Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS or RaaS) is big on the hype meter right now, and cloud computing providers are clamoring to find solutions to fill the gap. The biggest driver in DR in the Cloud is the utility-like aspect of purchasing infrastructure, because you only pay for what you use. Disaster Recovery lends itself well to the concept of cloud computing, because you want to keep that insurance premium as low as possible. Virtualization has enabled some pretty amazing things in regards to Disaster Recovery as well. Recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO) have dropped significantly since virtualization became mainstream, without adding cost. 

On to the practical application: How on earth do I replicate my data to a public cloud provider?

Replication is essential to a low RPO. Doing full backups across a WAN link is going to result in a lot of data loss. There are methods to only replicated changed blocks, but even then you could have some pretty hefty loss.

Here are the 4 levels of replication currently out on the market:

Application

Replication at the Application level has been around for some time. Relational database servers such as Microsoft SQL are a good example. You can replicate database transactions to a remote server, and restore the database when disaster strikes.

Pros: Public Cloud-friendly, very low RTO and RPO, can be physical to virtual, or any combination of the two.

Cons: Target server must be running in the cloud. OS and application must be set up properly and maintained (patches, OS, etc).

Guest OS

Vision Solution's Double-Take product is a good example of this. The OS, application, and data can all be replicated on a block-level basis to a target machine. The OS files are "staged" on the target machine, and upon clicking the failover button, the target machine "becomes" the source machine. Pretty cool technology indeed.

Pros: Public cloud-friendly, Low RTO and RPO, physical to virtual, or any combination of the two. One click failover.

Cons: Agent overhead on source machine (CPU, Disk and Memory), license cost, target server must be running in the cloud.

VM/Hypervisor

There are two strategies at this level. The first is snapshot based replication. Veeam is a good example of snapshot-based replication. A virtual machine snapshot is taken, much like a normal VM backup is taken, and the changed blocks are replicated to the target VM.

Hypervisor-based replication is new to VMware vSphere 5. ESXi 5 now has a low level driver to capture VM disk data writes at the SCSI level. This is incredibly cool because it means I don't need to rely on snapshots. VMware SRM VR takes advantage of this, as does the ultra-cool Zerto.

As we move down the stack, this is the first replication level we have to think about VMware vCloud Director and it's meta-data. At the time of writing this blog post neither VMware's VR or Veeam replication have solutions for vCloud Director. Zerto supports vCloud Director in both private and public cloud scenarios.

The challenge for DR to public vCloud providers is direct access to the SAN. Most of the hypervisor level replication solutions have been built around the enterprise, not around a multi-tenant cloud. The public cloud is certainly NOT going to give you self-service, open access to the SAN.

Pros: Public vCloud friendly (Zerto), very low RTO and low RPO replicates entire servers, storage agnostic, target VMs powered off and not consuming resources.

Cons: NOT public vCloud friendly (VMware SRM, Veeam), Snapshot rollups can hurt performance (Veeam), virtual only, not hypervisor agnostic.

SAN/LUN

SAN-based replication is a great solution for Enterprises looking to back up all or part of their infrastructure. The source and target in this case is not a VM though. It's an entire LUN. Typically you have multiple VMs running on a single LUN, which is nice if the group of VMs require data/time consistency. VMware SRM uses SAN replication to achieve a fully orchestrated DR solution, and even physical servers with disks on the SAN can be replicated.

As stated previously, no public cloud provider is going to give you access to the SAN, which leaves you needing to buy another SAN of the same make and model, and slap it in a colocation rack.

But wait...SAN vendors also have virtual storage appliances (VSA), which DO run in the cloud. So if you run SANs such as EMC, Nexenta, or HP, there is a possibility you could at least get your data off-site. The only challenge there is you can't run the VMs in the cloud from the VSA. There would need to be a seperate script to migrate VMs from the VSA to the public vCloud provider through the vCloud API. It's not impossible, but it would certainly add some time onto the RTO. 

