CiRBA On-Demand Webcasts

CiRBA for Efficiency Management

This presentation by Andrew Hillier, CiRBA’s CTO & Co-founder provides a brief introduction to the CiRBA solution.

Download 18 minutes - 35.6MB WMV format.

The Tetris Effect: Increasing the Efficiency of Virtualized Infrastructure
through Strategic Workload Placements

Virtualization and consolidation have been widely embraced to reduce capital and operating costs. Initial deployments have generally delivered some savings, but most organizations are continually over-provisioning capacity to mitigate risk resulting in inefficiency and waste.

The traditional approach for determining capacity requirements by analyzing total utilization is now insufficient. As in Tetris, the factors equally important to the size of the workload are the shape, orientation, and ultimately the placements. These factors in combination determine how to make best use of available capacity. Dealing with these placements and the "fragmentation" they inevitably produce is the new frontier in capacity management. By failing to strategically place workloads, organizations not only increase operational risk, but lose significant opportunities to maximize efficiency by increasing densities and designing infrastructure according to required service levels. Ultimately it is the placement of workloads combined with appropriate resource allocations that will determine how efficient and safe an organization’s infrastructure is.

Andrew Hillier, CiRBA’s CTO & Co-Founder

Download 5 minutes - 35MB WMV format.

Virtualization Economics: Balancing Risk and Efficiency through Intelligent Workload Placements and Resource Allocations

Virtualization significantly changes the economics of constructing and operating IT environments.  But the gains in efficiency that lead to greatest cost savings don’t come easily.  Many of the contributors to promised savings, such as reduction in physical hardware and the corresponding savings in power and cooling, are important drivers for virtualization initiatives but are often not realized either at the time of deployment or on an  ongoing basis.  Often in an attempt to avoid risk, organizations will oversize infrastructure, avoiding potential performance problems but eroding the benefits of a transformation.  The challenge facing organizations is how to efficiently transform infrastructure while mitigating risk. The key to addressing this challenge is the intelligent placement of workloads and allocation of resources within virtual infrastructure.

Andrew Hillier, CiRBA’s CTO & Co-Founder

Download 50 minutes - 35MB WMV format.

External Clouds vs. Internal Virtualization:
Determining Where to Draw the Line

Identifying candidates for cloud computing is not as simple as it may first seem. By comparing cloud options to existing physical hosting scenarios it is easy to see reduced costs, but the real benchmark for comparison lies with the virtualization of existing infrastructure. This session will outline how to analyze environments in order to first qualify candidates for the cloud or virtualization based on a number of business, configuration and utilization considerations.  For example, sensitive data, regulatory requirements, or utilization patterns and personalities all impact whether or not applications are suitable for the cloud. Once suitable candidates are identified, a rigorous analysis that examines factors including SLA requirements, costs and break-even points, operational windows, and utilization personalities and patterns, will enable organizations to fully understand the potential of cloud alternatives. Also, advanced capacity management concepts, such as dynamically “right-sizing” workloads onto the most economical cloud instances based on operational patterns and windows, will be discussed.

Andrew Hillier, CiRBA’s CTO & Co-Founder

Download 53 minutes - 53MB WMV format.

Six Steps to Virtualization Planning Web Cast

Why Proper Candidate Selection, Workload Analysis, Detailed Constraint Analysis, Solution Design, Implementation and Process Improvement are Critical to Success.

In this session you will learn:

How to identify servers that may be risky or inappropriate to virtualize
How to analyze business, risk and growth variations to optimize design
How to manage, track and improve the implementation process

Andrew Hillier, CiRBA’s CTO & Co-Founder

Download 60 minutes - 39.3MB WMV format.

CiRBA for P2V Transformations

This presentation by Andrew Hillier, CiRBA’s CTO & Co-founder provides a brief introduction to CiRBA’s approach to P2V consolidation analysis.

Download 15 minutes - 13MB WMV format.

