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Microsoft, together with partner Persistent Systems has developed and released a tool which helps customers to move complete Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas) deployments from one Microsoft datacenter to another. As Microsoft introduces new data centers, customers may want to move to the nearest data center for better performance. The solution called Azure Data Center Migration Solution is delivered as open source licensed under the Apache License and available for download on GitHub
Microsoft yesterday announced several updates to its Microsoft Azure cloud platform. Updates include the availability of the new G-series type of VM’s, the availability of Ubuntu image with a fully integrated Docker engine and a public preview of Azure Key Vault providing the abiltiy to safeguard and control keys and secrects using Hardware Security Modules (HSM) in the cloud.
Starting yesterday it has made available the G-series in Windows Azure, offering up to 32 vCPUs using the latest Intel Xeon processor E5 v3 family, 448GB of memory, and 6.59 TB of local Solid State Drive (SSD) space. Also the maximum count of attached data disks has been increased to 64, enabling the attachment of up to 64 TBs of persistent disks in Azure Storage. More information about how to deploy the new G-series can be found here.
Microsoft has released a free book titled: “Microsoft System Center Introduction to Microsoft Automation Solutions“. The book which contains 105 pages gives an introduction to the automation solutions provided by Microsoft in the form of Microsoft Azure Automation and Service Management Automation (SMA).
The book provides considerations on the features of each solution, and how they can be architected to fit your needs. It explores the interfaces you will use to interact with the solutions, including the web-based portals, Windows PowerShell command-line interaction, and programmatic access via the web services. It then covers how you implement and manage automation using runbooks, assets, and Integration Modules, along with how you can use a source control system to manage runbook content.
Google announced beginning this week that it’s going to support running Windows workloads on top of its Google Cloud Platform. For now this means that you can now run Windows Server 2008 R2 in beta, and it will work on supporting later releases like Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2 as well.
Besides that Google also announced that customers can use their current Microsoft licenses so that they can move those to workloads running on top of Google Cloud Platform, under the Microsoft License Mobility for Google Cloud Platform program. Also customers can use the Chrome RDP application from Fusion Labs for free allowing them to connect to the workloads using RDP via the Chrome browser.
Microsoft has published a series of articles on the subject: Cloud Platform Integration Framework. The Cloud Platform Integration Framework (CPIF) provides an enterprise or cloud service provider architect patterns that helps bridge the gaps between infrastructure and workloads by providing guidance to application and workload teams for integrating with the Microsoft cloud platform.
The framework presents a number of best-practices patterns that:
The OpenStack Foundation regularly conducts Elections for Individual Directors of the Foundation’s Board, next elections for the 2015 Board of Directors are going to be held from Monday January 12, 2015 to Friday January 16, 2015. It is time to decide who are the candidates as nominations are occurring during these days, from November 24 to December 12, 2014.
This process is important for the legitimacy of the Foundation and for the strenght of the open source cloud computing project. These directors are meant to represent the voices and interests of the developers and contributors to the OpenStack project as a whole, and of the operators of OpenStack-based clouds. Among the responsabilities of the 24 person Board is the budget of the Foundation, strategy and goals, the board is constituited by directors elected by the 8 Individual Members, directors elected by the 8 Gold Members and directors appointed by the 8 Platinum Members.
Individual Members Director board seats are meant to serve as the Individual Members of the Foundation and they are the connection between the community of the Foundation and the Board, it is important to mention that they are not supposed to represent the companies for which they work.
VMware has released a paper titled:"Creating a VMware Software-Defined Data Center". The paper which contains 29 pages describes a reference architecture for a Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) using VMware vCloud Suite Enterprise 5.8, VMware NSX for vSphere 6.1, VMware IT Business Management Suite Standard Edition 1.1, and VMware vCenter Log Insight 2.0.
The design uses three cluster types, each with its own distinct function. It provides a management plane that is separate from the user workload virtual machines. In addition, it leverages an edge cluster, which provides dedicated compute resources for network services such as edge routers; these provide access to the corporate network and the Internet.
Today, November 20, IBM announced an interesting update to its PaaS (Platform as a Service) Bluemix. The new “Dedicated” offering allows developers to create applications and deploy them in a single tenant, dedicated cloud environment hosted in an IBM cloud center.
IBM is also expanding its offering with a private API catalog on its public instance of Bluemix that is going to help developers to more easily access their on-premise data.
Among the announcement that IBM made, there is also the enlargement of its Bluemix Garage network to Canary Wharf Group’s Level39, which is Europe’s largest tech accelerator based in London, the network provides a central location for financial, retail and future cities tech companies.
Microsoft has published a series of blog articles called the "Microsoft Infrastructure as a Service Foundations". The goal of the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) Foundations series is to help enterprise IT departments and cloud service providers understand, develop, and implement IaaS infrastructures. This series provides comprehensive conceptual background that combines Microsoft software, consolidated guidance, and validated configurations with partner technologies such as compute, network, and storage architectures, in addition to value-added software features.
The Day 2 at AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas saw on stage Verner Vogels, amazon.com CTO, in a keynote mostly focused on devs.
Two the key announcements:
