Ed Byrne

With job loss announcements, pay cuts and pay freezes being almost daily news, how does one go about actually getting a job, or moving to a new role? You may be a student in your final year planning to enter the workforce; recently made redundant; or even aching for a change from your current position – but afraid to even try, leaning instead towards ‘preserving your employment’. Regardless of what stage of the workforce you find yourself, getting a job is harder now than it has been for 20 years – and I believe the approach to job hunting needs a totally new approach, due to the economic climate and two major trends – the growth of on-line personal information (social media) and the brevity of time a person tends to spend in a company (life long roles do not exist any more).

Like starting a business in tough times, getting a job in tough times is difficult – but like starting a business, the good ideas (people) will still succeed.  Markets are cyclical, this time 12 months ago the labour force held all the power – and it was all employers could do to hold on to staff, offering pay increases and generous benefits packages, coupled with recruiters constantly trying to tempt good staff (read: staff they have previously placed) into other companies. Now the employer holds all the power – for most jobs now a simple advert will garner hundreds of applicants. So how do you stand out from the crowd, get your CV past the initial screening, and land that interview?

The first reality to come to terms with, is that the CV is dying, or already dead. CV’s are a ‘dead tree media’ personal advertisement. Advertisements promote a brand or product, and all viewers know they are created by the promoter – and therefore extremely one-sided. A CV is no different – employers know you wrote it – and you are naturally biased towards self–promotion. The reality now is that a vast amount of information on you can be found on-line – and very often this information is not controlled by you and can give potential employers a shockingly honest window into your life.

You are in denial if you think any – every – potential employer today is not going to ‘Google you’. Google yourself now – are you proud of the results that show? Will these results positively or negatively affect a strangers perception of you, and encourage them to meet you as a candidate for employment?  Is it a link to your Facebook or Bebo page? Are there any links at all? Both are equally dangerous answers. Your online persona is incredibly important when it comes to achieving career success – if you want to stand out for the mass of applications to get a first interview, and also if you wish to pass an online screening for any content that might paint a less than salubrious picture of you. For most people the results are easy to manipulate – it just takes a little time and effort.

5 Steps to Standing Out from the Crowd and Getting Yourself Noticed Online

1. Decide what your personal brand stands for. Select your areas of interest and make a list of communities, events and people to connect with. This is your target audience, and this is the audience for which you are creating content you hope will be seen by a potential employer.
2. Setup a blog. You need a ‘home’ online, and you need to create meaningful content (this is the single most important thing you can do to get noticed). This is what you hope will show up on the first page of a search on your name – entries in your blog posting articles and commentary of your professional sphere of interest.
3. Setup a twitter account. Twitter might not be for everyone, and it’s a little hard to understand at first. But it’s a massively growing medium for connecting, and it’s easy to participate – unlike blogging where you need to formulate long entries, each ‘tweet’ you post is limited to 140 characters. It’s called ‘micro blogging’ but instead of trying to write micro-novels, use Twitter to find other people in your sphere of interest – and see what they are talking about – news, trends, companies, other people. It’s a great way to expand your network and find new sources of knowledge.
4. Join LinkedIn and find like minded people. Search for other  forums. LinkedIn is a great professional networking tool. Just like other social media sites, I can see the connections of people I am connected to, and if there is someone there I’d really like to meet, I can ask my connection to introduce me. That’s a very powerful tool for job hunting. For example – add me as a connection to your LinkedIn profile – then you can browse my contacts. Perhaps there’s someone there in a company you really think you can add value in; so you ask me to introduce you to my contact – that is FAR more powerful than a cold-call or randomly submitted CV. Furthermore, LinkedIn is a great replacement to your MyCV.doc – it’s a public, constantly updateable, and searchable, profile of yourself than you control. (Here’s mine for example).
5. Start writing, commenting, connecting. Once you’ve set yourself up online, it’s time to start getting yourself out there. Read relevant articles and if you have a comment – leave one and link back to your blog. Write content on your blog – it doesn’t have to be profound – it can be a summary of new things you have learnt or come across on line. Participate in online communities, or if one doesn’t exist – create it!

