Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Are SLAs worthwhile?

Should an IT organization offer SLAs to their internal users?
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7 Key Challenges You Can't Ignore
Virtualization platforms, such VMware ESX and Microsoft Hyper-V, represent the first form of virtualization that is typically introduced into the data center. While these new infrastructure platforms provide considerable advantages; virtual machines (VMs) also add complexity, scale, and management challenges to your environment. By planning for your migration to virtual machine platforms, and recognizing the inherent challenges, you can make it seamless and optimize your virtual network and storage environment.

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Spotlight Story
Are SLAs worthwhile?

Steve Taylor By Steve Taylor and Jim Metzler
The last two newsletters highlighted the dialogue at Network World's recent IT Roadmap conference in Denver and how it emphasized that the challenging economic environment puts pressure on IT organizations to focus even more than they do in normal economic times. With that in mind, the last two newsletters discussed the need for IT organizations to identify their key applications and to establish service-level agreements for them. This newsletter will continue the discussion of internal SLAs for key applications. Read full story

Steve Taylor is president of Distributed Networking Associates and publisher/editor-in-chief of Webtorials. Jim Metzler is vice president of Ashton, Metzler & Associates.

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The need to focus Last week in Denver, Network World hosted an event entitled 'IT Roadmap conference.' At that conference Jim moderated two tracks - one track was on Network Management and the other was on Application Delivery. The overall conference was very interactive with a lot of dialogue amongst end users, industry analysts, and vendors. That dialogue highlighted the fact that in 2009 IT organizations need to focus even more than they do in normal economic times. With that in mind, this newsletter and the next two newsletters will discuss the need for IT organizations to focus on a handful of key applications.

Establishing SLAs for key applications The last newsletter highlighted the fact that the dialogue at Network World’s recent IT Roadmap conference in Denver emphasized that the challenging economic environment puts pressure on IT organizations to focus even more than they do in normal economic times. With that in mind, this newsletter will begin to outline a process that IT organizations should follow in order to focus on a handful of key applications.

The changing role of the network engineer The last newsletter examined some of the conventional wisdom that impacts the networking organization. In particular, we looked at the conventional wisdom that says that if the performance of an application is degrading, that the cause is the network. As was pointed out, that kind of defensive approach to managing application performance has led to a new management metric – the mean time to innocence (MTTI). This newsletter will continue the discussion of the conventional wisdom that impacts the networking organization by looking at the changing role of the network engineer. In particular, we'll look at the conventional wisdom that says that the role of the network engineer is limited to just designing the network.

Eliminating the mean time to innocence As is the case with most industries, there is a lot of conventional wisdom that surrounds our industry. By conventional wisdom we mean the set of beliefs that guide how organizations think about Information Technology. The challenge, of course, is that sometimes the conventional wisdom is incorrect and it guides IT organizations in the wrong direction. With that in mind, the next two newsletters will take a look at some of the prevailing conventional wisdom with an eye to whether or not it is indeed accurate.

Multi-Gig File Transfers Windows Server 2008 blogger Glenn Weadock has a dilemma: Vista SP1 uploading a 4-gig virtual machine to a Windows Server 2008 file server (not beta, not R2). The problem: BIG delays . Help him figure out an answer before he resorts to blaming Microsoft.

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Exchange alternatives: Pros & cons
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10 iPhone apps that could get you into troubleA look at the top 10 iPhone apps that could get you into trouble.

Sponsored by F5 Networks
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7 Key Challenges You Can't Ignore
Virtualization platforms, such VMware ESX and Microsoft Hyper-V, represent the first form of virtualization that is typically introduced into the data center. While these new infrastructure platforms provide considerable advantages; virtual machines (VMs) also add complexity, scale, and management challenges to your environment. By planning for your migration to virtual machine platforms, and recognizing the inherent challenges, you can make it seamless and optimize your virtual network and storage environment.

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03/24/09

Today's most-read stories:

  1. No business case for IPv6, survey finds
  2. Rootkit to exploit Intel chip flaw to be posted 3/19/09
  3. IBM/Sun deal could benefit Java, says Google's open source chief
  4. Skype for SIP targets business customers
  5. Voluntary separation scheme for Dell's Malaysian staff
  6. Hidden commands
  7. Ukrainian cybercriminals raked in $10K/day, Finjan reports
  8. E-mail evidence in Madoff case includes another scam
  9. Power grid is found susceptible to cyberattack
  10. Tweeted out of a job: "Cisco Fatty" story
  11. Students learn through robot battles


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