Looking at Virtualization and Cloud Computing

Looking at Virtualization and Cloud Computing

Most of the time I work on references as how business can be improve and going into the right direction, for that reason I want to pick on the undecided businesses that can find a clear path in technology, nor have the direction being dictated from their upper management – planning departments and the inherences of the IT departments.

The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women's fashion. Maybe I'm an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It's complete gibberish. It's insane. When is this idiocy going to stop? We'll make cloud computing announcements. I'm not going to fight this thing. But I don't understand what we would do differently in the light of cloud.
Larry Ellison - CEO - Oracle Corporation

Source Quote: 15 Memorable Cloud Computing Quotes ~ Techno-Pulse

In order to find a consultative way is first to understand what’s the relationship between cloud computing and virtualization? I might ask myself what is that people understand in those aspects.  Many people believe that cloud computing requires server or desktop virtualization. But does it? I will be presenting here different views as using virtualization without cloud computing, cloud computing without virtualization, and how can be both use together. In order to present the differences we need to evaluate some cases for it and their most probably limitations.

Let’s start with our first and most common scenario, Virtualization without cloud computing.

A virtualization project typically starts with servers virtualization, as it is usually the easiest to virtualize and provides the greatest ROI and this is what most people agrees virtualization does.

According to Gartner, approximately 60 percent of all servers today are virtualized. While this is tru in the US, many other countries the percentages are lower.

As a daily operations in an IT Departments and Systems planning there are many things that can be virtualized to the Business needs. Both networking and storage are virtualized. Most network functions can be virtualized as well such as switching, routing and load balancing. It can also include firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention systems, antivirus management and more. Often these services are combining with software to automate the various elements of the network, the physical elements and the virtual components.

Many current providers of services  such as EMC use software defined storage that permits the idea of using commodity storage devises, which regular are on physical servers, and virtualized the access to them so the local storage inside each server gets pooled together and becomes visible  as shared network storage.

At this point, many companies will be at this stage of virtualized computing, networking, and storage are combined, and the result is like a software data center, which allows a great deal of automation and scalability.

Until this point, everything looks good. However, what is left on this approach by many companies is the Cloud Computing piece. The process for using the Virtual Machines (VM), that’s necessary for the workloads to run.  Without a proper provisioning team and IT team the company’s agility to implemented it is reduce and might led their users to find for solutions outside the IT team , and it is here where IT is fear of losing his role at the company.

Cloud to the eyes of an IT might be a thread while in reality might be its ally to move forward in other opportunities to enhance the core business and generate value. While traditionally the IT department well being perceived as a cost center now can be seen as a profitable one while reducing operational cost and increasing operational optimization.

Some examples where there is a good uses for using virtualization without the cloud computing are small business, that they do not seen the need for a VM’s extend of provisioning services process, in addition while few Medium businesses may also ok with virtualization only, especially if they don’t have developers or others that need VM’s provisioning quickly or in demand.

It is here as this point that also can be offered the option of even moving to the cloud with virtualization because the use of some SaaS application on the market limited their operations and availability to enhance other services. This move also to the cloud can give them the advantage of reduce cost by maintain control of their operational features on the cloud from the original SW, rather than use the provider SaaS application.

 As evolution to the cloud we can now explore Cloud Computing without Virtualization

The main concept on Cloud computing without virtualization falls under the IaaS, Infrastructure as a Service cloud service model. Some IaaS provider offer provisioning of physical servers located on the cloud provider’s premises, which might include physical networking devises and physical storage devices. The configurations changes as the value proposition form the provider of services.

There exist in my opinion two kind of providers as IaaS, the ones that charge you by the hour, month and some other contract period to the customer, where many hidden implications are as used of cpu, inputs and outputs, network that are over the top of the billing services. And the flat rate yearly contract that provides all over one umbrella of services.

What are the limitations of this approach? It is that some does not incorporate a full solution for virtualization and scale of services, the provider might limit configuration options to reduce problems of sizing an appropriate server or VM, but make customer fit their workloads into an specific server sizes, this approached might take longer than a VM structure that takes few hours to configure.