When a prospective employer searches for you online now – they will see your professional profile on LinkedIn, a few articles you’ve written online, or maybe they will come across you long before you’ve submitted a job application because you’ve connected with them through you new online activities. All this shows interest above and beyond the ‘9 to 5′, it makes you stand out for the crowd and gets the employer to think you are proactive, interested and self-motivated. Immediately you are more employable than the 50 other CV’s on the persons desk with the same education and experience.

A mentor many years ago said to me ‘when you are looking for a job, looking for a job IS your full-time job’. Writing a standard CV and cover letter and sending it to recruiters and a few companies is NOT the approach that will land you your dream job. This lazy ‘blanket bomb’ approach may have worked in the past, but it won’t any more. If you not working, then you have AT LEAST 40-hours a week to spend looking for a job. Start a blog, create relevant content, promote yourself online through meaningful contribution to forums and industry communities, attend networking events in your area (or start one!), and make contact with companies you would like to work with through interacting with them where they are active, or likely keeping an eye on.

Ed Byrne BrandMe

What is Utility Computing?

Nick Carr published a book about it this year – called The Big Switch. Amazon [Web Services division] are the (surprising) world leaders in this area with a huge first-mover advantage and massive developer community -400,000 strong, not to mention the estimated 500m dollars revenue in 2008 they will generate from this. Effectively Utility Computing means accessing computing resources such as server infrastructure (Windows / Linux), storage, and other services that can be built on top of these (Business Continuity or Data Backup for example), on a ‘pay as you go’ model. The pay-as-you-go model is really where the ‘Utility’ part comes from and is the critical, game-changing, part of this new area.

Nick Carr compares Utility Computing to the consumption of and payment for electricity – you don’t have a generator at home constantly powered-on, generating ‘x’ kilowatts per hour; you use as much or as little electricity as you require, and only pay for what you have actually consumed. Computing is moving towards this model … at least raw computing resources anyway, and it’s going to massively disrupt the industry.

Why Utility Computing?

Why would you purchase expensive server infrastructure installations, that average running at 15% capacity, while at the same time you need to both pay for the capital purcahse as well as the running costs? If you could pay for resources you need, and scale your infrastructure pool up-and-down as your organisation needs to consume IT, you would make huge savings financially. You would expect to make great savings in capital (purchasing the infrastructure) and IT operations (running, maintaining, growing the infrastructure). Thus Utility Computing provides a model for consumption of IT in a manner that suits efficient business operation – just like consumption of any utility like water or electricity – take advantage of a providers scale facility and pay as-you-go.

Challenges and Opportunities Utility Computing Presents

1. Systems Integrators and Value Added Resellers

These companies make their bread and butter by selling servers and related appliances, with maintenance contracts, into organisations. Utility Computing presents a big challenge for them as their customers will no longer want to spend money on hardware, they will want Utility-billing. If they don’t change their game, they risk being sidelined as IT departments buy their compute resources directly from big Utilities, and pay as they consume.

I think there exists an opportunity here for innovative SI’s and VAR’s to offer On-Premise Utility Computing. Existing players are all Web-based, remote, and not very customisable. If a VAR were to offer the same level of service as businesses currently enjoy, by installing the infrastructure on-premise, but only charging for resources being utilised, I think they would have a compelling competitive advantage over the ‘Big Players’ like Amazon, and get a leap ahead of the old school companies that will eventually see their server-selling business dissappear. I would suggest that if a supplier here were to run the financial model, they may find Utility-billing does not reduce client revenue (over the life time of the contract) and creates a much more symbiotic client relationship that additional services can be sold though as a result.

Further opportunities then exist from the On-Premise, Utility-billed installation, for the supplier to provide ‘Bursting’ to Off-Premise Utilities, and provide additional services such as Data Backup, Remote Access, Business Continuty and Distaster Recovery, Unified Commications. I think we may see some new entrants to this market, if the SI’s and VAR’s don’t move fast enough to provide this service to their clients.

