Data center operations

The Illusion of Cloud High Availability – Hardcore risk management

Question:  I am building a private cloud and am concerned about how to meet the SLA high availability requirements.  What are my risks and how can I best manage them?

To understand how to manage your high availability options, it is important to...

Reducing Cloud Operations Costs with Automation

Question:  How can I best realize the promised operational cost savings of my private cloud?

If you are running a typical enterprise IT organization, you are probably struggling with an organization and processes that are not...

Robust Cloud Network Architectures, or why the Internet runs on Layer 3

Question:  I am designing a network for my private cloud.  Should I use Layer 2 switches or Layer 3 routers for my cloud network architecture?

Since the dawn of the Internet there has been an on-going debate over whether to...

Cloud Hardware – Sacrificing system efficiency for low cost

Question:  Is the cloud really hardware agnostic?

The wonderful thing about cloud architectures is that they are designed to be cost effective at massive scales.  The major cloud providers are profitable not only because...

Real Life Business Continuity Planning

Question:  What are some operational considerations to expect while running a disaster recovery (DR) site during an actual disaster? You are in a panic.  Suddenly, your primary data center is down and you are planning to failover your business critical...