Pros: Public cloud friendly (maybe with a VSA), Low RTO and low RPO, replicates virtual and physical machines

Cons: NOT public cloud friendly (hardware SAN-to-SAN), NOT hardware, SAN, or hypervisor agnostic.

Don't forget Failback!

Just an additional note that you should always ask about how to failback once your primary site is healthy. You don't want to be stuck in DR mode forever, and most of the above mentioned solutions require full replication of the systems back to your datacenter. Make that a top ten question when looking for a DR solution. The Disaster Recovery is not complete until you are back in your production datacenter!

 

Bluelock is excited to announce that it was recently named to NetworkWorld's list of "10 most powerful IaaS companies." Writer Christine Burns assembled the list with help from analysts at Cloud Technology Partners, Current Analysis, Enterprise Strategy Group, Gartner, IDC and Neovise. Those analysts named companies they believed have the most influence in the public cloud infrastructure as a service category.

Bluelock continues to prove itself in its ability to draw in enterprise customers to the benefits of using public cloud resources. While serving a wide variety of use cases, Bluelock Virtual Datacenters have enabled many mid-size and large organizations to test new waters with cloud computing. In another article by Christine Burns at NetworkWorld, "IaaS making slow headway," she references a number of enterprise deployment trends mentioning public cloud IaaS use cases that Bluelock continues to see time and again.

Bluelock's very popular Public Cloud Diaries built in conjunction with VMware detail a number of interesting use cases, many resembling the NetworkWorld list. Our list of case studies also continues to grow with our most recent piece featuring PatronPath and Bluelock's role in enabling them to meet strict PCI-DSS compliance requirements for it's online ordering solutions for restaurants.

We continue to see large enterprises going to the cloud to enable greater agility and flexibility, but also for the cloud's ability to provide a level of visibility and control these organizations had never experienced before. Bluelock Portfolio has proven to hit the mark for customers in their quest for that visibility, and it has even begun to change organizational behavior in very large companies.

What would your organization do with the ability to see what your IT resources really cost -- broken down by region, site location, line of business, application, resource component or even by Virtual Datacenter?

To learn more about Bluelock's public cloud infrastructure as a service solutions visit www.bluelock.com.

NetworkWorld articles referenced in this blog post:

10 most powerful IaaS companies

IaaS making slow headway

 

It’s been a busy few weeks for the team at Bluelock and a lot of exciting stuff has been happening, one of which was CRN naming Bluelock to its 2012 100 Coolest Cloud Computing Vendors list. The comprehensive list highlights the most innovative cloud computing companies across the five major categories: cloud platforms, cloud infrastructure, cloud storage, cloud security and cloud software. This is the second time in as many years Bluelock has been named to the cloud infrastructure list. Be sure to check out the list in the March 26 issue of CRN Magazine as well. Here’s what they had to say about Bluelock:
 
“Bluelock embraces the public cloud for its enterprise cloud hosting offerings using its Bluelock Virtual Datacenters to help companies get up and running in its SAS-70 Type II datacenters. Bluelock also boasts the distinction of being among the first certified VMware vCloud Datacenter service providers.”
 
Also this week, Bluelock announced the availability of VMware vCloud® Director™ 1.5 within its VMware vCloud Datacenter Service which has been well received in the media. The announcement was covered on Data Storage Connection, Talkin' Cloud, ServerWatch, HostSearch, TopHosts.com and MyHostNews.com  to name a few.

2012 has proven to be an exciting year for Bluelock clients! In January, we introduced the cost projection feature within our Bluelock Portfolio cloud support tool. Today, Bluelock continues the tradition of cloud innovation with the upgrade to VMware vCloud Director 1.5. This upgrade delivers increased cloud agility and makes it even easier to adopt a cloud computing model leveraging existing IT investments.

