opus:interactive | If These Servers Could Talk

There was a lot of buzz about Grid Computing vs. Virtual Machines and the combination of them together. As many of you may know Amazon (Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3) like many others, such as Google (Google Page Creator) and Microsoft (Microsoft Office Live,) has released online hosting/storage services using this technology in one form or another. The technology has been out since 1990s as a metaphor for making computer power as easy to access as an electric power grid in Ian Foster and Carl Kesselmans seminal work, “The Grid: Blueprint For A New Computing Infrastructure.”

My experience with Grid Computing goes back to the late 1990s with distributed.net in helping making encryption that much secure. With the technology originally designed to harness unused CPU cycles to solve complex problems, to now being used to hosting an infinite number of hosting environments. It is amazing the level of reliability and scalability options that are available with the system. The ability to grow in resources at an unlimited rate -on the fly- with little to no exposure to change, is outstanding. The other great aspect of this system of technology is the ability to contribute to a sustainable mindset. If done properly, you can reuse old servers and hardware that in a normal life cycle would be recycled, now can be reprovisioned back into a production environment with little concern of impact of hardware failure. This rejuvenation of hardware opens up a great opportunity to get that-much-more out of your initial investment as well as being able to pass those saving onto the customer. Do I see Grid and Virtual environments replacing all hosting environments? Not likely. In theory they have great potential to revolutionize the price, uptime, and growth opportunities of hosting. However I don’t see the replacement of dedicated environments with dedicated resources. Really, the way I look at it is: the continued growth in Grid and Virtual systems is really an improvement like public light rail has been for transportation. It has become cheaper, more reliable and continues to expand where it can go. However most of us still buy our own cars customized the way we like; from rims, stereos, number of seats, 4×4, biodiesel, the list goes on. Just like the vehicles you want to own, the same holds true in hosting. As a light rail can’t take you everywhere when you need to be, grids and virtual solutions can’t host every complex environment.

The question always seems to come up with this technology, will the Corporate Giants with the large pocket books and nearly limitless resources wipe out the little local hosting companies? In my opinion – not likely. Although the large corporate empires can deliver good products and great hardware, one thing they will always struggle with is: relationships. There is something to be said with local support and the face-to-face relationship with your hosting partner that you don’t get with the Giants. Having the ability to pick up the phone and call your solutions executive-engineer-local-host 24/7 and have them know who you are by name and the solution you utilize says a lot about the type of local provider you have. Additionally, there is something to be said about the warm fuzzy feelings we all get when we can go down to the local Data Center and see the pretty lights flashing and say to yourself, “There is my site.” The fact is, what Amazon as well as other do for the industry is what helps get the exposure to the general public about technology and drive more business to local providers as well. I think it is great. It will be interesting to see how the community responds to the technology. One thing is for sure my eyes will be watching.

Hosting Con 2007 also brought information about web 2.0 applications: MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, Friendster, and Xanga community. Others refer to this as a social networking movement. I find it interesting that half of Myspace users are over the age of 35.

So what does that say? To me it says there is a opportunity harness some of the power of user driven content. There is over 180,000 active and unique visitors in these communities as of Aug 2006 and they continue to grow. One way I see harnessing the power of these users is to create a community of customers for your hosting business that can help each other. They are all in one form or another doing the same thing and can use each other’s resources/knowledge to grow together. This type of value add and communication tunnel that not only your customers can contribute and drive the conversations but also your engineers and technicians can contribute ideas or solutions to drive more business. In summary, hosting is a communication vehicle to drive your customers content.

Vegas. It’s the, um, subtle touches.
by Jeremy Sherwood

Walking into Interop in Las Vegas reminded me very much of a big kids’ Disneyland. The lights, the overly large gimmicks that scream “Look at me! Look at me!” It really was sensory overload. Looking back on the event I can still remember the booths that really made an impression. There was a lot of good swag, and of course the cheap booths that attempt to persuade you with a simple little 25-cent plastic clapper (although my 1-year-old digs the plastic clapper).

Interop 2007 brought home that we are doing the right things and heading in the right direction. We are well ahead of the curve in almost all areas of IT.

