Skip to main content

Private Cloud Journey...

Private Cloud is a secure, stable, scalable and simple shared services model deployed within enterprise network boundary adhering to cloud computing principles.

Primary Goal of Migration to Private Cloud is Seamless transfer of Application Services from Current Data Center to the new facilities built using Shared Services Architecture for Private cloud.

AppsCloud – A Methodology for migrating to Private Cloud

The Emphasis of this methodology is on:

  • Understanding application workload Behavior
  • Ensure Security
  • Leverage technology innovations
  • Adherence to Cloud Computing Principles

The Goal is to de-risk the datacenter migration, reduce disruption due to change and simplify the path to Private cloud adoption.

Understanding Application Workloads

Application Infrastructure in a large organization is inherently difficult to comprehend as a single entity due to diversity of Application workloads (Email, Database, Data warehousing, ERP, Analytics etc). Deployment complexity coupled with primary and multi-level interdependencies, the resulting emergent behavior presents an even greater challenge in understanding.

Data Center Migration Methodology

The Conventional Approach of Datacenter Migration

  1. Rebuild the Physical, Infrastructure
  2. Deploy applications,
  3. Perform Data migration
  4. Test Application level integrity and Scalability
  5. Cut-over / Go live

This Approach is ridden with risks, uncertainties and a fairly long re-deployment cycle inhabiting the move to Private cloud.

Most of the Unix environment and some mission critical Windows servers (Oracle Database other business critical apps) are required to be migrated in the above approach.

The Windows workloads are more amenable to Virtualization/Private Cloud and Unix workloads are being rapidly converted to various supported variants of Linux for being virtualization friendly.

The several core technology innovations driving this transformation increasing adoption of Private Cloud by enabling features such as redundancy, multi-tenancy and high availability. These features help to realize the shared services architecture and to de-risk the transformation

Core technologies enabling the Private Cloud

The Popular tools and Core technologies utilized in realizing the goals of the Private architecture are:

  • Service Orchestration
  • Self-Service Portals
  • Monitoring/Management and Reporting Platforms
  • Master Data Management (CMDB/Asset/Inventory management)
  • VMware Fault Tolerance
  • VMware HA
  • vCenter Heartbeat
  • vMotion
  • Storage vMotion
  • vShield Manager built-in backup
  • EtherChannel
  • vPC
  • Device/Link Redundancy
  • UCS Dual Fabric Redundancy

Migrating to Private Cloud

The Most important drivers to Private Cloud migration is a need for optimizing the cost, improving manageability, increasing scalability and ensuring security. Moving from discrete server infrastructure to a virtualized share services model seems to meet most of the Cloud compute objectives of pay-per-use/pay-as-you-grow, on-demand scalability and easier management.

The key to developing a robust Private Cloud design is clearly defining the requirements and applying a proven methodology and design principles.

Introducing the key requirements for secure, stable, scalable and simple shared services Private Cloud architecture...

The security requirements for Private Cloud defined in terms of Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability pillars for the Shared services Architecture:

Isolation

Isolation or Secure Separation ensures meeting Confidentiality objective where one application/tenant does not have access to another application/tenant's resources, such as virtual machine (VM), network bandwidth, and storage. Each tenant must be securely separated using techniques such as access control, VLAN segmentation, and (If possible) virtual storage controllers. Also, each layer has its own means of enforcing policies that help reinforce the policies of the adjacent layers.

Service Assurance

Integrity of the environment is maintained by Service Assurance techniques. Service Quality is ensured with isolated compute, network, and storage in concert with SLA driven service delivery, performance monitoring and incident management during both steady state and non-steady state. For example, the network can provide each tenant with a certain bandwidth guarantee using Quality of Service (QoS), resource pools within VMware help balance and guarantee CPU and memory resources, while Hitach with its active-active architecture can balance resource contention across storage volumes.

High Availability

The focus on High Availability is reflected in the design of infrastructure to meet the expectation of compute, network, and storage to always be available even in the event of failure. Like the Isolation/Secure Separation pillar, each layer has its own manner of providing a high availability configuration that works seamlessly with adjacent layers.

Stable and Consistent Management

Technology innovations at the platform level are required to consistently manage, rapidly provision resources with clear visibility into resource availability. In some of our smaller deployments in its current form, each layer is managed by vCenter, UCS Manager, Nagios/Munin, Cisco Data Center Network Manager and Hitachi Management tools, respectively. We are collecting analyzing information from these tools to making capacity planning and provisioning decisions.