Ben Miller, our Product Solution Director, reviews the new features and benefits vCloud Director 1.5 provides to Bluelock clients:

Key Features of vCloud Director 1.5

• UI Enhancements – General user interface enhancements, including improved browser support and usability, make building and managing enterprise-level cloud solutions a snap.
• Self-Service VPN – In addition to creating VPN tunnels for hybrid cloud communication to your Virtual Datacenter, you can now automatically configure both sides of the VPN tunnel to reduce time and labor.
• Source-based Firewall Rules – vCloud firewall rules now include source IP address, port, and protocol for increased network granularity and control. Unique network designs in your Virtual Datacenter also benefit from static routing within firewall configurations.
• vCloud API 1.5 – Added vCloud API functionality improves automation and consumption of cloud resources. The new Query API increases developer efficiency and support for free tools like PowerCLI 5.0.1 and vCenter Orchestrator 4.2 sweeten the deal.
• Network Adapter control – You can now specify network adapter type within vCloud Director to take advantage of the universal e1000 adapter, or the more powerful VMXNET3 adapter.

vCloud Director 1.5 allows Bluelock clients to build and leverage secure hybrid cloud resources with ease. We're excited to provide these new virtual datacenter features to our clients! Learn more about vCloud Director 1.5 at Bluelock »

Portfolio, Bluelock's vCloud portal and decision support tool just learned a new skill: Cost Projection!

Bluelock already excels in providing predictable costs in the cloud, but what about those months you need to burst by adding additional resources to your capacity? Portfolio is now outfitted with helpful run rate calculations, allowing you to see early on what your costs will be at the end of the month.



By knowing your cost projection well in advance, you'll be able to dial back the resources in use, or for example, see what adding 100 new users worth of resources to your application will cost you on a monthly basis.

Also in this release, we've added some granularity to your organization costs. Previously, catalog storage was combined with the rest of the organization costs, but now catalog costs are completely transparent to you.




By breaking catalog storage costs into it's own column, you have even more visibility into how your virtual datacenters at Bluelock are being utilized.

Want to know more about Bluelock Portfolio, or virtual datacenters powered by VMware vCloud? We'd be happy to help you discover a path on your cloud journey! Just visit www.bluelock.com.

Public Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is transforming the hosting industry. Traditional hosting companies and fresh service provider faces both play an active role in this emerging market. IaaS offerings taut agility for early adopters, while slower moving enterprises—still managing their own cloud—watch from the sidelines. Ever expanding datacenters, operational responsibilities and security requirements, amidst shrinking IT budgets, means traditional infrastructure often only makes sense for the largest of organizations.

1. Is the IaaS model right for you, or are you  better off with PaaS, SaaS or other cloud models?
   Disseminating IaaS from PaaS and SaaS is simplest to understand using the cloud stack model. IaaS includes all datacenter and network plumbing and service and storage hardware. A virtualization layer on top encases the IaaS offering. PaaS handles the next two layers of the stack; operating systems and infrastructure software. Finally, SaaS delivers hosted applications, ranging from personal email to full blown CRM systems. Leveraging the on-demand nature of these mdoels requires that an organization understand how they intend to develop and deploy applications. IT agility and autonomy beckons an IaaS structure.
2. Will implementing IaaS require additional IT resources?
   Adjusting from a static on-premise datacenter to a dynamic IaaS model can be a tremendous shift for enterprise IT organizations. IaaS solution providers also vary in their delivery of managed services. Providers like Bluelock offer managed services traditionally handled by internal IT to streamline operational tasks. This allows organizations to focus on their core business, not running their business. Examples of Bluelock managed services include operating system patching, load balancing, virtual machine backup and antivirus. The ease of IT operations inherent in IaaS solutions makes cloud particularly attractive to nimble startups with limited resources. Cloud investment and resources can scale with fluctuating businesses.
3. How easy is it to scale up (or down) your services?
   A key characteristic of cloud computing is scalability, or more precisely the ease with which scalability can be achieved. IaaS enables scalability through dynamic provisioning of resources on a self-service basis to meet business demands. While easy cloud offering takes a different approach to scaling parameters, all IaaS models are far more flexible than traditional one-app-per-service computing.
   A good illustration of IaaS scalability existed when Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc (LMHI) filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2008. Amist the sell off of business divisions, LMHI was left without the technology assets necessary to support the wind-down of the company. Lehmann formed an asset manager business, LAMCO. Tasked with building infrastructure able to assume peek capacity day one and slowly wind down over time, cloud computing was the logical choice. LAMCO selected Bluelock’s VMware-based Virtual Datacenters due in large part to its flexible scaling capabilities.
4. Does the IaaS provide adequate support?
   The ability to quickly and accurately diagnose and resolve issues with infrastructure not only ensures reduced downtime, but keeps one issue from threatening an entire network. Dedicated support teams ensure enterprise IT and infrastructure keep pace with your business. Keep in mind, select vendor’s customer service is not offered 24/7 or is only available at an additional cost.
   Transitioning to the cloud is no small task. A staff of cloud experts at your disposal for guidance and support may help organizations new to the cloud. Bluelock has a proven track record in providing scalability and client support.
5. What is your plan for outages?
   Outages are a problem for any computing model. On-premise datacenters are especially susceptible to outages. Designing for failure should be obvious, but each cloud providers approach to blackouts varies. For example, Bluelock offers 99.99% uptime in the cloud because our clients are enterprise-level companies with mission-critical production environment needs. You likely can’t afford the downtime that would be threatened with a provider who can only promise 99.9% or 99.95% uptime.

