Intel Day In The Cloud: Partner Solutions on Display
As I mentioned in my first report from the Intel Day In The Cloud, the chip giant is working with a range of technology partners on cloud computing advancements. In attendance at the Portland, Ore., event were representatives from well-known channel players like Microsoft, Parallels, VMware, and Citrix, as well as relative newcomers to the space like GProxy and Oxygen Cloud. They were all there to show off solutions built atop Intel cloud reference architectures.
Here’s a quick list of solutions demonstrated at the conference…
1. eCommerce specialist GProxy has whipped up a way to make the browser aware of the specs of the device accessing it (right down to laptop battery power remaining) and deliver content accordingly. For example, a new, top-of-the-line laptop computer with a built-in webcam was able to access a browser portal with 3D graphical representations of data pulled from NetSuite, built-in video chat, and high-definition video playback. But a slightly older machine got only the bare essential data and video played in 480p. It’s still in beta, but GProxy’s solution shows a lot of promise.
2. Storage specialists EMC and Oxygen Cloud are delivering a joint solution that brings IT policy management and control to a very Dropbox-like file management solution. Much like the consumer offering, it uses simple drag-and-drop to keep files accessible from anywhere with an Internet connection. But by making sure the storage and retrieval stays compliant with regulatory standards., it’s the best of both worlds.
3. Intel itself has whipped up a way to automatically manage VMware vCloud environments based not on CPU usage, but power consumption. If a workload consumes too much power, as defined by administrator policy, it just shunts it elsewhere. It works between facilities, and can help keep power usage even across all resources no matter how far apart, among other use-cases. Intel has apparently offered said plug-in to VMware, but no word if it’ll see wide-spread release.
4. Citrix showed off Open Cloud Bridge, a way to open secure tunnels and move data from private cloud to public cloud — apparently, a widely-requested feature. In the demo, Intel engineers were actually able to move a workload from a remote private cloud to the public cloud test lab hosted on the premises in the span of a few minutes. And once it was complete, the Citrix XenApp deployment worked just as it had previously. They call it “managed cloudbursting.”
5. HyTrust and VMware are leveraging Intel TXT secure virtualization technology, which prevents malicious software from getting into a virtual machine before launch, to pool trusted and untrusted VMs and enforce policies on each. The goal is to prevent the administrator from causing any damage to the cloud, whether that damage is because of malware or a misclick.
6. NetApp attended to show off their 10 gigabit networking solutions, which they had rigged up to carry iSCSI as well as TCP/IP. Basically, NetApp says, they can deliver up to ten gigabits of whatever protocols you need, drastically reducing the need for cabling in the data center.
Intel divides their Cloud Builders initiative into two parts: creating the cloud and managing the cloud. Most of the solutions on display yesterday seemed to be geared around the latter part. But make no mistake, as much lip service was given to the former as the latter.
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