You Cannot Virtualize That
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@scottalanmiller said in You Cannot Virtualize That:
Definitely looking for feedback and ideas on this one. Trying to get the idea across but struggling to figure out if I've worded it in a good way.
The depth of thought that is displayed is obvious. Your entire article makes complete sense to me. Your ability to articulate your thoughts, and deliver them to others (while retaining readability) is amazing.
Thank you.
My pee break is over! Back to bed for me.
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@scottalanmiller said in You Cannot Virtualize That:
Definitely looking for feedback and ideas on this one. Trying to get the idea across but struggling to figure out if I've worded it in a good way.
Do you mind if I re-write this? I wonder if a lot of it could be made shorter for the sake of speed reading online.
"One thing that many, many vendors attempt to do is limit the scenarios under which their product will be supported. By doing this, they set themselves up to be prepared to simply not provide support - support is expensive and unreliable. This is a common strategy. It some cases, this is so aggressive that any acceptable, production deployment scenario fails to even exist."
Becomes
"One thing that many vendors do is limit the scenarios under which their product will be supported. They set themselves up to simply not provide support - support is expensive and unreliable. This is a common strategy and in some cases any acceptable scenario fails to even exist."
For me I'd prefer reading the above, we're cutting out words and also changing the tone. We're not saying try to do, we're saying this is something they are doing today.
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To me the article makes sense, as I've said the same thing, but less verbose, time and again.
Software vendors who sell a product but have odd requirements (IE Server 2003) are clearly there to just sell the product, when you have an issue they'll claim you're out of a support window, even though the product has that requirement.
The bit about vendor space where existing vendors simply don't support common best practice and how there is a vacuum should be made more verbose.
There is huge potential for businesses in this space.
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The one I usually get is licensing. "Well there is no way for us to get the licensing key read..."
Me: "Well there's three ways off the top of my head I can think of... one is a key that calls home every 30 days. In which case we just need Internet connectivity, which we have, and then input a license key, which you could provide us. The other way is setting up a subscriber locally, and tie that into some subscription web client, similar to the first option works. The other is sending us a USB license, which we'd plug into the host so the VM can access it 24/7."
Rep: "Mmm yeah that just won't work."
That won't work for me, or for you? Cause those options consistently work for me. Probably won't work for you, cause you're not making any money off the appliance I don't need.
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@DustinB3403 said in You Cannot Virtualize That:
There is huge potential for businesses in this space.
Huge potentials for what in what space?
Maybe you mean:
The bit about vendor space where existing vendors simply don't support common best practice and how there is a vacuum should be made more verbose.
That maybe true - OK well we know it is, but it would often require the vendor who makes the crappy product to provide information they probably are unwilling to make.
For example, I have a distribution client. They have to use the manufacture's software to gather the information they need to provide quotes to re sellers. In order to compete in this space, someone would have to write software that has access to the APIs of the manufacturer, if that's even possible. etc etc
Being a super small market share, and the likely denial from the manufacturer, this project would never get off the ground. -
@BBigford said in You Cannot Virtualize That:
The one I usually get is licensing. "Well there is no way for us to get the licensing key read..."
Me: "Well there's three ways off the top of my head I can think of... one is a key that calls home every 30 days. In which case we just need Internet connectivity, which we have, and then input a license key, which you could provide us. The other way is setting up a subscriber locally, and tie that into some subscription web client, similar to the first option works. The other is sending us a USB license, which we'd plug into the host so the VM can access it 24/7."
Rep: "Mmm yeah that just won't work."
That won't work for me, or for you? Cause those options consistently work for me. Probably won't work for you, cause you're not making any money off the appliance I don't need.
In that situation, they just need to up the cost of the VM solution. Just look at Unitrends. Their VM pricing isn't that much less than their appliance solutions - and you have to provide ALL the hardware.
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@Dashrender I think you're misunderstanding the idea.
If there is Software vendor HealthCrap, and HealthCrap makes really crappy software, but it's the only software available. They have a monopoly, so any other software house could come along and make a competing software, that does the same thing, but better.
And have it supported in virtual environments etc.
Obviously the hurdles here include knowing what needs to be done, the cost of building a competitive product, federal regulations etc.
Which aren't small by any means.
But any IT person would (I hope) strive to get this software in house and dump the old one as soon as possible if it came available.
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I have had this same approach for some time. I can't imagine pulling the trigger on software with that type of requirement and it does lead me to believe that they are not actively developing and I would never have confidence in their ability to maintain/support the product, let alone grow with my organization's needs.
