Blog Feed

Time to make the switch

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +1000

You've spent the last few years, untold amounts of company funds, and a large portion of your life fulfilling the dream of the virtualised data centre. No-one can deny that this was time, and money well spent, infrastructure once only available to those privileged with deep pockets now runs in your business, allowing you to respond quickly to server requests, improve the protection of data, and recover quickly if disaster strikes.

So what's wrong? Why aren't you happy?

The unfortunate thing is that in the same time the global economy has also changed. In Australia we're heading for a soft landing, however it would seem the resources you need to keep IT running are not as available as freely as they once were. Costs have skyrocketed, the storage, backup, disaster recovery, software, licensing and operational costs are taking their toll on what little resources are available, and the efficiencies gained are starting to erode.

You're not alone, many Australian organisations are dealing with the hangover from a period of tremendous change within the data centre and considering options to continue to support the need for more performance, more storage, more protection, for less investment.

It's always good to know where you've come from.

Looking back, what are the investments that have worked, and what are the things you can do without. It's hard to disagree that straight virtualisation is a non-brainer, simple and effective, but do you need the expensive features, or can you reduce licensing costs, only paying for what you use.

You have options.

Hyper-V 2012 from Microsoft has come a long way from the me-too virtual infrastructure Microsoft first debut a few years ago. When comparing core functionality such as live migration, high availability and replication, Hyper-V may provide what you need, and reduce the cost of your virtual infrastructure. To limit the risk, and the cost of all-in migrations, we've seen companies deploying Hyper-V to support new initiatives, or non-critical workloads. This allows a strategy of gradual migration, often using remaining software license periods to allow a controlled migration.

If you're happy with VMware, look at your license level. VMware has a mature product, but you may only need the bare essentials, and by reducing licensing tiers, the only thing you'll miss is the renewal bill.

Move non-core applications to the cloud.

By now just about any IT service has been associated with the 'C' word, and you're probably wondering why you would migrate core applications to an externally hosted service. Cloud isn't the natural progression from virtualisation (that only works on Gartner slide packs), but rather should only be considered for applications that are commodity, non-core, and widely deployed. The best example of this, is email.

Review your current email environment, consider the capacity and performance that may be released if email wasn't hosted internally. It might be the case that some critical mailboxes are still kept on premise, whilst non-critical (and infrequently accessed) mailboxes are moved to Office 365.

This can remove significant management overhead, leaving you to focus on ensuring the availability and performance of core and unique business apps suited for your on-premise environment.

Simplify storage operations.

The biggest ticket items in your data centre are the devices that hold the information. They should be too, after all most all company information is stored of these costly appliances, sometimes the data is stored multiple times, just to be sure it can't be deleted forever.

The technology has undergone a massive change over the last few years. The advent of higher capacity and solid-state drives is transforming the traditional architecture and economics of enterprise storage.

Products from companies like Nimble Storage combine these technologies, to reduce the footprint of storage, and deliver 2x the capacity, and 5x the performance of traditional arrays. Using innovative software-based approach, also reduces the complexity of storage operations, simplifying the provisioning and management of data backup and replication.

New developments including Nimble Storage Infosight, enable you to monitor the health, performance and capacity of your storage environment in the cloud. Logon to the Infosight portal and view your entire Nimble Storage fleet, and understand areas for improvement.

The data centre and virtualisation and cloud-services markets have matured significantly over the past few years, and the time is right to consider you're next move.

Maybe it's time to make the switch.

The Cloud was made for 'Click Frenzy'

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +1100

It was supposed to be our version of Black Friday, the massive online sales event held by U.S. online retailers, instead Click Frenzy exposed a vulnerability in many aussie retailers digital infrastructure, with the spike in traffic bringing sites down, and leaving customers frustrated.

Servers struggle to meet demand

Opening for business at 7pm, and down moments later, the demand created by 'Click Frenzy' left many poised to make purchases without a site to do it on.

It wasn't only Click Frenzy servers that were unable to take the load, many of the participating retailers including Myer, Priceline, and online only sites like Kogan were unreachable within 10 minutes of the event starting.