2. Hosting Providers and Data Centre Providers

Companies such as Hosting365 and RackSpace, as well as Data Centre Colocation Providers like InterXion and TeleCity, will see their business affected by Utility Computing in 2009. Hosting Providers already save companies money on the Capital Expenditure of purchasing infrastructure – by leasing it to them as part of a services contract. Data Centre providers supply the raw space to connect a customers infrastructure to the Internet. Both of these areas will see customers moving to Utility-computing as a replacement for their services. DC providers will still get business from SI’s and VAR’s moving customer infrastructure to a Internet-delivery method (although this won’t last for more than another 3 years) and from bespoke infrastructure that standard Utility Computing simply cannot provide for.

Hosting Companies are far more threatened – Utility Computing as provided today by the likes of Amazon is a direct competitor, providing nigh-on the same service. The opportunities I believe are to provide a true Managed Service and ‘Managed Services’ SLA on a ‘Hybrid Utility Base’. I think monthly payments on a contracted term are still feasible, although will become much more difficult to win against Utility Computing offerings – but a model with a consultative sell and setup, high-end SLA and service, with a monthly-minimum for infrastructure that can ‘burst’ as needed, and the burst’s are paid for on a Utility Model, will be an opportunity for Hosting Companies to maintain their customer base, continue to grow and compete effectively with pure Utility Providers.

3. IT Departments

In-House IT organisations that currently spend a lot of time provisioning and maintaining server infrastructure will see Utility Computing outsource a lot of their day-to-day tasks. If servers are provided by a 3rd party, and their configuration, provisioning of additional servers and infrastructure environment maintenance are all taken care of by the 3rd party – IT Departments will have to justify their ongoing existence, certainly in their current form.

The challenge this presents is that company CFO’s will see this as a dual opportunity – to save money on IT capital and maintenance expenditure, and to reduce staff overhead in the IT department. The opportunity for IT Dept’s to mitigate this is to have a brainstorming session and create a plan for adding strategic value to the business. With resources freed up in terms of budget and time, the IT Dept. should propose how it can more tightly integrate with business management and operations – to once again try and be the catalyst providers of competive advantages (as IT used to be when it was just being introduced – a better IT setup mean’t a better business). In this way internal IT can be the instigators of the change to utility, and both save the company money while providing a higher value service – a ‘win win’.

Conclusion

A couple of interesting potential developments may occur. Hosting Companies, Systems Integrators and VAR’s may become much more like a single type of company with very little to differentiate them. Or, Hosting Companies will provide bare-bones infrastructure to existing SI’s and VAR’s as their Channel Partners. The SI’s and VAR’s will no longer try to sell any hardware but rather take a margin on the Hosting Company service they implement, and move up the value chain to ‘Strategic IT Partner’ rather than pure ‘Supplier’.

Utility Computing will certainly be a big player in the IT business in 2009, and on-wards. 2008 was the ‘early adopter’ and ‘buzz’ year … 2009 will see it enter the real business world.

Ed Byrne Cloud, Infrastructure, TechTrends cloudcomputing, hosting365, technology2009, TechTrends, utility computing

It might be a little early to be thinking about what’s going to happen in 2009 – however I do like to plan ahead, and Q4 is well under way at this stage, so we will soon be thinking about strategic projects and business goals for Hosting365 for 2009. I find it good to start this exercise right at the top – and think about developments in technology as an industry, and macro-economic business trends in general, and then apply these to the company’s current abilities, product sets and plans.

Here’s the 10 areas I think will see a lot of development in 2009, and present challenges and opportunities to businesses in the technology sector.

1. Utility Computing
2. Cloud Computing
3. SaaS
4. Mobile Commerce
5. Mobile Applications
6. Web 2.0 Consolidation
7. Virtualisation
8. Online Collaboration and Communication
9. Green IT
10. Data Portability

From doing the exercise of discussing the impact of each trend on our business, sometimes the only result is agreeing that the current plans are the right ones – and that re-affirmation is good to have going into a new year. Other times a new opportunity is identified (in the 2006/2007 exercise we decided Blades, Virtualisation and Cloud Computing were going to be important in 2007 and onwards – that worked pretty well for us, although it took a year to deliver on the plans!). And finally threats may be identified as coming in the future as part of the macro- and technology- trends we see, and knowing these threats helps plan to mitigate them.

