In this first post, I cover the planning process and various considerations that anyone - from a small “mom and pop” shop to a large enterprise – should take into account for successful deployment.

1) What problem(s) are you trying to solve? What are you trying to achieve?

It should come as no surprise that this is the first step but surprisingly it’s a step that is sometimes ignored or not enough time and thought are spent against it in the rush to virtualize. Without really understanding what problem you’re trying to solve and what you’re trying to achieve, how will you ever know that you’ve been successful? Some typical reasons to virtualize:

• Server consolidation and cost savings. ROI and TCO.
• Efficient resource utilization. Chargeback model and measurement.
• Cost-effective growth strategy. Cost avoidance.

2) What resources do you have and what additional resources do you need?

You need to understand your current environment before adding virtualization to the mix. Peel back the onion and look at historical performance. You may not have the right hardware to handle an increase in virtual servers.

Factor in the pattern of the behavior of servers, whether they are running hot during business hours or at night, peak cycles, etc. Are they CPU-intensive or is the gating factor disk or memory or a combination of these? This information forms the performance baseline you must factor into any virtualization capacity planning.

I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to have a capacity plan. People tend to virtualize but don’t always have a capacity plan in place to know when they’re running at full.

Beyond computing assets, you need to look at staffing as well. How will virtualization effect staff resource utilization? Virtualization, done the right way, should gain you efficiencies on the staffing side as well, freeing up resources for other initiatives. But in order to do it the “right way”, that takes an investment in training that should always be factored into your planning.

3) What are your success metrics?

Make sure to draft a document to formally measure your success before, during, and after implementing a virtualized environment. This relates back to the problem you were trying to solve. Depending on what you need to measure, you need to plan for tools and processes to make this a reality.

In the next post, I’ll talk about roadblocks to successful virtualization deployment and how to avoid them.

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In this first post, I cover the planning process and various considerations that anyone - from a small “mom and pop” shop to a large enterprise – should take into account for successful deployment.

1) What problem(s) are you trying to solve? What are you trying to achieve?

It should come as no surprise that this is the first step but surprisingly it’s a step that is sometimes ignored or not enough time and thought are spent against it in the rush to virtualize. Without really understanding what problem you’re trying to solve and what you’re trying to achieve, how will you ever know that you’ve been successful? Some typical reasons to virtualize:

• Server consolidation and cost savings. ROI and TCO.
• Efficient resource utilization. Chargeback model and measurement.
• Cost-effective growth strategy. Cost avoidance.

2) What resources do you have and what additional resources do you need?

You need to understand your current environment before adding virtualization to the mix. Peel back the onion and look at historical performance. You may not have the right hardware to handle an increase in virtual servers.

Factor in the pattern of the behavior of servers, whether they are running hot during business hours or at night, peak cycles, etc. Are they CPU-intensive or is the gating factor disk or memory or a combination of these? This information forms the performance baseline you must factor into any virtualization capacity planning.

I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to have a capacity plan. People tend to virtualize but don’t always have a capacity plan in place to know when they’re running at full.

Beyond computing assets, you need to look at staffing as well. How will virtualization effect staff resource utilization? Virtualization, done the right way, should gain you efficiencies on the staffing side as well, freeing up resources for other initiatives. But in order to do it the “right way”, that takes an investment in training that should always be factored into your planning.

3) What are your success metrics?

Make sure to draft a document to formally measure your success before, during, and after implementing a virtualized environment. This relates back to the problem you were trying to solve. Depending on what you need to measure, you need to plan for tools and processes to make this a reality.

In the next post, I’ll talk about roadblocks to successful virtualization deployment and how to avoid them.

ShareThis

In this first post, I cover the planning process and various considerations that anyone - from a small “mom and pop” shop to a large enterprise – should take into account for successful deployment.

1) What problem(s) are you trying to solve? What are you trying to achieve?

It should come as no surprise that this is the first step but surprisingly it’s a step that is sometimes ignored or not enough time and thought are spent against it in the rush to virtualize. Without really understanding what problem you’re trying to solve and what you’re trying to achieve, how will you ever know that you’ve been successful? Some typical reasons to virtualize:

• Server consolidation and cost savings. ROI and TCO.
• Efficient resource utilization. Chargeback model and measurement.
• Cost-effective growth strategy. Cost avoidance.

2) What resources do you have and what additional resources do you need?

You need to understand your current environment before adding virtualization to the mix. Peel back the onion and look at historical performance. You may not have the right hardware to handle an increase in virtual servers.

Factor in the pattern of the behavior of servers, whether they are running hot during business hours or at night, peak cycles, etc. Are they CPU-intensive or is the gating factor disk or memory or a combination of these? This information forms the performance baseline you must factor into any virtualization capacity planning.

I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to have a capacity plan. People tend to virtualize but don’t always have a capacity plan in place to know when they’re running at full.

Beyond computing assets, you need to look at staffing as well. How will virtualization effect staff resource utilization? Virtualization, done the right way, should gain you efficiencies on the staffing side as well, freeing up resources for other initiatives. But in order to do it the “right way”, that takes an investment in training that should always be factored into your planning.

3) What are your success metrics?

Make sure to draft a document to formally measure your success before, during, and after implementing a virtualized environment. This relates back to the problem you were trying to solve. Depending on what you need to measure, you need to plan for tools and processes to make this a reality.

In the next post, I’ll talk about roadblocks to successful virtualization deployment and how to avoid them.

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About Milton Security Group LLC

Success in the 21st century is defined by your agility in a changing time. This includes adapting to the needs of your employees, contractors, outsource providers on the workforce side and the changing landscape of how to provide the right access to each one of these groups. Your current infrastructure may be limited in its ability to change as well. Real time auditing and control is required in this age, The Age of Compliance(T).

Milton Security Group LLC is a security company with a consulting practice. The Principals and Staff at Milton Security are dedicated individuals with many years of experience with diverse organizations from small businesses to government agencies. Combined with this and our unique range of experience and knowledge, Milton Security serves only one purpose, helping our customer's succeed.

OK, not really too much there. They are a security company with a consulting practice. I did a little more digging. They have two job openings posted, one for a Sr Systems Engineer for the current and next generation of MSG NAC products. I guess this is the guy who will continue on the development of the Vernier line.

But you guys don't pay me what you do to stop there do you? I did some more digging. Seems that Milton Security is the brainchild of its founder and CEO, James McMurray. I did some more digging and it seems James is the former head of the SE group at Vernier, what a surprise! Looks like he was able to get them to let him take over the IP and run with it. I bet he and his friends paid little if anything for this.

People lets get real here. I applaud James for biting this off and wish he and his band of merry men the best of luck. But is this fair to the people who spent all that money on the Vernier boxes. At best Milton will be pressed to keep up with the snort and nessus signatures the Vernier boxes use. I guess being this small, without VC money behind them, they might be just better off using the Tenable and Sourcefire signatures and hope that those guys figure they are too small to sue.

If you are a Vernier customer you have to be checking your underwear. I mean do you want Milton-Bradley supporting your NAC system? This isn't board games we are talking about here. There are too many replacement and trade up offers from StillSecure and other NAC vendors for you to want to be a guinea pig in yet another experiment from the folks at Vernier. How many times do you have to get burned before you learn? You deserve better!

1. Not having a policy
2. Not updating the policy
3. Not tracking compliance with the policy
4. Having a "tech only" policy
5. Having a large, unwieldy policy