Department
Architecture
11 articles filed under Architecture.
The Commoditization of Architecture
I often talk about the moving “commodity line”, this line affects essentially all technology, including designs. Essentially, when any new technology comes out it will start highly proprietary…
Understanding the Role of the Dell VRTX
Dell’s VRTX is one of those devices that is just sexy, as IT hardware goes. It strikes a chord and drives IT professionals nearly wild. It looks cool, it has an incredible amount of power, it can be…
Making the Best of Your Inverted Pyramid of Doom
The 3-2-1 or Inverted Pyramid of Doom architecture has become an IT industry pariah for many reasons. Sadly for many companies, they only learn about the dangers associated with this design after the…
What Do I Do Now? Planning for Design Changes
Quite often I am faced with talking to people about their system designs, plans and architectures. And many times that discussion happens too late and designs are either already implemented or they…
The Weakest Link: How Chained Dependencies Impact System Risk
When assessing system risk scenarios it is very easy to overlook “chained” dependencies. We are trained to look at risk at a “node” level asking “how likely is this one thing to fail.” But system…
The Inverted Pyramid of Doom
The 3-2-1 model of system architecture is extremely common today and almost always exactly the opposite of what a business needs or even wants if they were to take the time to write down their…
Solution Elegance
It is very easy, when working in IT, to become focused on big, complex solutions. It seems that this is where the good solutions must lie – big solutions, lots of software, all the latest gadgets…
Virtualization as a Standard Pattern
Virtualization as an enterprise concept is almost as old as business computing is itself. The value of abstracting computing from the bare hardware was recognized very early on and almost as soon as…
Virtual Eggs and Baskets
In speaking with small business IT professionals, one of the key factors for hesitancy around deploying virtualization arises from what is described as “don’t put your eggs in one basket.” I can see…
How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love BYOD
Bring Your Own Devices (or BYOD) is one of those hot topics this year that seems to have every IT department worried. What does BYOD mean for the future of IT? People have already begun to call it…
State of Thin Clients
The IT world loves to swing back and forth between moving processing out to the user via fat clients and moving processing back to the server leaving users with thin clients. The battle is a long…