What could have been a great opportunity for an already suffering retail industry, ended as a missed opportunity.

So how could this have been avoided?

No one could have predicted the demand caused by the event, and trying to bulk up internal IT infrastructure capacity for a temporary (and yet unproven) event, costly and time consuming. More bandwidth, more compute power, more network and storage, all for a very short period of time. Even so, tomorrow some retailers may be asking themselves just how much revenue was lost when their site was down, and how could it have been avoided.

The cloud was made for this

Accessing capacity for short-term, unique events is what the cloud is made for. Having an IT infrastructure that can respond to increased demand, and scale up when the traffic starts to spike may have been the difference between the sites were available, and those that were down.

Cloud based servers, networks and storage could have been on stand-by, costing nothing, until (and if) the traffic started. Add to this some smart automation, and IT departments could have clocked off this afternoon, confident that if needed, their company site would have been not only available, but also responsive, and ready to accept customer purchases.

A competitive advantage

In a mobile, and connected world having the front door to your organisation available, and ready 24x7 is expected. Having an online presence that is available when all others are not suddenly is no longer just nice-to-have, but mandatory, and a critical advantage you can have over your competitors.

In the past this was a game of scale, the bigger you were, the more capacity you could buy, keeping it in reserve for peak periods. This is no longer the case with services like AWS and CDN instantly available, for no up-front cost.

Click Frenzy has highlighted the Australian publics appetitie for online retailing, and also the need for some organisations to re-assess their cloud strategy.

Learn more

Amazon launches Sydney region

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +1100

Today Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced the availability of an region hosted here in Australia. This is an huge step for the Australian IT industry and a validation of the significant growth of cloud based infrastructure services.

So what's the big deal, and why might this be the start of something big.

Location Matters

Location matters for a few reasons. Mostly, here in Australia we're a long long way from the rest of the world. You can't speed up light, and our distance has meant accessing cloud services came at the cost of some performance. For some applications this is not so much of an issue. But with a region here in Australia, data can be delivered to and from the cloud with greater performance.

Direct Connect

AWS have offered Direct Connect in other regions for sometime. The choice of bypassing the internet and directly connecting to AWS is critical in Australia where bandwidth is still very low, and links are saturated with other traffic. Using AWS for data management, and moving large amounts of data into the cloud may require a connection straight to the region. With Direct Connect available on day one, this will break down another barrier for adoption.

Legal Implications

We're not going to weigh in on the onshore or offshore debate, but one of the biggest barriers for AWS adoption has been the location compliance requirements for data storage. It is important to seek advice, but with an Australian-based region, some organisations previously reluctant to move data offshore, may now be able to take advantage of the massively scalable data storage in Amazon's S3 service. With data storage requirements growing at 50% compound annual growth rate, users have never had more appetite to store information. Using AWS has a 3rd or 4th tier of storage, could vastly reduce the costs of data storage, and also be the catalyst for big data initiatives.

Cloud Strategy

There is not doubt this is big news, and something that will shake up, and spur on the local cloud service provider market. Merely having a capability to provide infrastructure compute, network and storage units as a subscription is not going to be enough for many players. Playing a commodity game with an organisation with the scale of Amazon can only end in tears. AWS has a feature set that is updated constantly, so along with delivering cost competitive service, small players may also struggle to innovate as quickly.

If you're subscribing to a cloud provider, it may now be the time to assess your strategy, to look at your application and data needs, assess your legal obligations, and consider the future, and the viability of your current provider.

If you're new to cloud computing, then take a look at AWS. They are without doubt the market leader in cloud services, and now clearly focused on innovating not only overseas, but here in Australia as well.

Are you supporting yesterday?

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +1100

The continuing flatline of global economic conditions has meant that IT is spending far less than it did only a few years ago. But while budgets are shrinking, the tech-world is experiencing unparalleled innovation. Mobile, and Cloud computing have all become mainstream over the last few years, and users are far more IT-savvy then they used to be.

It is a race of cost efficient innovation, and the organisations that are winning aren't wasting resources to support yesterdays old tech, but instead are focusing them on preparing for the innovations of tomorrow.

