Infrastructure Architecture in the modern world

Infrastructure architecture is a vast and deep topic.  Much of our day to day lives in IT are driven by previous decisions in this area.  How do I backup my system?  What types of servers can I order for my project?  What version of OS am I allowed to use?  These are all generally dictated by the infrastructure that has been chosen in your company, data center, or IT shop.

As DBA's and application admins we ask why can't I backup my system faster?  Why can't I bring in a new server or storage technology?  Why doesn't my system work just like the powerpoint diagram the vendor gave me?

Well the answer is the architecture, the standards set forth and the technology choices we have at hand.  Often these rules and choices are dictated by much bigger business forces and decisions, not really for technical reasons.  How much investment budget does the company have at hand to change from one vendor to another?  How will the existing staff adapt to the new technology?  Will the technology work for everything in the data center?  Not just one database, one technology, or one application?

Over the years I've had conversations like this with many experienced IT professional both in my company and at conferences.  These topics are deep, and no one answer is right.  The reality depends on the company, the size of the teams, the size of the budgets, the ability for teams to understand and change, and many other factors.

This year at Collaborate I'm pleased to be working with industry experts and Oracle ACE's.  Join myself along with Tariq Farooq, Kirby McCord, Arup Nanda, and Kia Yu as we try to discuss this topic in a two hour panel session Thursday at 3:00 in Lido 3105 and also with IOUG Plug in to Vegas.

Since these topics can often get sided with the limits we have in our daily jobs, our session will use a fake company made up for the discussion.  We will talk about the options of engineered systems, virtualization, commodity hardware, and external clouds.  Why choose these architectures, and what some of the impacts on future business decisions would be.

Hope to see you there.