Battles over formats and standards in the technology industry aren't new. Whether it was e-mail, word processing, graphical images or even some more current like the apps on your smart phone, each new innovation typically starts out somewhat proprietary and incompatible.

Today we live in a world where a lot of those battles have been fought and won while some are only starting to heat up. Formats tend to resolve themselves through standards so that things like e-mail and web pages "just work." That or at a minimum the technology we use evolves and hides it all from us via various forms of automatic conversion. In a world where so many technologies seem to get along - why shouldn't clouds? The answer isn't so simple and, as is often the case, history has a way of repeating itself.

Different Approaches
Just as email initially emerged inside of private datacenters, so has cloud infrastructure. It was initially based on virtualization technology and, depending on what kind of IT shop was involved, you most likely ended up on VMware if you were trying to make your core datacenter more efficient by virtualizing legacy servers; Xen if you had a significant Linux or Java developer presence where the need to rapidly provision test and develop machines was important; and maybe even Citrix if you were using Metaframe for serving up applications to remote users or thin clients. For some companies, cloud adoption started outside the corporate datacenter inside of the VMware vCloud or Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Different Platforms
These approaches initially evolved into distinctly different virtualization technologies. VMware's vSphere platform grew up in the heart of enterprise data centers so it focuses more on performance, manageability, stability and uptime. Amazon's platform is directed at rapid provisioning of instances that are great for developers and dynamic workloads. While they both promote the concept of virtual machines as the building blocks of their clouds, the formats are very different. Amazon breaks its workloads into images called Amazon Machine Images (AMIs), which contain an operating system image from a limited library, memory and CPU resources. VMware uses a format called a Virtual Machine Disk (VMDK) that contains not only the memory, but also a more flexible operating system image that can be based on any x86 and, as you can tell by the name, the disk storage itself. With Amazon's AMI model, any additional storage outside of the operating system image must be kept on a separate disk image on the network using either their S3 or EBS storage solutions. With VMware's VMDK, because the disk is included, you can move everything around. They call this a vApp.

Competitors
It also goes without saying that the war for cloud market share has started and is being waged in earnest. Given the amount of dollars at stake, it makes complete sense. The major players all want their share of the anticipated $241 billion that corporations are predicted to spend in the cloud over the next 9 years (according to Forrester Research). This kind of growth opportunity resembles a land grab of significant size and proportion that fosters only self-serving forms of compatibility.

History Will Repeat Itself
As we now know from the email platform wars, once the bulk of companies picked their initial email standard to implement, the green fields of opportunity started to dry up. As a result, email platform vendors found themselves in a situation where they could only gain market share by taking customers away from each other. This caused them to start offering various forms of migration services. The initial offerings were assistance with your email strategy, which was closely followed by professional services teams that could perform the migration for you. At some point, the professional services teams developed tools to make the migrations easier and those tools ended up being packaged and offered directly to end users.

