Friday 30 January 2015

OpenStack vs VMware vCloud

Topics

● IT Managers Important Points
● OpenStack Pro/Cons
● VMware Pro/Cons
● Technical Compare
● Non-technical Compare
● Who Should Use OpenStack ?
● Who Should Use VMware ?

IT Managers Important Points

The important points for IT managers in organizations and companies to
manage infrastructure services are:
● Easy to use
● Management tools & Optional web interfaces
● Easy to find skills and support
● Entry cost and maintenance, The lower the better
● Integration with other platforms
● Other points by you

OpenStack Pro/Cons

The advantage of OpenStack by our experiences at innfinision:
● The most successful Open Source project after Linux kernel
● Support from many OEMs and OS vendors
● Interoperability with many components, just pick your favorite one and plug it in
● Standard and well accepted APIs

The disadvantage of OpenStack by our experiences at innfinision:
● Very complex to setup and troubleshoot
● Although common code base, might differ from implementations
● Need high numbers of management nodes
● High skills required to run the cluster

VMware vCloud Pro/Cons

The advantage of VMware vCloud by our experiences at innfinision and
our customers advises:
● Feature rich (vSphere HA, vMotion, DRS, I/O control)
● Very large ecosystems
● All os vendors make it supported and certified under ESXi

● ESXi can be downloaded and used freely

The disadvantage of VMware vCloud by our experiences at innfinision and
our customers advises:
● Per core license - expensive
● Proprietary platform
● ESXi can not be APIs accessed - need to buy licenses
● Most of applications are based on Windows

OpenStack at a Glance



VMware vCloud at a Glance


Technical Compare

Hypervisor:
● OpenStack supports variants of hypervisor and container such as KVM, Xen, VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix XEN, Docker, LXC

● VMware vCloud suppors ESXi as the only and default hypervisor

Customer and operations access :
● OpenStack native dashboard, 3rd parties dashboards, CLI
● VMware Windows clients, vCloud Director (EOL’d)

Storage:
● OpenStack Default non-persistent images. Pluggable Cinder:block volumes, Ceph, Several vendor SAN
● VMware VMFS over SAN and iSCSI

Network:
● Traditional switching and Software Defined Network
● VMware traditional switching infrastructure, SDN with additional products

Image management:
● OpenStack Glance Image Service, support all popular image formats
● VMware Catalogs & templates, OVF import

Management System:
● Nova (Cluster Controller)
● VMware vCenter

High Availability:
● Nova for VMs HA; OpenStack HA project for infrastructure components
● VMware vCenter Heartbeat

APIs:
● For OpenStack based on Open REST APIs, compatibility with Amazon EC2 & S3
● For VMware is Proprietary, mostly only under Perl and Powershell

Non-technical Compare

Costs:
● For OpenStack everything is free but Some might charge for a maintenance fee for enterprise support

● In VMware the costs contains License + Maintenance fee

Industries :
● OpenStack is for cloud management platform for large providers, carriers and large outsourcers
● VMware is for virtualization for enterprises

Skills:
● For OpenStack high-end skills required, including system and network
● For VMware, basic system administration is needed

Expansion :
● No actual limitation on OpenStack (might be handy create different Availability Zones)
● Max 32 physical nodes on VMware vCloud, though not recommended

Migration:
● OpenStack any to any through built-in qemu tools
● VMware converter for P2V and other virtualization formats

Flexibility:
● OpenStack primarily created for Linux, Windows supported on the same infrastructure
● Great guest OS support and large ecosystem on VMware vCloud

Who Should Use OpenStack ?

If you are a large company or ISP with hundreds of VMs and networks being destroyed and created daily and have budget of having more than 15 physical nodes to start, go for OpenStack

Who Should Use VMware ?

If you need certified traditional workloads (ex: Oracle, SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, ...) and you have money and also you want all the point-and-click features, this is a no-brainer decision go for VMware


Wednesday 28 January 2015

Layers of Latency: Cloud Complexity and Performance

The cloud has enabled enterprises to dramatically improve how they operate their businesses, bringing information and applications to every corner of the globe and freeing up storage space as big data grows in popularity and volume.