More, with even more less

Keeping up with demand means having the resources available to respond to change. To focus their efforts on changing the business for the latest tech innovations. Its a combination of having smart and talented resources with time to partner with the business.

IT is increasing in complexity, the convergence of disciplines has broken down technical barriers but resulted in an increasingly complex IT Infrastructure requiring specialised skills to manage.

The Australian Mid-Market suffers the worse. The technology implemented is enterprise grade in its feature set, but the IT budgets are not. The mid-market doesn't have the luxury of dedicated resources to manage individual apps, servers, network or storage. Instead they rely on multi-skilled resources to take care of the lot.

You're wasting resources

The paradox of increased complexity, and minimal resources means that Australian Mid-Market IT departments are exhausting 70% of their resources to maintain yesterdays infrastructure. Keeping the lights on technology that was implemented years ago. If the company has managed to grow, the complexity has increased and the foundations harder and harder to manage.

Overnight the business isn't going to turn its back on these investments, but instead the key to enabling your team to change their focus, is to break the cycle of wasting valuable resources on support.

You need to drive down the cost of managing your environment, energise the talented skill you have available and begin to discussing innovation with the business.

The change in IT will be felt throughout your business, and instead of being looked at as a cost centre, IT will transform into a valuable business partner.

We have a three step approach to break the cycle;

1.Drive down the cost of supporting systems
Get control over the operation of IT infrastructure, seek to create efficiencies that reduce troubleshooting time, and increase time to resolution. Explore selectively outsourcing the operation of problematic technologies for which you don't the in-house skill.

2.Look for deeper benefits from innovation initiatives
If its IT infrastructure look to simplify things to ease management, but also look to enable the business. A recent implementation of virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) at a major telco ended up costing the business more, however the outcome allowed support staff in a call centre to respond to 3 x as many calls, meaning they were more efficient, available to work immediately, and customers spent less time in the call queue.

3.Nuture highly talented team members to increase business knowledge
Talent is the hardest thing to come by, and whilst skills can change to knowledge some staff have about your business is invaluable. Nurture the start performers, and encourage them to look for innovation opportunities, instead of burying their heads in an administration keyboard.

A strategy of stopping waste, and energising valuable team members to focus on the future requires dedication and resolve. Determining the right mix of insourced and outsourced activities, and the correct business partners to ensure performance and support are not sacrificed is paramount. However, once the business gains confidence in IT, and the CFO can see innovation without excessive costs, your IT team will be the envy of everyone else in your business.

Nimble, Cisco, and VMware for VDI

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +1100

Today Nimble Storage, Cisco and VMware announced their Reference Architecture for Virtual Desktops.

Nimble Storage CEO Suresh Vasudevan Blog Post about the announcement
VMware's release about Making the case for VDI with Nimble Storage
Scale-to-Fit Whitepaper

Back in 2011 we discussed the importance of User Satisfaction for VDI to be successful, and how storage performance was critical to making your users love VDI. Things haven't changed, storage is still the most critical part of a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure.

Big deal, What has changed?

Well rather than trying to shoe-horn traditional storage architectures to suit VDI, innovative vendors are using advances in multi-core processing, high capacity drives and solid state to change the common thinking about how to increase storage performance without a huge amount of cost.

Today the factors are the same as in the 2011 article. The best storage solutions;

Provide performance with Innovative Cacheing
Reduce costs by using storage efficiently
Protect User information
Make it easy to deploy many desktop images

Boot storms, Anti-Virus, who cares...

We're excited to be working with Nimble Storage, a vendor with the right architecture for VDI, and virtualised environments. Using their innovative architecture you don't have to worry about splitting data across different tiers to suit boot storms, or AV scans.

Check out this video on how to scale from 100 to 1000 users with Nimble Storage.

Contact Us for more information, and a live demo of Nimble Storage in your environment.

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Does your DR plan work?

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +1100

It used to be that your DR infrastructure only ever worked on a whiteboard. Some hot shot consultant would come in, draw up some boxes, arrows and a cloud (you can't miss the cloud these days!), and hey presto, you've just failed over all your applications to another location in seconds.

