/ By admin / Cloud/ 0 Comments

“Lift and Shift” Existing VMware Workloads to the Public Cloud

Whatever your opinion is of IBM Cloud, the company has made tangible strides to provide a compelling hybrid cloud strategy for the enterprise. Several analysts even recently acknowledged IBM leadership in this area. Based on the recent announcement with VMware, you’ll understand why existing VMware clients are pretty excited about IBM Cloud’s hybrid strategy.

The announcement notes that SoftLayer provides the capability to create secure and flexible VMware environments on top of IBM’s public cloud—now with expanded (and cost-effective) capabilities. These capabilities allow existing VMware customers to:

  • “Lift and shift” (read: extend) existing VMware workloads to the public cloud with the associated benefits (secure, compliant, global, OPEX, and so on)
  • Take advantage of existing VMware skills, assets, and processes (scripts, VMware admins, virtual machine templates, and so on)
  • Transition to the public cloud and flexible hybrid environments with minimal disruption

1_High_level_architectural_components

IBM Cloud encompasses a much larger scope that includes native SoftLayer and open source options, Bluemix/PaaS, as well as extensive cloud solutions and services.

The following are VMware-related FAQs, in addition to the ones you can find on KnowledgeLayer:

Why can’t I do “lift and shift” on other cloud platforms, e.g., AWS or Microsoft Azure?

In simple terms, you’ll need access to the virtualization host in order to “fully” operate your VMware environment (as you’d be used to it from your own data center). Neither AWS nor Azure allows you this level of control; they also run different hypervisors. SoftLayer allows you to deploy and manage physical hosts in addition to standard virtual servers.

Why would I do “lift and shift” on SoftLayer and not on VMware’s own public cloud?

Performing the extension on SoftLayer lets you:

  • Choose from 28 data centers in 14 countries
  • Take advantage of SoftLayer’s unmetered private network
  • Have “full control” beyond what is specifically exposed as a “service” in vCloud (there is no access to the physical ESX hosts).

Source :http://blog.softlayer.com/2016/%E2%80%9Clift-and-shift%E2%80%9D-existing-vmware-workloads-public-cloud

/ By admin / Funny/ 0 Comments

Cloud, Interrupted: The Official SoftLayer Podcast

Have you ever wondered what happens when you put three cloud guys in a room to talk cloud? Our curiosity was insatiable, so doggone it, we went and did it. We hereby officially present to you our brand new podcast: Cloud, Interrupted.

Join Kevin Hazard, director of digital content, Phil Jackson, lead technology evangelist, and Teddy Vandenberg, manager of network provisioning, as they wreak havoc interrupting the world of cloud.

In case you’re a skimmer, here’s the highlight reel:

  • [00:00:05] Phil isn’t a Stanley, but he is a germophobe.
  • [00:01:44] Are we interrupted by the cloud or are we interrupting the cloud?
  • [00:03:22] We have goals with this podcast, we swear.
  • [00:04:34] Teddy drops the bass.
  • [00:05:58] What’s a better word for “cloud” than “cloud”?
  • [00:08:12] Where social interaction influences the real world: Meet “passive computing” and the trifecta.
  • [00:10:44] Who cares what Phil has to say?
  • [00:11:51] Phil reminisces about that time he explained web hosting to the Harris County Tax Office.
  • [00:16:02] Then Teddy’s analogy was used against Phil.
  • [00:19:21] IBM to the rescue!
  • [00:20:45] Oops. He had to do it again.
  • [00:23:11] New and old technologies get lost in translation. “To the cloud!”
  • [00:25:54] You exist in the cloud more and you will start to understand the cloud more.
  • [00:30:31] Now this is a podcast about Costco.
  • [00:31:03] Wait a second. Who’s Kevin? And why isn’t SoftLayer on Snapchat?
  • [00:32:56] Teddy’s relationship with IBM is complicated, but the cat is fine.
  • [00:33:45] Hot tip: Unplug both ends of your telephone cable and reverse it.

We hope you dig it.

 

Source : http://blog.softlayer.com/2015/cloud-interrupted-official-softlayer-podcast

/ By admin / Customer Service/ 0 Comments

When in doubt with firewalls, “How Do I?” it out

Spring is a great time to take stock and wipe off the cobwebs at home. Within the sales engineering department at SoftLayer, we thought it was a good idea to take a deeper look at our hardware firewall products and revamp our support documentation. Whether you’re using our shared hardware firewalls, a dedicated hardware firewall, or the FortiGate Security Appliance, we have lots of new information to share with you on KnowledgeLayer.