We are starting to see this trend emerge in the cloud. Most Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) providers have either a toolkit or a professional service offering that helps customers migrate from one SaaS provider to another. You can see this with Salesforce and Netsuite. VMware and Amazon are no exception. Amazon offers a tool that allows you to convert your VMDK virtual machines into AMI images. VMware has an extensive professional services offering and numerous channel partners that can help an Amazon customer migrate to a vCloud or back to their internal VMware vSphere environment if a customer found themselves locked in to the Amazon cloud.

Interoperability and Open Standards
It's clear that more help is on the way, but there may be some solutions that can help in the short term. The Distributed Management Task Force, also known as the DMTF, is a standards body that represents 160 member companies and organizations and more than 4,000 active participants crossing 43 countries. They have endorsed and are actively promoting the Open Virtualization Format (OVF) standard for Virtual Machines(VMs) and Virtual Applications (vApps). OVF support is the foundation of the VMware vCloud and VMware vSphere 4.1. Workloads can be quickly converted to OVF and then moved or copied between clouds as the needs dictate. This gives the IT department and power users the ultimate flexibility as they begin to adopt a cloud-enabled approach to IT.

Which One Is Best?
Choosing the best cloud platform is a lot like deciding to upgrade from a tube television to a flat screen. It can be hard to choose when you see all of the different flat screen television technologies like DLP, LED, Plasma and LCD but once you've made the leap to High Definition, regardless of which technology you chose, it still puts you light years ahead of where you were with your old TV set.

How to Choose
The most important thing is to determine what the right use cases are for your organization to adopt cloud. For some companies that may be to make their existing IT resources more agile and efficient so placing some of the workloads they have already virtualized using VMware into a public vCloud make the most sense. For other companies that may need to perform thousands of calculations on a moment's notice, consuming that capacity from a commodity cloud like Amazon's EC2 might be the best fit. The real key is that this landscape is evolving and changing rapidly. Any workload placed into the cloud should conform to existing IT practices and should be able to be de-provisioned, redirected or moved as the cloud market matures and the understanding of which clouds best fit which workloads becomes clearer.

Global Washington’s mission is to help Washington State’s non-profits work together to alleviate world poverty, however they lacked the budget and IT expertise to build an effective technology solution. Bluelock, with Esri ArcGIS (Geographic Information Systems) and VMware, developed and launched a sophisticated database-driven GIS application delivered as SaaS from the cloud.

A membership association that promotes and supports the global development sector in Washington State, Global Washington’s vision was to create a cohesive, viable online community where non-profits can learn and collaborate with other members working in the same space. Technology implementation is especially difficult for international development organizations. Global Washington addressed this technology gap with Bluelock Virtual Datacenters, powered by VMware vCloud Director.

On-demand access to computing resources through Virtual Datacenters allowed Esri to package the GIS applications as a virtual appliance (or vApp) within 48 hours and complete the first phase of the project within two months. Future customers seeking this type of GIS cloud-based solution can now publish that vApp from the vCloud App Catalog on-demand.

The pilot was a resounding success and the GIS application dramatically improved service delivery. “With the help of Esri, VMware, and Bluelock, we’re using cloud technology from our Virtual Datacenter to help our non-profit members increase the visibility of their activities, improve communication and collaboration, and advocate more effectively for the causes they support.” stated Bookda Gheisar, Executive Director at Global Washington.

Read Entire Success Story >>

A short visit back in time to any organization’s datacenter would render images of tape carts, disk drives, paper logs and even punched cards.  Later, the datacenter used menu driven applications to take batch processing out of the computer room and onto the user’s terminal screen.

In just a few short years, the menu-driven application was gone and Graphical User Interfaces gave the user total independence from picking up the telephone and asking IT to “run a report.”  Finally, with the advent of office suites that included integrated spreadsheets, word processors and presentation packages, the IT department took the form of supporting whoever had a computer -- wherever computing took place.

