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Showing posts from March, 2014

Hybrid cloud - Missing automation link Part 2

If you read my previous post ( part 1 ), I kind of concluded that you had 2 choices. Of course the answer is somewhere less binary and perhaps in between the two options. This post is another discussion about where we are headed in an non-technical way, I hope.   "Reflecting on my future" - A scenario " So you are sitting there enjoying your coffee and analyzing what has happened in your datacenter the last couple of years. You have "virtualized" the network and the load balancers (you do use Citrix Netscalers right). Your Netscalers are happily living their life as virtual appliances on your hypervisor along with the rest of the windows/linux servers. Your clients are being served by System Center Configuration Manager. The users can deploy their new laptops from SCCM and use the Software Catalog to install the software packages they need. Your servers and SNMP network devices are monitored by System Center Operations Manager and you have implemented Syst...

Hybrid cloud – the missing automation link?

Fair warning: I am probably off on a rant here about the cloud and how “everything is connected” in terms of automation. This post is going to discuss the recent offensive from Microsoft and their vision about a Hybrid Cloud. I will not do a deep dive into any technical aspects, however do a more overall discussion about the vision and how recent changes brought to us by Windows Server 2012 R2 (and windows management framework 4) can affect us going forward. Background – What do we have and what has happened? From “nowhere” Azure as a PaaS was born. A while before that people started talking about “The Cloud” and things started to move about in terms of Public (The Cloud) and Private Cloud (“On-Premises or On-Prem as it is called nowadays) . Moving forward a bit Microsoft started to launch their vision about Hybrid Cloud, a nice mix of the “best” of the Public and Private cloud. This was even supported with the release of the System Center 2012 suite and together with Windows S...

Powershell – The DSC book

Don Jones (@concentrateddon) is writing this awesome book about DSC. Please help him review the contents and make suggestions. You may leave feedback on the Powershell.org/FAQ web page (just create a new post there). I have been working as an consultant in IT since 1999, I have done a lot of strange “things” (work related that is). I have done my fair share of vb-scripting and small GUIs or console application development using vb.net etc. I have even created an automation solution/"framework" with powershell and .net (.net Forms). I have been using powershell since exchange 2007, however the last 2 years I have been a “heavy” user writing advanced scripts/functions, dot-sourcing, creating small modules etc. Full disclosure; I am not exaggerating when I say I am super excited about DSC. My comments (in random order, when I say you/your I target Mr Jones, I think :-)) DSC resources – As you mention Microsoft has released 2 waves of additional resources for DSC. Wh...