Put your DR drawing to the test

It has been too difficult to prove if or not this worked. Site Recovery Manager from VMware, and Zerto BC/DR solutions have changed that, and now it's time to put that drawing to the test.

Work out a plan a bit before hitting next, next, next....

SRM has some unique requirements, if you have some DR kit already check the Hardware Compatibility List to make sure it's all supported.

If you haven't already got a Disaster Recovery infrastructure it's time to begin planning with the business. Work out how long the lights can be out before customers start to complain. The finance team are going to want zero downtime, but they're also so ones that control the budget, if they see a bizillion dollar investment it's not going to fly, so try to keep them realistic.

Keep it simple

When you know what recovery targets to aim for develop a simple design, it's easy to complicate things when the vendors start to talk about features. Remember, more features adds more complexity, and most likely you'll be back on the whiteboard with a theory you can never test. Keep it simple and you'll be able to sleep at night, knowing that a DR failover really is as easy as a click of a button.

Contact Us to start delivering DR that actually works, and can be tested.

Innovative Disaster Recovery with Zerto

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +1100

Over the last few years we have implemented countless infrastructure solutions to provide disaster recovery. We've used words like RPO, RTO, consistency, storage replication and snapshots, but until recently we rarely used the word 'Simple'.

Today we're excited to announce our partnership with Zerto a solution that simplifies Disaster Recovery for the Virtualised Data Centre.

Disasters that affect IT operations aren't ever simple matters, but providing a robust infrastructure to protect and support your information and apps should be. Lets say you want to protect your company ERP. You want be able to protect the application and database servers, replicate them to another site, regularly test recovery, and provide a mechanism to fail back when things are restored.

Ask this of your current disaster recovery solution, you might find the functionality is there. Then ask how complicated it is. How many technologies have to work together? Are you using separate products to replicate data and to manage recovery and testing? Is there another product to manage data consistency? How long does a recovery take? The harder the solution is the less you want to test it, and the less you test, the greater the risk of an outage.

Zerto is the first hypervisor-based, virtual-aware, data replication solution designed for tier-one applications deployed on virtual infrastructure. It replaces the need for multiple technologies and tools. Eliminating the need for traditional array-based replication and disaster recovery solutions that are not built to deal with virtualised IT environments. One software tool to replicate the data, protect the virtual machines (no matter what LUN they're in), regulary test, and easily failback.

The Australian adoption for virtualised data centres has been high. You've virtualised most if not all of your server fleet and benefited from reduced server costs and a faster response when called on by the business. However, as server numbers have depleted in the data centre, storage has exploded. The savings you predicted have been eroded by the high-cost of storage, and the duplication of data to identical arrays is putting even more pressure on your budget.

Zerto is storage-agnostic. No matter what vendor, what tier, or type or protocol, if your vSphere envrionment is connected to the storage, you are able to protect the virtual machines. In fact the virtual machines are the lowest unit for replication. You can choose to replicate a single VM, or multiple VMs together in a protection group, all on the same schedule, regardless of the LUN or storage device they are stored in. You can also replicate to the cloud (just ask us how).

We're always looking for innovative solutions that can reduce costs, simplify management and make the best use of the resources you have available. If you haven't got confidence in your current solution, drop us a call for a chat about Zerto or check out this video - Zerto in 90 Seconds.

Video - Zerto in 90 Seconds

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +1100

Following on from our Blog post about Zerto check out this quick 90 second overview that describes this innovative Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity solution. For more information Contact Us for a chat. &amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;

VMware AppBlast and Octopus

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +1000

This is some seriously great technology being previewed at VMworld 2011. VMware Project AppBlast and Octopus have great potential to further transform your Information Workspace environment.

AppBlast allows you to present any Windows Application via HTML5 to any browser. The potential for this technology is great as we all know there are many applications written to the Windows OS that we'd love to be able to access via mobile devices like the iPad.

Octopus extends all of the benefits of consumer grade collaboration tools such as Dropbox to the Enterprise. The ease of use of consumer grade solutions has users demanding such tools, but IT departments struggling to provide them in a secure way. Octopus has great potential to enhance user collaboration, yet provide enterprise security and data-loss prevention.