Ed Byrne General

I read recently Paul Graham’s article on YCombinator that mentioned a WebOS as being an area they were interested in looking at. At Hosting365 R&D we are building what we are calling ‘NetOS’, which tackles certain parts of the WebOS. I thought it might be interesting to outline what I believe the core elements of a WebOS would be made up of.

First off – what IS a WebOS? A WebOS, to me, is a set of fundamental building blocks for Internet Services and Web Applications to run on top of.

1. Identity

I believe the WebOS must start with identity. This does not necessarily mean ‘who are you’ but also ‘what are you’ – identity is about devices identifying themselves as much as people. You could say that IPv6 is a form of Identity, although IP addresses are not really ‘owned’ by anything, especially with NATing and network virtualisation.

The WebOS needs an Identity Module for People primarily. I’m not certain what the best Unique_ID is – perhaps a fixed domain name or email address. Perhaps a ME page (.me maybe!) with your identity details, securely managed to the access levels you want to allow people/companies/trusted friends and applications gain – such as name, contact numbers, email, social profile (where are you on the web).

The second part of the Identity Module for WebOS that is required is Account Management – if it is an OS then you need a place to manage your identity, the elements of it, and if you would like, payment profiles associated, security options, access control and personal data. This can be done through OpenID or something more secure like Secure_ID, depending on your requirements.

2. Data

Second in the WebOS layer must be data. Data is the fundamental driver of the Internet – albeit through a plethora of applications and interfaces – it is raw data that all our shiny new networks and data centres are pushing around. For WebOS Data the module must provide a secure, safe place to store.

What do you need to be able to do with your data:

- Store It – Safely and Securely
- Access It – Availbility, Mobility, Policy-Enforceability (Access Rights Control)
- Use It – Edit, Modify, Version and Backup (Integrated with Office Web Apps like Zoho or Google Apps)
- Advanced Features: PUT, GET, SELECT_FROM_IN_WITH_ORDER : SQL Based : DBTables

You need to be able to get, manage, delete, and port your data from other web sites too … such as your photos on Facebook, your Friends on MySpace, your Blog Posts on Wordpress, your videos from YouTube.

3. Computing

Computing provides the processing layer for WebOS – on Data or on-behalf of other modules/applications. In the form of Internet Services, Computing needs to be a true on-demand utility – usable as-needed, and always available. The question here is do we need a standard Cloud Machine (ie. 2.4Ghz / 2GB RAM / x GB Hard Drive) that can be expanded or copied, or do we need another module.

To take the electricity grid example, which is commonly used for Cloud Computing – one doesn’t build a power station to get electricity at home or in the office, you plug into the grid – similar to Cloud Computing. However you do not plug into the grid at 300 kilowatts, you plug in at zero and pull down as much as you need.

So perhaps the Computing module of WebOS and for Cloud Computing needs to be similar – it should be based on Instructions Per Second (which is the real requirement of a process – not how many gigahertz and gigabytes of RAM are AVAILABLE, but how many instructions the process has used in the Cloud). Obviously Instructions Per Second is going to be a high number – so I suggest the utility model for WebOS Computing is MIPS – Millions of Instructions Per Second. For comparison, a number of MIPS -capacity- could be said to be equivalent to a current standard server configuration.

4. Communications

Communications is another absolutely fundamental layer to WebOS. Like Identity, Communcations is not limited only to an individual.

Type of Communication Supported (Open-API allows more to be integrated of course): Email, Messenger, Corporate, Phone-VOIP+Mobile+Hardline (ENUM), Social Networks (+Blog+Forum), Micro Blogs, Comments (left and recieved), Friend Feeds (friend activity stream, passive and directed at me), RSS.

Communications needs to be VERY mobile and location aware:

- Mobile
- Mobile Web
- DesktopPC
- Web Browser
- Within TYPES (Types= Within Other Networks, Within Coporate Firewalls WITHOUT breaking policy)

Groups is the really important definer of communications – and the methods by which the WebOS module for it should be created.

