Eddie Izzard finishes 43rd marathon in 52 days, covering 1,100 miles - Times Online

Image via Wikipedia

This is not about technology. It’s about a person’s will to do something  he has never done and doing so in a manner that far exceeds imagining.

BTW, I don’t think he ran in this outfit.

Eddie Izzard finishes 43rd marathon in 52 days, covering 1,100 miles

Eddie Izzard finishes 43rd marathon in 52 days, covering 1,100 miles - Times Online

Why did I add Ads?

I just added an ad-sense account to my blog. I did it for a couple of reasons. Mostly, I'm curious.

• What ads would appear?
• Will I make more than a dollar a month?
• Would it annoy my few readers?
• Would it generate traffic.

Whatever the reasons, it will be interesting and if I make a buck or two, I'll be grateful.

Integrating management systems

In the August 31-Sept 7 issue of NetworkWorld, Tim Greene writes about 3Com's efforts in unifying network and security management.

"The most significant aspect of the announcement is the management, says Phil Hochmuth, an analyst with the Yankee Group. 'Enterprises are really consolidating their management roles,' he says. 'More and more enterprise IT and enterprise security teams are sharing the same hat, the teams are extremely integrated. The more they are looking at the same screens, the better.'"

This is something I've been discussing and writing about for many years. Too many different management consoles leads to confusion, error and frequently extreme segregation of operational functionality limiting the ability of administrators to manage increasingly complex systems. Systems that are comprised a mixture of servers, storage, networks, security systems and more and all being virtualized as well.

This need is becoming more and more critical as even the largest organizations are relying on teams of technologists responsible for managing these virtualized, integrated, multi-vendor environments. These teams may be made up of men and women who've specialized in storage or server or application management, but are now being asked to address issues outside their comfort zones as the issues they're facing are not necessarily linked to any single component of the IT environment. Problems may be coming from any device, program or function in the system and waiting for another specialist to solve a problem is untenable.

A "Single-pane-of-Glass" console helps the administrative team identify the multifaceted issues they're facing and a uniform interface, tool set and command syntax empowers team members. They are empowered because they can resolve all but the most complex issues by using what they already know about the system and are comfortable enough with the tools at hand to attempt what may have not been comfortable for them before.

It's good to see 3Com attempt to address these issues, as is Cisco and the other vendors. It will be interesting to observe how this plays out.

NetApp unveils new virtualized storage software | NetworkWorld.com Community

 

Among the announcement are of a Virtual Storage Console, which is a plug-in module for VMware vCenter Server that lets storage administrators manage and monitor NetApp gear from within vSphere 4 environments.

NetApp unveils new virtualized storage software | NetworkWorld.com Community

This specific item and the other announcements from NetApp, quoted in this article,  show their continued commitment to marketing themselves as the VMware storage solution. Competitors will need to move quickly to implement similar capabilities in the area of two way management integration.

This is important because even if servers, storage, applications, I/O and everything else is virtualized, the devices are still individual components with unique characteristics that need their own management tools. In a virtualized world though, changes to the hardware have affects on the virtual space and visa versa; so being able to manage the virtual from a physical device and the physical from a virtual device will become ever more critical.

It’s going to become a requirement that admins be able to manage any storage system from vCenter and vCenter from any storage management console. These capabilities are going to be a special challenge to IBM and HP as their focus has been on integrating within  their own equipment stacks rather than bi-directional integration with management platforms for vendors such as VMware. Stories about a Cisco/EMC joint venture might, at least partially, be about this need for management capabilities across the whole hardware stack.