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How to select tHe best Hybrid cloud provider

for your firmA successful

sHift towArds A Hybrid cloud

corporAte environment

requires A new ApproAcH to trust in tHe

orgAnisAtion

tHe job of tHe infrAstructure senior mAnAger

of tHe futureHybrid cloud

ArcHitectures will need it

depArtments to move from core

server skills to mAnAging

tHe cApAcity to let developers

code

understAnding tHe functions

of microsoft’s Hybrid cloud

After A slow stArt,

microsoft Azure is

progressing rApidly And

HAs become A strong Hybrid

cloud cHoice for businesses

Computer Weekly buyer’s Guide

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A Computer Weekly buyer’s guide to hybrid cloudHybrid cloud infrastructure allows CIOs to retain sensitive data behind the firewall while exploiting the lower cost and flexibility of cloud; improve scalability and provisioning at decreased cost; and allocate resources for short-term projects at a much lower cost than upgrading on-premise infrastructure. In this 11-page buyer’s guide, Computer Weekly looks at how to find the best hybrid cloud provider for your organisation, how the shift to hybrid cloud will change the traditional role of the infrastructure manager and how Microsoft is catching up with the cloud market with its Azure offering

These articles were originally published

in the computer Weekly ezine

computerweekly.com buyer’s guide 2

Home

How to select tHe best Hybrid cloud provider

for your firmA successful

sHift towArds A Hybrid cloud

corporAte environment

requires A new ApproAcH to trust in tHe

orgAnisAtion

tHe job of tHe infrAstructure senior mAnAger

of tHe futureHybrid cloud

ArcHitectures will need it

depArtments to move from core

server skills to mAnAging

tHe cApAcity to let developers

code

understAnding tHe functions

of microsoft’s Hybrid cloud

After A slow stArt,

microsoft Azure is

progressing rApidly And

HAs become A strong Hybrid

cloud cHoice for businesses

Computer Weekly buyer’s Guide

For iT, a well-orchestrated hybrid cloud strategy can support better communication and collaboration between iT teams. Therefore, it is becoming more critical for enterprise iT firms to find hybrid cloud providers that have the right migration tooling to enable seamless relocation of existing services between dedicated private cloud

and public cloud infrastructures, without lengthy or unplanned disruption to live service.The governance of a successful shift to the hybrid cloud corporate environment also

requires a new approach to trust throughout the organisation. Development teams need access to the right public cloud tools to work efficiently, and must ensure the solutions they find provide security and control on a par with the internal datacentre.

With public clouds’ elastic resources, it becomes easier, faster and cheaper for the iT organisation to extend the reach of existing datacentre resources in real time according to business demand, instead of weeks or even months spent on provisioning new infrastructure on-site. so where do you go shopping to find the right tools, platforms and cloud service providers to get you into a virtuous hybrid cloud development cycle?

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Hybrid cloud storage:

What data goes where?

Application development

on Microsoft’s hybrid cloud

How to select the best hybrid cloud provider for your firmA successful shift towards a hybrid cloud corporate environment requires a new approach to trust throughout the organisation. Bernt Ostergaard reports

