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Information Technology Navigator

Tips, Advice & Insights from Technology Pros

Michael Chen

Recent Posts

Is this (Finally) the Year of VDI? The Verdict is In

In last week’s blog "Is this (Finally) the Year of VDI?" I talked about how VDI has struggled to live up to its many promises and explained how security benefits and performance boosts from HyperConvergence are making VDI an attractive option to secure and support end users. Is wide scale adoption about to happen? Is 2017 finally the year of VDI? Read on to find out!

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Wed, Sep 06, 2017
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Is this (Finally) the Year of VDI?

 

It’s become an industry joke that every year is the “Year of VDI.” While promising to be the be-all and end-all solution to everyone’s IT woes, it’s never really lived up to the hype. Sometimes the issue is cost; other times it’s concerns about performance. And there’s also the problem of familiarity -- why break away from something you’re already comfortable with? Not to mention that supporting a VDI environment falls in that weird gray area between infrastructure and end user support. Nobody that has worked on VMware environments for the last 10 years is particularly interested in troubleshooting Microsoft Office issues again. But there is a convergence of improved technologies and market forces creating a perfect storm as to why you should begin seriously considering implementing VDI in your environment, if you haven’t done so already.

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Wed, Aug 30, 2017
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Backing Up Virtual Machines: 5 Things to Remember

Virtualization Changed Everything

While we may all be familiar with virtualization at this point, we are still feeling its significant impact on our data centers. What was once sprawling racks of servers has been consolidated into ever-smaller hardware packages.  With the advent of cloud computing, your hardware footprint could in fact be zero! However, despite the technology making our lives so much easier, it’s important to consider that our responsibility for these workloads remains the same.

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Wed, Apr 01, 2015
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Hybrid Cloud Management: Unraveling vRealize

 
As VMware is wont to do, it has released a new brand of products that users may already be familiar with. Though I witnessed a number of complaints from users during the small group discussions at VMWorld, the vRealize rebranding really does go beyond simple marketing. Until a couple of days ago, the products that now make up the vRealize Suite came from very different origins, and had been positioned for very different use cases, from simple monitoring to justifying ROI. However, these products were also unique in how they integrate with VMware’s cloud offerings, thus the logic behind the mirrored vRealize Air product line.
 
vRealize is a culmination of VMware’s strategy to transition their products to the cloud and to show that they continue to deliver value once the user has made that transition.
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Tue, Oct 14, 2014
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4 Cloud Strategies to Secure your Corporate Data

 
By now, many of you are probably aware of the most recent cloud breach where a large cache of celebrity nude photos was released on a forum board on 4chan. Though details are still emerging, the prevalent theory is that the hackers managed to gain access to the pictures by accessing the celebrity’s Apple iCloud accounts.
 
This is but the most recent security breach in a long string of security breaches, affecting major enterprises like; Sony, Twitter, Target, and even the Department of Homeland Security. It’s not your company data necessarily that these data thieves are interested in. Rather, it’s your contact data – the personal data you compile on each contact in your data base such as social security number, credit card number, and email address. This naturally raises the question; just how secure is your corporate data in the cloud? The hard truth is - “it depends”. Fact is, the only surefire way to guarantee your cloud data is 100% secure is to disconnect it from the cloud.
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Mon, Sep 29, 2014
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Will CloudVolumes Help VMWare Horizon Reach the Promised Land?

 
VMware has traditionally struggled in the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) space because while customers may use vSphere to support their VDI environment, the actual brokering software is almost always Citrix instead of VMware View.
 
This may soon change. During the second day of VMWorld 2014, Sanjay Poonen, VMware’s EVP & GM, End-User Computing, announced some very exciting news about VMware Horizon that could have a big impact on the End-User Computing (EUC) landscape.
 

Historically, administrators faced a challenge. Either they had to have a small footprint with View Linked Clones AND needed to re-provision applications (sometimes manually) at the end of all recompose operations. Or, they had to give everyone thick persistent desktops, which ate up storage costs and thereby decreased the ROI of VDI significantly. Enter CloudVolumes.
 
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Mon, Sep 15, 2014
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