Cloud Technology and Automation: One Key to Cloud Success

Hyper-Converged Infrastructure, Application Infrastructure

Article | July 19, 2023

Discover the list of best hyperconverged infrastructure books and gain knowledge on the latest advancements in HCI and process design & explore areas for HCI improvements in the infrastructure domain. This comprehensive guide presents a curated selection of top books to consider for adopting Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) in IT infrastructure. Organizations increasingly recognize HCI as a transformative solution that streamlines data center management, enhances scalability, and optimizes resource utilization. To navigate this technology effectively, businesses must equip themselves with the proper knowledge and insights from authoritative sources. The carefully compiled list of books featured here offers valuable information, providing IT professionals and decision-makers with a solid foundation to make informed choices and successfully implement HCI within their IT infrastructure. 1. Hyperconverged Infrastructure Data Centers: Demystifying HCI Author: Sam Halabi Hyperconverged Infrastructure Data Centers: Demystifying HCI is a highly informative and authoritative guide that provides a clear understanding of Hyperconverged Infrastructure technology. Written for technical professionals and IT managers, the book offers a vendor-neutral perspective on HCI, covering its use cases and comparing leading hyperconvergence solutions in the market. Halabi effectively explains HCI's benefits, combining storage, computing, and networking into a single system, offering simplicity, scalability, and flexibility without sacrificing control. The book explores computing, virtualization, and software-defined storage advancements, highlighting the improvements they bring to data center designs. The author guides readers through the HCI lifecycle, including evaluation, planning, implementation, and management. The book also delves into HCI applications such as DevOps, virtual desktops, and disaster recovery, presenting a new application deployment and management model. 2. Hyperconverged Infrastructure: A Complete Guide Author: The Art of Service - Hyperconverged Infrastructure Publishing This book is a valuable resource for individuals and organizations seeking to understand and leverage the potential of hyperconverged infrastructure. This guide takes a question-based approach, empowering readers to uncover challenges and develop effective solutions. The guide provides a comprehensive self-assessment tool covering seven core HCI maturity levels. With updated case-based questions, readers can diagnose their HCI projects, initiatives, organizations, and processes based on accepted diagnostic standards and practices. It helps readers identify areas where HCI improvements can be made and provides a clear picture of the attention those areas require, enabling them to lead their organizations effectively and address what truly matters. It empowers readers to make their HCI investments work better by guiding them through asking the right questions and seeking innovative perspectives. 3. Hyperconverged Infrastructure: Practical Tools for Self-Assessment Author: Gerardus Blokdyk The book is a valuable resource for individuals in diverse business roles seeking to optimize their Hyperconverged infrastructure investments. This comprehensive guide emphasizes the integration of HCI with other business initiatives and the monitoring of HCI activities' effectiveness. The guide emphasizes the use of HCI data and information to support organizational decision-making and foster innovation. One of the strengths of this guide lies in its focus on leveraging HCI data and information for organizational decision-making and innovation. The self-assessment tool helps identify areas for improvement, with case-based questions organized into seven core areas of process design. Nevertheless, this guide equips readers with the necessary tools and insights to maximize the value of HCI investments, align with business objectives, and foster a culture of continuous improvement and innovation. 4. Hyper-converged Infrastructure Standard Requirements Author: Gerardus Blokdyk This book offers individuals various business roles considering or exploring hyper-converged infrastructure implementation. This comprehensive guide emphasizes the importance of asking the right questions and understanding the challenges and hyperconvergence solutions related to HCI. It provides a set of organized case-based questions, enabling readers to diagnose their HCI projects and identify areas for improvement. The self-assessment tool helps organizations implement evidence-based best practices and integrate the latest advancements in HCI and process design. With the Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Scorecard, readers can gain a clear understanding of the areas that require attention and prioritize their efforts accordingly. The digital components accompanying the book provide additional resources to support organizations in their HCI journey. 5. The Gorilla Guide to Hyperconverged Infrastructure Implementation Strategies Author: Scott D. Lowe The Gorilla Guide to Hyperconverged Infrastructure Implementation Strategies is a book designed for strategic planners seeking innovative segmentation methods. This book offers individuals various business roles exploring HCI implementation. It starts with the architecture of hyper-converged architecture, followed by Exploring the Intersection of Software-Defined Networking and HCI. It delved into addressing the pain points and storage performance in HCI, with relevant use cases for practical examples. It covers data-center consolidation, test and development environments, and HCI economics, for its impact on the IT budget. It helps organizations implement evidence-based best practices and integrate the latest advancements in HCI and process design. 6. The 2022 Report on Hyper-Converged Infrastructure: World Market Segmentation by City Author: Prof Philip M. Parker The '2022 Report on Hyper-Converged Infrastructure: World Market Segmentation by City' is a book designed for global strategic planners seeking innovative segmentation methods. This report covers over 2,000 cities across 200 countries, providing insights into the estimated market size (latent demand) of hyper-converged infrastructure in each significant city worldwide. The report ranks these cities based on their market size relative to their respective countries, geographic regions, and global market. The sales of hyper-converged infrastructure encompass a wide range of products, including hypervisors such as VMware, KVM, and Hyper-V, used for various purposes like virtual desktop infrastructure, server virtualization, data protection, and cloud solutions. Prominent companies in the industry, including VMware, Nutanix, Maxta, and others are covered in the report. The information presented is gathered from public sources, including news, press releases, and industry players, and is reported in U.S. dollars without adjusting for inflation. 7. The 2020-2025 World Outlook for Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Author: Prof Philip M. Parker The World Outlook for Hyper-Converged Infrastructure study comprehensively analyzes the global market across more than 190 countries. It offers estimates of the latent demand, or potential industry earnings (P.I.E.), for each country, expressed in millions of U.S. dollars. The report also presents the country's share as a percentage of the region and the global market, enabling readers to assess its relative position. The study generates latent demand estimates using econometric models that project economic dynamics within and between countries. While it does not delve into specific market players or product details, it takes a strategic, long-term perspective, disregarding short-term cyclical fluctuations and focusing on aggregated trends. A multi-stage methodology, often taught in graduate business courses on international strategic planning, was employed to formulate these estimates. Wrap-up The adoption of Hyper-Converged Infrastructure represents a significant opportunity for businesses to revolutionize their IT infrastructure, improve operational efficiency, and unlock new levels of agility and scalability. The books recommended in this listicle serve as indispensable resources for IT professionals and decision-makers seeking to embark on an HCI journey. By investing in the knowledge imparted by these authoritative texts, you empower yourself and your organization to leverage the full potential of HCI and stay at the forefront of technological advancements. Remember, success in adopting HCI lies not only in the technology itself but also in the understanding and expertise gained through continuous learning and exploration.