Buyer’s guide hybrid cloud

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Home

How to select tHe best Hybrid cloud provider

for your firmA successful

sHift towArds A Hybrid cloud

corporAte environment

requires A new ApproAcH to trust in tHe

orgAnisAtion

tHe job of tHe infrAstructure senior mAnAger

of tHe futureHybrid cloud

ArcHitectures will need it

depArtments to move from core

server skills to mAnAging

tHe cApAcity to let developers

code

understAnding tHe functions

of microsoft’s Hybrid cloud

After A slow stArt,

microsoft Azure is

progressing rApidly And

HAs become A strong Hybrid

cloud cHoice for businesses

Computer Weekly buyer’s Guide

The questions that any cloud strategy must be able to answermanagement: What management tools or applications are available to control data, apps and processes across a hybrid cloud from the user desktop to remote public cloud environments? how well does it integrate with existing management systems?security: how are compliance mandates such as Pci-Dss or GAAP facilitated, and how does it affect the iso27002 information security standard that governs the corporate datacentre?redundancy and portability: Does the solution provider offer credible redundancy that avoids single points of failure such as network connectivity? What open application programming interfaces (APis) are available?latencies: While data transfer may be accommodating, apps may be sensitive to delays. Don’t expect to run any latency-critical applications in a hybrid mode. You need to do that on the same platform. service level agreements (slAs): how are sLAs defined? General availability and latency are typical factors, but an sLA for business-critical apps is more important. What type of compensation is offered? Amazon, for example, offers a service credit in case availability falls over a one-month period. But is this good enough? if you have a month of poor service, do you want another month free?pricing: The basic cloud principle is pay per use. But how usage is calculated, whether there is a fixed monthly fee, what sLA-defined support is included and more means the total cost of ownership must be assessed carefully, monitored continuously and compared with the business value being gained to ensure the balance is always to the good.

Dedicated hybrid cloud providersThe number of managed cloud service providers offering hybrid cloud services continues to expand from the basic infrastructure, platform and application services to vertical industry solutions and enterprise architecture.

Typically, the hybrid cloud service pack of managed services will provide migration tools to enable fast relocation of existing services between dedicated, private cloud and public cloud infrastructures, that may include virtual servers and sAn storage, integrated on-demand servers, dedicated databases, firewalls, load-balancers, content delivery network (cDn) and streaming services. Leading global providers include Amazon, Verizon Terremark, Rackspace and centuryLink (through its acquisition of savvis and Qwest).

The Uk boasts a vibrant hybrid cloud market for small and medium-sized companies looking for a hybrid cloud service partner, able to help them with governance and orchestration of a comprehensive hybrid cloud solution. This, far from a comprehensive list, illustrates the market boom well:n Attenda delivers fast migration toolsn niu solutions has strong iBM tiesn claranet focuses on managed application hosting capabilitiesn Pulsanet provides managed hosting and a G-cloud providern commensus has VMware’s vcloud Director suiten nasstar has strong security credentialsn ioMart provides 100% uptime for critical apps

These companies are all recent arrivals and may represent a continuity risk, as illustrated by the messy demise of nirvanix last year, and the more orderly retreat of iron Mountain.

“The UK boasTs a vibranT hybrid cloUd marKeT for small and mediUm-sized companies looKing for a hybrid cloUd service parTner”

computerweekly.com buyer’s guide 4

Home

How to select tHe best Hybrid cloud provider

for your firmA successful

sHift towArds A Hybrid cloud

corporAte environment

requires A new ApproAcH to trust in tHe

orgAnisAtion

tHe job of tHe infrAstructure senior mAnAger

of tHe futureHybrid cloud

ArcHitectures will need it

depArtments to move from core

server skills to mAnAging

tHe cApAcity to let developers

code

understAnding tHe functions

of microsoft’s Hybrid cloud

After A slow stArt,

microsoft Azure is

progressing rApidly And

HAs become A strong Hybrid

cloud cHoice for businesses

Computer Weekly buyer’s Guide

so you should have contingency plans for evacuating your data and apps from a failing supplier. cloud software is mostly proprietary, but there is a groundswell of open standards, which is also manifesting itself in the cloud world. openstack, managed by the openstack Foundation, aims to provide the ever-present open source cloud computing platform for public and private clouds, and more than 200 companies have signed up.

System integrators and telcosMany mid-tier and large companies initially go to the trusted providers of their applications and networks: their systems integrators (sis) and the telcos. Their challenge is agility, where the smaller dedicated cloud providers often move faster and are more willing to accommodate individual demands. For the customer it is safer to store data with a well-funded provider with the resources to make your sLA guarantees enforceable.

in some cases, such as Verizon, the telco buys a well-established cloud service brand such as Terremark to assure customers they know what they are doing. others, such as interoute, buy mid-tier cloud provider Quantix to integrate with their existing network services. other big operators, such as BT, “roll their own”, and work closely with established global cloud providers. Recently, BT announced it now supports cisco’s intercloud service, working alongside citrix and netApp to broaden its cloud compute portfolio and improve the way its hybrid cloud solutions benefit customers globally. Vodafone’s Flexible computing multi-tenant public cloud platform offers add-on computing power and storage on demand using EMc to deliver agile cloud storage, automated tiering and fully managed storage.

