Key messages:
When account is new to cloud computing, it is best to set expectations that automation occurs within steps.
Step #1 – automate infrastructure
Designed for IT operations/administrators, it delivers IT efficiency and reduced cap and opex costs
Customer benefits:
Delivers consistency --- infrastructure instances are stood up right the first time, every time
Team enablement
Ops review template for internal & external communications effectively
Per Forrester, cloud adoption has really grown over the past year with the technology becoming a formal part of IT’s portfolio. This means that cloud is poised to create a major impact on how companies build, deliver and manage IT services over the next five years.
What companies are DOING in the cloud is changing as well. Once used for test and dev, cloud has moved into the deployment of real business critical applications.
While developers within companies are using public clouds, the majority of corporations show a strong preference for private clouds first to utilize the equipment they already own or a greenfield platform, like a converged infrastructure that is purchased to support a specific cloud project.
Building a cloud is all about aligning a number of layers varying from hardware to software to business practices, processes and procedures.
At the lowest level lies the infrastructure be it physical or virtual
The next layer up consists of the tool that manage the infrastructure, what is usually referred too as element or domain managers (such as VMware vSphere, or Openstack)
Next we need a layer that will provide automation and orchestration of the various functions that will support the dynamic and elastic nature of a Cloud
The final and fourth layer is that of services that are offered to the Cloud consumers whether their role is technical or business related.
IAC is a solution that utilizes physical and virtual resources, interfacing with infrastructure management systems to facilitate the orchestration and automation of cloud related services.
Enable organizations to deliver a disciplined and structured automation solution to manage cloud environments
Accommodate complex customer’s technical and business requirements offering end users a single interface for requesting a comprehensive array of services
Accelerate and expand cloud adoption
Lower cost of operating via Open Source solutions
Standardize and simplify provisioning, configuration, troubleshooting and lifecycle management of your cloud infrastructure
As customer mature beyond basic virtual machine provisioning, Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud (Cisco IAC) delivers the critical foundational layer for deploying and managing cloud-based computing in a holistic and unified manner.
Cisco IAC provides the essential automated management and orchestration that enables organizations to control and manage cloud-based services transparently throughout their lifecycle. Cisco IAC can cover a diverse range of cloud deployments and is a flexible solution that can scale from initial cloud deployments to large-scale enterprise-wide initiatives to deliver maximum value to customers.
Cisco IAC is the point from which organizations can burst into hybrid cloud computing as well as multi-hypervisor platforms. Solution accelerators are community-based solutions that extend the management capability of Cisco IAC. The most popular is the multi-cloud solution accelerator which allows Cisco IAC to manage vCloud Director, Amazon EC2 and OpenStack.
Cisco UCS Director has begun the integration process with Cisco IAC to deliver the ability to recognize UCS Director as a node on the multi-cloud accelerator and provision virtual machines just as managing Amazon EC2. Additionally, customers can provision physical storage into their existing virtual data centers and associate the file store as appropriate.
Via IAC, you’ll be able to select (and allow users to select) capabilities that are delivered through UCS Director with the single touch in IAC. IAC requests an asset from UCS Director and UCS Director does the configuration of, say, a FlexPod
World-class service portal and service catalogue that creates a standardized set of services to the “end-users”
Integrates cloud connectors to integrate with public/hybrid clouds and the Nexus 1000V InterCloud to manage the overall solution holistically.
Integrate via API with other management platforms so you can leverage other system management that you have
Register Platform Elements and selectively make available for ordering (resources, networks, images)
Populate selection lists for better user experience during administration
Populate selection lists for user orders applying RBAC
Render dashboards for resource usage and availability at provider and tenant level
Audit and repair usage recorded in service items (e.g., reconcile changes made outside of service offerings)
Import items provisioned outside of service offerings, such as pre-existing virtual machines
Tenant is simply another name for Customer
Cloud provider (Enterprise or Service Provider) have multiple “customers” with respective organizations (users) that are part of a shared of a dedicated infrastructure
A cloud provider (Enterprise or Service Provider) will have multiple “customers,” i.e. multiple tenants, and their respective organizations (and users) could be part of a shared or a dedicated infrastructure.
In Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud 4.0, no tenant can determine the existence of any other tenant; tenants may only see members of their own tenancy (users and roles).
Tenants are authenticated and authorized to access their data, no tenant can access the data of any other tenant, including:
Data in motion (network)
Data at rest (storage)
Data in memory (compute)
A Tenant in IAC represents an enterprise, a corporation, a company.
Each tenant will probably consist of multiple organizations, representing a different business function with their company, i.e. an Organization, such as Finance, or Engineering. A Tenant may create multiple organizations.
The tenant decides whether its organizations will consume from a pool of shared or dedicated resources. These are represented in IAC as Virtual Data Centers. Each tenant organization can request multiple VDCs.
Use accounts to model tenants or cross-team projects for demand management and planning.
Agreements and sub-agreements support fine grained resource allocation under an account (quota)
Quota can be defined against Count of Service Item or a numeric Service Item attribute, e.g. number of virtual CPUs.
Each Quota policy is defined against a particular Account.
Once you introduce a service item with Quota policy, you need to follow the Agreement setup instructions to define Agreement Template and Agreement.
The Quota quantity settings for an Account is maintained in the Agreement.