What do we really need? Cloud? or Change?

Going through the VCAP-DCD material and I had a question. Since it comes with the assumption that everyone is working toward building a private cloud. So I started asking, do I need to build a “cloud” and why? Now don’t think I have completely gone bonkers. I still think the benefits of cloud could help many IT departments. I think more than how do I build a cloud, the question should be what do we need to change to provide better service to the business.

We are infrastructure people

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As VMware/Storage/Networking professionals we tend to think about what equipment we need to do this our that. Or how if I could just get 40Gb Ethernet problems XYZ would go away. Often we have to build it on top of a legacy. If we do ever get a green field opportunity it usually needs to be done so quickly we never quite to investigate all the technology we wish we could. There is stuff like All Flash, Hyper-converged things, accelerator appliances, software defined everything all aiming at replacing legacy Compute/Network/Storage.

My last post was about knowing the applications and this is not a repeat of that, but it is very important to for us to look at how our infrastructure choices will impact the business. Beyond business metrics of my FlashArray allows business unit X to do so many more transactions in a day which means more money for the business. What else do the internal customers require from the blinking lights in the loud room with really cold AC.

Ask better questions

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  • How does faster storage change the application?
  • What will change if we automate networking?
  • Could workers be more productive if the User experience was better?
  • What are things we do just because we always do them that way?
  • What legacy server, storage and network thought processes can we turn upside down?

This type of foundation enables you to focus on the important things like getting better at Halo. Just kidding. My goal is one day Infrastructure Administrators will get to sleep well at night, their kids will know their names and weekends will once again be for fun things and not Storage, Server or Network cutovers. That is the value of Private Cloud, not that I can now let internal customers self-service provision a VM or application (which is still cool). We gain confidence that our infrastructure is manageable. We have time to work on automating the boring repetitive stuff. You get your life back. Awesome.

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