Just when it was safe to relax in the recliner with the laptop running hot, a cold glass of lemonade nearby and a handful of almonds to munch on, someone somewhere in the “techy” world said the words, “Cloud Computing.” 

Take heart, all ye random access warriors.  Keep that glass close by and those almonds in the bowl, change has come again, but in a good way.

In an IT world that has rapidly evolved from challenging the company cash flow with large iron horses laying down huge “footprints” on elevated floors and climate-controlled rooms, to wireless routers and employees armed with note and netbooks, the “cloud” has arrived.

Bluelock, a provider of Virtual Datacenters hosted in the public cloud, is leading the way in cloud technology.  Providing hosted IT solutions, Bluelock gives businesses a “just-in-time” and “just-enough” approach to computing needs. 

While reducing the investments organizations make in their technology budgets, Bluelock is providing on-demand Virtual Datacenters (VDCs) that take the place of the traditional corporate datacenter. Such structural and strategic issues as acquiring and maintaining servers, administering networks, and constantly evaluating storage requirements give way to reduced hardware costs, multiple-site file sharing and speedy decision processes.

Using infrastructure-as-a-service, businesses pay for just the resources they need instead of continually adding hardware to keep up with ever increasing database requirements.  Instead of the demands of upgrades, fixes and enhancements that keep the traditional IT staff spinning, Bluelock can host applications on its servers with maintenance either being provided by the application provider or by internal IT staff.

Another advantage to a client is the attention paid by Bluelock to data security.  Traditional IT facilities, including “hot-site” business continuity centers, are subjected to SAS 70 reviews and other security audits.  With Bluelock’s attention to security and compliance requirements, firewall installations and its production ready Virtual Datacenters, data, applications and access policies easily conform to client needs.

While the term “Cloud” at first seems an “out there” concept, it may be the best thing to happen to technology since the elimination of punch cards.

enStratus recently announced that customers can now manage 18 public and private clouds through the enStratus platform. Provided by enStratus, a cloud infrastructure management solution provider, the platform adds cloud management, governance, and automation capabilities to public, private and hybrid clouds. One such cloud supported by the platform is Bluelock's cloud. enStratus has a multi-cloud architecture that provides security, reliability and cloud independence.

Thanks to Bluelock Virtual Datacenters, enStratus now provides unified cloud manager for 18 public and private clouds. David Bagley, CEO of enStratus, stated “Bluelock’s focus on security and reliability are a natural fit for us and we look forward to working with them and their clients.” Additionally, Bluelock’s CTO Pat O’Day agreed that “enStratus and Bluelock share a focus on the enterprise market and are excited about their approach to deliver additional cloud governance and automation capabilities to vCloud users.” enStratus support for Bluelock is available immediately.

Read full press release.

Determining which applications are cloud ready and which need to stay in your datacenter can be difficult. You will need to be able to address each workload's unique infrastructure, security and performance requirements to choose which cloud offering is best for your respective applications.

VMworld 2011, hosted by VMware, is in full-swing at Las Vegas (August 29 – September 1). The largest virtualization and cloud infrastructure event of the year was just the place for Bluelock’s unveiling of their all-new cloud-aware decision support tool Bluelock Portfolio™. The first of it’s kind, Portfolio will offer customers deeper visibility into the true cost of IT resources, enabling them to adjust their Virtual Datacenters to best align spending and utilization.

With great power comes great responsibility, and cloud infrastructure is no exception. The ability to see infrastructure consumption levels is increasingly important to understanding and managing the true costs of IT. Both over-allocation and under-allocation can spiral costs out of control. Now, Bluelock Portfolio enables customers to break down their cloud costs by region, site location, line of business, application or even by Virtual Datacenter. Monitoring usage and spending has never been easier in the cloud. Over-provisioned applications and potential overages can be adjusted through the self-service portal powered by VMware vCloud® Director.

Watch the Bluelock Portfolio in action to see how you can manage and monitor your Bluelock Virtual Datacenter accounts:


You can also read the entire Press Release.

