Learn key considerations about building a private or hybrid cloud, including selecting hardware, cloud infrastructure software, hosting vendors, systems integrators, and reference architectures.

1. Building Blocks for Private and
Hybrid Clouds
Brian Adler
Sr. Professional Services Architect, RightScale
June 13, 2012

2. 2#
Agenda
• Definitions and Terminology
• Infrastructure Evolution
• Private Cloud Key Considerations
• Hybrid Clouds – Different things to different people
• Use Cases for Private and Hybrid Clouds
• Best Practices for Private/Hybrid Cloud Design and
Implementation
• Design Considerations
• Hardware Consideration
• Software Considerations
• Implementation
• Management
• Conclusion/Q&A
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3. 3#
Definitions and Terminology
• Virtualization (server)
• Division of one physical server into multiple isolated virtual environments
• Private Cloud
• A collection of compute, storage, and network resources for a single
tenant that are accessed programmatically via an API endpoint.
• Public Cloud
• A similar set of resources that is multi-tenant and is provided by a cloud
vendor with access via an API endpoint.
• Multi-Cloud
• An environment that spans two or more separate clouds, be they both
public, both private, or one (or more) of each.
• Hybrid Cloud
• An environment that spans one or more public clouds as well as one or
more private clouds.
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4. 4#
Infrastructure Evolution
• Old school Datacenters
• Racks of physical nodes, one application per node
• It’s all we knew, it worked, and it was fine.
• Virtualization – The Early Years
• Capability of a node outgrew the needs of any single application
• Lots of idle resources on each node
• Virtualization provided the ability to have a many-to-one (servers
per node) relationship
• This was better
• Cloudification (Virtualization grows up)
• Automated provisioning and management via an API appears
• This is much, much better
Talk with the Experts.

5. 5#
Private Cloud Key Considerations
• Workload and Infrastructure Interaction
• Applications have different resource needs
• Choose the right fit for your application and your infrastructure
• Security
• Data may be contained within the private cloud, thus allowing for stricter
security compliance
• Latency
• Consumers of the private cloud resources are generally “closer” to the
private cloud, which reduces latency
• User Experience
• Related to latency, end user experience is enhanced due to proximity to
resources.
• Cost
• OPEX is generally reduced. (CAPEX is another story )
Talk with the Experts.

6. 6#
Hybrid Clouds
• What if application outgrows the private cloud?
• Common desire is for “cloud-bursting”
• When private cloud resources are exhausted, a server tier expands into
the public cloud to tap into the “infinite” resources
• Considerations:
• Security – public Internet is traversed
• Latency – traversal of public Internet involves the Great Unknown
• Cost – bandwidth charges for public Internet traversal
• Complexity – setting up a secure environment is not a trivial task
• More common use case is multiple clouds in an organization,
with multiple applications, and with each application contained
entirely within a single cloud.
Talk with the Experts.

7. 7#
Hybrid Cloud Bursting
PUBLIC
INTERNET
LOAD BALANCERS
APP SERVERS APP SERVERS
MASTER DATABASE
SLAVE DATABASE
OBJECT STORAGE
PRIVATE CLOUD PUBLIC OR PRIVATE CLOUD
Cloud Bursting
Talk with the Experts.

8. 8#
Use Cases
• Self-Service IT Portal (“IT Vending Machine”)
• Test/Dev environment
• Users select one of several preconfigured tech stacks
• “Siloed” environments
• Scalable Applications with Uncertain Demand
• Public cloud used as “proving ground” for new applications
• If applications fail, they are allowed to run their course in the public cloud
until they are end-of-lifed
• If an application gains traction, it remains in the public cloud during its
growth phase
• When stability of workload is reached, the application is transitioned into
the private cloud
Talk with the Experts.