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Datacenter Orchestration on an iPad

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +1000

Check out the latest Beta software from one of our partners Cloupia.

The industries first iPad applicatoin for datacenter orchestration. Drag and Drop provisioning of a Virtual Machine on a Flexpod - Awesome!!

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Plan your Virtualisation Strategy

Thu, 18 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +1000

For the last few weeks the water coolers in IT departments have been abuzz with VMware's vSphere 5.0 licensing model. We take a quick look at how the new model works, and also ask the question, 'Is it time to develop a Virtualisation Strategy?'

The vSphere 5.0 Licensing Model

The new VMware vSphere 5.0 licensing model is a per-processing model with a vRAM entitlement. A few keys points;

vRAM and Core entitlements are pooled between all hosts connected to a vCenter or multiple vCenters connected via Linked-mode
Each physical processor still needs at least 1 license
vRAM entitlement varies for each edition
No core limitations per license
vRAM entitlement licensing is capped for VMs

Each license is entitled to an amount of allocated vRAM. This is defined as the vRAM allocated to virtual machines. For example, when you create a VM you allocate an amount of vRAM. There is no restriction on the amount of vRAM you can configure, nor is there a restriction on the amount of VMs you can have.

As long as the total amount of vRAM allocated in a pool is less than or equal to the total vRAM entitlement, vSphere is licensed correctly
There can be more vRAM allocated than the entitled license - VMs won't turn off
Usage is calculated on a 365 moving day average of the high-water mark of allocated vRAM

	Essentails	Essentials Plus	Standard	Enterprise	Enterprise (Plus)
vRAM	32 GB	32 GB	32 GB	64 GB	96 GB
vCPU	8 Way	8 Way	8 Way	8 Way	32 Way

Develop a Strategy

This doesn't mean you need to throw out vSphere immediately, nor does it mean you need to blindly accept the changes to licensing and incurr additional costs. Rather this is a chance to look at the current environment, assess the usage of resources and hypervisor features, and develop a strategy that will continue to deliver all the great benefits of virtualisation

Baseline Infrastructure and Financial Performance

Assess the effectiveness of the current environment in reducing costs. This should include looking at the current allocation of resources to determine if VMs are over or under allocated vRAM and vCPU. Check the total cost of ownership for the solution and baseline the financial performance of the environment.
Analyse Feature Usage

vSphere 5.0 does bring some new features, but there are many optimisation, availability and disaster recovery features in 4.x that may or may not be being used. It's a good time to look at the deployment of these functions and determine their suitability and value in your environment. If they are not being used, ask why, and liaise with business and application stakeholders to determine if they are needed now or in the future.
Compare Alternatives

Compare your current deployment to alternatives. Assess the costs, risks, and re-training that might be required to upgrade to vSphere 5.0 or alternative platforms like Hyper-V, KVM, or XenServer. If you change what will be gained or lost, and how does this align with your organisations strategy for Cloud Computing.

The new model for licensing has certainly stirred up alot of opinion, and regardless of if or not you agree with the model now is the right time to assess and develop your virtualisation strategy and continue to deliver all the fantastic benefits of infrastructure virtualisation

For more information on Data Solutions Group Virtualisation Planning Click Here -or- Contact Us

10 Steps to a Successful Tablet Program

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +1000

There is little doubt that Tablets are here to make an impact on the way we work, learn and interact with each other.

Besides being cool at the moment Tablets are a simple, cost effective solution for putting information in users hands, whenever and wherever they need it.

This comes with advantages, yet also can bring many challanges for IT teams. Managing the content, applications, performance and health of tablets is becoming increasingly important to tablet computing initiatives.

Below are 10 Steps we believe critical to a successful tablet program.

1. Engage stakeholders outside IT
Communicate with the business to identify the areas, applications or processess that could be improved through tablet computing and mobility.

2. Identify requirements
Understand the applications the user base wish to use and assess their suitabiity for operation on a tablet. Assess the performance, network requirements, browser compatibility and development costs associated with meeting these requirements.

