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Building a Cloud Computing Lab

Cloud adopters should consider the following key elements when implementing Cloud service delivery frameworks:

  • Leverage existing infrastructure within the prospective Cloud providers.
  • Use a graduated adoption from semi-automated to fully automated processes.
  • Balance between customization and standardization while making an effort to have differentiated services.

In order to help cloud adopters realize the value of this approach, It is better to walk the talk....A Cloud Lab can be created and evolved in the same manner as a Production Cloud deployment.

As a Physical Manifestion of a cloud, there are three critical components

  1. Core Network and Shared Data Center
  2. Workload Execution Engines
  3. Resource Pool Management, Securty, SLA Analytics and Automation Infrastructure (on-going development/enhancement roadmap)

A Practical Deployment plan for

Core Data Center Network Services is as follows:

  • Core Network Services such as CRS, Nexus 7k
  • Cat 6k Services complex with Service blades for Firewall/Loadbalancers/SSL Accelaration/Wide Area Accelaration etc),
  • Storage-as-a-service(MDS with EMC VMAX-FC, Clariion-iSCSI, EMC-DataDomain(VTL/Dedup), may be even NetApp-NAS)

The end result is a creation and demonstration of Multi-Tenant PaaS SKU's for Routing/VRF, Firewall Contexts, Storage, Backup and ACE/WaaS contexts to supplement the core IaaS SKU's

Workload Execution Engines:

  • A VCE - vBlock 1(VMWARE, UCS B-Series + EMC Clarrion)
  • Secure Multi Tenancy(Microsoft, UCS-C series + 5k +Netapp) - Servers Storage and Access Network
  • This can complemented with Sample Workloads such as Unified Messaging/Collaboration(MS-Exchange/Cisco Unity/Call Manager/Sharepoint/Webex), ERP (SAP/Oracle) and VDI (each one taken as mini-deployment to simulate a customer on the Cloud)

The end goal is Creation and Demonstration of Core IaaS SKU's for Compute, Storage and Application Bundles(Basic SaaS SKU's)

Resource Pool Management, Security, SLA Analytics and Automation Infrastructure:

  • There is a need to create both in-band patform with Web/ReST based tools and out-of-band platforms with SNMP/IPMI and Native Command Line Interfaces for enhanced security and control of Below-the-line Activities.
  • Profile and Identity Services - LDAP-Active Directory/Raduis/Profile Server(SPML) are the key to tie all applications/infrastructure elements together with Access Control and Authentication.
  • The Components for Automation Platform are Tidal Enteprise Orchastrator for Service Orchestration and System-wide Semi-Automatic Job Execution and Tracking using Business Support Portal Front-end
  • XMPP based Presense service for Assessing Capacity/Performance and Availability of to existing Resource Pools and managment of Resource Pools using native tools like VMWARE Vcenter, EMC Control Center and UCS manager
  • Master Data Managment of the Entire Environment is Maintained in BMC CMDB with Business Support portal to Enable Semi-Automatic Tasks (Moves/Adds/Changes)
  • The Service Catalog Management and simpler BSS functions are handled using Open Source/Sify developed tools jBilling/NMS/Helpdesk
  • SLA Analytics and Reporting Platform using Crystal Reports(now from SAP)
  • Log Consolidation using SPLUNK and Profile Services

This environment needs to drive home the Completeness of Vison, Strategy and Execution to meet the Customer objectives of:

  • Security
  • Compliance
  • On-demand services / increased customer stickiness
  • Reduced TCO
  • Time-to-provision

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