Beyond Messaging

Jargon Buster - Cloud Computing

via www.netevents.tv

NetEvents.tv seems like a wealth of resources for learning about the hot new trends in Enterprise IT, and Telco Technology. This video on what is behind the jargon of cloud computing was very interesting.

Are you a Virtualization Administrator or Payload Administrator?

Now, in the age of cloud computing, payload administrators (for lack of a better term) can leverage virtualization to almost ignore infrastructure operations. (I say "almost" because there are fundamental concerns related to things like security that must be taken into account.) Infrastructure is "someone else's problem", and can easily be handed off to shared IT services or even a third part infrastructure service.

via news.cnet.com

Are you a Virtualization Administrator or Payload Administrator?

I think the quote above from CNET pretty perfectly describes the largest challenge to the adoption of cloud computing in big business. Many larger companies are not yet familiar enough and trusting enough of 3rd party cloud parnters to outsource their IT infrastructure.

My prediction is that many larger companies will create their own virtualized data centers and the data center support group will provide internal cloud services to their business unit customers. Of course this may be different for companies that are not in the IT industry and do not consider IT one of their core businesses. For a company that wants to focus on core business and wants commoditized IT, a 3rd part cloud partner may be a good deal. Especially as the cloud services marketplace matures, companies like Google and Google Partner Cloud Sherpas, Amazon, IBM and others will fine tune their product/service offerings and be able to offer real IT bargains.

So, to answer the question posed in the title of this post - will the new job title of Virtualization Adminostrator be a real career path, or will their be subject matter experts in each functional area that are more like Payload Administrators?  I think the answer is that both of these job functions will be used in different environments.  Companies whose core business is in fact based on IT, will want to keep closer tabs on their virtual environments and will have system administrators who work within the virutual environment just as they do in the physical environment of non virtualized data centers.  Business units, developers, and project managers working with application lifecycles will probably be more like Payload Administrators.  They will be more concerned with programming the applications and less concerned on what back end they are running on. 

However, no matter how much you virtualize your environment there is always going to be a need for people who understand how technical elements and business processes come together to create the user experience.  Troubleshooting skills, technical expertise, and a firm understanding of the business you support are all key elments of IT System Administration that are not going to change any time soon.  What does change (almost daily!) is the technical specifications of the systems and environments we are supporting. 

What does this mean for the average system administrator?  It means keep studying the key products and services in the virtualization marketplace.  Add in related technologies such as storage.  Also keep abreast of concepts in application development lifecycles such as agile development.  And don't get so starry eyed over the cloud that you forget the non-sexy but bet ever important concepts of information security, backup, and disaster recovery.

Embedding a Spreadsheet on a Web Page with Google Docs

I am having fun this morning experimenting with Google Docs.  I have uploaded a spreadsheet listing all the sizes of circular knitting needles I own.  (Even though I have inherited two grandmother's worth of knitting needles in just about every size and type imaginable, it is amazing how the one size I need for any given new project turns out to be the one size I do not have.

My goal is to have a list of what I have so that when I am out shopping and viewing patterns I can use my Blackberry to see the list and fill in any missing blanks.  Now that I know how to use the embeddable Google Doc viewer, I can even have my spreadsheet show up embedded in an iFrame on my web page.  As long as I format it for mobile viewing I should be able to see what knitting needles I have and what I still need.

By the way, here is the code I used to embed the spreadsheet into this blog post using an iFrame. There are other ways to do it, but I wanted it to look clean and simple, without the editing controls so it will look ok on a mobile device.  Tip: make your sheet very simple with small cells.  Use the "merge cells" button on the toolbar to get text to show across multiple cells.

<iframe src="http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=0AjMpyePv9g-xdEJaRFJnTzVqMWlyRk9jZ3hhYXllY1E&hl%E2%80%9D" height="450" width="430"></iframe>

Embedding Google Documents into a Web Page

I just read a great piece on an undocumented feature of Google Documents that allows you to make an iframe to embed a Google Document (.pdf, or ppt were mentioned).  Edited to Add - I just tried this with a .doc file and it worked great!

I am going to give this a test.  I've had challenges in the past embedding PowerPoint files on a Websphere Portal page, so this could be handy.

Here is the link from the Google Operating System blog. And below is the result of test code they used which I believe links to the original thesis describing what would become Google.

Edited to Add: Cool, it worked.  Its too wide for my page as written so I am making the iframe less wide than the original.  I may not be a programmer but I do know how to change pixel sizes on widgets and even keep aspect ratios although with this widget it didn't require worrying about aspect ration, it has automated scroll bars as well as a zoom in/zoom out button. Very nice.  (I never smoosh people's heads by shrinking photos incorrectly.  Yes, that is one of my pet peeves.)

Tips for Writing Downtime Incident Reports

This morning Gmail was down for about 100 minutes.  The Google blog has a well written explanation of the downtime Gmail users experienced this morning: More on Today's Gmail Issue.

This is a good example of how to communicate with your user community about downtime issues.  I don't think I have to tell any System Administrator that it is very important to communicate with users both during and after the fact of a downtime incident.

