Product Marketing Vision in Virtualization Stack Providers

Give me a solution to migrate existing app servers to a new virtualized infrastructure...Tell me your point of view and solution.  With billions of dollars being spent on solutions marketing, cloud management, you would think this would be prevalent with the issue being which person to listen too...Nope. No substance, lots of fluff.

I went looking for something fairly straightforward - which IT equipment vendors had documented solutions for a virtualized stack - of practically any sort - without buying a vBlock, flexPod or vmTank, etc. There are lots of  choices. I want to see how the vendors themselves see the architecture fitting together - at all levels.

I want to see:

• The big vision - why do I care, who is this for, what benefits do I get by following their advice
• A detailed design guide that walks me through key components, sizing, capabilities, technical approach
• A deployment document that gives me exact model numbers for the validated design, configuration scripts (even if they repeat the manuals), and decision trees for configuration decisions.
• Clear nomenclature and dependencies so when I call support and say "I did it like doc X01234 said to do it" they know what I'm talking about (or at least someone will.)
• Let me find the content, somehow, on your website...Building virtual/converged/unified infrastructure is only the hottest thing to hit the IT field since App/Web servers - you'd think it would be upfront...

Short answer - Cisco does it best, Juniper a second.  The guys who most stand to benefit - HP + Dell I would think - they both sell all the HW and do direct sales on the web...really bad.

HP - www.hp.com/go/virtualsystem

I was hopeful. So I go to look at the closest document to generic server virtualization - "Reference configuration for virtualization – HP ProLiant BL490c G6 servers, HP StorageWorks P4000 storage and VMware vSphere 4 [white paper].  Seems like a good title.

What it contains in it's 9 pages is a brief BOM, some config guidelines, very little sizing or design guidence and a lot of references to various documents.  HP does so many things right - the smart bundles are great - but the customer is still on their own for mapping out the config and deployment plan. 

Way finding is just awful.  So many links take one back to generic search pages where there is no relevant content.  And when the search does came back with content, the nomenclature is confusing and most of the content is stale.

• Navigation/Way Finding - F
• Content Depth - D
• Content Quality - C

Dell is a little better.  They have a guide "Virtual-Ready Infrastructure - Business-Ready Configurations Solution Guide".  It seems more like a demo box build guide - very little discussion of which businesses or what purpose this configuration is for.  No sizing or performance info (good job HP there.)  Not sure what it has to do with virtualization though - it takes you through installation of redhat....

• Navigation/Way Finding - C
• Content Depth - F - out of date...
• Content Quality - D - No business value, just none.

Juniper took me by surprise.  They aren't selling the whole solution but seem to do it better than most. Their nomenclature is fantastic - so much better than the really big hw vendors.  First drill down through, I found "Cloud-Ready Data Center Reference Architecture". Not a whole lot of sizing guidence but well written, clear purpose and positioning, right messaging.  Then came the kicker....actual design guides and deployment guides!  

• Navigation/Way Finding - A
• Content Depth - C - how do you do network reference architecture and exlude unified storage networks!
• Content Quality - A

Cisco is a little hard for me to judge.  I'm a Cisco partner and I think the most interesting stuff is on the non-public side.  Maybe it is for other vendors also?  The VXI architecture isn't quite consisent with the other reference architectures in depth but stuff like this solution wayfinder on the right is insane!

• Navigation/Way Finding - A- (it's time to consider micro-sites again...)
• Content Depth - A++
• Content Quality - A (Maybe VXI needs another round - usually an A.)

I had high hopes for VMware.  They have a solutions tab on the website with all sorts of juicy subheadings.  I should be finding things left and right.  Maybe they just need to say agnostic to avoid pissing off any partners but the closest I got to a physical infrastructure design guide was the HCL.

• Navigation/Way Finding - Teasing - F
• Content Depth - D - how fluffy can a massive site be?
• Content Quality - B - good business value stuff