Application Infrastructure, Application Storage

Article | July 19, 2023

There is an exciting convergence in the networking industry around open source, and the energy is palpable. At LF Networking, we have a unique perspective as the largest open source initiative in the networking space with the broadest set of projects that make up the diverse and evolving open source networking stack. LF Networking provides platforms and building blocks across the networking industry that enable rapid interoperability, deployment, and adoption and is the nexus for 5G innovation and integration. LF Networking has now tapped confluence on industry efforts to structure a new initiative to develop 5G Super Blueprints for the ecosystem. Major integrations between the building blocks are now underway–between ONAP and ORAN, Akraino and Magma, Anuket and Kubernetes, and more.

Hyper-Converged Infrastructure, IT Systems Management

Article | September 14, 2023

Firms face challenges with managing their resources, and ensuring security & cost optimization, adding complexity to their operations. IaaS solves this need to maintain and manage IT infrastructure. Contents 1. Infrastructure as a Service: Future of Cloud Computing 2. Upcoming Trends in IaaS 2.1 The Rise of Edge Computing 2.2 Greater Focus on Security 2.3 Enhancement in Serverless Architecture 2.4 Evolution of Green Computing 2.5 Emergence of Containerization 3. Final Thoughts 1. Infrastructure as a Service: Future of Cloud Computing As digital transformation continues to reshape the business landscape, cloud computing is emerging as a critical enabler for companies of all sizes. With infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), businesses can outsource their hardware and data center management to a third-party provider, freeing up resources and allowing them to focus on their core competencies, reducing operational costs while maintaining the agility to adapt to changing market conditions. With the increasing need for scalable computing solutions, IaaS is set to become a pivotal player in shaping the future of computing. IaaS is already emerging as a prominent solution for organizations looking to modernize their computing capabilities. This article will delve into the recent trends of IaaS and its potential impact on the computing industry, implying why IaaS is important for emerging businesses. 2. Upcoming Trends in IaaS 2.1 The Rise of Edge Computing The rise in IoT and mobile computing has led to a challenge in the amount of data that can be transferred across a network in a certain period. Due to its many uses, such as improving reaction times for self-driving cars and safeguarding confidential health information, the market for edge computing infrastructure is expected to reach a value of $450 billion. (Source: CB Insights) Edge computing is a technology that enables data processing to occur closer to its origin, thereby reducing the volume of data that needs to be transmitted to and from the cloud. A mesh network of micro data centers that process or store critical data locally and push all received data to a central data center or cloud storage repository in a footprint of less than 100 square feet. (Source: IDC) Edge computing represents the fourth major paradigm shift in modern computing, following mainframes, client/server models, and the cloud. A hybrid architecture of interconnected IaaS services allows for low latency through edge computing and high performance, security, and flexibility through a private cloud. Connecting edge devices to an IaaS platform streamlines location management and enables remote work, thus looking forward to smoother future of IaaS. An edge layer (fog computing) is required to optimize the architecture model with high-speed and reliable 5G connectivity, connecting edge devices with the cloud. This layer acts as autonomous distributed nodes, capable of analyzing and acting on real-time data. Doing so sends only the data required to the central infrastructure in an IaaS instance. By combining the advantages of edge computing in data capture with the storage and processing capabilities of the cloud, companies can take full advantage of the benefits of data analytics to leverage their innovation and optimization capabilities while simultaneously and effectively managing IoT devices on the edge. IoT devices, also known as edge devices, possess the ability to analyze data in real time through the use of AI, ML, and algorithms, even in the absence of an internet connection. This technology yields numerous advantages, including superior decision-making, early detection of issues, and heightened efficiency. However, an IaaS infrastructure with top-notch computing and storage capabilities is an absolute necessity to analyze the data effectively. 