Hybrid cloud storage providersApart from pricing and flexibility drivers, hybrid cloud services expand disaster recovery and data backup options to address the enormous growth in data generation and retention.

hybrid cloud storage leverages a combination of local and off-site resources to provide primary data storage, data backup, disaster recovery, secure sync and share, and more. They are cost effective and help organisations integrate existing iT infrastructure. Businesses also gain from the expertise of the hybrid cloud provider.

The easiest (but also most proprietary) solution is an off-the-shelf software application that stages data on to a server, which then offloads this to connected off-premise resources. Microsoft’s Windows Azure uses a proprietary agent to facilitate backup to the cloud. Management happens either using the Windows Azure management portal or with local tools such as server Manager or Microsoft system center.

other hybrid solutions provide a local cache and manage the transfer of data from the local system to the cloud host based on a user-defined set of policies. You typically get everything you need from the cloud provider such as Amazon or Rackspace, including support if you’re willing to pay a little extra.

To avoid supplier lock-in, enterprise customers must look for cloud providers such as Flexiant with openstack and open APis that provide direct access to the inner workings of the cloud supplier’s services.

New optionsAs a buyer in a fast-moving market, keep your options open and make sure you can port your data and apps if you find a better offer or the current provider goes bust or changes

ownership. That is partly a contractual matter, partly a question of portability and open portability APis. Finally, keep an eye on the openstack community as it aligns with the software defined network evolution. With the introduction of openstack, software-defined networking and APis for

programmatic control over both physical and virtual infrastructure, new infrastructure as a service concepts are emerging. This may lower costs and open up higher levels of software and hardware integration right across the corporate hybrid network. n

› Strike the hybrid cloud balance› Hybrid cloud demand bolsters VMware

› Enabling hybrid cloud services: Where are we?

computerweekly.com buyer’s guide 5

Home

How to select tHe best Hybrid cloud provider

for your firmA successful

sHift towArds A Hybrid cloud

corporAte environment

requires A new ApproAcH to trust in tHe

orgAnisAtion

tHe job of tHe infrAstructure senior mAnAger

of tHe futureHybrid cloud

ArcHitectures will need it

depArtments to move from core

server skills to mAnAging

tHe cApAcity to let developers

code

understAnding tHe functions

of microsoft’s Hybrid cloud

After A slow stArt,

microsoft Azure is

progressing rApidly And

HAs become A strong Hybrid

cloud cHoice for businesses

Computer Weekly buyer’s Guide

It is inevitable that enterprise iT in 2020 will comprise a hybrid mix of on- and off-prem-ises services. While your particular combination of cloud services will vary, it is unlikely any enterprise iT department will still primarily focus on configuring server, storage and network devices as a core competency. The shift to business technology and iT as a

service is well underway, so you can either ignore it, try to contain it or embrace it.in the cloud era, your new role is to establish guardrails to guide developers to the best

cloud services; get out of the way while they deploy, test and release them; and then take over ongoing operational support, so they can get back to coding. But you have to earn the right to be their cloud manager. The operational skills you developed to manage traditional datacentre infrastructure need to be refocused on the application tier, since this is where you will add the most value.

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Hybrid cloud storage:

What data goes where?

Hybrid cloud: When

public and private clouds

collide

The job of the infrastructure senior manager of the futureHybrid cloud architectures will need IT departments to move from core server skills to managing the capacity to let developers code, writes Dave Bartoletti

Buyer’s guideHybrid cloud

computerweekly.com buyer’s guide 6

Home

How to select tHe best Hybrid cloud provider

for your firmA successful

sHift towArds A Hybrid cloud

corporAte environment

requires A new ApproAcH to trust in tHe

orgAnisAtion

tHe job of tHe infrAstructure senior mAnAger

of tHe futureHybrid cloud

ArcHitectures will need it

depArtments to move from core

server skills to mAnAging

tHe cApAcity to let developers

code

understAnding tHe functions

of microsoft’s Hybrid cloud

After A slow stArt,

microsoft Azure is

progressing rApidly And

HAs become A strong Hybrid

cloud cHoice for businesses

Computer Weekly buyer’s Guide

Build your cloud management capabilities with two primary objectives in mind. First, consider how you can make developers more productive. second, assess how you can opti-mise the runtime performance, availability and cost-efficiency of cloud applications, wher-ever they are deployed.

