Author: David

June 23, 2011 Off

Risk to cloud adoption because IT departments ‘short on time’

By David
Grazed from ComputerWorld.  Author: Antony Savvas.

Widespread adoption of cloud computing could be threatened because IT departments do not have the time to get it off the ground, according to a report.

High maintenance costs and the increasing percentage of time that goes into administration around existing systems were the biggest challenges to overcome, said the paper.

Nearly two thirds of respondents said the volume of administrative tasks was "significantly reducing their effectiveness", and 60 percent said administration was reducing their capacity to work on new initiatives, such as cloud migrations.

June 22, 2011 Off

How to Manage Rackspace Cloud Servers

By David
Grazed from ReadWriteWeb.  Author: David Strom.

A new ebook to help users of Rackspace setup and manage their cloud-based servers is out this week. Called Managing Rackspace Cloud Servers and written by Jacek Artymiak, it is a very practical and useful guide, and seems to be unique.

The 75 page book teaches you how to use the openstack-compute Python-based tool to manage server farms built on top of the Rackspace Cloud Servers service. The author takes you through the steps to get the source code installed on your machines and illustrates some basic management tasks with copious examples and some geek humor thrown in for extra measure. Even if you aren’t familiar with Python you should be comfortable using this tool.

For example, you can use openstack-compute to resize RAM or disk on one of your VMs, rebuild a VM from a known working version, and making backups of your cloud servers.

Rackspace’s programming interfaces make automating common tasks possible, and why these Python-based tools can be useful. "Consider the following scenario: you have an nginx front-end server as a load balancer and a couple of Tornado web servers behind it servicing the incoming traffic. Suppose you get famous and the load on your web servers rises above a certain threshold," says Artymiak…

June 22, 2011 Off

ITIL struggles to catch up with private cloud

By David
Grazed from The Register.  Author: Nathan Coates.

Data centres run on the back of good operational processes that are repeatable and trusted. IT management best practices have sometimes been criticised as being monolithic and failing to keep up with change.

ITIL (the Information Technology Infrastructure Library), for example, was defined in the 1990s as a best-practice framework for large-scale UK government systems.

Is ITIL still appropriate framework for the private cloud?

The long-standing goal of data centre management the private cloud has been dynamic IT, or the allocation of IT resources on demand according to the needs of the business.

June 22, 2011 Off

Microsoft: Cloud computing won’t hurt us

By David
Grazed from Network World.   Author: Jon Brodkin.

Cloud computing is widely perceived as a threat to Microsoft, because the maker of Windows and Microsoft Office earns the lion’s share of its money selling licenses for packaged software.

But Microsoft’s new Server & Tools President, in his first public appearance since taking the top spot, said cloud computing is another opportunity Microsoft can exploit just as it did with the birth of the PC.

June 21, 2011 Off

Bank app store part of community cloud developments

By David
Grazed from Computer Weekly.  Author: Karl Flinders.

Community-based cloud services for banks, including an app store for financial services organisations, are being incubated on the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (Swift) network.

The 40-year-old shared messaging service, used by world banks to complete financial transactions, could offer the secure and reliable cloud platform that financial organisations are looking for.

June 21, 2011 Off

Beta Cloud VPS will be launched by Host1Plus

By David
Grazed from Open PR.  Author: PR Announcement.

London, United Kingdom, June 16, 2011 – Host1Plus web hosting and cloud hosting provider launches beta Cloud VPS from 1st July.
Host1Plus will be giving away 10,000 cloud machines worth $1.5 million. This introductory offer will run for 3 months granting all beta testers 3 months of free VPS products and services.