Flashblog: DCIS-Cube

May 12, 2018 Stijn Depril 0

Over the last couple of months I had been involved in the development of the ‘DCIS-Cube’, the new architecture that will be used as a ‘portable’ and easy deploy-able system by NATO’s Communications and Information Agency (NCI Agency). Portability and the ease of deployment of infrastructure in regions of deployment have always been challenging for the NCI. When they have to deploy a small datacenter to support a mission somewhere on the globe, they have to ship a couple of racks with hardware to that specific place.  Apart from the logistical nightmare of moving a ton of hardware,  they are struggling with the actual deployment of all that hardware as well. As every single mission has different requirements they can’t prepare the solution somewhere […]

First impressions: VMware HCI assessment

May 11, 2018 Stijn Depril 2

VMware launched a new HCI assessment tool. Last week Duncan Epping reached out to me. He had a customer asking him if he could have a look into the environment so they could better size the environment with VSAN. I got in contact with the customer on Friday and on Tuesday we had a call in which we discussed the whole environment. Even Mister Epping is impressed with it. Customer reached out a week ago, wanted to know if vSAN would be an option for them. Connected them with @sdepril and within 3 days a full report was produced using the new VMware HCI Assessment tool. It is really powerful! Read more about the tool here: https://t.co/G8u6gpPaCz — Duncan Epping […]

REVIEW: Architecting EUC Solutions

June 26, 2016 Kim Bottu 0

Each year I order a couple of books even though I have no idea if they will be books which contain content I can actually use. The reasons to buy these books varies: The title might look promising, there is a lot of buzz about a book or it can be as plain and simple as me liking the cover of a book. Brian Suhr’s book belongs to the first category, the title looked promising. Such a strategy can result in picking bad books of course.                 This book is not a book that does not deliver though. After having read Architecting EUC Solutions I would say this book is quite the opposite to me, an EUC compendium ‘par […]

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IT Architect: Foundation in the Art of Infrastructure Design Review

June 15, 2016 Graeme Vermeulen 3

I picked up a copy of this book pretty much as soon as it was released. Most architects I’ve spoken to have recommended this book, so I didn’t want to miss it! Where to start. First impressions The book gets off to a running start, there is no build-up towards hitting you with some great knowledge (the authors have also managed to get a number of VCDXs to answer the question “what is infrastructure design?”). You’ll get stuck in right from the beginning regarding how you should approach solutions design, from the various stages (such as discovery, design, build etc.), design methodologies straight through to really useful case studies. It’s really quite difficult to get this amount of technical information through across […]

REVIEW: Pluralsight – Overview of TOGAF® 9.1

June 7, 2016 Kim Bottu 0

For quite some time now I have set my eyes on getting TOGAF certified. Not that I think that getting TOGAF certified instantaneously will make anyone an Enterprise Architect, but it would definitely proof that someone (in this case me, myself and I) has some insights into where enterprises and architecture meet. Yes this includes IT infrastructure as well! Discovering the right literature was rather easy. The Opengroup not only sells its own books to help you get TOGAF certified, but also is friendly enough to offer a digital version free of charge on the internet. Finding good video courses proved to be a lot harder.   PuralSight – Overview of the TOGAF® 9.1 Enterprise Architecture Framework, by Joseph Anthony For anyone who has no idea what TOGAF and/or […]