start preparing now to manage an iT portfolio based on services automatically deployed on demand and from an elastic pool of infrastructure, most of which you will not own. That means you need to start thinking about applications first: how your developers can build and deploy them faster, and link them more easily to a range of existing and new business ser-vices and data sources, in-house and outside your enterprise walls.

Cloud securitycloud security starts with identity verification, access controls and permissions. Extend your existing identity services into the cloud by taking control of existing public cloud user accounts, security keys and credentials. Define and enforce role-based access controls across clouds to restrict access to specific pools or types of resources by team or business unit. Acknowledge these limitations clearly in your service catalogue.

Review current regulatory and corporate compliance constraints. These determine where you will let applications run and where data can reside (public or private cloud, or a combina-tion); you are ultimately responsible for compliance, whatever the mix. in addition, determine your tolerance for shared multi-tenant environments, either on or off-premises. integrate cloud security with your existing lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP) and/or Active Directory infrastructure and include spending caps by role to keep cloud costs under control. Finally, make sure you actively track, log and report all security and compliance events, from configuration changes to placement of sensitive data.

Cloud automationYou won’t own the entire infrastructure as your cloud portfolio grows. You will probably have a mix of on-premises private clouds built on virtualised or converged infrastructures as well as off-premises public cloud infrastructure that, for the most part, is managed for you. in either case, leave infrastructure management to the cloud providers (private or public) – they are responsible for multi-tenancy, resource pooling and scale-out in each cloud domain, for instance. The providers expose the building blocks; your job is to inte-grate and standardise them to simplify and accelerate consumption.

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computerweekly.com buyer’s guide 7

Home

How to select tHe best Hybrid cloud provider

for your firmA successful

sHift towArds A Hybrid cloud

corporAte environment

requires A new ApproAcH to trust in tHe

orgAnisAtion

tHe job of tHe infrAstructure senior mAnAger

of tHe futureHybrid cloud

ArcHitectures will need it

depArtments to move from core

server skills to mAnAging

tHe cApAcity to let developers

code

understAnding tHe functions

of microsoft’s Hybrid cloud

After A slow stArt,

microsoft Azure is

progressing rApidly And

HAs become A strong Hybrid

cloud cHoice for businesses

Computer Weekly buyer’s Guide

standardise and automate everything. Traditional iT provisioning is a slow and manual process, while cloud provisioning is on-demand, automated and application programming interface (APi)-driven. Developers do not want to fill out a help desk request, nor will they tolerate a lengthy approvals process to get access to cloud resources.

Beyond provisioning, cloud consumers also expect automated compliance, availability, scalability and performance management features. if you have built your problem diagnosis and remediation processes for specific infrastructure or applications you own, they will need to be generalised to handle new cloud-specific metrics and to enable automated remedia-tion. As your cloud application life cycle compresses, there will be no time to craft custom management processes for each new application.

Cloud managementUnderstand why developers use new cloud manage-ment tools. They are likely to rely on newer cloud management tools already – understand why. cloud developers turn to Dell’s Enstratius, Rightscale cloud Management, scalr, serviceMesh’s Agility Platform and others and rely on opscode’s chef and Puppet Labs’ Puppet for automation because these tools aim squarely at simplifying their lives.

From unified dashboards, they simplify application design via re-usable templates and blueprints and offer push-button deployment to multiple clouds. They automate configuration, scaling and recovery operations and consolidate multiple cloud accounts, users and roles in a common framework that hides infrastructure complexities. in short, they bring order to the chaos of multi-cloud management without limiting developer productivity.

if developers continue to manage cloud themselves and do not see value in central iT’s cloud management capabilities, they will go around the iT infrastucture staff. not only will this cut into your developers’ productivity, it will foster the notion that cloud is competition for the infrastructure team. Don’t let that idea take hold. Embrace the hybrid cloud opportu-nity by proving you can lower the burden on business cloud users wherever they use cloud services and that you have the right skills and tools to make sure their apps deliver the right user experiences.

