E-Guide Tips for Building a Private Cloud Start Slowly

E-Guide

Tips for building a private cloud-

Start slowly

Many IT professionals are intrigued by the idea of a private cloud to

reduce performance bottlenecks and simplify management. But

shifting today's server-based applications to a new platform requires a

huge level of development and expensive man hours. This expert e-

guide from SearchCloudComputing.com provides insight into what you

need to consider before investing in a private cloud strategy. Discover

a four-step plan that enables you to successfully implement a private

cloud in your IT infrastructure.

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Tips for building a private cloud-Start slowly

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E-Guide

Tips for building a private cloud-Start

slowly

Table of Contents

Answers for the private cloud curious

Private cloud strategy: A four-step plan for success

Resources from Dell and Intel




Answers for the private cloud curious

By Steve Cimino, Site Editor

Few things intrigue a forward-thinking IT department more than private cloud. No more

jam-packed server rooms, fewer performance bottlenecks; the improved economics and

enhanced practicality promised by the cloud computing revolution. That's the idea, anyway.

But of course, there is a gulf between the concept and what's real. Enterprises must

contend with legacy gear, so shifting today's server-based applications to a new platform

requires a huge level of development and expensive man hours. Even if it's a secure, more

trustworthy option than public cloud, many organizations would still safely dub private cloud

as "on the horizon."

If you are planning for a private cloud, make sure to ask a lot of fundamental questions.

What is private cloud? Who uses it? What will I get in return, and what is the risk? You need

these answers, even if you're already equipped with some variation of an in-house cloud.

What is private cloud, and who wants it?

A common question is "What's the difference between virtualization and private cloud?" The

simple answer is that private clouds feature metered usage, chargeback and on-demand

self-service, all of which take it a step beyond the common virtualized server. Moving from

virtualization to private cloud, however, is a logical progression for those intrigued by cloud

computing.

Who exactly is intrigued by cloud, at least enough to allocate precious IT budget towards it,

remains to be seen. In a TechTarget survey, nearly two-thirds of few small and medium

businesses that responded said "no thanks" when asked about their private cloud ambitions.

But a more recent survey noted that 60% of respondents claimed to have at least a partial

private cloud infrastructure in place. In actuality, it's probably a combination of the two:

Few organizations are ready to adopt a private cloud, but many have something they like to

call "private cloud" in their data centers.




What are the major private cloud risks?

While private cloud can be enticing, there are still roadblocks. Sometimes it's money. How

many organizations will drop a quarter of a million dollars for a private cloud system? Even

if private cloud can cut IT spending, that's a huge up-front investment at a time when IT

spending remains low.

Some concerns are focused on IT. Organizations have noted that application delivery in the

cloud can be technically difficult. Merging cloud and in-house processes is rarely simple, and

some work is necessary to enable the kind of automation and orchestration features that

make private cloud something special. IT shops will probably need to turn to cloud-oriented

third-party tools.

Will private offerings rule the cloud computing market?

Some say that the real future is in the hybrid cloud. Want all the benefits of public and

private cloud, combined in an extremely scalable, flexible model? Hybrid may be for you,

and some are already available for use in the real world. But it's also a lot of work to

monitor the flow of data between two different cloud systems, especially since hybrid clouds

are still immature. Unless you have a really good reason to choose hybrid cloud, it can be a

difficult decision to justify.

Until hybrid cloud technology advances, IT managers will continue to look to private cloud.

And the big IT vendors know this, with many of them already presenting private cloud as

their primary cloud offering. Dell is selling do-it-yourself in-house clouds, IBM is updating its

Tivoli software with VMware capabilities and CSC will install and integrate VCE in 10 weeks

through its BizCloud offering.

As cloud computing technology progresses, it's important for IT managers to assess where

they reside on a scale from "one" to "private cloud." Some CIOs think that private cloud's a

fad, going as far as to say "if you wait long enough, what's out will be back in again."

Others continue to voice the same old spiel about security risks. That may be what it really

comes down to: How risk averse is your enterprise? Are they willing to dive headfirst into a




new technology in the hope of reaping its benefits, or would they prefer to play it safe and

wait out this initial surge of cloud intrigue?

Either way, make sure you understand what you're getting into. If you're ready to shell out

for the latest and greatest, prepare to build the private cloud of your dreams. If you've

already got a private cloud, see if it's time to take it to the next level. And if you're still

waiting, make certain that your cloud strategy is in tip-top shape. Researching the market

and choosing the best pieces for your private offering will pay dividends when you begin

crafting a cloud computing architecture.




Private cloud strategy: A four-step plan for success

By Greg Shields

It seems like cloud is all anyone can talk about these days. But virtualization is an important

step toward developing a private cloud strategy. If you’ve already virtualized part of your IT

infrastructure, you’re probably closer to private cloud computing than you think.

Cloud’s getting all the attention these days because of the benefits of cloud computing and

the inherent limitations of virtualization. Virtualization concerns itself with the virtual

machine (VM), how well that VM performs and what can be done once a physical server is

virtualized. Private cloud computing takes a wider view, focusing not on the VM itself but

instead on the entire infrastructure in which VMs are hosted.

Why develop a private cloud strategy?

Looking past the hype, are the benefits of cloud computing worth attaining? Most assuredly.

For a solid private cloud strategy, start by embracing the concept of the virtual data center.

That approach will introduce the benefits of cloud computing -- further-optimized resources,

better ability to deliver services and improved visibility into resource usage -- to your IT

infrastructure.

So how do you get there? The following four steps can help you develop a private cloud

strategy and reap the benefits of cloud computing.

Step 1: Recognize what private cloud computing is

The IT industry has done itself a disservice by referring to this whole concept as “cloud.”

Too many people see vaporware in what is really a powerful new mindset for managing IT

workloads. At its core, private cloud computing represents the collection of assets that you

already own -- the aggregation of which creates a pool of resources. Out of that pool, you --

and your end users -- can create VMs in any configuration that your supply of resources will

support.




Self service is the most important functionality of that resource pool. You can set up a cloud

of resources, dole out a portion to specific individuals, teams or projects, and allow them to

use the resources in whatever way they see fit.

More and more self-service tools are becoming available, some from virtualization platform

vendors and others from third parties or customized from public cloud vendors.

If you define private cloud computing using VMware’s suite of management tools, it’s little

more than a cluster of hosts that have VMware High Availability and Distributed Resource

Scheduler enabled, integrated with the self-service tools mentioned above. With these

assets, along with the storage and networking that accompanies them, you’re able to

flexibly create VMs up to the level of your supply of physical resources.

So with what you’ve already got today, you’re well on your way to developing a complete

private cloud strategy.

Step 2: Recognize the private cloud computing components you don’t have

Many IT professionals don’t actively manage system performance, even after virtualizing.

But to get the benefits of cloud computing, performance monitoring should be a critical part

of your private cloud strategy.

Private cloud computing represents an abstraction of the entire data center. That

abstraction consolidates hardware into a set of numbers that measure capacity. Network,

storage, processing and memory all are abstracted into numbers that quantify resource

supply and demand.

You see evidence of this abstraction today. For example, pull up the VMware vCenter

Client’s Virtual Machines tab for a cluster and you’ll find a long list of VMs with their

processing and memory demand values. Advanced tools such as VMware vCloud Director

and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 (currently in beta) bring further

visualization of these resource values.




Because of the abstraction, it’s important to embrace performance and capacity

management at a data-center level when adopting private cloud computing. You’ll need

more tools than what your virtualization platform alone can provide, but you’ll also need an

evolved approach to IT resource management that regards your assets as contributions to a

whole.

Step 3: Cease and desist the virtual white boxing

There’s a new class of hardware now available from major manufacturers: converged

infrastructure. This hardware is modular, making it easy to add computing power, storage

or networking throughput by simply snapping in additional capacity. And manufacturers

bundle in management tools to govern this hardware for virtualization.

That handshake between hardware manufacturer and virtualization platform is the real

linchpin of private cloud computing. It’s the connection that enables admins to further

optimize how VMs consume resources in their private cloud strategy. Storage works with

servers, which communicate across networks, which combine to create a seamless

experience for virtual workloads.

These technologies are available today, but you won’t always be able to make them part of

your cloud strategy overnight. With hardware refresh cycles the way they are, it may take a

few years for this new equipment to make its way into your data center. What you can do

for now is plan for its arrival.

Here’s why: You learned a decade ago that building white-box servers from scratch might

be loads of fun, but these dissimilar servers and their configurations grow unmanageable as

the infrastructure scales upward. Unless you begin planning for converged infrastructure

now, you’re doomed to relearn a similar lesson with your entire data center, and your

homemade virtualization hardware won’t scale to meet your needs.

Step 4: Right-size services to their delivery platform

To really achieve the benefits of cloud computing, you need to get over your fears about

security and loss of control.




Private cloud computing is the first step toward a future where IT services can be flexibly

hosted wherever they make sense. Sometimes it makes sense to host those services in your

local data center. Other times, it makes more sense to let someone else do the hosting in a

public cloud.

Bridging these two methods are an evolving series of technologies that secure the

connection, protect the information and create the hybrid cloud experience. Both your cloud

services vendor and your virtualization platform vendor can now share with you the current

and future vision for these products, because they are today -- finally -- products that you

can actually see and feel.

Private cloud computing: Closer than you think

Not long ago, there was the notion that a thin wafer of plastic could never be a secure

mechanism for purchasing goods and services. The credit card, with little more than a series

of numbers and a magnetic strip, was a commerce vehicle that people weren’t ready to

trust.

Today, we have a level of trust that’s become so engrained we don’t think twice when we

purchase something. It’s a perfect metaphor for the evolution of trust we’re seeing in IT

today. Private cloud computing is one part of that trust, and its bigger brother, public cloud

computing, isn’t far behind.




Resources from Dell and Intel

An Enterprise Private Cloud Architecture and Implementation Roadmap

Presentation Transcript: SMB Server School: Considerations for Integrating

Windows Server into a Cloud Computing Environment

Layered Tech sees 22% performance increase by building new infrastructure using

Dell servers that takes managed hosting and cloud services to a new level

About Dell and Intel

Dell and Intel have worked together for years to bring you end-to-end solutions that

improve business productivity, increase performance and reduce your total cost of

ownership (TCO) across the enterprise.

http://www.bitpipe.com/resource/1302099696_283





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E-Guide Tips for Building a Private Cloud Start Slowly