Capacity Management within Virtualized Data Centers with Cameron Haight, Research VP, Gartner

Cameron Haight, Research VP, Gartner:
Capacity Management within Virtualized Data Centers

Download 7 minutes - 35.6MB WMV format.

Best Practices for Virtualization & Consolidation:
How Empirical Analysis can help you Minimize Risk
and Maximize Savings of Transformations

Economic uncertainty is accelerating the need for IT organizations to take action to reduce cost. In the face of declining budgets, strategies such as virtualization and consolidation are being pushed to the top of the project queue. If done correctly these actions can significantly reduce hardware purchases, lower facilities and administration costs and make IT organizations more agile. The question is “how do you do it quickly based on best practices without introducing risk and impacting service levels”?  And who do you turn to for impartial answers based on their experience?

Spend an hour with Unisys and CiRBA to learn about a new kind of empirical analysis that maps the potential for cost cutting in the data center through consolidation and virtualization, while mitigating the risks of the transformation. In this session you will learn about the constraints that you must consider as these changes are mapped and how technology and leading edge thinking can dramatically increase your success.

Steve Peacock, VP of Infrastructure Optimization Services of Unisys and
Chuck Tatham, VP of Business Development and Marketing of CiRBA:

Download 50 minutes - 41.5MB WMV format.

Dynamic Capacity Management for Virtual Environments:
Balancing Efficiency and Risk to Optimize VM Placements

The ability to move VMs creates an unprecedented opportunity to align resource supply and demand and drive higher efficiency in the data center. Solely relying on motioning to optimize resource utilization can create significant issues relating to control, change management, and even efficiency within an environment.  To minimize costs and maximize the efficiency of virtualized infrastructure, organizations require advanced capacity management that facilitates intelligent workload placements initially and through forward looking planning.

Andrew Hillier, Co-Founder and CTO of CiRBA, presents:
Dynamic Capacity Management for Virtual Environments:
Balancing Efficiency and Risk to Optimize VM Placements

Download 55 minutes - 36.9MB WMV format.

Virtualization is 90% preparation, 10% perspiration:
How to analyze your environment and avoid common pitfalls.

Presented by Chuck Tatham of CiRBA &
Chris Wolf of The Burton Group.

Download 58 minutes - 43MB WMV format.

“Now What?” Successful Strategies for Optimizing
Virtual Infrastructure After Consolidation

Andrew Hillier, CTO & Co-Founder of CiRBA
with Chris Wolf,  Senior Analyst, Burton Group

When couples bring their first child home from the hospital, they often find themselves facing “Now What?” syndrome. The baby is home, but what are they supposed to do next? Ultimately, parental instincts kick in and everyone has a laugh about their “Now what?” moment later in life. Unfortunately, virtualization management isn’t as instinctive. Many organizations spend months planning for the arrival of their data center’s newest baby – virtualization, and following completion of the virtualization migration project find themselves in a “Now what?” moment. In this webcast, Burton Group senior analyst Chris Wolf and CiRBA CTO Andrew Hillier take a deep look at steps organizations should follow after a successful virtualization implementation. Like a newborn baby, virtualization can get into a lot of trouble if the collective virtual infrastructure is not effectively managed and optimized. With the proper approach to virtualization management, you can spot potential performance bottlenecks, governance red flags  and continue to optimize utilization despite constant change within the environment.

Download 58 minutes - 47MB WMV format.

How to Successfully Plan and Manage
Large-Scale Virtualization

Andrew Hillier, CTO & Co-Founder of CiRBA
While the benefits of virtualization may seem straightforward, the process of building and managing virtualized infrastructure is anything but. The complexity that hides beneath the covers of the modern data center poses a serious threat to the success of any initiative that is not methodically planned. This live Web cast discussion will explore how advanced workload analytics combined with in-depth analysis of business and technical constraints have helped organizations safely establish and maintain optimally virtualized data centers.

Download 58 minutes - 39MB WMV format.



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