Within the cloud, users can access applications from literally anywhere in the world, requiring only an Internet connection, and applications can be housed across multiple data centers sprinkled around the globe. Because of the flexibility and availability that the cloud offers, more than 30 percent of enterprises worldwide use at least one cloud-based solution. What’s more, cloud revenue is expected to grow 500 percent from 2010 to 2020 as cloud applications and companies multiply and expand.

Despite the cloud opening so many possibilities, it is not always able to deliver on performance demands, sometimes leading to subpar end user experiences. For example, research from Google Chrome executive Mike Belshe found that 20 milliseconds of network latency can result in a 15 percent decrease in page load time. Other studies from Amazon and Google found that a half-second delay causes a 20 percent drop in traffic on Google, and a one tenth of a second delay can lower Amazon’s sales by 1 percent. Clearly, latency is not only a nuisance, but also a serious problem for enterprises that house their applications in the cloud.

To mitigate the growing effects of latency, it’s important to understand what causes it, as well as how enterprises can reduce it. With both the Internet and cloud computing playing a role in how we share and access applications, latency is far more complicated than one might suspect. Prior to the arrival of the Internet, latency was defined simply by the number of router hops required for data to travel from origin to destination. Enterprises, for the most part, owned their network and all its components. So, packets would have to travel the distance between two computers or servers, resulting in more latency for transfers that involved more hops.

Today, most networks are broken down into hundreds — if not thousands — of components that are each owned, operated and managed by different entities. Therefore, enterprises often do not have insight into the performance of their network, let alone the ability to optimize its performance or reduce latency. Often labeled as distributed computing, this scenario means that if even one server out of hundreds is experiencing latency, cloud application users will see slower load times and halted performance.

Compounding the effects of distributed computing, virtualization adds another layer of complexity to cloud latency. Once a simple storage warehouse for rack-mounted servers, today’s data centers are a complex web of hypervisors running dozens upon dozens of virtual machines. Within this forest of virtualized network infrastructure, servers often incur packet delays before data even leaves the rack itself.

Because these widespread and complex networks are increasingly common in today’s world, many connectivity providers now provide service level agreements, or SLAs, that outline a minimum level of service and guaranteed network performance. Service providers of all types, whether telecom or cloud, work very hard to uphold the minimums outlined within their SLA. However, when it comes to cloud transactions conducted over the Internet, service providers often don’t establish SLAs. This is largely because cloud latency is such a new phenomenon and connectivity providers are still working out how they can ensure strong uptime for cloud applications, not to mention what levels to set.

It’s clear that these three factors — intricate networks, virtualization and a lack of SLA standards — create extremely unpredictable and unregulated service levels. However, the problem is not necessarily latency, but the unpredictability of it. To overcome this unpredictability, enterprises need to establish a baseline for performance and then keep as many cloud applications as possible performing to that level. Only then can they work to reduce it.

Many have found that establishing a direct connect to a public cloud is one way to help reduce the cloud’s unpredictability. These connections are offered by many leading cloud companies, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), to enable a connection between an enterprise’s network and the public cloud without involving hundreds of other servers or virtual machines. This essentially means that an enterprise can set up its own lane in which cloud applications travel back and forth to the home network. As a result, cloud traffic is no longer subject to the unpredictability of the general Internet and performance becomes far more calculable. Performance metrics for these services follow strict quality of service guarantees as these “cloud onramps” are seen as a key offering within cloud providers’ solutions.

Outages and latency continually remind us that the cloud is not perfect. Despite the high performance capabilities of the cloud, we must keep in mind that this is very new technology and both users and providers are still trying to work out the kinks to establish steady service levels. However, the first step to achieving a low-latency, high-performing cloud is identifying the causes of performance degradation. From there, we can only move onwards and upwards — into the cloud.

https://itechglide.com

VMware vs OpenStack: Public and Private Cloud Reality Check

When it comes to OpenStack vs VMware in private clouds and public clouds, make sure you're aware of the facts and asking the right questions. Here's the misinformation and a reality check.
When it comes to OpenStack vs VMware, a lot of misinformation is floating around the web. Read the headlines, and you might think OpenStack (the open source cloud platform) competes head-on against VMware's vSphere hypervisor. But that isn't  exactly the case. Here's the reality check, including recent thoughts from VMware Executive VP Raghu Raghuram.