One aspect we’re highlighting is a series of articles entitled, “How Do I?” within the Firewalls KnowledgeLayer node.  A “How Do I?” provides you with a detailed explanation about how to use a SoftLayer service or tool with the customer portal or API.

For example, perhaps your cloud admin has just won the lottery, and has left the company. And now you need to reorient yourself with your company’s security posture in the cloud. Your first step might be to read “How Do I View My Firewalls?” which provides step-by-step instructions about how to view and manage your hardware firewalls at SoftLayer within the customer portal. If you discover you’ve been relying on iptables instead of an actual firewall to secure your applications, don’t panic—ordering and securing your infrastructure with hardware firewalls can be done in minutes. Be sure to disable any accounts and API keys you no longer need within the Account tab. If you’re new to SoftLayer and our portal, take a look at our on-demand webinars and training video series.

Now that you’ve identified the types of firewalls you have protecting your infrastructure, fel free to drill in to our updated articles that can help you out. If you’re running a dedicated hardware firewall and want to know how to manage it within the portal, this “How Do I?” article is for you. We’ve also tailored “How Do I?” entries for shared hardware firewalls and the FortiGate Security Appliance to help you beat the heat in no time. The SoftLayer customer portal also provides you with the ability to download firewall access logs in a CSV file. See for yourself how the Internet can truly be a hostile environment for a web-facing server. Every access attempt blocked by your firewall has saved your server from the work of processing software firewall rules, and keeps your application safer.

We know that not all issues can be covered by how-to articles. To address that, we’ve also added a number of new entries to the Firewalls FAQ section.

Keep the feedback coming! We’re here to help answer your sales-related technical questions. And be sure to check out our latest Sales Engineering Webinar: Creating a Digital Defense Plan with Firewalls.

Source : http://blog.softlayer.com/knowledge-layer-how-to

/ By admin / Cloud • Infrastructure/ 0 Comments

Meet the Integrated IBM Cloud Platform: SoftLayer and Bluemix

Did you know that you can complement your SoftLayer infrastructure with IBM Bluemix platform-as-a-service? (Read on—then put these ideas into practice with a special offer at the end.)

When you pair Bluemix with SoftLayer, you can buy, build, access, and manage the production of scalable environments and applications by using the infrastructure and application services together.

Whether you need insight on the effectiveness of a multimedia campaign, need to process vast amounts of data in real-time, or want to deploy websites and web content for millions of users, you can create a better experience for your customers by combining the power of your SoftLayer infrastructure with Bluemix.

Bluemix solutions and services allow you to:

  • Optimize campaigns in real-time based on customer reaction using Watson Personality Insightsand Insights for Twitter.
  • Run scalable analytics using Streaming Analytics to retrieve results in seconds.
  • Improve outcomes with Watson Alchemy API and Retrieve and Rank paired with high performance bare metal servers.
  • Automate hundreds of daily web deployments using SoftLayer and Bluemix APIs.
  • Securely store, analyze, and process big data using Cloudant database service with Apache Spark.

You can see the value of an integrated SoftLayer/Bluemix experience by looking at insights and cognitive, big data and analytics, and web applications.

2_hadoop_datawarehouse_NOSQL

 

Source: http://blog.softlayer.com/2016/meet-integrated-ibm-cloud-platform-softlayer-and-bluemix

/ By admin / Business/ 0 Comments

Larger Virtual Servers Now Available

You asked. We listened. We’re excited to announce that our clients can now provision virtual servers with more cores and more RAM.

Starting today, you’re now empowered to run high compute and in-memory intensive workloads on a public and private cloud with the same quick deployment and flexibility you’ve come to enjoy from SoftLayer. After all, you shouldn’t have to choose between flexibility and power.

Oh, and did we mention it’s all on demand? Deploy these new, larger sizes rapidly and start innovating—right now.

Whether you require a real-time analytics platform for healthcare, financial, or retail, these larger virtual servers provide the capabilities you need to harness and maximize analytics-driven solutions.

Popular use cases for larger virtual servers include real-time big data analytics solutions requiring millisecond execution as needed by organizations processing massive amounts of data, like weather companies. Given the immense amount of meteorological inputs required for any location, at any time, at millisecond speed, larger virtual server sizes power weather forecast responses in real-time.

With SoftLayer virtual servers, you can segment your data across public, private, and management networks for better reliability and speed. You get unmetered bandwidth across our private and management networks at no additional charge, and unmetered inbound bandwidth on our public network. As real-time data-intensive workloads are developed, SoftLayer ensures that our best-in-class network infrastructure can retrieve and move data with speed.