Find out what your developers are doing that keeps them from coding. You will learn the most from your early cloud adopters. spend time with them to understand how much infra-structure control they need and how much they are doing just because they have to. Ask them where they need more visibility and focus your monitoring efforts there. Find out why

they choose a particular public cloud, so you can establish a baseline for your own cloud operations — what do they like and where are the gaps?

catalogue your existing cloud services. Before you can define your cloud management requirements, you need to pick a starting set of deployment models and determine what

level of abstraction is available in each. Which integration APis are available, what types of infrastructure, which development tools? how much operational management is provided for you by the cloud platform itself, and what will you have to build or acquire to fill in the gaps?

it is likely iT infrastructure managers will spend much less time configuring servers and installing management software in the future. These people will spend more time extracting meaningful insight from performance metrics and negotiating service provider agreements. n

“prove yoU can lower The bUrden on bUsiness cloUd Users wherever They Use cloUd services”

This is an extract of the Forrester report: Cloud Management In A Hybrid Cloud World (July, 2013) by Dave Bartoletti

› Enabling hybrid cloud services› What is hybrid cloud?

› Seven essential benefits of hybrid cloud backup

computerweekly.com buyer’s guide 8

Home

How to select tHe best Hybrid cloud provider

for your firmA successful

sHift towArds A Hybrid cloud

corporAte environment

requires A new ApproAcH to trust in tHe

orgAnisAtion

tHe job of tHe infrAstructure senior mAnAger

of tHe futureHybrid cloud

ArcHitectures will need it

depArtments to move from core

server skills to mAnAging

tHe cApAcity to let developers

code

understAnding tHe functions

of microsoft’s Hybrid cloud

After A slow stArt,

microsoft Azure is

progressing rApidly And

HAs become A strong Hybrid

cloud cHoice for businesses

Computer Weekly buyer’s Guide

Microsoft is a keen advocate of the hybrid cloud, or, in other words, an iT infra-structure that has some servers on-premise and some hosted in the public cloud, whether that is Windows Azure or a third-party hosting service. its advo-cacy is not surprising, because it is the obvious way to make sense of a large

existing business selling Windows server and applications such as Exchange and sQL server, while also meeting the demand for public cloud services.

nevertheless, the hybrid cloud concept chimes with businesses looking for the scalability and efficiency of cloud-based infrastructure, or taking advantage of the cloud for off-site backup or replication, but without giving up the control and independence that can only be found in your own datacentre.

one reason for Microsoft’s slow start with Azure was its failure to grasp the need for infrastructure as a service (iaas) alongside platform as a service (Paas). on its initial release, Azure was an application platform with web roles for web applications, worker roles for

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The Windows

Azure Backup basics all Windows

Server admins should know

Windows Azure success

could determine

Microsoft’s cloud future

Understanding the functions of Microsoft’s hybrid cloudAfter a slow start, Microsoft Azure is progressing rapidly and has become a strong hybrid cloud choice for businesses. Tim Anderson reports

Buyer’s guidehybrid cloud

computerweekly.com buyer’s guide 9

Home

How to select tHe best Hybrid cloud provider

for your firmA successful

sHift towArds A Hybrid cloud

corporAte environment

requires A new ApproAcH to trust in tHe

orgAnisAtion

tHe job of tHe infrAstructure senior mAnAger

of tHe futureHybrid cloud

ArcHitectures will need it

depArtments to move from core

server skills to mAnAging

tHe cApAcity to let developers

code

understAnding tHe functions

of microsoft’s Hybrid cloud

After A slow stArt,

microsoft Azure is

progressing rApidly And

HAs become A strong Hybrid

cloud cHoice for businesses

Computer Weekly buyer’s Guide

background applications, and storage services to persist your data. it used virtual machines (VMs) based on Microsoft’s hyper-V hypervisor, but they were stateless, so that, by design, Azure could, at any time, revert a VM to its state at the time you last deployed the applica-tion. Even the VM role, introduced later, worked in the same way. This approach has its mer-its, but meant that Azure could not easily work as an extension of an existing datacentre, but only as a way of running new applications.