2.2 Greater Focus on Security Hackers might use cloud-based services to host malware through malware-as-a-service (MaaS) platforms or to distribute malware payloads using cloud-based apps and services. In addition, organizations often need more than they can secure in their IaaS footprint, leading to increased misconfigurations and vulnerabilities. Recognizing and reacting to an attack is called reactive security, whereas anticipating a dangerous event before it happens and intervening to prevent it is predictive safety. Predictive security is the future of cloud security. The cybersecurity mesh involves setting up a distributed network and infrastructure to create a secure perimeter. This allows companies to centrally manage access to their data while enforcing security policies across the distributed network. It is a critical component of the Zero-Trust architecture. A popular IaaS cloud security trend is the multi-cloud environment. Multi-cloud proves effective when tools like security information and event management (SIEM) and threat intelligence are deployed. DevSecOps is a methodology that incorporates security protocols at every stage of software development lifecycle (SDLC). This makes it convenient to deal with threats during the lifecycle itself. Since deploying DevOps, software releases have been shortened for every product release. DevSecOps proves to be secure and fast only with a fully automated software development lifecycle. The DevOps and security teams must collaborate to provide massive digital transformation and security. Digital services and applications need stronger and better security in exponential amounts. This methodology must be enforced in a CI/CD pipeline to make it a continuous process. Secure access service edge (SASE) is a cloud-based architecture that integrates networking and software-as-a-service (SaaS) functions, providing them as a unified cloud service. The architecture combines a software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) or other WAN with multiple security capabilities, securing network traffic. 2.3 Enhancement in Serverless Architecture Serverless architecture apps are launched on demand when an event triggers the app code to run. The public cloud provider then assigns the resources necessary for the operation to occur. With serverless apps, containers are deployed and launched on demand when needed. This differs from the traditional IaaS cloud computing model, where users must pre-purchase capacity units for always-on server components to run their apps. The app will incur minimal charges during off-peak hours with a serverless model. When there is a surge in traffic, it can scale up seamlessly through the provider without requiring DevOps involvement. A serverless database is a type of database that operates as a fully managed database-as-a-service (DBaaS). It automatically adjusts its computing and storage resources to match the demand, making it convenient for users. A serverless database is a cloud based service that eliminates the need to manage infrastructure, scaling, and provisioning. It allows developers to concentrate on constructing applications or digital products without the burden of managing servers, storage, or backups. 2.4 Evolution of Green Computing In promoting green computing, infrastructure-as-a-service plays a significant role by allowing cloud providers to manage the infrastructure. This helps reduce the environmental impact and boosts efficiency by intelligently utilizing servers at high utilization rates. As a result, studies show that public cloud infrastructure is typically 2-4 times more efficient than traditional data centers, a giant leap forward for sustainable computing practices. 2.5 Emergence of Containerization Containerization is a type of operating system virtualization where applications are executed in distinct user spaces called containers. These containers operate on the same shared operating system, providing a complete, portable computing environment for virtualized infrastructure. Containers are self-contained software packages operating in any environment, including private data centers, public clouds, or developer laptops. They comprise all the necessary components required for the right functioning of IaaS-adopted cloud computing. 3. Final Thoughts With the expansion of multi-cloud environments, the emergence of containerization technologies like Docker and Kubernetes, and enhancements in serverless databases, IaaS is poised to become even more powerful and versatile in meeting the diverse computing needs of organizations. These advancements have enabled IaaS providers to offer a wide range of services and capabilities, such as automatic scaling, load balancing, and high availability, making it easier for businesses to build, deploy, and manage their applications swiftly in the cloud.

Article | June 2, 2021

StarlingX—the open source edge computing and IoT cloud platform optimized for low-latency and high-performance applications—is available in its 5.0 release today. StarlingX combines Ceph, OpenStack, Kubernetes and more to create a full-featured cloud software stack that provides everything carriers and enterprises need to deploy an edge cloud on a few servers or hundreds of them.