The background: In recent weeks, published reports suggested PayPal (owned by eBay) would dump VMware for OpenStack. But VMware strongly disputed the report, and PayPal has also distanced itself from such assertions. What's the truth?

Here's The VAR Guy's spin:

OpenStack is a public and private cloud platform. It supports multiple hypervisors -- including VMware vSphere, KVM (kernel-based virtualization) and more.

It's safe to say hundreds of companies are currently testing OpenStack. Big proponents include Dell, HP, IBM and Rackspace. But that doesn't mean they will go live with OpenStack in all scenarios. For those that do deploy OpenStack, they will still need a hypervisor. That means choosing between VMware, KVM and more.

Instead of competing head-on against VMware's vSphere hypervisor, OpenStack is more logically positioned against VMware's vCloud Suite.

"vCloud gives you everything you need in an integrated approach," said Raghu Raghuram, executive VP of cloud infrastructure and management at VMware. "OpenStack is a piecemeal apporach. The service provider has to assembile it all together." Raghuram made that statement to The VAR Guy during the VMware Partner Exchange summit in February 2013.

VMware's own Hybrid Cloud initiative (which will include a VMware Public Cloud) will not run OpenStack. Some critics are concerned about that market reality, but The VAR Guy offered his two cents here.

Your Next Moves

For channel partners and cloud integrators, it's important to keep OpenStack momentum stories in perspective. Whenever a major technology shift occurs (mainframe, PCs, client-server, Internet, cloud...), you'll always see first-mover migration stories. Take a closer look and most of the migrations involve a specific application or IT department, rather than a wholescale rip-and-replace transition.

No doubt, OpenStack is generating buzz out there. And the buzz will get louder at the OpenStack Summit (April 15-18, Portalnd, Oregon). You'll also start to see more OpenStack training and certification programs for channel partners and integrators. But OpenStack's potential success doesn't spell certain doom for VMware.

Here is my reality check.

Hypervisors are just one strategy to muli-tenancy. VShere is not cloud. Cloud is not simply the next step past virtualization. Cloud is a transformation to services. Big difference technically and organizationally. VCloud is more closely compared to OpenStack. Like Linux OpenStack will garnish a portion (large perhaps) of the market. Developers drive innovation, developers prefer freedom and choice. They have chosen OpenStack.

You don't have to have a SI to be successful with OpenStack now - See Metacloud. F100 companies are in production with OpenStack. At significant cost advantage to VCloud with functional parity - Enterprises not looking at OpenStack will wake-up one day feeling left behind as there competitors deliver more cost effective agile solutions with the best developers choosing to work on OpenStack verse alternatives.

Little more..

OpenStack is an open Source project, like Apache and Linux before it. That is both its greatest strength and its greatest vulnerability. OpenStack is under three years old and it is already the biggest Open Source project ever. The others took 25 years to get to where they are today. OpenStack is a set of tools built from the ground up to support large scale clouds. Its main competition is not VMware, its Amazon.

VMWare is and will always remain a proprietary product that started life as an application used for cutting the costs of maintaining test/dev environments. Its greatest strength is that it is a monolithic virtualization hypervisor. The tools, until recently, are still mostly infrastructure and administrative focused. Yes, vCloud is getting there, but it is no more integrated than the OpenStack tools. VMWare had a few year jump on developing the technology, but it is so embedded in the Enterprise, it missed what was going on outside.

Saturday 11 October 2014

PMP TRAINING Program

Project Management Professional (PMP)® Certification is the most important industry-recognized professional course/ certification forproject managers. Globally recognized and demanded, the PMP® certification training demonstrates that you have the experience, education and competency to successfully lead and direct projects.

​To know more about PMP Training Program feel free to reach us on +91-9873922896 or drop an email at helpdesk@itechglide.com. Our PMPprofessionals would be more than happy to help you with your query.

​We Guarantee the success in clearing the Certification and if the exam is not cleared in 1 attempt they are entitled to get the training free of cost in next batches.

