Hybrid Clouds & Mini Pods The Business Case Dr. Phil Richards discusses how Loughborough University created mini data center "pods" (DDUDs) to solve local problems more cost effectively than building a new centralized data center. He explains how this hybrid cloud model could help the higher education sector in the UK save over £100 million annually by leveraging industrial-scale cloud resources through a high-speed network like Janet. However, barriers remain as some cloud providers may not be fully passing on the economies of scale to customers. Janet Brokerage aims to increase price transparency and competition to help educational institutions realize even greater cost savings through hybrid cloud solutions.

1. Hybrid Clouds & Mini Pods
The Business Case
Janet Cloud Conference
9 February 2012
Dr Phil Richards
Director of IT, Loughborough University

2. Overview
 The local problems we were trying to solve
 How we did it
 The wider problem our sector wants to solve
 The barriers to this
 Can Janet brokerage help break through them?

3. The local problems we were trying to solve
Distributed Data-centres
Under Desks (DDUDs)

4. Options
i2012 network i2012 data centre i2012 voice Totals
Gold: full core upgrade, Gold: green, virtualised Gold: VoIP core, full Gold:
resilient EMMAN „pod-based‟ data centre with migration to VoIP
connection to cloud additional management
services, full edge tools
replacement, Wi-Fi
everywhere for student
experience
Silver: Some risk of M25 Silver: green, virtualised Silver: as gold, but West Silver:
effect, single point of failure „pod-based‟ data centre with Park remains on legacy
in EMMAN connection for minimal management tools analogue phone system
cloud services, close to full
edge replacement, Wi-Fi
everywhere
Bronze: Minimal core and [Bronze: just a single pod, [Bronze: use ‘soft phone’ [Bronze: ]
edge replacements, M25 with no resilience] on PC instead of handset]
effect, no Wi-Fi everywhere

5. Capital spend benchmarking
University Network Data Centre Phones
Lboro gold
University P
University Q
University R
University S
University T
University U
Universities V, W, X, Y and Z undertaking similar exercise

6. Business Case
(joint with Finance)

7. Holywell Park mini-pod
avoiding expensive new build

8. Resilient local cloud architecture
for high availability
Mini pod 1 Mini pod 2

9. De-risking the cloud and avoiding major build:
Loughborough’s Hybrid Cloud
‘Fairly green’ local cloud
Avoid refurb Co-operative Cloud
Save £Ms
+
OJEU competitive
dialogue for buy-in
2 x ‘mini-pods’
Logicalis MPC Remote cloud
via

10. The wider problem our sector
is trying to solve
 Sector: UK Higher Education
 Save £100Ms from £23Bn UK HE turnover
 ~ 2% spent on servers and storage = £460M
 Can we save 50% of £460M?

11. HP internal consolidation project
 Create „private cloud‟
 Data centres: 85 6 (3 x pairs)
 Applications 6000 3000
 Investment: $100Ms to create own Janet
 Saving: $1Bn per annum revenue
 (Source: eweek.com)
 Lesson: „industrial scale‟ key to savings

12. What is ‘industrial scale’?
“… construction of extremely large-
scale, commodity-computer data
centres at low-cost locations…
uncovered the factors of 5 to 7
decrease in cost of electricity,
bandwidth, operations, software and
hardware at these very large
economies of scale.”
Armburst, Armando Fox et al.,
Above the Clouds, Berkeley

13. Industrial-scale US data centres (sample)
Owner Location Square feet
Microsoft Chicago, Illinois 700,000
Apple Maiden, North Carolina 500,000
Google Lenoir, North Carolina 477,000
Facebook Prineville, Oregon 307,000
IBM Boulder, Colerado 300,000
HP Colerado 250,000
Amazon Ashburn, Virginia 180,000
Source: Greenpeace report „How dirty is your data?‟, April 2011

14. Industrial-scale European data centres
Owner Location Square feet
Amazon Dublin, Ireland 240,000
Google Hamina, Finland N/K
HP Wynyard, UK 305,000
IBM Dublin, Ireland N/K
Microsoft Dublin, Ireland 303,000
Source: Greenpeace report „How dirty is your data?‟, April 2011
Others
Eduserv Swindon, UK 37,000
Logicalis UK Slough, UK 10,000

15. Are cloud service providers passing
on economies of scale to customers?
 Remote private and public cloud prices 2x to 3x
more expensive than local hosting in our mini-
pods
 Is it because of secure multi-tenant issues?
 Or because we don‟t have a high-speed
distribution network?
 Or are we being over-charged?

16. Secure Multi-Tenancy Built on FlexPod
Layer on or enable software
 NetApp MultiStore and FlexShare
 Security hardening
 Cisco Nexus® 1000V Series
 Cisco® SAFE architecture
Enable capabilities
 Multi-tenancy and secure separation
 Service availability and DR
 Service management
Enhanced Secure  Service assurance
Muli-Tenancy (SMT)
 Workload isolation and mobility
Cisco Validated Design
released October 2010
16

17. Where are suppliers angling?
I want Supplier offers Comment
Utility IaaS from Proprietary Difficult exit strategy, expensive initial
industrial data SaaS/PaaS system integration/consultancy,
centre with pricing based on local hosting+,
standards and suppliers don‟t need to work hard to
hybrid cloud retain my business – strong lock-in
„exit strategy‟
Single PSN Multiple PSNs At least one expensive solution per
public sector vertical
 PSN counter example – Wales PSBA, grew out of Janet
www.psba.org.uk – could more be made of this model in England?
 Is it part of our role as public sector IT leaders to allow ourselves to
spend much more than we need in this way?

18. JANET – our ‘national grid’ for hybrid cloud
Remote industrial Remote industrial
data centre 1 data centre 2
University or College
local clouds

19. Hybrid cloud-bursting via Janet:
a national first (July 2011)

20. Janet Brokerage
What I would like to see:
 Fast Janet connectivity
 Like-for-like price transparency
 Real competition

21. Summary
 We want to run virtual servers and storage cheaper in the
cloud than local
 Evidence shows this is achievable
 Large service vendors prefer to focus on (currently) more
profitable areas…
 Has UK HE and the public sector got the nouse to resolve?
 Should UK HE lead on this, on the back of Janet, for national
public sector benefit?
 HE ability to take risks
 HE retention of IT domain expertise
 Janet network and Janet Brokerage right at the centre of this