9. 9#
Use Cases
• Disaster Recovery (DR)
• Production environment in one cloud
• DR environment in a second cloud
• Most common configuration is the “Warm DR” scenario
• Replicating slave in a second cloud
• All other servers in non-operational state
• Failure of production environment requires promotion of slave to master, launching of “standby”
servers, and DNS reassignment
Talk with the Experts.

10. 10#
Design Considerations
• Location of Physical Hardware
• On-premise
• Availability considerations (power, cooling, networking, etc.)
• Hosted or Colocation facility
• Accessibility of hardware for additions and/or modification
• Latency to end users
• Security
• Availability and Redundancy Configuration
• Easiest configuration (single zone, single region, single API endpoint)
does not promote high availability
• Outage of API endpoint renders entire cloud unavailable
• Power issues affect entire pool of resources
• High Availability of cloud resources requires more complex configurations
• Multiple zones, multiple regions (if possible/practical)
• Multiple API endpoints
• Redundant and segregated power and networking
Talk with the Experts.

11. 11#
Design Considerations/Options
Simple Configuration
HA Configuration
No HA or Redundancy
Talk with the Experts.

12. 12#
Design Considerations
• Intended Workloads and Use Cases
• Does the application require high availability or is it tolerant of interruptions
of service?
• User-facing will most likely require HA.
• Batch processing tasks may not.
• Is flexibility of the infrastructure required for test-beds and/or proof-of-
concepts?
• Potential topologies and hardware options will be affected/limited
• Does the application require (or greatly benefit from) high performance
CPUs?
• Does the application have high IOPS demands?
• Are low-latency interconnects required?
Talk with the Experts.

13. 13#
Hardware Considerations
• Compute
• Commodity
• Allows for easy addition of capacity
• Easy swap-out of failed components
• High end/specialized
• May be required for intended workloads
• Limits available options
• Increases costs
• Complicates maintenance
• Networking
• Driven by topology, latency demands, and price
• Some cloud infrastructure software offerings have support for network
hardware devices (load balancers in particular)
• Storage
• Cost vs. Performance (commodity? SSD?, etc.)
Talk with the Experts.

14. 14#
Software Considerations
• Cloud Infrastructure Software
• CloudStack, OpenStack, Eucalyptus, etc.
• Open source vs. commercial
• Dictates/influences other decisions regarding cloud implementation
• Access to resources
• Web interface
• API
• Cloud Management Software
• Abstracts underlying details of the cloud infrastructure offerings
• Presents consistent interface to the available resources regardless of the
underlying infrastructure provider
• Provides a cloud-portable solution
• Provides orchestration tools for provisioning and management
Talk with the Experts.

15. 15#
Implementation Process
• Hardware Procurement
• Pre-existing or new?
• Pre-existing limits ability to tailor infrastructure to workloads
• Cloud Infrastructure Software
• This decision will dictate/limit many future decisions
• Research options, and choose wisely!
• Cloud Topology
• Zones, regions, storage allocation, HA considerations, etc.
• Build or Buy
• Use in-house resources if expertise exists
• Third-party resources
• Build using existing resources
• Build using new preconfigured hardware
Talk with the Experts.

16. 16#
Management Process
• Compatibility
• Avoid vendor lock-in at IaaS level, hypervisor level, cloud infrastructure
software level
• Unified Control/Security
• “Single pane of glass” for user access, keys and credentials, etc.
• On-Demand, Self-Service Provisioning
• Allow users to access resources without administrative intervention
• Focus on Applications
• Core competency is in application development, so remove yourself from
image management, automation, provisioning, etc.
Talk with the Experts.

17. 17#
Summary/Conclusions
• Private (and therefore hybrid) clouds were originally thought of
as an academic exercise or science project
• Recent advances (particularly in cloud infrastructure software)
have shown private and hybrid clouds to be viable IT delivery
models
• Many considerations come into play
• Design
• Hardware
• Software
• Implementation Details
• No “one size fits all”
• Do your research. Find the right fit.
Talk with the Experts.

18. Questions?
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