Profile:
Yudhir Arora (Project Manager)
ITIL V3 Certified, PMP (Project Management Professional), CBAP – (Certified Business Analysis Professional) & Six Sigma Green Belt Trained professional.
https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=22510801


We have Project Management Professionals
Thousands of PMP sample questions for PMP preparation
​Outright PMP study material & PMP Mock exams
Examples from Live Projects
​Building concept
Weekend batches for Professionals


Contents: Based on Fifth Edition of PMBOK

Module 01          Introduction: What is PMP?
Module 02          Organization Influence and Project Life Cycle
Module 03          Project Management Processes
Module 04          Project Integration Management
Module 05          Project Scope Management
Module 06          Project Time Management
Module 07          Project Cost Management
Module 08          Project Quality Management
Module 09          Project Human Resource Management
Module 10          Project Communication Management
Module 11          Project Risk Management
Module 12          Project Procurement Management
​Module 13          Project Stakeholder Management


​PMP (PMBOK 5th Edition) 4 day class
​Preparation for the PMP® Certification Exam(PMBOK 5th Edition) class will give you the core skills and knowledge Project Managers need to be effective at their job. It will also prepare you to become a Certified Project Management Professional (PMP®).


Course Fee Structure:

​Course: 
​PMP 4 day Class

​Fees: 
INR 10000

Total Amount with Tax(12.36%): 
​INR 11236

Monday 6 October 2014

Cisco Nexus vPC Benefits and Deployment Scenarios

Benefits of vPC

vPC is a virtualization technology that presents both Cisco Nexus 7000 Series paired devices as a unique Layer 2 logical node to access layer devices or endpoints. vPC belongs to Multichassis EtherChannel [MCEC] family of technology.

​A virtual port channel (vPC) allows links that are physically connected to two different Cisco Nexus 7000 Series devices to appear as a single port channel to a third device. The third device can be a switch, server, or any other networking device that supports link aggregation technology.

vPC provides the following technical benefits:
● Eliminates Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) blocked ports ● Uses all available uplink bandwidth ● Allows dual-homed servers to operate in active-active mode ● Provides fast convergence upon link or device failure ● Offers dual active/active default gateways for servers

By using vPC, users get the immediate operational and architectural advantages:
● Simplifies network design
● Build highly resilient and robust Layer 2 network
● Enables seamless virtual machine mobility and server high-availability clusters
● Scales available Layer 2 bandwidth, increasing bisectional bandwith
● Grows the size of the Layer 2 network

Components of vPC

NX-OS Version Requirement for vPC
vPC technology is supported since NX-OS 4.1.3. (i.e since the inception of NEXUS 7000 platform). NX-OS appropriate version depends on line cards configuration (M1, F1 or F2), chassis type (7010, 7018 or 7009) and Fabric Module generation (FM generation 1 [46Gbps per module] or generation 2 [110Gbps per module]).

NX-OS License Requirement for vPC
​ vPC feature is included in the base NX-OS software license.
​ ​Hot Standby Router Protocol (HSRP), Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP), Link 
Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) are also included in this base license.

The 2 common deployment scenarios using vPC technology are listed as below:
​● Inside Data Center:
​◦ Single-sided vPC (access layer or aggregation layer)
​◦ Double-sided vPC, also called multilayer vPC (access layer using vPC interconnected to aggregation layer using vPC)
● Across Data Center i.e vPC for Data Center Interconnect (DCI):
◦ Multilayer vPC for Aggregation and DCI
◦ Dual Layer 2 /Layer 3 Pod Interconnect

Single-Sided vPC
In single-sided vPC, access devices are directly dual-attached to pair of Cisco Nexus 7000 Series Switches forming the vPC domain.
The access device can be any endpoint equipement (L2 switch, rack-mount server, blade server, 
firewall, load balancer, network attached storage [NAS] device). Only prerequisite for the access 
​device is to support port-channeling (or link aggregation) technology:
● LACP mode active
● LACP mode passive
​● Static bundling (mode ON)

Beginning with Cisco NX-OS Software Release 4.1(3)N1(1a), the Cisco Nexus 5000 Series is capable of supporting 16 active member ports per port-channel. Cisco Nexus 5000 Series to a vPC domain gives a compelling topology where vPC can be sized up to 160 Gbps (16 x 10-Gbps ports).

Double-Sided vPC
This topology superposes two layers of vPC domain and the bundle 
between vPC domain 1 and vPC domain 2 is by itself a vPC.