Need for Data center Intelligence for Private Cloud

As the environment expands in thousands of workloads and spanning multiple data centers capacity planning tools such as VMware capacity planner fall short in assessing the big picture requirements such as Network Topology, Non-IT resources (Power/HVAC) optimization, Business Continuity and Workload distribution.

There is a need for Data Center Intelligence tools such as Tideway(BMC) and Cirba to assist in decision making process. These data center intelligence products gather information by automated discovery processes and integration into the management /monitoring tools. They connect to systems of Record such a Asset management Database/ CMDB , ERP and CRM systems and correlate the northbound business data with the southbound intelligence on infrastructure to assist in quick and informed decision making

Data Center Migration techniques for Private Cloud

A Data Center Migration can leverage industry standard Datacenter intelligence and virtualization tools and methodologies for Capacity planning, Server Consolidation and Physical to Virtual conversion. This approach helps to de-risk the application redeployment complexity and quicken migration process to Private Cloud

Simple Datacenter Migration Approach for Private Cloud

1. Capacity Planning using Cirba, Tideway or VMware capacity planner

2. Physical to Virtual conversion using VMWARE converter

3. Multi-site Cluster with Live Migration - using Symantec/VCS and/or VMware SRM

Path to Cloud – Road Ahead

Virtualization ensures portability of the application infrastructure, the easy migration across datacenters.

The benefits can be realized with the advances in Server, Access and Virtualization Technologies.

Cisco is leading the pack by creating a Transparent Virtualized Shared Services Environment across multiple datacenters(Cisco UCS/Nexus), Other Server vendors(IBM/HP/Dell etc) are building Cloud-in-a-box solution with Clustered Servers(infiniband/10g Ethernet) and Storage, Storage Vendors (EMC/Netapp/Hitachi/HP) provide multi-tenant storage frameworks with remote replication capability, Boutique appliances are focusing on the other critical pieces of the puzzle such as Security(Hytrust/RSA), WAN optimization(Riverbed/Cisco WaaS) and Scalability(F5/Citrix)

These developments are paving way for easier and more affordable path to Private Cloud.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

ForeThought -- Global directory service for the Digital world

ForeThought Real world is full of people. We have phone books,yellow pages, maps and postal addresses to get to them. Real world is governed by laws, rules and norms. Digital world is full of devices and devices only(severs, desktops, appliances, gadgets etc..) In the digital world, We have DNS, IP Addresses/SMTP mail address, Routers/gateways. All of these methods are still rudimentery to lookup and locate attributes, features and functions of devices. Most devices serve a useful purpose. some of them are misused to inflict pain and damage in the digital world. Clear knowledge attributes, features and functions of devices can hel in reducing the risk and help us in responding to misuse of these devices. An idea of a Global Directory Service -- for locating Devices worldwide....These devices are attributed to People, Resources and Services.... This type of service can help in Asset tracking, Monitoring, Communications, Incident response, forensics and Da...

Information Infrastructure for Human Advancement - Vedic thought

Human Advancement is a far-cry when we are living in a world where human existence is threatened by man-made vulnerabilities. Human existence is threatened by Global warming - Natural disasters Health Crisis - Drinking water, Biodiversity/Genetically Modified Food, Virus Outbreaks Materials Crisis - Availability of Petroleum/Rare-earth for EV's (Lithium/Dyspersium) Security Crisis - Cyber Security/Data Breaches Global Political/Economic environment – Sanctions/Tariffs Purpose and Motivation Purpose of this conversation is to discuss the application of emerging technologies in information infrastructure for improving resilience of the human race and aspire for human advancement. This requires understanding key concepts of AI/Deep learning/Machine Learning, Nueromorphic computing and Pervasive computing in the context of  human interactions. There is need for a Multi-disciplinary approach involving Non-STEM and STEM(Science, Technology, Engineering and Math)...

Living a dream...five years of moving from services to lasting products.

RCV innovations has transformed from a training and consulting outfit to product based services organization.  The last five years had a see-saw effect on our existence as a viable business. We cannot forget the contributions of our mentors, early patrons and partners- Niranjan, Brad, Rakesh,Dorothy, Avik, Supriya, Sridhar, Bhaskar, Jaipal, Kishan, Joseph, Goutam, Mishra and many others. I am deeply moved by the faith some of our new customers have placed on us by adopting VAMANiT appliances for their business needs. Our team is grateful for the opportunity to serve you to the best of our ability. I am humbled by the commitment and excitement the team has shown in executing our new Nested Data center strategy. The pace at which we have trained ourselves in cutting-edge VMware vSAN and NSX technologies is noteworthy.  We are applying our VMware knowledge to Strategic and Mission critical applications by integrating energy efficient purpose built VAMANiT Nested Data ...