Q&A with Rich Bourdeau of DynamicOps

RB: It’s important to offer choices for software deployment and provisioning because not all companies use the same approach.   Even within one company, there may be different deployment methodologies for development vs production or servers vs desktops. By offering support for multiple approaches, we protect companies’ prior investments in existing process and technologies while automating the delivery and management of on-demand or private cloud services. 

RB: There are many options for OS and application software deployment. Each has advantages and disadvantages, which is why we support a variety of different options, eliminating the need for companies to rip and replace prior investments.

• Platform tools like hypervisor cloning, Windows WIM Imaging, and Linux Kickstart/Auto YaST provide basic mechanisms for software deployment.  These tools are used in a wide variety of deployments from simple to complex.
• Enterprise tools from vendor like HP Server Automation and BMC’s BladeLogic Operations Manager that go beyond software deployment to ongoing patch management, compliance checking, and more.  Customers with large numbers of production machines to manage value this additional functionality.
• Space-efficient Tools such as Citrix Provisioning Server, NetApp Flexclone, VMware View Composer, and others provide a thin image or stream the application to the machine.  These technologies are critical to the cost effective deployment of virtual desktops.

RB: We see many different types of environments at our customers’ sites, so they appreciate the flexibility of these multiple options for OS and application software deployment. The flexibility of Virtual Resource Manager has been an important feature that has helped many accelerate their virtualization deployments. Some customer uses of VRM include: