastructures these companies have developed, their SOA initiatives “invariably stall out”. She says: “The techies just can’t sell SOA to the business. They have yet to demonstrate how all this infrastructure yields any business value. More to the point, the techies have not been able to explain to the business units why they should adopt a better attitude about sharing and collaboration – which is the fundamental cultural shift required for SOA to succeed… As one of my interviewees said, ‘Altruism is not an enterprise strategy.’”

It is hard for what is essentially an IT initiative that is utterly dependent on business buy-in to get it. So how do you sell it to the business? For my experience the best way is to turn selling SOA to the business into a mini PR project taking a strong hint from Alan Cooper work on Personsa’s and TOGAF Architectural Views

When selling SOA to the business it’s wise not to just target the individuals incharge of budgets and give them that standard definitions and turn it into an technology education session. These people will have others that influence them and report to them, all of them will have specific view-points so it is worth preparing sessions that cater directly to their needs rather than getting lost in the big picture, use Business Analysts to help identify their concerns, likes and dislikes, in other words get to know your audience. This will be time consuming but ultimately allows people from IT and Business at a non-management level to interact which will do more for business/IT alignment than any Gartner report because you are listening to each other, this is priceless. Also alot of detail will come out so ensure that your requirements capture process/tool is up to scratch because it will get a hammering, capturing as much as you can because it’s all good.as this is lthe level where SOA is made or broken down, keep the process moving by recording and moving on.

This leads me on to my next point, I’m not sure it’s wise to have business and technical staff at different locations and different time zones. Alignment comes with good relationships, you can’t make friends via requirement documents and email. Global organisation or not you will lose money going backwards and forwards and lost time in misunderstandings.

SOA effects business and technology further than most methodologies have done in recent years, how many can claim to need a change to business process? So, take business with you to avoid the So What.

Technorati tags: SOA

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