One contract, multiple providers. That’s VMware’s global cloud vision, and Bluelock’s onboard. VMware launched Global Connect, among several other new vCloud offerings, at this year’s VMworld in Las Vegas. Global Connect, an optional feature of the vCloud Datacenter service, will allow customers to use cloud services from multiple providers across the globe as if they were a single virtual cloud. Get the cloud computing infrastructure you need, where you need it, and when you need it.

Global Connect is fully compatible with VMware vSphere® and the VMware vCloud architecture. Applications will be provider agnostic, traveling to and from clouds without modification. Management of private and global public cloud resources through a single-pane-of-glass is made possible with VMware vCloud Connector console. As service provider adoption rises, geographic boundaries among clouds will continue to fall. Global enterprise hybrid cloud will deliver applications and services to a worldwide customer base.

I expect to see growing relationships between vCloud Datacenter partners through the Global Connect initiative. The service provider network is expected to grow to 25 datacenters in 13 countries by the end of the year.

Read the full press release.

Bluelock is in the midst of getting ramped up for our favorite event of the year - VMworld 2011. Last year we had a blast in San Francisco, and this year Vegas will surely live up to its potential. As a leading certified vCloud Datacenter provider, Bluelock is excited to make a big splash with a major announcement around our Bluelock Virtual Datacenter capabilities. Stay tuned.

More importantly, we're planning on having a lot of fun with our partners, prospects and friends. The fun starts Sunday night where we're sponsoring the #VMunderground event on Sunday night. This will be my first experience with the event, and after hearing such great things, I can say that I am incredibly enthused!

If you've seen us at VMware events earlier this year, yes we'll be bringing lots of energy (literally). So stop by if you need a pick-me-up!

Make sure to add these sessions to your event schedule:

• #CIM3254 Real-world Cloud Experiences: Enterprise IT leaders discuss public and hybrid cloud deployments (Wednesday, August 31, 2:00 PM)
• #CIM2750 Are All Clouds Commodity? Key Technical Considerations and Customer Experiences (Monday August 29 and Wednesday August 31, 11:00 AM)
• #SPO3966 Case Studies: How to Build a Cloud Infrastructure that's 100X Easier to Manage (Wednesday, August 31, 8:30 AM)
• #CIM2961 Federating vCloud Services - How to Best Deploy Your Applications Amongst Multiple Cloud Service Providers Worldwide (Thursday September 1, 12:00 PM)

At this year's Chicago VMware vForum event, Jake Robinson (@jakerobinson) met up with David Davis (@davidmdavis) to chat Bluelock Virtual Datacenters and Powershell commands.

Jake's been up to some really cool stuff as it relates to Powershell automation between private and public clouds. He dives into some of the work he's been doing with PowerCLI in conjunction with the vCloud API. And if you're uncomfortable with command lines and scripting, Jake talks about how you can use the vCloud Connector for vCenter to view your internal datacenter and Bluelock VDCs in one pane as well as to upload and download VMs.

"Essentially, if you can say it in English, I can write it in Powershell." - Jake



Check out Jake's Powershell work at Github.com/jakerobinson

Check out more from David Davis on the VMwareVideos.com blog.

“To meet our clients’ business requirements, we need to be able to scale up and scale down very quickly with no disruptions. The only way we can do that is with the architecture we’ve built using VMware and F5 BIG-IP LTM.” - Pat O’Day, Chief Technical Officer, Bluelock

As a provider of Virtual Datacenters hosted in the public cloud, Bluelock needs to be able to seamlessly deliver traffic across servers for heightened performance and efficiencies. BIG-IP LTM provides intelligent traffic management that efficiently distributes traffic across virtual machines to optimize server utilization. By offloading SSL processing from the virtual servers, BIG-IP LTM also frees up server capacity to handle other processes.

Check out a recent case study video where O'Day talks about the benefits of F5 load balancers for cloud computing.

“BIG-IP LTM helps us maximize the efficiency of our virtual environment so we can pass those efficiencies along to our clients, all while ensuring the high performance and availability that our clients require,” says O’Day.