This changed with the release of Azure Virtual Machines, which have been generally avail-able since April 2013 and were in preview from June 2012. Azure VMs are durable and sup-port Linux as well as Windows server. Microsoft also introduced a new REsT-based manage-ment APi and a revamped web portal, with the portal designed for ease of use when getting started (complete with a gallery of VM templates), and the REsT APi designed for scripting control and long-term management.

it was only with the arrival of Azure VMs that Microsoft was able to offer iaas and to com-pete with Amazon Web services (AWs).

But there is more in Azure than just VMs. it also offers data services, including sQL server databases, blog or table storage, and hadoop clusters; application services, including service bus, media services, and Biztalk for integrating business processes; hosted Active Directory; virtual networks; websites that scale from free to multi-ple load-balanced servers, and mobile services to sup-port apps running on devices.

A key feature of Azure Active Directory is that it is used by office 365, Microsoft’s hosted Exchange and sharepoint offering. You can use this in conjunction with Active Directory Federation services (ADFs) and Directory sync, which between them enable a single directory and single sign-on between office 365, Azure applications, and the local network.

Microsoft’s private cloudMicrosoft’s private cloud story has long been based on its system center server manage-ment suite. The underlying hypervisor is primarily hyper-V, as it is on Windows Azure, although the latest version of system center Virtual Machine Manager (scVMM) can also manage VMware EsX and citrix Xenserver. Using scVMM, you can create, deploy and manage virtual machines. new virtual machines are based on templates, which you design in scVMM.

“azUre vms are dUrable and sUpporT linUx as well as windows server”

Creating new services in Windows Azure. This same portal is now available for the private cloud thanks to Windows Azure Pack

The Service Template Designer in System Center Virtual Machine Manager lets you configure applications spanning multiple VMs, for automated deployment

computerweekly.com buyer’s guide 10

Home

How to select tHe best Hybrid cloud provider

for your firmA successful

sHift towArds A Hybrid cloud

corporAte environment

requires A new ApproAcH to trust in tHe

orgAnisAtion

tHe job of tHe infrAstructure senior mAnAger

of tHe futureHybrid cloud

ArcHitectures will need it

depArtments to move from core

server skills to mAnAging

tHe cApAcity to let developers

code

understAnding tHe functions

of microsoft’s Hybrid cloud

After A slow stArt,

microsoft Azure is

progressing rApidly And

HAs become A strong Hybrid

cloud cHoice for businesses

Computer Weekly buyer’s Guide

You can also create service templates, which define a complete application deployment. service templates comprise several VM templates along with operating system and applica-tion deployment scripts. There is also support for server Application Virtualisation (server App-V), which lets you deploy an application image to a VM, largely isolated from the VM operating system.

Microsoft’s scVMM also has a private cloud feature. simply having VMs in a datacentre is not enough to define a private cloud. Rather, a cloud has further characteristics, including:n Delegation of management to enable self-service. Users in the organisation who require

computing resources must be able to come to a portal or run a script that lets them cre-ate cloud resources automatically, subject to the resource and usage limitations defined by the cloud provider (internal or external).

n Resource pooling. A shared pool of resources results in more efficiency.n Elasticity. it must be possible to add resources to a private cloud so that its capacity can

be increased.n opacity. cloud consumers do not need to know the

details of the physical implementation.it follows that a key element in any cloud is how self-service is implemented. A historical problem with Microsoft’s hybrid cloud efforts was that the on-prem-ise solution, based on system center, used a different approach than Azure.

it was not until the arrival of system center 2012 R2 and the Windows Azure Pack that this began to change (there was a predecessor to the Azure Pack, but it was mainly aimed at hosting providers).

system center has a convoluted story when it comes to self-service portals. Users (that is, admin users in need of compute resources) can log into scVMM and use that, although the console is really designed for pri-vate cloud administrators. There is another system center component called App controller, which is a portal that enables users to deploy virtual machines and service templates.