- To me
- From Me
- With Me
- To Myself (from Myself : IE. Reminders, Notifications, Calendars Events and Alarms, Notes)
- In A Group (Within the Group : CC’d, To, Part of Thread)
- From A System (Travel Reminders, Domain Renewal Reminders)

The GROUPS part of communications should define the WebOS actions taken. Again like Identity, a Communication may occur automatically, and trigger automatic actions, all machine based without human ineraction. The beauty of the WebOS is the overarching integration that streamlines and allows for automation and improvement on normal interations.

Conclusion

Does the WebOS need to develop all these modules? No. The WebOS needs to provide interoperability between them all, and WebOS should integrate with 3rd party API’s – so for ID you can use your Open_ID or other Identity Providier (Bank, Company ID, Government ID); for Data it should integrate with Amazon S3, Microsoft Live Mesh, Applie MobileMe. And so on. The WebOS needs to have two-way API’s that both allow the WebOS to talk to 3rd party core services (data/computing/applications) and also allow 3rd party core services not yet envisoned integrate themselves with WebOS – so it is a totally open maleable system – the only core being the Business Logic that allows open, scalable platform growth.

Ed Byrne Cloud cloud cloudcomputing webos netos hosting365 webservices

Cloud Computing is a wonderful buzzword being touted by any and all in the technology industry these days – although the definition varies widely depending on the source or sector. So what is Cloud Computing? At the recent Irish Open Source Technology Conference, Hosting365 delivered a presentation (embedded below) called ‘Cloud Computing – The Evolution of Internet Infrastructure’, which aimed to explain Cloud Computing, talk about the components of a Cloud Platform, and then discuss the future potential of this area.

Introduction to Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing is often confused with Grid Computing or Utility Computing, and while these may be uses of Cloud Computing, they are not inherently part of it. Grid Computing is typically a massively scaled infrastructure capable of processing huge amounts of data very quickly. Environmental Modelling or DNA Modelling are examples of uses for grid computing. Utility computing on the other hand is really a model of pricing and delivery. In utility computing, the premise is that you can access computing resources as you need them, and only pay as you use them. Utility Computing is often explained by referencing the Electricity Grid – where there is a massive power grid that you can tap into as you need it, and scale up and down as you require.

Cloud Computing is essentially computing resources delivered from the Internet to your desktop.

Cloud Computing refers to services on the Internet as being ‘in the cloud’ – which means not in your office server rack or your building’s comms room. Cloud Computing means outsourcing your computing requirements and receiving these services through your Internet connection. You no longer need to worry about power, cooling, server hardware deployment and management.

You can use Cloud Computing services to store data (archive, backup, general-purpose), deliver applications (SaaS – Software-as-a-Service), and deliver access to Internet Infrastructure as and when your company requires it (HaaS – Hardware-as-a-Service), such as for seasonal peaks, or torture-testing your new application deployment.

Why use Cloud Computing?

Let me preface this by assuming there is an organisation need for Internet Infrastructure – be that a requirement to delivery services to customers (IE a web application your company has built), or to provide resources to staff such as email, file storage, collaboration, database and ERP applications. Assuming an Infrastructure requirement exists, there are two ways it may be currently at the moment. You may have infrastructure in-house (typically for office applications) or you may have server hardware co-located or leased in a Data Centre (typically for web applications).

Enter Cloud Computing. First of all, the most tangible benefit of Cloud Computing is that it offers an Enterprise-grade solution, on a very affordable basis. Unlike a single server, an enterprise cloud offering will have massive amounts of fault tolerance built in, and should be architected using high-end network, server and storage kit. You can therefore outsource your company’s infrastructure to a Cloud Platform and benefit from reduced cost AND increased services. (This is why Cloud Computing is such a hyped area!).