 

Source : http://blog.softlayer.com/larger-virtual-server-sizes

/ By admin / Startup Series/ 0 Comments

Sales Primer for Non-Sales Startup Founders

The founder of one of the startups in our Global Entrepreneur Program reached out to me this week. He is ready to start selling his company’s product, but he’s never done sales before.

Often, startups consist of a hacker and a hustler—where the tech person is the hacker and the non-tech person is the hustler. In the aforementioned company, there are three hackers. Despite the founder being deeply technical, he is the closest thing they have to a hustler. I’m sure he’ll do fine getting in front of customers, but the fact remains that he’s never done sales.

So where do you begin as a startup founder if you’ve never sold before?

Free vs. Paid
His business is B2B, focusing on car dealers. He’s worried about facing a few problems, including working with business owners who don’t normally work with startups. He wants to give the product away for free to a few customers to get some momentum, but is worried that after giving it away, he won’t be able to convert them to paying customers.

Getting that first customer is incredibly important, but there needs to be a value exchange. Giving products away for free presents two challenges:

  1. By giving something away, you devalue your product in the eyes of the customer.
  2. The customer has no skin in the game—no incentive to use it or try to make it work.

Occasionally, founders have a very close relationship with a potential customer (e.g., a former manager or a trusted ex-colleague) where they can be assured the product will get used. In those cases, it might be appropriate to give it away, but only for a defined time.

The goal is sales. Paying customers reduce burn and show traction.

Price your product, go to market, and start conversations. Be willing to negotiate to get that first sale. If you do feel strongly about giving it away for free, put milestones and limitations in place for how and when that customer will convert to paid. For example, agree to a three-month free trial that becomes a paid fee in the fourth month. Or tie specific milestones to the payment, such as delivering new product features or achieving objectives for the client.

 

Source : http://blog.softlayer.com/2016/sales-primer-non-sales-startup-founders

/ By admin / News/ 0 Comments

Certified Ubuntu Images Available in SoftLayer

In partnership with Canonical, we are excited to announce today that SoftLayer is now an Ubuntu Certified Public Cloud Partner for Ubuntu guest images.

For clients, this means you can harness the value of deploying Ubuntu certified images in SoftLayer. The value to our clients includes:

  • Running Ubuntu on SoftLayer’s high performance and customizable virtual and bare metal server offerings
  • Ubuntu cloud guest image updates with enablement, publication, development, and maintenance across all data centers. Customers will have the latest Ubuntu features, compliance accreditations and security updates
  • Quality assurance ensures that customers enjoy one of the highest-quality Ubuntu experiences, including some of the fastest security patching of any Linux provider
  • Archive mirrors for faster updates retrieval for Ubuntu images
  • The opportunity to engage with Canonical for enterprise-grade support on Ubuntu cloud guest images, and use Landscape, Canonical’s award-winning system monitoring tool

In a continued effort to enhance client experience, SoftLayer’s partnership with Canonical assures clients as they look to accelerate transformation on Ubuntu workloads with a consistent SoftLayer experience.

“Canonical has a broad partnership with IBM with Ubuntu images already available on LinuxOne, Power and Z Systems,” said Anand Krishnan, EVP, Cloud, Canonical. “By signing this new public cloud partnership with SoftLayer we have made Ubuntu images available for its customers.”

Canonical continually maintains, tests, and updates certified Ubuntu images, making the latest versions available through Softlayer within minutes of their official release by Canonical. This means that you will always have the latest version of Certified Ubuntu images.

Please visit these pages for more information:

Find an Ubuntu Partner

Ubuntu Certified Public Cloud

About Canonical

Canonical is the company behind Ubuntu, the leading OS for container, cloud, scale-out and hyperscale computing. Sixty-five percent of large-scale OpenStack deployments are on Ubuntu, using both KVM and the pure-container LXD hypervisor for the world’s fastest private clouds. Canonical provides enterprise support and services for commercial users of Ubuntu.

Canonical leads the development of Juju, the model-driven operations system, and MAAS (Metal-as-a-Service), which creates a physical server cloud and IPAM for amazing data center operational efficiency. Canonical is a privately held company.

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Cloud, Interrupted: The Official SoftLayer Podcast, Episode 3

You’re never going to believe this. You already know the second episode of Cloud, Interrupted—the one, the only, the official SoftLayer podcast—hit the streets in December. And now, coming in hot, we’re bringing you the long-awaited third episode of Cloud, Interrupted—only a month after the last one! Contain your excitement. We’re getting good at this.

In the third episode of our authoritative, esteemed podcast, we discuss why our first podcasts were recorded in wind tunnels, we pat ourselves on the back for being doers and not scholars, and we reveal the humble, testosterone-fueled origins of the iconic Server Challenge.