3. Evaluate different platforms
Tablets aren't just Apple devices and although there are some very bad implementations, there are many innovative products that may better suit your identified requirements. Trial iOS, Android, Blackberry and WebOS devices.

4. Pilot
Put together a group of diverse stakeholders that will benefit from the program. Run the evaluation as a project and meet with the team regularly to discuss their experiences. Use these sessions to further develop the solution, uncovering requirements that had not ben thought of, and tweak the solution to meet their needs.

5. Analyse the success of the pilot
Objectively assess the success of the pilot and determine the full costs, risks and benefits of transformation.

6. Develop a budget and financial analysis
Compare the investment required to deploy a tablet project with the likely benefits of the solution. Use both soft and hard measurements to identifiy opportunities. Use this to gain business support and begin the steps to planning a deployment.

7. Review and change policies
Desktop computing policies do not always apply to tablet computing. Controlling the operations of the tablet program is critical to the safety, performance and costs of the initiative. Ensure the policies are developed long before devices are deployed to users.

8. Support Software and Toolsets
Consider the additional software and tools that will be required to enforce policies, deploy applications and manage devices. Seek out solutions that are not limited to single platforms, but can be extended upon as the devices in the organisation change. Unlike the standard x86 desktop or laptop, this market is one with diverse operating systems. Supporting all the majors is critical to reduce the risk and cost of the project.

9. Deploy an Enterprise App Store
A tablet can quickly become a giant iPod without great applications. Develop and Enterprise App storage to deploy in-house and best of breed applications.

10. Engage a Partner
Talk with a Systems Integrator to assist with the design, transition and operation of the tablet program. Offload the day-to-day operation to focus on the applications and content delivered to the device.

Data Solutions Group Information Workspace solutions take a user centic approach to tablet computing, whilst focusing on cost efficiency, reduced risk and increased performance. For more information - Contact Us

3 Best Practices for VDI

Sun, 10 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +1000

Recently we were invited to give a presentation at the Melbourne VMware Users Group about VDI. These best practices apply no matter what technology your using. Enjoy the slide deck, and if you have any questions, let us know, we'd love to share our experiences.

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Tablet VDI and Cisco Cius

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +1000

Here at DSG we love our iPads. We use them on the go and in the office to speed our access to corporate information, personal data and also our Virtual Desktops. Using Wyse Pocket Cloud we connect our virtual desktops to access corporate information that is safely stored within the data centre. There is no need to sync sensitive client information with an insecure cloud service, and we don’t have to remember the information we want to take with us.

This flexible information access has resulted in a more productive workforce, our internal and client meetings are being more creative, and information is transferring between our partners, customers, and employees quicker than before. We can action items straight away and update corporate systems immediately following a decision point. The virtual desktop is key to this experience as not all of our systems are web or iPad enabled.

It was therefore with great excitement when we learned about Cisco’s corporate tablet theCisco Cius. User experience is the key to VDI adoption and the potential for users to get access to an ultra-portable (yet IT managed) tablet might just be the catalyst needed for rapid enterprise adoption of virtual desktops.

Due in 2011 the Cius has been announced by Cisco with some early specs;

802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, 3G/4G data and Bluetooth 3.0
HD video (720p) with Cisco TelePresence solution interoperability
Virtual desktop client
Android operating system, with access Android marketplace applications
Collaboration applications including Cisco Quad, Cisco Show and Share, WebEx, Presence, and IM

It is likely that Cisco will deepen it’s partnership with VMware to provide the Virtual Desktop capability. With View 4.5 around the corner and offline desktops now fully supported will we see the Cius capable of running a standalone corporate desktop when connectivity is not available? What connection protocol will the device support? Will the device work outside of the corporate LAN?

What we do know is that unlike other solutions the Cius will run VoIP and Video applications locally, rather that run them via a Virtual Desktop connection protocol. This integration is another killer feature that will enable the device as a users goto device for corporate collaboration and communication.

