links for 2008-05-16

• Microsoft’s evolving role in systems management
  By 2013, Garbani sees three major categories in the management software market, which will envelope many of the discrete functions that we have today; 1) IT Service Delivery & Performance 2) IT Service Mgmt & Processes 3) IT Support & Resources

links for 2008-05-15

• The World Needs “BSM Lite”
  nice writeup that gives credit to all the great work done by Doug on BSM.
  (tags: bsm)
• Ten things I learned about CA
• HP Building a One-Stop Data Center Shop
  “Data centers generally run in 10-year cycles. A lot of them were built in the late ’90s for the Internet boom, and now those are way outdated—especially when it comes to conserving power,” he said. “It’s very expensive to renovate the old ones
  (tags: datacenter)
• HP buys EDS for $13.9 billion
  (tags: datacenter)
• The CMDB System, the CMS, the ‘CCS,’ and the NOC
• HP’s EDS Acquisition Misses Real Market Opportunity
  Unfortunately, EDS brings nothing to the table when it comes to SaaS, managed services or other utility-based offerings. Instead, it saddles HP with lots of aging people, facilities and business ideas that haven’t kept pace with today’s realities.
  (tags: datacenter)

links for 2008-05-13

• ITPro: News: VMware tackles IT service management, disaster recovery
  (tags: virtualization)
• BSM Vendors Push Products, But Process Is More Important — BSM — InformationWeek
  (tags: bsm)
• The Realities of the BSM Challenge
  (tags: bsm)

links for 2008-05-09

• Opalis offers data center automation data to execs
  Crouchman said Opalis is seeing much of its market opportunities come from firms that are struggling with configuration management, server provisioning, fault and incident management and an emerging trend around high availability and disaster recovery.
  (tags: process+orchestration Run-book-automation RBA)
• Polling at Interop.Network Performance Blog, Network Performance Management News, Tutorials, Resources - Network Performance Blog
  Close to 80% of attendees are either using virtualization now or planning to use virtualization in 12 months, and a plurality of respondents – 38% - said the virtualization presented the greatest monitoring challenges.
  (tags: virtualization)
• BMC Software to Embed TIBCO’s ActiveMatrix into BSM Platform
  “BMC Software chose to work with TIBCO because of their commitment to, and participation in, the creation and support of open standards. ActiveMatrix will power a SOA-enabled solution that will position BMC far ahead of our competitors
• Cirba server consolidation software targets mainframes
  Cirba now caters to users that run IBM’s System z. At an IBM event last year, System z General Manager James Stallings revealed that of the mainframes IBM ships today, about 25% of their workloads are designated to run Linux.
  (tags: virtualization)

links for 2008-05-08

• Microsoft System Center Cross Platform - Finally, Heterogenous Support in System Center
  You told us that Windows is great, and Windows might be a large part of your data center, but for many of you, you have heterogeneity out there. So we’re taking a step towards allowing you to have one single solution with System Center
  (tags: Microsoft)
• Dell delving deeper into virtualization
  Dell also has enhanced partnerships with VMware Inc. and Citrix Systems Inc. And it has added a new partnership with Egenera, whose products virtualize an entire data center, beyond the servers and storage devices.
  (tags: virtualization)

links for 2008-05-07

• Digital Fuel Delivers Advanced ITIL Catalog
  (tags: resource-reconciliation)
• Splunk seeks to revolutionize IT change management using its IT search platform | Tech Sanity Check | TechRepublic.com
  “Splunk brings change audit events and configuration data together with activity and error logs so you can connect change with actual system and user behavior
  (tags: performance-and-availability-management)

links for 2008-04-30

• Data Center automation reduces costs and prevents human error
  (73%) of enterprises find that these automated tools allow their staff to be more productive, reducing the pressure to replace staff when they move on
  (tags: DCA virtualization)
• Microsoft Expands Management Capabilities
  Now company officials are looking to continue expanding those capabilities to include virtualized and non-Microsoft environments.
  (tags: virtualization configuration)
• Microsoft targets CA, HP with new management attack
  Microsoft also is introducing Performance and Resource Optimization capabilities that let OEMs develop Operations Manager management packs that monitor unique features of their platforms, such as power management. In addition, Microsoft lined up 30 partne

Month in Review - April 2008

Vendor Analysis

• Mapping HP Software to the Data Center Automation Blueprint - reviewing the post Opsware offering from HP Software

Performance & Availability vs. Analytics series

• Performance & Availability vs. Analytics; Part 1 - Discussing data collection of metrics after numerous vendors briefings and research
• Performance & Availability vs. Analytics; Part 2 - Discussing innovations around the usage of this data
• Performance & Availability vs. Analytics; Part 3 - Conclusion on where Performance & Availability fit in DCAB

Data Center Automation Blueprint development & discussion

• Data Center Automation Blueprint; made a round of updates - added some descriptions and key features to the blueprint wiki page

links for 2008-04-29

• The Virtualization Stack
  nice writeup on the different types of virtualization and how they relate to each other.
  (tags: virtualization)
• AlterPoint Announces New Network Lifecycle Management Capabilities
  (tags: configuration Resource-Reconciliation CMDB)
• Interop network goes all-out virtual
  Last year Horne recalls his team pulling 20 to 25 servers off the racks after the show. This year practically every show function will be run on just one HP BladeSystem c7000 Enclosure, which is being virtualized using VMware ESX Server.
  (tags: virtualization)

links for 2008-04-28

• An Application Response Time Equation for Geeks
  (tags: application-performance-management)
• Adventures in managing virtualization - Network World
  (tags: virtualization)
• Tideway Launches Tideway Foundation 7.1
  (tags: CMDB Resource-Reconciliation)