The Windows Azure Pack (WAP) lets you deploy much of the Azure web portal and REsT APi (called the service Management APi) for your own datacentre, bringing consistency to public and private cloud offerings, at least from the point of view of cloud consumers. it also enables third-party hosting services to offer an Azure-like service.

Azure Pack is not a replacement for system center but works alongside it. nor does it fully replace App controller, although there is overlapping functionality. To provision virtual machines, for example, the Azure Pack requires programmatic access to scVMM via an APi

“sysTem cenTer has a convolUTed sTory when iT comes To self-service porTals”

You can create point-to-site or site-to-site VPN between on-premise and Azure

Creating a private cloud in System Center Virtual Machine Manager

computerweekly.com buyer’s guide 11

Home

How to select tHe best Hybrid cloud provider

for your firmA successful

sHift towArds A Hybrid cloud

corporAte environment

requires A new ApproAcH to trust in tHe

orgAnisAtion

tHe job of tHe infrAstructure senior mAnAger

of tHe futureHybrid cloud

ArcHitectures will need it

depArtments to move from core

server skills to mAnAging

tHe cApAcity to let developers

code

understAnding tHe functions

of microsoft’s Hybrid cloud

After A slow stArt,

microsoft Azure is

progressing rApidly And

HAs become A strong Hybrid

cloud cHoice for businesses

Computer Weekly buyer’s Guide

called the service Provider Foundation. This APi is part of another system center component, called orchestrator.

Migrating a private cloud to WAP is not trivial, but it is a strategic component in Microsoft’s hybrid cloud strategy and represents the future direction. on the provider side, WAP offers automation, billing by usage, hosting plans and tenant management. cloud users get the excellent Azure portal, or the option to use scripting, and features such as scalable websites, VMs running Windows or Linux, a web app gallery with support for multiple application platforms including AsP.nET, PhP and node.js, service bus, and sQL server or MysQL databases.

Connecting public and private cloudsMicrosoft offers both public cloud (Azure) and private cloud (system center), but how do you connect them?

There are several connection points, not least Active Directory federation and synchronisa-tion, as mentioned above.

Another key piece is virtual private networks (VPns) between on-premise and Azure. You can configure both point-to-site (single machines connect to Azure) and site-to-site VPn. once created, you can select a virtual network for Azure VMs and have full VPn connectivity between the two networks.

App controller can connect to multiple clouds, private, hosted and Windows Azure. You can also move VMs to Azure using App controller, although this requires shutdown of the VM first. When a virtual hard drive (VhD) file is uploaded, empty blocks are detected and skipped to speed transfer. Azure does not yet support the new VhDX format.

Azure stores VhDs in its blob storage service, and you can also upload and download VhDs with Powershell script.

hyper-V Recovery Manager is an Azure service that monitors scVMM clouds and co-ordinates failover from one to another in the event of an outage.

system center operations Manager can connect to Azure subscriptions and monitor Azure hosted services, as well as private cloud.

There is an abundance of connection points, although some operations are not as seamless as they could be. You cannot set up replication between Azure and on-premise VMs or do live migration, but you can backup to Azure storage using a Backup service.

Microsoft’s hybrid cloudAfter a slow start, Microsoft Azure is progressing rapidly and has become a strong choice for businesses that use Microsoft’s platform, or want to use another cloud provider along-side Amazon Web services or others. its key differentiator is hybrid cloud, consistency and connectivity between on-premise and pub-lic cloud. There are numerous connection points, including site-to-site VPn, Active Directory, and integration between system center and Azure.

Windows Azure Pack gives cloud users a consistent experience, whether using public or private cloud, within the subset of Azure features that are supported.

But delve into the details, and the different cloud management technologies in system center versus Azure remain, making integra-tion more difficult.

however, Microsoft is welding them together, and consistency of management is likely to improve with each new release. n

App Controller, part of System Center, can connect to public, private and hosted clouds and lets you manage VMs and services