So, why a provider offers this services? Simple, because the customer requires it, why they want it because there are looking for performance and absolute minimal latency, which is required for virtualization. Some others just for ROI, why to build a Data Center while they can have all the features from a Data center, the power, cooling, redundancy, contingency , as well as to worriless of the maintenance and services on the operating system, patching and others elements. Finally in some cases they just want to have the extra capacity in the cloud and link them back to their own premises (Hybrid solution) and manage as a single unit.

The ideal stage Virtualization with Cloud Computing

This is the optimal stage of service that any company will want to reach either if you are small or big enterprise. This provides the best of both worlds.

Let’s discussed some of the benefits on this approach

Benefits to the Service Provider

Resources are share, allowing more Virtual Machines (VM) to be run on less hardware (HW) costs and allowing lower rates to be charge to customers. If the provider has also implemented all the different options for security, network, and many others, the benefits can be multiplied further. In addition, the security can be assure and controlled between customer, and even within a customer’s environment.

Benefits to the Consumer

Resources can be commissioned and decommissioned when need it, very quickly, usually within a few minutes. The customer thus does not need to buy  a lot of space capacity for the occasional period of peak demand, accessible during the holidays, and for any other instances, etc. Load can be balanced quickly between new instances as they are created and just as quickly removed when they are no longer needed, saving a lot of expenses . Most providers only charge for resources you actually used, but the better option is the flat provides, you don’t have to worry about extra payments and utilization charges, additionally minimizing costs. Finally, the need to purchase servers (a capital expenditure, or Capex is reduced or eliminated and replaced with a rent on demand model, as an operational expenditure, or Opex.

The most important items here is be able to know where your services will resides the type of data center qualifications, owned or leased by the provider the better you know where they the reside and that the IaaS are owner of their facilities the more resiliency you will have as a benefit for your services, besides how the data centers are compose of, generators, dual entrance and diversity path of circuits, UPS System besides the contingency, HVAC system and power are vital for your decisions.

There exist in my opinion, Michael Halasz, from Birch, IaaS provider, the ones that charge you by the hour, month and some other contract period to the customer, where many hidden implications are as used of CPU, inputs and outputs, network that are over the top of the billing services. And the ones that offer the flat rate yearly contract that provides all over one umbrella of services. You need to differentiate among companies that offer you services as IaaS and pay as you go, for example (AWS) are not competing models to the yearly contract flat rates. While AWS offers same like services under IaaS, many other IaaS offered the fixed rates model but IaaS offers on demand and fixed rate models, the question raise whom to data centers belong too?

Conclusion:

Each of the scenarios above presented has a valid use cases and is the right approach in different situations. However, over the next few years the trend will be probably be mostly to cloud computing either exclusively or in a hybrid deployment with on premises equipment.

If you are a C- level and IT Director has not yet started to look into cloud computing, now is the time. It is becoming a mainstream option and you will left behind with process and ways of operating the old fashion that would be hard to catch up with completion on your line of business.

The most important aspects of this shift is can be look at four major components:

Economical:

Capital Expenses to Operational Expenses shift

Minimize expensive technology refreshes

Lower costs (staff, resources)

Only pay for what you need/maximize resources

Operational Process Improvements:

Rapid deployment options

Scale up/down based on business demand

Multi-location deployment options

Management and optimization:

Advanced self-service/management options

Consolidated view of your IT platforms

Optimize the consumption of resources

Focus on core competencies of your business

Business Continuity and focus

Eliminate single points of failure (on premise or off-site)

Business continuity/mobility during major outage or disaster

Deployed in highly secure, redundancy-based facilities

Mitigate data loss risks

References:

Gartner

Oracle President - Quote

ETCIO

CIO Magazine

Birch - Michael Halasz - SE

Cloud Computing Counsil 

15 Memorable Cloud Computing Quotes ~ Techno-Pulse