Perhaps the most important factor is that this device will be Enterprise ready and no doubt come with a collection of management tools that will make it suitable for large scale corporate deployment. When coupled with efficient VDI image management the Cius could give both IT departments and users a reason to further embrace VDI.

Improve Healthcare Informatics

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +1000

In the last century the majority of Healthcare investment has been in developing pharmaceuticals that improve the quality and longevity of life. Although pharmacology is an essential component, it is precise knowledge that is the key to successful and efficient healthcare.

We believe there are 3 core concepts that can improve the Healthcare Informatics.

1.Collaboration
The sharing of information between agencies is vital to the success of healthcare information systems. By sharing patient records, clinical results, and research data agencies can become more knowledgable and therefore act more efficiently and with greater success.Take the example of a patient requiring a joint replacement. As populations age replacements are being implanted with greater frequency at large cost of patients, healthcare funds and resources. By sharing clinical results the knowledge a surgeon may have regarding joint replacement can be improved by many orders of magnitude, enabling them with a wide dataset of information for which to make a decision on treatment for a patient.This knowledge would improve the effectiveness of the treatment, the cost for it to be applied and most importantly the continued health of the patient.

2.Communication
Ease of communication is a challenge for healthcare agencies. Much of the information that needs to be shared is visual and accuracy becomes challenging when information is being shared in many forms. Results from radiology, visual symptoms and reports are all delivered by different means. Through the unification of communication, be it, email, voice or video, healthcare professionals will be assured that accurate and clean knowledge is exchanged

Interaction with remote patients would benefit from systems that combine, written, oral and visual communication. In particular Australian regional locations are struggling to provide quality healthcare, with many doctors stretched over wide regions, and patients suffering from a lack of care that is available in more densely populated areas.

3.Mobility
Access to information must be available to clinicians throughout healthcare agencies and remote locations. Static access to information would only introduce inefficiencies to current practices. As agencies consolidate and grow health systems must follow a clinician as they move throughout a ward, a hospital or even a geographic region.

It is essential that mobile access to information does not impede the efficiency at which a clinician may work. By introducing solutions that allow quick access to information on-the-go, clinicians will improve the operation of processes rather than impede them.

Integration is the key to making these core conceptes work. By taking a holistic view of the current state of the healthcare system strategies can then be developed to improve the healthcare informatics at an agency.

Data Solutions Group develop Workspace strategies that take a holistic view of access to healthcare informatics. By taking the perspective of the people, the processes and technology we seek to understand the opportunities that will ensure the precise creation and exchange of information within healthcare.

Google Chromebook, Focus on Apps

Mon, 16 May 2011 00:00:00 +1000

With the recent announcement about Google’s Chromebook, we thought we’d take a look into how these devices might fit into current IT environment, in both Education and Business.

The Chromebook further supports the argument that we are entering the ‘Post-PC era’. It started with the Netbook and the iPhone, and now it seems more and more devices are being created with the sole purpose of connecting to the web. But are these devices the management panacea so desperately needed? There is no doubt that Chromebooks are not a ‘all things to all people’ kind of solution. Instead the Chromebook offers Education and Business a unique proposition, one that says, ‘If you don’t need it, throw it away’.

So what things will be thrown away to make the Chromebook a success? Well if it’s a Chromebook ‘Pure Play’, you would lose;

Microsoft (duh!) – and for that matter anything that isn’t Google or available on the App-store is not accessible
Local Storage – Not such a bad feature, but if it isn’t in the Cloud, it isn’t anywhere. For businesses in Australia this means understanding the legal implications of data storage.
Utilities and Settings – How will these work within the realms of enterprise management. Well seeing you can’t do anything to them all those MS GPOs you’ve developed won’t be useful
Security – With supposed ‘in-built’ security time will tell if the data on these devices (or transmitted between the cloud and these devices) is secure.
Control – How much can be serviced by Google and other web-app providers and what does this leave for the organisation to manage?
Competitive Advantage – If your business has alot of development costs sunk into a system that supplies a competitive advantage, then this will also disappear. The reason web-apps are successful is that they supply companies with out-of-the-box features, these of course are features that are shared with competitors. If IT is woven into the value of your business, your will need to move your app to the web for it to work with a Chromebook.