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@wrx7m said in You Cannot Virtualize That:
I have had this same approach for some time. I can't imagine pulling the trigger on software with that type of requirement and it does lead me to believe that they are not actively developing and I would never have confidence in their ability to maintain/support the product, let alone grow with my organization's needs.
I had a software vendor (existing) for one of my customers. As I learned about their product, and what was supported, and not. Then finding out that basic industry standards were unavailable I advised the customer against the solution.
To be fair to the software vendor this was a legacy solution from the early 90s. And the customer didn't like change. The vendor had updated offerings that included what was needed and advisable. He eventually switched when they EOL'd his solution and all support. -
That's great and all, for sure we all agree virtualization is best. Not sure where else you're going with this. I guess that's enough by it's self but I'm left feeling.... unsatisfied.
I think you could cut all this down a lot by making a clearer point:
"Make virtualization support a key factor when shopping for new things".
or
"The importance of checking the recommended setup for new toys: don't get stuck with gear that does not virtualize"
I'm not sure what to tell you man...
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I think this is more general than that @MattSpeller. Don't buy things that won't provide support within the industry standard approach unless you have a very specific need that can't be otherwise met.
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@Dashrender Virtualization is mentioned ~10? times in the first section... that seems focused enough for me
Point taken (because it's a good one) though I disagree about the article's focus.
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You said
@MattSpeller said in You Cannot Virtualize That:
I guess that's enough by it's self but I'm left feeling.... unsatisfied.
I guess I didn't feel that way because I took a more generalized look at the article, and didn't limit it to only virtualization.
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@Dashrender said in You Cannot Virtualize That:
@DustinB3403 said in You Cannot Virtualize That:
There is huge potential for businesses in this space.
Huge potentials for what in what space?
Maybe you mean:
The bit about vendor space where existing vendors simply don't support common best practice and how there is a vacuum should be made more verbose.
That maybe true - OK well we know it is, but it would often require the vendor who makes the crappy product to provide information they probably are unwilling to make.
For example, I have a distribution client. They have to use the manufacture's software to gather the information they need to provide quotes to re sellers. In order to compete in this space, someone would have to write software that has access to the APIs of the manufacturer, if that's even possible. etc etc
Being a super small market share, and the likely denial from the manufacturer, this project would never get off the ground.In that case the issue is bigger but NOT one of APIs, right? It would be one of replicating bad software AND a bad manufacturer.
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@MattSpeller said in You Cannot Virtualize That:
That's great and all, for sure we all agree virtualization is best. Not sure where else you're going with this. I guess that's enough by it's self but I'm left feeling.... unsatisfied.
I think you could cut all this down a lot by making a clearer point:
"Make virtualization support a key factor when shopping for new things".
or
"The importance of checking the recommended setup for new toys: don't get stuck with gear that does not virtualize"
I'm not sure what to tell you man...
It's not fully about virtualization, though, it's about not being production ready and when you can identify that. And disputing the "we need X so that we can run in production" when X implies you can't run in production. It's pointing out the paradox of buying hobby class software in a business using production needs as an excuse.
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@Dashrender said in You Cannot Virtualize That:
You said
@MattSpeller said in You Cannot Virtualize That:
I guess that's enough by it's self but I'm left feeling.... unsatisfied.
I guess I didn't feel that way because I took a more generalized look at the article, and didn't limit it to only virtualization.
Maybe the title is just wrong
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My response to the Title would be: "Wanna bet?"
Sure, you'd lose support if you virtualized something they told you not to... but companies are trying to get out of doing support anyway.
But like anything else, that'd be more of a business decision than an IT one.
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@dafyre said in You Cannot Virtualize That:
My response to the Title would be: "Wanna bet?"
Sure, you'd lose support if you virtualized something they told you not to... but companies are trying to get out of doing support anyway.
But like anything else, that'd be more of a business decision than an IT one.
Should be all one and the same. All IT decisions should be in a business context. The idea that there could be a business vs IT decision should not exist and implies a management structure that isn't aware of what the role of IT even is. The only reason that IT cares about virtualization is because it, too, is a business decision.
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"You Cannot Virtualize That" = "Challenge accepted"
I've run into this with a very popular 3D drafting software company. In the end, I was just convinced that the "you cannot visualize that" mandate is simply a way for them to blame virtualization for problems with their software. In other words, if you have a problem, and their support cannot figure out the solution, they will always come back to the fact that you virtualized their product, which is "not supported."
Also, why isn't virtualize in my computer's dictionary?
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@fuznutz04 said in You Cannot Virtualize That:
Also, why isn't virtualize in my computer's dictionary?
Because many of the browsers actually don't have the word in their dictionaries...