Sure, but was it worth it?
by Jason Nuss

From the moment the flight was booked and my registration for Interop was complete the only thing I could think of was, “Is this going to be worth the money?” Although we did the free registration for the conference I knew we would be spending a lot of money to get down there, a lot of money on hotel, food, taxis, monorail, and of course entertainment. In the end, on the flight back to Portland, my thoughts were, “That was a great trip.” Here’s why.

Babes. Babes. Technology. Babes.
by Eric Hulbert

Wow! The booth babes were incredible. These shows never cease to amaze me. Every other booth had models sporting ultra slinky spandex wear showing off their products trying to draw you in to their booths. It works! I was very happy to see that we are well ahead of the curve in almost all areas of the IT lifecycle and daily managed services sustainability practices.

Lots of opportunities.
by Brady Wilson

It’s been years since I’ve been to an industry convention like this. The most exciting product I discovered at the show was SolidDNS by a company called InfoWeapons. It is a DNS server software/appliance management by a GUI interface. What’s interesting is that it’s based on their own flavor of FreeBSD called SolidBSD. It uses Bind for its DNS daemon and pf for its local firewall. That’s exactly where I would like to take the opus:interactive DNS platform.

by Jason Nuss

The opportunity to do a conference in Vegas was great and to go with teammates was even better.

From the moment the flight was booked and my registration for Interop was complete the only thing I could think of was, “Is this going to be worth the money?” Although we did the free registration for the conference I knew we would be spending a lot of money to get down there, a lot of money on hotel, food, taxis, monorail, and of course entertainment. In the end, on the flight back to Portland, my thoughts were, “That was a great trip.” Here’s why.

I get to travel quite a bit in my position as Director of Operations. I say quite a bit but that’s in comparison to others here who don’t travel at all. I go to 3-4 places a year attending training, conferences, vendors, and retreat. The opportunity to do a conference in Vegas was great, since I hadn’t been there for more than a day in 12 years. The opportunity to go with teammates was even better. Vegas, to me, is a place you don’t really want to go alone. Two reasons that’s true: one, there is too much to get you into trouble, so having buddies keeps you on the up-and-up (not that I would ever get into trouble, it’s just a tempting place); and two, who wants to go to Vegas alone? So just being in Vegas, relaxing away from the office, trying new things, seeing new sites, and, best of all, people-watching, was almost worth the money by itself. But obviously we didn’t go to Vegas for that, we went for Interop.

Interop was bigger than I expected. Although I new there were a lot of exhibitors I didn’t expect to see what I saw. Huge booths and displays, some of them two stories high, were common. In fact, you often had to look up to see the entire booth/displays. The big companies that opus:interactive uses for equipment, like Cisco, HP, and Dell were there, as well as the smaller vendors we use, like Array Networks (load balancers), GTA Firewalls, and IronPort Systems (S&V appliances). Hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent by these companies, for sure. What the ROI was, I don’t know, but it was obvious they felt it was an important place to be.

The big themes, as I saw them, were networking appliances and accessories, security appliances, wireless technologies, and data center cabinets, cooling, and new technologies. Not all these spoke to us as a company, but we did study every booth and visited anything we thought might be interesting.

Free stuff. We were up for free t-shirts, squishy balls and dice, Lego sets, candy, coffee, pop, backpacks, hats, pens, and more. The most notable freebie for me was the branded Lego set by IronPort. Very creative and memorable. I also like cleverly designed t-shirts. The free lemonade stand was creative, and the fact that it was hosted by half-naked women attracted a lot of buzz. BlueCat Networks hosted free Xbox360 gaming at their booth, as well as a few amazing-looking “booth babes”. Again, the girls tended to attract folks to the booth, although I am sure many guys didn’t attend the booths so as to not be viewed as a perverts. I lean towards not going up to talk to the booths with some half-dressed girl there unless it was a must see product, but that’s just me.

So the food in Vegas was amazing. I had a steak at this restaurant called Nine Fine Irishmen. The one thing I remember about this place—okay two things—was the t-shirt for sale in the lobby that said “I’ve done Nine Fine Irishmen,” which I found humorous. The second thing was the incredible ribeye steak. Wow.

