Recent Surveys Show DevOps Use on the Rise, but Confusion Remains

​I recently poured over F5’s “The State of Application Delivery in 2015” and InformationWeek’s “2015 App Dev Priorities Survey” that they presented with Dr. Dobb’s. The similarity of their titles, and even their release dates made me wonder how unique each of their findings would be, and I challenged myself to flush out any interesting

Don’t Let Your Hybrid Cloud Collapse Into a Black Hole

In this post, I will cover a topic, the PMTUD black hole, that can cause a particularly subtle set of issues in hybrid cloud-based environments where the cloud resources are connected to a corporate office or other datacenter via IPSec tunnels. PMTUD black holes basically cause certain (but not all) traffic to not make it

User Support Series: Network Address Translation

In this edition of the User Support Series, we’ll take a look at the documentation for Skytap Cloud’s new Network Address Translation (NAT) functionality.​ As described in the blog piece Dynamic Network Management by Seth Payne, NAT makes it easy to connect many networks together without having to worry about subnet overlaps. Of course, before

Dev/Test: A 5-Step Process for Tuning out the Cloud Hype

Over the past few years it would have been hard to miss the slow and systematic outsourcing of certain parts of corporate IT. The primary solution has been cloud computing—which, of course, means the market is flush with cloud providers—and a lot of hype. With so many options to choose from, it becomes even more

New AutoNetworks and CloudControl Capabilities

Today we announced new AutoNetworks™ and CloudControl™ capabilities for enterprise hybrid clouds. Our multi-VPN capability extends software-defined networking features, and our new Scheduler automates actions on Skytap Cloud resources. AutoNetworks AutoNetworks is our unique software-defined networking capabilities for complex, multi-network, multi-machine environments. With multi-VPN capability, users can create multiple two-way secure connections between their Skytap

Watch SmartClient at Work

SmartClient™ is our latest feature release that offers a fast, easy, and secure way to remotely access and interact with the complex computing environments you create in Skytap Cloud™. It offers the flexibility of using the SmartClient Java-based browser applet or any Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP)-capable client on any device including desktops, laptops, smartphones, and

Enterprise Networking Planet Picks 10 Networking Newcomers to Watch

In Robert McGarvey’s latest article for Enterprise Networking Planet, he discusses Top 10 Networking Newcomers to Watch, and outlines how beyond the big names like Cisco, Juniper, HP, IBM, Brocade, and Alcatel-Lucent–there are smaller, more nimble, enterprise networking companies that are introducing innovation. From the article: Software defined networking, virtual networking, virtual desktops, cloud …

Networking Perspectives: How It’s Done at Skytap

In the first part of this piece, Networking Perspectives: OpenStack v CloudStack, I discussed some of the primary differences between the network architectures of OpenStack and CloudStack. A key point was what we here at Skytap believe are the three core tenets of cloud networking: Clouds are inherently multi-tenant, and network definition and provisioning should

Networking Perspectives: OpenStack v CloudStack

In early April, OpenStack released the Essex version of its stack software. Citrix, two days prior, announced their release of the CloudStack project under the Apache2 license, creating a genuinely competitive market for open-sourced stack software. We here at Skytap are excited to see this, since it represents a growing maturity and adoption of cloud

Wrangling an out of control cloud with notification and usage limits

Now that I’ve shifted the majority of my day-to-day workflow to the cloud it’s easier than ever to have custom environments for each project I’m working on. I still use Google Docs for most document creation and project tracking (lesson learned from an earlier hard drive failure) but for my demo environments, which involve complicated

7 Habits of Highly Effective Cloud Architects – Part Three

Lat week we posted part two of our series: 7 Habits of Highly Effective Cloud Architects. This week we will cover habits 6 and 7. Habit #6: Let your users share IT environments; be sure to manage user roles A big part of being agile in software development is the ability for developers, test engineers and support

7 Habits of Highly Effective Cloud Architects – Part Two

Lat week we posted part one of our series: 7 Habits of Highly Effective Cloud Architects. This week we will cover habits 3 through 5. Habit #3: Empower your users with self-service & create internal evangelists As an IT architect, teams count on you to drive rapid innovation within your organization.  Cloud computing promises to