If all you’re workforce or students use is the web, and all your business or school applications are available via the Chrome browser then perhaps this device in an option. However, if you’re not in that position then integration may be a little more difficult.

The only answer to incorporate these existing devices would be to explore the use of Virtual End-User Computing. It is expected that Citrix and VMware will both be supported on the Chromebook OS. The Chromebook is therefore a great opportunity to deploy very thin OS to the user base, whilst allowing access to corporate applications and data, secured in an Australian data centre that is in your control. Of course we can do this already with terminals and re-purposed laptops and PCs.

Such an approach enables a path to ‘all-in’ web services and opens opportunities to ease the management burden at the client end, and controlling migration (if chosen) to Google services.

The key to the last step will be the availability of services and applications that are specific to the industry vertical or education arena in which you belong. Only with effective web-app alternatives will a browser only OS survive.

Time will tell if this solution is successful.

Best Storage for VDI

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +1000

The secret to successful VDI implementations is user satisfaction. Without the support of the user base during evaluation, virtual desktop initiatives rarely make it past a Proof of Concept. The key to maintaining performance with VDI is sizing the disk storage for both capacity and performance.

At DSG we start every VDI opportunity with an assessment, we look at current user service levels (logon time, application load times) but most importantly we look at storage utilisation. We assess;

— Average Disk Transfers a Second (IOPS)
— % Read and % Write
— Observed Peak Transfers a Second (IOPS)
— Image size and Total capacity (GB)

We're always looking for the storage performance needed by the uses. Typically we observe peak storage utilisation during user logon, antivirus operations and machine boot. Often in environments the peak load can be FIVE TIMES what the average utilisation is. This peak occurs at regular periods, for example when everyone starts work in the morning, or when students login at the start of a teaching period.

When storage is distributed across many physical desktops this net effect isn’t so bad. However, when we consolidate these workloads onto shared storage with VDI, this can cause poor desktop performance and unhappy users.

Storage therefore needs to be able to efficiently support the increase in Disk IO at peak periods. We can reduce the storage footprint with image tools (such as VMware View Linked Clones), however we need a storage system that is sized for both Capacity AND Performance

The old answer used to be throw more spindles at the array. However this can be costly and in-efficient and blow out the costs of VDI. The best solutions use a combination of the following;

— Provide performance with innovative caching/tiering
— Reduce costs with storage efficiency
— Protect user information and desktop images
— Streamline the process to deploy

After integrating many storage platforms with VDI our experience has shown NetApp storage to be best aligned to these needs.

The biggest benefit is providing performance needed during peak load. The implementation of FlashCache means that storage blocks that are being heavily utilised stay in cache. Its not a post process but rather a normal function of the storage array that uses a card that increases the amount of useable cache. More cache = more blocks can stay in cache. As a machine boots its blocks are moved to cache, and if the same block is accessed by another desktop image, the block is pulled from cache, not slower spinning disk. Couple de-duplication with FlashCache adds further efficiency. This combination can decrease boot time by upto 50% and increase overall desktop performance by 70% in some cases.

In reducing the costs associated with VDI storage NetApp can provide de-duplication of the desktop images, user profiles and data. Where linked cloning doesn’t perform well and full clones are needed this can save upto 80-90% of allocated storage. In addition NFS datastores can be larger in size, thin-provisioned, and easily extended if more storage is required.

Storage based Snapshots can preserve user data and desktop images. When separating the user profile from the base image this is important as we can take point-in-time copies at regular intervals, without disruption to the operation of the desktops. At times this can mean retaining daily snapshots of user data for rapid recovery, reducing the need for tape.

Lastly, the integration between NetApp and Connection Broker vendors means you can utilise storage based snapshots to rapidly deploy desktop images. This can streamline the deployment process in environments where many machines are required in a short amount of time. In test we have seen 1000 VMs deployed within 10 minutes, all customised and ready for users to access.

So if you want to ensure users are happy, you need to couple VDI with a storage system that ensures image performance, protects their data and reduces the costs to deploy and manage.

For more information, contact info@data-solutions.com.au