Yes I know: I should have never stopped blogging (some might say that it was goodness I did). To paraphrase my blogging colleague Claus, it was a blogcation. “In reality”, Santa snatched the keys of my blog last Xmas, and it took me several months to get them back… but I could not wait for Xmas this year especially as I have received encouragements (right or wrong) on a regular basis from colleagues & fellow bloggers to start again my postings. I am thinking in particular about a very nice note from Anil Gupta from SNW-San Diego that I re-read recently and which has really motivated me to blog once more. Thanks Anil.

Several topics have caught my attention lately -

First of all, the OVF proposal going to DMTF. Just think about how complex it is to instantiate reliably a Virtual Machine on various platforms, taking care of all the installation parameters for the various environments including software licensing. Well, that what is being worked at with the Open Virtual machine Format (OVF) standard proposal going to DMTF.
The OVF specification describes an extensible format for the packaging and distribution of virtual machines or groups of virtual machines, whilst still allowing some localization based on the platform and run-time environments to optimize the deployment and performance of the applications contained in the package. So this is a portable metadata model for virtual machines that can be exchanged between platforms. In dynamic resource environments such as SOA when tasks and services are (re-)distributed on a regular basis, the portability of a standard like OVF could become very helpful. Many questions spring to mind with regards to the resource definition and allocation for each virtual machine image, let’s say for storage and data… Could the creation of VM images be automated? Yes probably. The application field for such standard is broad and could go beyond the traditional business application packages to more specialized ones such as specialized service providers. Like any standards it only provides value to IT users if it becomes truly utilized in real products and if all adopting vendors don’t attempt to twist it to include their own “added value”… With virtualization being a well-monitored IT industry topic, I have no doubt we will hear fairly soon if OVF isn’t on the right track.

FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet) is also an interesting industry project right now. The Ethernet convergence is a recurring theme in our industry and whilst there are concrete proof-points to demonstrate the reality of such convergence (e.g. VoIP, iSCSI…), the timeline and the market conditions for such convergence are often different than what is originally announced – rarely shorter though! But FCoE appears to be on a fast(er) track. The adoption of the project in T11 has not affected the momentum behind the proposed technology - of course nothing against T11 here but official standards work generally has a higher coordination cost than if it is privately developed.
The FCoE proposal is attractive: being able to leverage Ethernet networks, without the weight of TCP/IP, to transport FCP constructs whilst relying on the use of optional congestion management features in Ethernet (Pause mechanism in 802.3-A31B) is an interesting convergence approach.
From an FC standpoint it also capitalizes on previous FC-BB development efforts. Of course time will tell if the specific network conditions required for FCoE will allow the storage community to embrace the Ethernet foundations that exist in most if not all Enterprises today. With FCoE in the pipeline, FC-BaseT futures could become a little more uncertain. The idea to leverage the Ethernet connectivity standard for FC communications was a good one – however going away from the Ethernet communication standard over Cat5 or Cat6 infrastructure would prove to be a tough choice, even for FC. FCoE appears to be a safer bet to help bridging Fibre Channel and Ethernet Fabrics.

Oh by the way - SNW is only a few weeks away and for the first time it is in Dallas, Texas. I expect topics like Green, Security, Virtualization, FCoE, ILM, Data Classification, Next Generation Data Center and Resource Management to be hot topics… See you there!

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