It’s not about “picking the right cloud” but choosing the right strategy that matches workloads to the most appropriate delivery model. Logicalis provides an overview of some of the challenges of moving to “the Cloud” and how we help customer determine the most effective cloud model.
Cloud Computing Perspectives from Different IT Professionals
1. Cloud – from Conception
to Completion
Rob Gee
Datacentre Architect
2. What is your perspective of Cloud Computing?
“Once upon a time, there were six blind men.
The blind men wished to know what an elephant
looked like.
The six blind men all perceived one aspect of
the elephant and were each right in their own
way, but none of them knew what the whole
elephant really looked like.”
Your definition of something may depend on your perspective…
It’s like a rope!
It’s like a wall!
It’s like a fan!
It’s like a snake!
It’s like a spear!
It’s virtualisation!
It’s automation!
It’s statelessness!
It’s on-demand computing!
Cloud
Computing
It’s a self-service portal!
Its “Anything as a
Service” (XaaS)!
“Once upon a time, there were six IT people. The IT
people wished to know what cloud computing looked
like.
The six IT people all perceived one aspect of the cloud
and were each right in their own way, but none of them
knew what the whole cloud really looked like.”
Elephant
It’s like tree!
5. Options?
Bolt on Aftermarket
Extension’s
Marginal Gain (if any)
Increased Management
and Cost
Refresh Infrastructure
Same Service
Same Challenges
Maybe Different Badge
Move to a Cloud Model
Innovation
Validated Infrastructure
SLA Driven
Reduce Cost / Service
Improvement
Delivered via “As a
Service” models
6. Cloud Models – Logicalis Portfolio
Private Cloud
FlexPod
VSPEX
VPDC
LVPDC
Shared
Dedicated
Compute-as-a-Service
Public Cloud
AWS
Azure
- Web Apps & Test / Dev.
- Application Resilience
- Commodity Cloud
- Traditional Applications
- Infrastructure Resilience
- Off Premise Cloud / SP
- Traditional Applications
- Infrastructure Resilience
- On Premise Cloud
Workload Centric
7. Your Strategy Starts with Applications
OperationalFlexibility
Strategic Value
Application
Silos
Zones of
Virtualization
Public Cloud
Private Cloud
Categorise requirements based on business needs
CRM
Dev/
Test
IT
Apps
Custom
Apps
App requirements unique to silo
Dedicated and optimized hardware
Static environment
Application Silos
Core IT application consolidation
Moderately dynamic
No self-service requirements
Zones of Virtualization
Noncore applications
Adapt to dynamic demands
Self-service and pay as you go
Readily available cloud services
Public Cloud
Core-defined services
Highly dynamic
Self-service and metering
Private Cloud
8. Place Workloads in the Right Cloud
Workloads Placement
Hosted
Cloud
Workload Groups
(Based on Attributes)
Compatibility
Service Levels
Protection
Levels
Security
Time To Market
Financial
Private
Cloud
Public
Cloud
Tier 1
Tier 2
Tier 3
Test / Dev
9. Workload Assessment - Sample
Requirements Metric Private Cloud Hosted VPDC Public Cloud
Compatibility x86 - Intel
Service Levels 99.9% Uptime
Protection 30 Daily Backups, DR
Security / Trust Model On Premise
Scalability N/A - - -
Financial $
Requirements Metric Private Cloud Hosted VPDC Public Cloud
Compatibility x86 - Intel
Service Levels 99.9% Uptime
Protection 30 Daily Backups, DR
Security / Trust Model Australian Data Sovereignty
Scalability Yes
Financial $
Requirements Metric Private Cloud Hosted VPDC Public Cloud
Compatibility x86 - Intel
Service Levels 99% Uptime
Protection 30 Daily Backups
Security / Trust Model No Data Sovereignty
Scalability Yes
Financial (No commitment) $
Test/dev
workloads
Critical
Business
Apps
Core
Business
Apps
10. Logicalis Approach
Drivers PositionDiscover
Challenges
- Inadequate DC
- No Disaster Recovery
- Over extended IT Team
- DC Infrastructure at capacity
- Desktop Management
Initiatives
- Wants to remove Tape (effort)
- Wants to offer Ops services to
other organisations
- Implement Virtual Desktops
(future)
Requirements
- Scalable platform aligning to
business demand
- Data Remain in Australia
Reduce Risk
- Data Centre Facilities
- Implement DR
Scalable Platform
- Meet business demand
Operations
- Reduce Ops effort
Financial
- Impending DC
Infrastructure Upgrades
Hosted
Cloud
Private
Cloud
Public
Cloud
Next Steps
Cloud Advisory
Service
- How do I determine what
applications are good for
cloud?
- What type of cloud?
- How do I compare cloud costs
to my current enterprise costs?
- What is our reference
architecture?
Meeting with SA
- Deeper Cloud Discovery
- Cloud Presentations
- LVDPC Demonstrations
Rob Gee, Solution Architect from Logicalis, presents an overview of some of the challenges of moving to “the Cloud” and how we help customer determine the most effective cloud model and migrate their data.
Cloud is a strategyand not a solution! Despite formal definitions (like NIST), if you ask ten CIOs to define the “cloud” you get ten definitions… the key point is that “cloud” is not a product or a “SKU” – you generally don’t “buy a cloud”. We see Cloud as a strategy for being able to deploy compute or IT demand, whether it’s infrastructure, desktops or specific applications. While there many type of public clouds – from private cloud and virtual private data centres to hyper-clouds like Amazon – it’s the orchestration layer that provides the business value.
A customer that recently moved to the Logicalis Cloud has issues with their physical data centre infrastructure, including water coming through the roof in heavy rain and power outages. This is not uncommon - we often see on-premise data centres that lack fire suppression systems or have simply out-grown the physical space. DR and data protection is also a common challenge – another customer we recently migrated had a core ERP application which was built on 50-60 virtual machines including SQL databases and application servers, and they had been trying for number of years to provide a cost-effective solution to implementing replication.The bottom line is that the data centre has often grown in a way that is not strategic, through tactical “Bolt on Budgets”, and with no predictability of cost or effective business continuity.
So what are the options? We work with many Australian corporate and enterprise customers, and see three common approach to the data centre challenges we just saw:For core or legacy applications – or if there’s a requirement for applications to be on-premise – an existing data centre can be scaled with incremental hardware. You can extend the life of an existing data centre by a few years, but at the cost of increasing management and operational cost. It means a continuation of the “80% of expense going to keeping the lights on” scenario.A data centre refresh brings some efficiencies – better processors, faster disk, a more efficient data centre networking fabric. But it’s really just changing the fundamental challenges and enabling the delivery of IT as a service. A traditional data centre was never built for virtualisation.Adopting a cloud strategy is starting to gain traction: it’s not all about saving money but service improvement. It’s also not about throwing away all the existing infrastructure and “moving into the cloud”, but determining the most appropriate for each workload and starting to think about developing a service catalogue or adopting self-service portals. This can be based on orchestration of an on-premise data centre or moving some (or all) workloads to a virtual private data centre or public cloud.
Logicalis supports three cloud models including private, Virtual Private Date Centre (VPC or VPDC) and Public Clouds.How do we know which clouds to position for each customer?It comes down to not about being about the customer but the workloads.Each cloud has design characteristics and run certain workloads better than others.Private and VPDC designed to run traditional applications as they are built on a highly resilient platform although with public clouds they are built for scale better suited for web applications and test / dev that don’t require high levels of redundancy or the application has the inbuilt resiliency.