We also took in Cirque du Soleil at the MGM. The show was amazing, to say the least. It was well worth the $69/per ticket price. That was the cheapest ticket available, but in a theatre of only 2000 seats there really wasn’t a bad seat.
Technology-wise, my biggest takeaway from Interop is that opus:interactive is ahead of the curve on sustainable practices and its effort to be eco-friendly. We are not perfect, but many of the practices that were presented at Interop are things we have been doing for a couple years. So I tip my hat to the owners and my director of IT for allowing us to push the edge on new technologies that improve our overall environmental impact.

Final thoughts:

• Flights were uneventful
• The weather was in the 90’s.
• Every time we walked out of a casino Jeremy and Eric would sneeze. I guess it was a temperature change? Whatever. It was funny.
• There were huge 50-foot billboards with g-stringed women advertising Vegas shows. Unimaginable in any other city.
• Rockstars were $5 each in the MGM.
• I went to a casino where all the dealers were impersonators. They would rotate singing on a stage in the middle of all the blackjack tables: Cher, Elvis, Louis Armstrong, Madonna, Maria Carey…
• The cab rides were freaky scary, but the stories the cabbies told were funny. One thing they all had in common: cabbies are bitter individuals who hate people.

The funniest moment (I must have laughed for 5 minutes and then throughout the trip just thinking about it):

Eric and I were playing Craps. Sometimes a die would bounce off the table and onto the floor, but it’s not common because the sides of the tables are so high. Eric finally got his chance to throw the dice. Instead of one of the dice bouncing off the table, Eric threw both dice off the table. In fact, they never even hit the table—they hit some guy in the gut. Eric was embarrassed, and I was rolling on the floor laughing. I couldn’t stop. I hadn’t laughed like that in months. Thanks Eric.

Good trip, worth the money.

It’s been years since I’ve been to an industry convention like this. I was reminded how big the vendors do things—large booths, gimmicks, booth girls, etc. I do like swag though!

Many of the vendors, and the show in general, seemed to focus more on Corporate IT than on an xSP like us. But that’s not uncommon. A lot of vendors tailor their products to Corporate IT, and we have to find a product that will work in a service provider environment.

I found many vendors offering network monitoring and management software and appliances. This is something we will be looking at in the near future for our own internal network management and compliance needs. It was a good way to get familiar with some of the vendors in that market.
These are the vendors at the show that are now added to the list to research when we get more serious about this type of product:

The U.S. is behind the rest of the world in migrating towards IPv6. There is an opportunity to get ahead and differentiate ourselves by adopting IPv6—lots of opportunity.

• Network Instruments
• NetQoS
• Niksun
• Wild Packets
• ArcSight
• cPackets
• Cymphonix
• Netscout
• Network General
• Solera Networks

I can’t say I learned anything new at the sessions we attended. It really just confirmed what we already know about data center design and the direction we’re already headed. It also made us even more confident in our selection of APC products and the places they are going with them.

It was great to talk with some of our existing vendors: GTA, Ironport and Array Networks were all at the show. The CEOs of GTA and Array Networks were there, so we got to speak with them directly. We talked about their company and let them know how much we support their products. We even gave Ironport some props to a guy who was at their booth researching their products.

The most exciting product I discovered at the show was SolidDNS by a company called InfoWeapons. It is a DNS server software/appliance management by a GUI interface. What’s interesting is that it’s based on their own flavor of FreeBSD called SolidBSD. It uses Bind for its DNS daemon and pf for its local firewall. That’s exactly where I would like to take the opus:interactive DNS platform. In addition, the SolidDNS product is dual-stack, meaning it resolves DNS for both IPv4 and IPv6 networks. InfoWeapons also is working on additional dual-stack products like firewalls and IPAM devices.

This kind of kick-started me on the IPv6 idea. The U.S. is behind the rest of the world in migrating towards IPv6. There is an opportunity to get ahead and differentiate ourselves by adopting IPv6—lots of opportunity.