The fact is that no matter how well you set up fail-over and high availability, there may be time when systems fail.  A good IT team needs to have monitoring set up to know when  failure occurs, troubleshooting skill sets to determine the cause of the problem, the ability to think on their feet under high stress, and the ability to communicate status with their customers.

When I communicate downtime reports, I like to harken back to one of the first jobs I held after college.  I used to process warranty claims for an Acura car dealership.  On the back of the repair orders the technicians had to report "the three C's" or "C.C.C" which stood for "Complaint, Cause, and Correction."  Like the 5 W questions of journalism (Who, What, Why, When, Where) these 3 C's serve as a good mnemonic device to help you make sure you cover the details.

An example of using this format on this morning's Gmail problem might look like this:

Incident Report: 

Key detail: What systems/users/functions were affected.  Note start time of first system down report, and end time when all systems were back to normal.

Complaint: Gmail down for 100 minutes.

Cause: Failover Request routers became overloaded during routing maintenance. Insufficient amount of request routers to handle failover.

Correction: Brought up additional request router servers.

Of course you will flesh this information out in different ways depending upon the audience, but the three Cs of repair technicians can be a good way to remember to report key details.

It is also good to remember there are two types of incident reports you may need to make: the first being a communication during the downtime, the second the full incident report after systems are back to normal.  In the middle of the crisis there is a temptation to forgo communication and just work hard to fix the problem.  Its good to have a member of management do the communication at this point, as the technical team is busy solving the problem.  Always tell your boss(es) immediately when a problem occurs that is going to be on their radar.  They hate being surprised.

During system downtime you may need to communicate via an alternative method.  (Can't email them that email is down, right?)  Voicemail, intranet, company blog, or even old fashioned overhead speakers can be used.  Update the help desk teams, and task them with updating the help desk voicemail message for your callers.

After the problem is fixed, then you want to put together your "post mortem" incident report.  Use the 5 W's of journalism and the C.C.Cs of Automotive service to help you remember to record all the key details.  And remember, the most important thing after a downtime experience is to do what is needed to assure your customers and management what you are doing to ensure that this does not occur again.

Next time it will be something completely else.

Amazon Cloud Includes Enhanced Security, Truly Virtual Servers

Amazon has released it's Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service. It features additional security features. Customers can specify IP address ranges for access, creating a private cloud network. Since companies are chomping at the bit for access to cheaper computing platforms and ability to use Cloud Computing for backups and cheaper software licensing, I predict many will evaluate the new Amazon solution.

via www.informationweek.com

Amazon said customers will be able to use their existing security services and firewalls for their private clouds. Amazon VPC will have no long-term contracts, requires "minimum" upfront investments, and customers will only pay for the resources they use, Amazon said in a statement.

So what's available on the service?  To start with it seems mostly geared toward IT groups who want to set up servers.

Here's a list from Amazon of their software "menu."  Truly virtual servers, here we come.

_________

Operating Systems

Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) are preconfigured with an ever-growing list of operating systems. We work with our partners and community to provide you with the most choice possible. You are also empowered to use our bundling tools to upload your own operating systems. The operating systems currently available to use with your Amazon EC2 instances include:

Operating Systems
Red Hat Enterprise Linux	Windows Server 2003
OpenSolaris	openSUSE Linux
Fedora	Gentoo Linux

Oracle Enterprise Linux

Ubuntu Linux

Debian

Software

Amazon EC2 enables our partners and customers to build and customize Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) with software based on your needs. We have hundreds of free and paid AMIs available for you to use. A small sampling of the software available for use today within Amazon EC2 includes:

Databases	Batch Processing
IBM DB2	Hadoop
IBM Informix Dynamic Server	Condor
Microsoft SQL Server Standard 2005	Open MPI
MySQL Enterprise
Oracle 11g

Web Hosting

Apache HTTP

IIS/Asp.Net

IBM Lotus Web Content Management

IBM WebSphere Portal Server

Application Development Environments
IBM sMash
JBoss Enterprise Application Platform
Ruby on Rails Application Servers IBM WebSphere Application Server Java Application Server Oracle WebLogic Server Video Encoding & Streaming Wowza Media Server Pro Windows Media Server

Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes, or... Google Apps

There's a third gorilla in play in the email space - more organizations, some quite large are dumping their infrastructure heavy traditional email client/servers and migrating to Google Apps.  Google Apps are enterprise ready, secure, and cost effective. 

The Gmail client is ubiquitous, with usability, large mailbox size support, and great searchability.  Using the software as a service (SaaS) model, you can cut down on administration and support costs by moving into cloud computing.

One of the big Google Apps partners, CloudSherpas, recently hosted an event called Leaving Lotus.  Click on the link to get access to their takaway presentations, including a migration guide Migrating from Lotus Notes/Domino to Google Apps.

Here is an article from the Google Enterprise blog that focuses on migrating from Exchange to Google Apps. Choosing Google Apps over Microsoft Exchange.