​vPC domain at the bottom is used for active/active connectivity from enpoint devices 
to network access layer.

​vPC domain at the top is used for active/active FHRP in the L2/L3 boundary 
​aggregation layer.

Benefits of double-sided vPC over single-sided vPC topology are listed below:
​● Enables a larger Layer 2 domain.
​● Provides a higher resilient architecture. In double-sided vPC, two access switches 
are connected to two aggregation switches whereas in single-sided vPC, one access switch 
is connected to two aggregation switches.
​● Provides more bandwidth from the access to aggregation layer. Using a Cisco Nexus F1 or F2 Series modules line card for vPC and Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Switches with Release 4.1(3)N1(1a) or later, a vPC with 32 active member ports (that is, 320 Gbps) can be instantiated.

Multilayer vPC for Aggregation and DCI
vPC provides capabilities to build a loop-free topology, and as such it makes the technology a good fit for Data Center Interconnect (DCI) deployments. In this scenario, a dedicated layer of vPC domain (adjacent to aggregation layer which also runs vPC) is used to interconnect the 2 data centers together.​

Sunday 5 October 2014

IT Service Continuity (Disaster Recovery Plan)

1. Identify hosting Site which needs to be available Active/ Standby in both of the DataCenters.
2. Understand and Identity replication method between the sites.
3. DNS failover multiple options : 
load balancer GSLB
dynamic DNS : publically available 
http://dyn.com/dns/ or http://www.dnsdynamic.org/ ​register domain name, then under domain name configure both the sides. what we did in our organisation was register companies domain name to dyndns and ask clients to do cname. You need to configure two public IPs which dyndns will track processes.

Let me explain Vmware replication, Vmware site recovery Manager and later what is Dynamic DNS and how to setup.

VMware vSphere Replication 5.5

vSphere Replication is a feature of the VMware vSphere platform. It copies a 
virtual machine to another location, within or between clusters, and makes that
copy available for restoration through the VMware vSphere Web Client or through 
the orchestration of a full disaster recovery product such as VMware vCenter Site 
​Recovery Manager. 




How does it work?

vSphere Replication is a deeply integrated component of the vSphere platform. 
​It is the only true “hypervisor-level” replication engine available today.

Changed blocks in the virtual machine disk(s) for a running virtual machine are 
sent to a secondary location, where they are received by a virtual appliance that 
writes them to an on-disk redo log. Only when that redo log is complete and all 
blocks in a given replication are received is that set of data applied to the virtual 
machine disks for the offline (protection) copy of the virtual machine.









​Configuring replication for as many as 500 virtual machines through the same management interface that is used for all VMware vCenter operations is an easy process of right-clicking a virtual machine and selecting the destination for its replica.

vSphere Replication performs an initial, full synchronization of the source virtual machine and its replica copy. 

After baseline synchronization is complete, vSphere Replication switches to transferring only the blocks of data that have changed. This ensures that a minimal amount of data is sent over the network to the target, and it enables aggressive RPOs. After unique data has been sent, there is no need that it be sent again. Only changes are replicated, and those blocks are sent to the target location’s vSphere Replication Appliance.




There are lot more interesting topics under Vmware Replication;
*​Simplicity Without Sacrificing Functionality
*Protected site replicating to Target Site 1 and Target Site 2.
*Replication between multiple Remote Sites managed by Different Vcenter
  server system instances.
*Recovering a Virtual Machine.
*Retention of Multiple Points in Time.

We cover all these topics with Live examples during our Vmware and Datacenter Classes.


Now Lets Discuss "VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager - Automated Disaster Recovery Orchestration"

What Is vCenter Site Recovery Manager?
vCenter Site Recovery Manager is the industry-leading disaster recovery (DR) management solution. Site Recovery Manager provides automated orchestration and non-disruptive testing of centralized recovery plans for all virtualized applications.
Site Recovery Manager can integrate natively with vSphere Replication.