Some other rationale for choosing Cloud Computing over traditional deployments include:

• Scalability : Grow your deployment rapidly, as required, without huge capital costs or operational time.
• Flexibility : Add and remove resources on-the-fly (or script tolerances!) to cope with peaks in your requirements. Only pay for what you need.
• Reliability : Take advantage of a massive computing platform, without having to build and buy your own. Improve your organisations infrastructure SLA’s by using a highly redundant and resilient platform that has no single points of failure (i.e. that server in the corner of your office!)
• Fast Setup : React the decisions or requirements quickly and deploy complex architecture’s rapidly.
• Affordable Enterprise Solution : Economies of Scale. Utilise a multi-million euro platform for even a single server deployment to get best-in-class service for an entry level price.
• Environmentally Efficient : Cloud Platforms maximise infrastructure utilisation per server and per square foot in the Data Centre. Standard servers only use 15% of their resources.

The 3 Levels of Cloud Computing

1. Hardware Independence
2. Service Not Reliant on single Data Centre
3. Platform Agnostic Application Delivery

(more information about the 3 levels of slides 10-12)

Vision for the Future

Cloud Computing has yet to finds it way into the boardroom. There is a lot of innovation happening in this area, and at the moment there is uncertainty and confusion around what the Cloud Computing really is, and no single provider has emerged as the ‘one to bet on’.

I think in the short term we will see a standard emerge (like x86) for Cloud Computing resources, and then application vendors will create packages for deployment and management around this. Standardised ‘Cloud API’s’ will emerge and users of cloud computing services will be able to select providers without fear of platform lock-in.

In the future it should be possible to move your infrastructure deployment between suppliers and you will be able to select criteria for this to happen automatically. For example, maybe you want your infrastructure to only reside in suppliers that have an SLA (and proven track record) of 99.999% uptime; perhaps you would like to keep your service within a defined latency of your users (this might mean moving your infrastructure ‘following the sun’ to place it nearest people in office-hours); you might want to keep your service within a price range while maintaining decent SLA’s (higher SLA’s for day-time with more tolerance for speed / latency at night while taking advantage of cheaper providers). Ultimately, a Cloud Computing standard will drive adoption from business as well as providing for innovations the whole industry can benefit from.

Presentation

Resources

Defogging Cloud Computing – GigaOm

How Cloud Computing and Utility Computing are Different – GigaOm

Reaching for the Sky through the Compute Clouds – ReadWriteWeb

Ed Byrne Infrastructure cloudcomputing haas hosting365

With the growth of the Internet for personal use (e.g. Facebook, Amazon, Google, Gmail) and business purposes (i.e.file storage, web applications, collaboration and communication, VOIP) I thought it would be useful to talk about what actually powers all these things. I have a secondary reason for this too – when a non-technical person asks me what I do for a living, I have yet to come up with a short simple answer that actually explains it!

First of all, let me define what I mean by ‘Internet Infrastructure’. All the hardware and services required to make this web page appear in your browser, or an RSS feed download into your reader, or VOIP calls / emails get to your desktop. All the underlying technologies that are unseen, but ‘make the Internet go’.

I see Internet Infrastructure consisting of a ‘Top 5′ areas :

• Data Centres
• Network Connectivity
• Computer Equipment
• Storage Services
• Server Applications

Data Centre

A Data Centre is basically a specialist building that has the ability to power (and cool) massive amounts of computer equipment. Typically a Data Centre would also have a very large amount of network bandwidth to accommodate data transfer in and out of it. Data Centres are built as highly redundant and resilient facilities – at the base level – you would expect a Data Centre to have at least N+1 power (this likely comes as a local feed from the national electrical grid as ‘N’, and a backup generator for the ‘+1′).

The Data Centre is the home for Internet Infrastructure. It is the central point of aggregation and distribution of data and network services. These facilities tend to include:

- 24 x 7 Staffed Operations Centre (typically called a NOC, the staff monitor all activities of the Data Centre and ensure smooth operation as well as deal with equipment issues)
- Building Management System (the BMS normally monitors and alerts on temperature zones, power and cooling usage, outside temp., access control and CCTV)
- Secure Access Controls (i.e biometrics on all entry and DC floor doors)
- Fire Alarm and Suppression (ie. VESDA for detection and Inergen gas for suppression)

The unit of measurement for a Data Centre is space and power. How much space will the equipment require and how much power will it draw (which is effectively double that, as cooling a server takes about as much power as just having the device operating).