The National Democratic Institute (NDI) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization based in Washington, DC and works in every region of the world to strengthen democratic institutions, safeguard elections, advance citizen engagement, and support open and accountable government.  In a recent joint case study with Bluelock and VMware, NDI highlighted some major technology improvements they experienced after moving to VMware vCloud Director using Bluelock Virtual Datacenters.

Chris Spence of NDI commented:
"VMware vCloud Director helps us better serve our users, including those in developing countries. We can configure virtual servers, point to URLs, and fire up applications within a matter of minutes. It's less costly for us and less time-consuming, and because it's a virtualized deployment, the hosting costs are low."

NDI needed to deliver applications to users across the globe who lack the infrastructure and resources to host them. The organization was also charged to drive efficiencies in the application delivery process so that it can focus on core activities; an important effort for a nonprofit organization. By using vCloud Director with Bluelock VDCs, NDI is now able to act quickly by provisioning new, stable environments within minutes, they've minimized hosting costs and freed up their engineers to focus on higher value tasks.

Read the full case study.

Learn more about NDI:
http://www.ndi.org/

Opcode's John Willis, VP of Training, Services, and Evangelism shares insight on cloud computing and their partnership with Bluelock.

Willis compartmentalizes cloud to three functional spaces:

Phase 1, provisioning, involves raw computing resources. Resources are used to create instances.
Phase 2, configuration management, employs instances for desired instrumented servers.
Phase 3, system integration, connects servers to create a functional environment.

Bluelock delivers the cloud computing resources necessary for Phase 1. Bluelock also offers a significant piece of Phase 2, configuration management, to deliver on customer needs. Opscode utilizes cloud instances for Phase 3, system integration. 'Opscode Chef' constructs and delivers the solution built off Bluelock Virtual Datacenter resources.

Bluelock is dedicated to providing a challenging and stimulating work environment to help employees succeed both professionally and personally. Our team is always on the lookout for qualified, hardworking professionals with a keen entrepreneurial spirit that are passionate about delivering client success. Bluelock offers a variety of employment opportunities for growth and development.

Do you like to achieve high levels of performance through collaborative teams, yet function independently in areas of specialty? Bluelock's stimulating culture may be what you're looking for. Bluelock is seeking an experienced Systems Engineer to join the Operations Team. Candidates need experience in virtualization and VMware products with knowledge of servers, networks, virtual machines, and storage.

Duties for a Bluelock Systems Engineer include installation, configuation, monitoring, and backup of Bluelock product environments for our clients to meet SLAs. Leverage your critical thinking skills to troubleshoot complex issues to ensure delivery of client services. Drive your technical knowledge and develop your skillset in our fast-paced environment.

Learn more about becoming a Systems Engineer well as other opportunities at Bluelock team on our careers page.

Are you a competitive self-starter with strong interpersonal and communication skills? Bluelock's Account Executive position is calling your name. As a certified VMware vCloud Datacenter Services provider, Bluelock delivers enterprise-class cloud computing and managed IT services. Leveraging VMware technology, Bluelock enables hybrid cloud strategies for the enterprise.

Account Executives collaborate with Bluelock's VP of Sales to prepare and execute quaterly sales plans. Through a consultative approach to selling our cloud services to a variety of influencers and IT decision-makers, Account Executives help shape and refine the sales process as the company enters our next growth phase.

Results-oriented individuals with five to ten years technical sales experience are encouraged to apply. Adaptability and problem solving intuition in the fast-paced cloud computing space offers a variety of opportunities for personal and professional growth. This client facing role will respond to and strive to meet customer needs. Bluelock's intimate work environment means all employees can contribute to a positive and fun work atmosphere.

Account Executives hands-on approach involves understanding prospect's specific business needs and matching our cloud hosting services to those needs. Bluelockers evangelize the advantages of virtualization and cloud computing. Think you got what it takes? We'd love to hear from you!

Excellent benefits and opportunities await you at Bluelock! Play an integral role in our growth team's success. Learn more about becoming an Account Executive well as other opportunities at Bluelock team on our careers page.

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