• What are the key design characteristics for IaaS clouds? • What are some of the key IaaS cloud patterns that emerge from these choices? • What fundamental capabilities are impacted by these decisions? • How do you use this knowledge to better construct a portfolio of IaaS cloud services best suited to your portfolio of applications?

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John.Treadway@cloudtp.com / Senior Vice President / @cloudbzz / May 6, 2013
Understanding IaaS
Requirements, Design & Performance

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What are the key design characteristics for IaaS clouds?
What are some of the key IaaS cloud patterns that emerge from
these choices?
What fundamental capabilities are impacted by these
decisions?
How do you use this knowledge to better construct a portfolio
of IaaS cloud services best suited to your portfolio of
applications?
Agenda

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Horses for Courses
Would you bet on a horse…
without knowing how it
runs on today’s course?
Grass? Dirt? Muddy? Dry? Long? Short?

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Would you bet on a cloud if you didn’t know how it’s built?

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• Performance
• Elasticity
• Security
• Reliability
• Interoperability & Portability
• And more…
Clouds Can Vary Significantly In Terms of…
Clouds have their own unique fingerprints…

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What’s In a Cloud?

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The Choices They Make Affects The Behavior of your Apps
• Many smaller vs. fewer larger servers?
• How much memory per server/blade?
• What is my network topology?,
• How fast is my network? 1G, 10G, 40G
• How is QoS managed? Is it managed?
• Where is storage – Local? SAN? Both?
• What type of storage – iSCSI? SATA?
SSD?
• What is the redundancy that is in the
infrastructure?
• What high-availability functionality is
resident in the cloud?

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Does Your Chosen Cloud Have a Noisy Neighbor Issue?
Contention happens…
… How is it managed?
Can you pay for lower
resource contention at the
network, storage
(LUN), CPU or RAM level?
Is your cloud architected
to provide maximum
through-put with advance
technologies such as
Infiniband and SSDs?

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Is your cloud more of a PaaS? If so, does that limit you?
• A PaaS can be more
prescriptive
– OpenShift for JBOSS vs. Cloud
Foundry for Tomcat
• Do you use the PaaS features
being layered onto IaaS
environments?
– RDS, SQS, Elastic Beanstalk
(Tomcat – not WebLogic),

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Three Cloud Design Patterns (of many)
Advanced, highly
elastic, open
technologies,
commodity gear
So-called “Enterprise
Clouds” – traditional
tools, approaches, and
vendor gear du jour
High-performance
clouds with state-of-
the-art technology
• Limited redundancy – 1
NIC, power supply, etc.
• HA in the application
• All custs/ workloads get
same QoS
• Developer-centric
• PaaS features
• Dual NIC, power, etc.
• HA in the hypervisor
and middleware
• Possible QoS configs for
custs and workloads
• IT operations-centric
• High-performance
hardware
• SSDs, Infiniband, etc.
• Dual NIC, power, etc.
• HA in the hypervisor
and middleware
• Application-centric

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What is impact of fast storage coupled with fast networks?
Cloud 1
Cloud 2
Cloud 3
Cloud 1
Cloud 2
Cloud 3

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How does a faster network help you?
Cloud 1
Cloud 2
Cloud 3
Cloud 1
Cloud 2
Cloud 3

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• Where are their data centers?
• How do they handle security and certifications?
• What about SLAs?
• Can you connect your data center to theirs on an MPLS circuit?
• What types of tools do they provide for management and
administration?
• Is their cloud supported by leading tools and service providers?
• Pricing and support options?
• What’s in their service catalog?
• How much work will it be to get your applications running on
their cloud?
There’s so much more to evaluate beyond technical design…

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Example public PaaS / IaaS provider high-level comparison*
Technical Requirements Amazon
Google App
Engine
Verizon
Terremark
CenturyLink
Savvis
Microsoft
Azure
Global Deployments
Webscale, Total Capacity
Autoscaling, Dynamic Allocation of
Compute and Storage
Cloud Management Tools
Security Certifications
Connectivity to Legacy Systems
Completeness of Solution (how much
still has to be built?)
Terremark
Not ready Fully ready
*Not actual ratings. Data not
intended for use in cloud
vendor evaluations.

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As with betting on horses, handicapping your cloud
based on detailed requirements can give you the
edge you need
Handicapping clouds takes analysis

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In other words, do your research before you bet on a cloud…

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… and maybe you can be a cloud WINNER too!

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Ask by email / John.Treadway@cloudtp.com / www.cloudtp.com
Questions?