Network

Possibly to most important foundation block of Internet Infrastructure is the Network. Without a network connection no data can pass between Data Centres, over the Internet, and ultimately onto your Desktop, Laptop or Mobile Handset. For the purpose of this post, let’s talk about the network infrastructure in a Data Centre, where data passed in to computer equipment, is processed and/or stored, and passed back out of the DC.

So you would expect at least N+1 network connectivity into a Data Centre in the form of at least 2  Fibre Cables from telecommunications providers on diverse rings. Therefore if one had service cut, the Data Centre’s network connection would not be affected. Some data centres (Hosting365’s is one) are Carrier Neutral – which means a number of carriers have a Point-Of-Presence in the facility, so the Data Centre is not affected by any commercial or technical issues of a single carrier.

Next you would expect redundant switch gear in the Data Centre in separate racks so again if the switch gear failed, the other set of it would simply take over and no service interruption would be experienced.

The unit of measurement for network connectivity is megabits per second and available megabits on the carrier connection. There may be 1 Gigabit available but the DC may only be using, and paying for, 100 megabits. The ability to meet peak demand is important though, so Data Centres will have a lot more connectivity available than is required for daily operations.

Computer Equipment

Now that the two basics of Internet Infrastructure are in place – the ability to power your equipment, and the ability to connect it to the Internet, the next thing is the computer hardware that uses this to process and store the applications and data.

By computer equipment, for this basic post, I really mean Servers. A Server is a more complex and high-end version of a desktop PC. An average server might consist of 2 power supplies (for redundancy), 8-12 RAM slots, anything from 2-10 hard drive bays and multiple processors (not just multi-core!).

Servers are housed in Racks in a DC which are typically 42u in height.  (1U is 1-unit and a low-end server takes up just 1 of these units, other servers scale within these racks to multiple ‘U’). Racks are normally powered by 2 PDU (Power Distribution Units) which connect to (if available) multiple power supply units in the server.

A low-end installation may be only a single server, which is the simplest form of Internet Infrastructure. The server would be connected to the DC Power, the Network,  an OS and other required applications installed on it. Then it is ready to ‘power and push’ data on the Internet. More complex deployments would include pools of servers, with different applications on each one, or clusters of pools for multiple clusters with dedicated application requirements.

The unit of measure for Servers is Processor Power and RAM. Although there is a lot more to selecting a server such as expandability, reliability, network ports, BUS speed, Cache size and speed. Personally I would like the unit of measure in Servers to change, I think for buyers and users it should be rated in ‘MIPS’ – which is ‘Millions of Instructions Per Second’ which is effectively all that matters, and how today’s Mainframe computers (IBM BlueGene is a high end Mainframe) are measured.

Storage Services

Data Storage is a huge part of Internet Infrastructure. All those emails accessible online, all the web pages on your favourite web site, all those photos on Facebook … are all stored on a hard drive in a DC somewhere. The basic level of storage is on-server storage, which means the hard drives in the computer server. This can cause not just performance and capacity issues, but also redundancy ones – local storage is inherently as prone to failure as the server it is in.

It is common to use specific storage devices – such as Direct Attached Storage (a dedicated and dumb storage appliance connected direct to your server), Network Attached Storage (a storage device that can be accessed by multiple machines over a network connection, and independent of the server itself) and Storage Area Networks, which are high-end, resilient and redundant set-ups that give high performance levels and are very scalable. A Storage Area Network may be shared among many services, applications, servers and customers.

The unit of measure in storage is gigabytes (getting to be more commonly terabytes now) and IO’s per second (input-output read/writes the device can perform per second).

Server Applications

The final piece of underlying Internet Infrastructure is the server applications themselves. In order for an web application to be delivered from a server, that server requires an Operation System (typically Windows or Linux), a Web Server application (like Apache or Microsoft IIS), and a Database (such as MySQL, MS-SQL or Oracle). There any many more variations here, but the basic web server has these 3 things. From here you can install blog software, an ecommerce site, your new web 2.0 application, or any Internet capable piece of software (more include – Instant Messaging Server, File Storage Server, Message Board)

More complex applications tend to have dedicated servers, or pools or servers, for specific things – like a cluster of Database Servers, or a pool of Web Server to serve those ‘www.’ page requests. These may also have more complex network setup such as dedicated routers, load balancing and firewall devices (for traffic management and security respectively).