Join Kevin Hazard, director of digital content, Phil Jackson, lead technology evangelist, and Teddy Vandenberg, manager of network provisioning, as they wreak havoc interrupting the world of cloud. Yet again.

You skipped that fluff-filled intro, didn’t you? We’ll reward your impatience with the CliffsNotes:

Cloud, Interrupted, Episode 3: In the end, you’ve gotta start somewhere.

  • [00:00:01] Yo yo yo, it’s the new and improved bleep bloops!
  • [00:00:25] We’ve finally stopped recording Cloud, Interrupted from our pillow forts. Now we just follow the mountains and valleys.
  • [00:04:23] So you want to host your own podcast? Cool. Take it from us on the ultimate, definitive, pretty-much-only guide to success: gear, software, and magical editing.
  • [00:06:24] Teddy takes us on a boring tangent about startups that’s not really a tangent at all. (You decide if it’s boring.)
  • [00:07:25] Ha ha, Kevin totally used to trick out his MySpace page.
  • [00:09:16] GOOD JOB, PHIL!
  • [00:09:26] Phil was THE most popular kid in school. That’s how he started programming.
  • [00:13:40] There are two types of technical people: those that do and those that read the docs. Teddy doesn’t read the docs. Ask him about YUM.
  • [00:17:59] C’mon, Kevin. No one wants to build a server at a conference for fun. What a dumb idea!

Source : http://blog.softlayer.com/2016/cloud-interrupted-official-softlayer-podcast-episode-3

/ By admin / Cloud/ 0 Comments

Use DSR to Take a Load Off Your Load Balancer

Direct server return (DSR) is a load balancing scheme that allows service requests to come in via the load balancer virtual IP (VIP). The responses are communicated by the back-end servers directly to the client. The load is taken off the load balancer as the return traffic is sent directly to the client from the back-end server, bypassing it entirely. You may want to do this if you have larger files to be served or traffic that doesn’t need to be transformed at all on its way back to the client.

Here’s how it works: Incoming requests are assigned a VIP address on the load balancer itself. Then the load balancer passes the request to the appropriate server while only modifying the destination MAC address to one of the back-end servers.

netscaler_DSR_workflow

You need to be aware of the following when using DSR:

  • Address resolution protocol (ARP) requests for the VIP must be ignored by the back-end servers if the load balancer and back-end servers are on the same subnet. If not, the VIP traffic routing will be bypassed as the back-end server establishes a direct connection with the client.
  • The servers handling the DSR requests must respond to heartbeat requests with their own IP and must respond to requests for content with the load balancer VIP.
  • Application acceleration is not a possibility because the load balancer does not handle the responses from the backend servers.

 

Source : http://blog.softlayer.com/2016/use-dsr-take-load-your-load-balancer

/ By admin / Cloud/ 0 Comments

SL-APS: The faster way for resellers to offer SoftLayer services

SL-APS is a SoftLayer infrastructure application package that allows a simple and fast way for cloud service providers to offer new and existing SoftLayer services to their customers. Since it is based onAPS Standard’s Application Packaging Standard (APS), you can get your Odin Cloud Marketplace Storefront up and running in a matter of a days—instead of spending months to develop and integrate—so you can sell and deploy SoftLayer services (virtual servers, bare metal servers, network devices, etc.) faster than ever before.

Putting the “r” back in fee

Providers (distributors and resellers) can download the software package from IBM free of charge. Once installed, the SL-APS package will dynamically discover SoftLayer products, pricing, and available data centers and display them in a “configurator” interface.

You’re in control

Providers then customize or simplify the product set by building a list of products they wish to offer to customers. The package also accommodates Provider-Reseller-Customer Sales models as well as two-tier distribution.

IBM SL-APS v3.0 (July 2016) provides deeper integration with many of SoftLayer’s catalog items and services. New features include:

  • SAML SSO to SoftLayer Customer Portal: Odin SL-APS customers can one-click securely sign on to their SoftLayer customer portal using a strong one-time security token.
  • SoftLayer Invoice-Driven Billing: All Odin invoices relating to SoftLayer services will be generated directly based on SoftLayer invoices, on customer’s SoftLayer monthly billing date, converted for customer/reseller currency and discount rate.
  • Detailed Reseller and End-Customer Invoices: Resellers and end-customers will receive detailed invoices containing all SoftLayer devices and associated charges, converted for customer/reseller currency and discount rate.
  • POWER8 servers (additional latest SoftLayer catalog item): POWER8 servers provide bare metal power for big data workloads.

source : http://blog.softlayer.com/2016/sl-aps-faster-way-resellers-offer-softlayer-services