How Does It Work?
VMware vCenter Server™. Site Recovery Manager instances 
deployed at both production and recovery sites integrate directly 
with local vCenter Server instances.
​Replication. Site Recovery Manager requires an underlying replication
technology to copy ​virtual machine (VM) data to the recovery site.
*vSphere replication
*Array-based replication

Key Benefits
​*Lower Cost for DR
*Hardware and APP independence
*Simplified setup
*Centralized recovery plan
*Non-Disruptive testing
*Automated disaster recovery Failover
*Automated Failback

There are lot more new features and technologies incorporated in VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5.0 which we will cover in our Trainings and test all of them in our LAB setup. 

Lets Discuss Dynamic DNS now..

The main differences between regular DNS and dynamic DNS are:
1)How often an IP address is updated
2)How the IP is updated
3)And the speed at which the new address is communicated to the rest of 
the internet.
Dynamic DNS updates a DNS server with new or changed records for IP addresses
without the need for human intervention. This allows a fully qualified domain name
(FQDN) that never changes to be associated with a dynamically assigned IP address 
​that can change quite often.



Static DNS:

​When a computer is connected to the internet with a static IP address, setting up the DNS for the domain is a relatively simple matter of adding an A record to the domain name's zone file.
​A zone file is just a special text file describing everything about a domain name, where to send email for the domain, and where the website is located for example.
​The A record is that section of a zone file that specifies the name and the IP address where the appropriate server is located. 

Here is an example of an A record:
www.example.com.   IN A  192.168.1.2 

​Zone files are stored on a computer called a nameserver. A nameserver is a computer that is designated to answer all questions from other computers about specific domain names.

For all the queries and explanations please contact helpdesk @ +91-9643459703 or write to us at helpdesk@itechglide.com

VMWARE and CLOUD classes are already going on. Please contact on above details for Registeration.

Saturday 4 October 2014

CISA - Certification, Discussions, Study Material



2 students from our last batch attempted CISA certification and had successfully cleared on their 1st attempt.

We will be adding students testimonials and Videos very soon in which they will be explaining there journey with iTechGlide and will share examination tips & tricks.
We will be starting Certification and Discussion FORM on our Website for various batches including CISA and CISSP.

Our current Batch was started on 27th Sep 2014 and we will very soon announce our upcoming Batch in EVENTS Section.

iTechGlide believes in providing education from those who have more then 15 years of hands on Security, Auditing, Compliance and Datacenter experience. Only instructors who have worked on real infrastructure challenges and know current Market trends can guide students at there best.

Our CISA & CISSP Instructor:
Bikas Kumar
https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=33102650&authType=name&authToken=6nkR&trk=nmp_rec_act_profile_photo

Find below few of the Study Material which will help you guys clearing the Certification who have already book there Certification.
Quote:
​It is important to remember that educational software, like books and internet, is only one tool in the learning process. Neither can be a substitute for experienced trainer, leadership, guidance and motivation.


​STUDY MATERIAL

​link for new CISA & CISM 2014 database;
http://download.cisa-support.com/ISACA/2014/CISA_2014_Setup.exe
http://download.cisa-support.com/ISACA/2014/CISM_2014_Setup.exe

And here's your keygen, it uses .NET 4
​http://www.4shared.com/zip/ntSm4T0Cce/2014.html 
or 
Download keygen from here:
https://www.mediafire.com/?n4u5zi0gldmsi8v

CISA Practice Questions Database 2013
http://kickass.to/cisa-practise-question-database-2013-cracked-version-and-works-perfectly-fine-t8626051.html

CISA Review Manual 2014
http://netload.in/dateiSMOSMmuXYH/CISAReviewManual2014.pdf.htm

CISA: Essential Exam. Notes [Kindle Edition]
Make sure to download the book instead of seeing it online. Otherwise, the quality will not be the best, and therefore you will not able to see it in high quality.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-b_WH4Ic2WAg1f3xjEMXkRIGsX6-cr8nRl9uzVYFXvk/edit?usp=sharing

CISA-Essential Exam.Notes-2014.pdf
http://certcollection.org/forum/index.php?app=core&module=attach§ion=attach&attach_id=7827

CISA CBT - Career Academy Torrent
https://kickass.to/cisa-career-academy-t7356393.html



CISA Practise Questions DB 2012
http://www46.zippyshare.com/v/30780847/file.html
DjVu Viewer (Required for viewing the file): http://www.djvuviewer.com/









Thanks and Regards
helpdesk@itechglide.com
+91-9643459703