Further Information

This post is only scratching the surface and (hopefully!) providing a very basic overview of what Internet Infrastructure constitutes. The actual deliver of power and cooling infrastructure is a very technical field and has professional disciplines dedicated to it. Very much so also on the network side as well as computer equipment (including storage) and applications. If you would like more information, come into Hosting365 for a tour of our Internet Infrastructure setup!

Ed Byrne Internet

Over the past few years, any time I come across a one-liner or short paragraph that really resonates with me, I have been putting them into a Keynote presentation file I titled ‘This I Believe’. (This I Believe was an NPR Radio Show in the 50’s)

Most of the slides are not written by me, some are edited, and most do not have the original author named. Hopefully I’ll edit this in the future, if I can find the original source! A lot come from Tom Peters works, other sources include Hugh MacLeod, Seth Godin and some of the ChangeThis works.

Each of these slides triggers some kind of idea or story in my mind. I find it great every now and then to run through them, one snippet always has something or relevance to what I’m working on at the time and helps get the mind creative.

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Ed Byrne BrandMe

I define BrandMe as the business, ideological, and subject matter that people associate with me when thinking about certain topics, or when my name is mentioned. Everyone has their own ‘BrandMe’, it’s about how you control it, propagate it, and utilise it that matters. I’ve decided this web site is a good place for me to centralise my BrandMe.

What BrandMe means to me:

Personal Data Store

I want to be able to store my thoughts on-line, I want to write down some of the things I talk to my colleagues about, and some of the things I think about while reading the news or blogs. We all do this – I have notes in Moleskin pads, in folders full of paper, in Word docs, in Notes and not written down at all. So I want to centralise all these notes, so in the future I can reference back to them. What better place to do this than on my web site?

Public Repository

This site is meant to be a repository of my ideas and comments on business, technology or media matters. It is not meant to be a blog that builds a regular readership, I am not a blogger or a media-type, so I am not trying to build BrandMe to get speaking or writing gigs. I believe putting these posts on an open, publicly accessible site, is a great way for anyone to find out more about me. I always want to know more about people I meet – so this site is a response to a need I see for business people in general to address.

My SoapBox

I think it is important to have your own soap-box from time to time. Even if I never need it, the fact that I can, from my personal perspective, make comments on topical issues, is worthwhile.

BrandMe – The Specifics

What do I want to achieve then with this ‘BrandMe’? I want anyone interested to know that I am excited by new business and technology companies and ideas, that I am out and out a Hosted IT evangelist, that I’m fascinated by the move to Enterprise 2.0 and Cloud Computing. I don’t want to be one of the people that write about these things, I want to be part of the change. I think Hosting365 has the people, the passion and the platform to ‘change the world’ in IT, and that’s exciting!

Reference Material:

• Tom Peters – The Brand Called You – FastCompany
• Hugh MacLeod – Global Microbrand

Ed Byrne BrandMe

Welcome to new my web site!

I’ve debated setting up a blog many times, and over the years have done so on a couple of occasions, but I find it very difficult to keep a regular blog while also building and running a successful company. I am re-launching this site with a personal target of keeping it up to date with one or two posts a month, as well as uploading content I’ve created and delivered elsewhere.

Topics I intend to post about here include:-

• Business – strategic planning, interesting experiences of running a business, implementing and running an operational business plan. (I think this is one thing many entrepreneur’s blogs miss – the day-to-day challenges of a business).
• Internet Infrastructure – particularly Hosted IT, Data Centres and Cloud Computing.
• Technology – the ‘Hot IT’ areas I’m tracking right now are – Mobile, Enterprise 2.0, On-line Collaboration, SaaS, Cloud Computing and Search.
• Innovation and Invention – Ideas are easy, implementation is hard. I’ve given up the thought that you should protect your ideas and that they are your real asset. YOU are your real asset. It’s also fun to think and talk about new ideas!

To find about more about me read my profile page.

Ed Byrne BrandMe