Application Delivery Controller To enable IT specialists to implement cloud storage capabilities

This public cloud that is ready to respond to burst applications is now a reality, and sometimes we call it "cloud eruption (Cloud bursting)." In such an environment, organizations only have to pay for the resources they use, thus avoiding the procurement of additional infrastructure. But as most applications are anchored to the internal infrastructure, how do we implement them?

For some businesses, the answer is in their application Delivery controller (ADC), where the load balancing layer has been used to coordinate the load across the available infrastructure. Load balancers are the best solution when you need more performance, said Tim Maliyil, founder and CEO of Alertboot, a software company based in Las Vegas.

Maliyil is a statement of experience. Last year, the 10-year-old company faces a hardware update, but Maliyal is not willing to pay for it. As a result, the company moved the entire operation from the hosting provider to the two geographically separated public cloud computing, which came from SunGard and Opsource, which saved 85,000 dollars a month for the company and ensured a sustained business growth.

"Our infrastructure is still in the closet," Maliyil said. "I don't know what to do with it, it's possible to donate it to charity." ”

Uncover Application Delivery Controller

Alertboot uses the application delivery controller from Zeus Marvell, and recently Zeus Marvell has just been acquired by WAN optimization company Riverbed Marvell. Unlike most load-balancing tools that need to be run on professional hardware, the Zeus ADC runs on a pure software virtualization device, enabling it to run on cloud environments. The device also includes script processing to automate the acceleration or deceleration of new servers to cope with the load.

That's the payoff, Maliyil said. For example, during the holidays, Alertboot Sales network software traffic will be twice times the usual. But since Zeus can quickly add and decelerate servers, traffic management applications will slow down the server at night when shops stop operating, thus Alertboot's cloud bill increases by only 30%.

It is not surprising that the users of the early burst model will be the cloud service provider themselves. Rackspace builds a virtualized explosion environment for users using F5 NX's IP traffic management tools to monitor bandwidth and decide when to accelerate the new cloud computing environment.

Application Delivery Next

To enable the cloud to explode, ADC must develop its own automation capabilities, or work with large companies, said Joe Skorupa, an analyst at Gartner Inc.

"ADC is a good monitoring and control point, and it tells us that the performance of the application is not what we need," he said, "but it's just getting started." ”

Then the next step is to apply this information to Gartner's "Fibre resource pool manager", such as the tuning and automation engine, such as HP's Cloud Service Don (acquired via acquisition Opsware), BMC BladeLogic Don Suite, and Dell's advanced infrastructure Manager.

At the same time, cloud vendors are noticing other factors that hinder cloud outbreaks: logistics.

Bluelock, a cloud-computing hosting provider for VMware based companies, provides performance for greenfield projects (new engineering), the company's technical director Aaron Branham, said: "We deal with the helpless projects for our users." Enhance their internal resources with the help of Bluelock performance. Users have been asking about future bursts, but there are still hurdles to overcome.

"I like that way," he added: "But because of the contract, the model doesn't work for us." ”

Bluelock, in particular, tend to have complex settlement processes for large companies, and it will take months to drum up new suppliers. By then, the burst performance that businesses are going to consume may have fallen, which will make it hard to recoup their input.

"It's like driving a car, adding oil but not delaying payment, which is what worries us," he said. "Branham said.

However, more companies can lay the groundwork for future cloud outbreaks by using cloud management tools such as VMware Vcloud Director, Branham said. As a plug-in to VMware Vcenter, Vcloud Director allows administrators to securely provide virtualization workloads across internal private cloud and public cloud vendors such as Bluelock.

Until then, the bluelock closest to the cloud was a disaster-recovery service. "Instead of buying an entire disaster-recovery site and buying a ' hot site ' on cloud computing, you can have standby functionality once a disaster occurs. Branham added. Although it is not completely dynamic, that is, the use of the Maliyil, such as Alertboot of users as Nirvana products, but it will be the starting point for the future.