10 steps to successfully conceive, build and maintain private cloud

Source: Internet
Author: User
Keywords Private cloud for virtualization

Building a private cloud is not a quick project. Starts with understanding the enterprise environment's expectations and definitions of Yu Yun, and then frames the models that have been created. Be sure to cover the entire organization, all of its processes, and the technologies that build cloud computing. Here are ten steps to conceive, build, and maintain a private cloud.

1. Determine what you are going to get from the cloud

The cloud journey is a huge it trend. The problem is that the terminology cloud computing has a different meaning for everyone. To start this journey, businesses need pragmatic cloud-computing goals. Many companies find themselves looking to cloud computing as a commitment to virtualization, like integration of physical hardware in the datacenter, energy saving and cost savings. Others find that their virtualization process is going into the next phase, and that standardization and automation are part of their IT processes.

But a handful of companies are preparing for organizational change, dealing with tough "people's problems (arranges problems)" like islands, service replicas, security and service management. These problems are often not technical in themselves, but they are across organizational boundaries and will remain in the political arena for a long time.

There are many misconceptions about the cloud, especially about how much it is defined. One of the most common misconceptions is that the cloud is based entirely on virtualization. While virtualization often takes a heavy role in private cloud deployments, private clouds can be just the shared infrastructure. Google's Gmail or Microsoft's SkyDrive, for example, are both public cloud services, but not overly reliant on virtualization.

Instead, a lot of physical hardware is used behind the scenes. The private cloud is also true for your organization, where shared services are created to replace many different duplicate services, and the use of virtualization is evaluated only as part of the service implementation. For example, a shared file Server service might replace a file server in many departments, which could be implemented on a physical server because of the compatibility between VMware Vmotion and Microsoft Cluster Service.

2. Realistic Expectations

What you should expect is that there will be no real self service it in your organization. IT departments have spent years wrapping processes and processes around creating and managing servers, and for good reason. Typically these processes are responsible for system monitoring, sizing and dependencies, documenting system design and responsibilities, processing licenses, and more.

Allowing anyone to provide a server or service without an approval mechanism is appropriate for a specific lab or development environment, but the production IT environment is a fast way to clutter, sprawl, and downtime. However, it is reasonable to expect to provide more process automation and standardization by using workflow tools and approval mechanisms, which have become part of Embotics's V-commander or Enstratus NX products.

Cloud Tour technology challenges less, and more human challenges, with process decomposition and refactoring, small tasks automation, and standardization implementation. The IT department is clumsy, slow to show off the user's needs, probably not rethinking itself and work from the right place exam. Similarly, IT departments are overworked and may not have enough time to track cloud solutions, although the cloud can save time.

The order in which you manage your IT work is important because it supports them in the face of complaints about focusing on cloud computing delays in other jobs. The motto "money-making process will cost" time for IT staff; it takes a prepaid time investment and saves the time that follows.

Finally, to expect all levels of management, including human resources, to support the transition to the cloud. It is not just that all the organizations in the enterprise see that the directors who are improving themselves are delaying it work, and that the main work of the IT staff will be automated and that they will be the targets of dismissal. They may be aggressively damaging the process. Individual problem plans, from the beginning, people communicate, they are valuable, their efforts will liberate them, to do more interesting, productive work.

3. Understanding Workloads and services

Moving forward like a private cloud model is tough, especially if you don't understand the services your organization relies on. The document is the key; without it explaining its relationship to the system, the service level agreement is unknown, and there is a lot of false assumptions. The need for people to use these services should be documented so that new cloud services can be built to meet these requirements. This is especially important when repeating services are in the centralized organization. Another reason is that a department builds its own infrastructure, rather than using shared services, and finds out why, and allows them to identify and avoid disputes.

The documentation also applies to the standardization itself, as the standard does not explain all requirements and system design requirements and will quickly get an exemption clause.

Performance information is also critical for moving to shared infrastructure and cloud-based solutions. A year or more of historical data, the highest possible clarity is highly practical and helpful for determining capacity requirements and system size.

4. Step into the path of virtualization

Although a private cloud does not necessarily require virtualization, this is a generic model. Virtualization typically drives specific knowledge and behavior within an enterprise. For example, most virtualization requires centralized storage. This same centralized storage will be an artifact of building a private cloud, so the knowledge gained in implementing virtualization is useful for private clouds.

Similarly, virtualization often breaks down data center networks. At the very least, it can transform the static flow pattern into dynamic mode. The shift to shared computing model and cloud based computing maintains this trend and increases reliance on the network, often increasing bandwidth requirements. The conversation begins with your virtualization administrator, storage Administrator, and network administrator, and the result is that the virtualization initiative will be the key to your development of cloud computing, especially when planning to service remote offices and mobile users.

5. Understanding Automation and standardization

Automation is one of the key goals for an enterprise to move to a private cloud. However, without standardization, automation is tricky. For example, the establishment of operating system and server standards allows you to assume file location, file system size, and authentication mechanisms. Based on these assumptions, you can script application software and middleware installation, such as Web servers, application servers, and firewall rules. The installation is easier to repeat, anyone can iterate over the deployment, or it can be handled as soon as the disaster occurs.

Standardization is very difficult for an enterprise that has not been able to practice it. But once standardization is adopted, time savings are obvious.

Imagine an enterprise without the standardization of operating systems, operating system versions, or component processes. Each server is different, and each operational requirement requires special attention. The time of the patch process or software installation is different, and the success rate is shaken because every master

Machines are changing. This usually has two results: the time that employees perform daily tasks on these servers is unbelievable, and many routine tasks like security bug fixes are skipped because they are too difficult and unpredictable. standardization and automation of one or two operating systems, and application deployment process productivity greater than it productivity gains.

Once you have automated most of the transformation, you can deliver it from service portals and service classifications. Although the enterprise is not likely to be 100% completely self service driven, but many processes can be automated according to the workflow; the only interaction is the approval process. IT department

The door can focus on more important issues, how to better support, monitor applications and services. It also improves the lives of application managers and developers by providing a consistent and repeatable platform. This means that it operators can build more useful, reusable streams

process, handling incidents and detecting system alerts, not every server is an exception. This may also open the door to automated response alerts.

6. Focus on cost Analysis: chargeback VS showback

As cloud forms and workloads are centralized, it is important for organizations to keep track of resource use cases and to verify that resource equity consumption and enterprise alignment are prioritized.

The chargeback model is the most effective one in the resource account model that is still the most tolerant. Companies do not have the resources to consume account history, it is difficult to achieve chargeback, because it requires in turn to the cloud, inventory and collation of each server and application. The process itself is beneficial to the enterprise, reducing waste, shrinking the spread, and exerting pressure on the application and the system administrator to handle the appropriate virtual machines.

With careful forward and creative work management, the CFO will yield to some good solution budgets, and be aware that the chargeback process is not abrupt and as low as possible.

Enterprises that cannot be chargeback at once can usually do showback, generate management reports, and show where resources are used in the cloud. Showback is a great first step in a real chargeback model, and it is useful for a private cloud to get a budget and a first step forward.

Many companies deploy Showback technology, just like treating the chargeback model as it is. Specific projects and departments allocate a cash account, except that the bill will never be sent to the "customer". This is an effective way to track and save resources, but this approach is unfamiliar to developers, application management, and other people who never need to organize and record the resources they use.

7. Make everything your own

Safe Patency is a big part of it, and it's a good time to think about security when you turn to the clouds. It is also a good fit to consider new technologies.

While cloud computing does not need to be virtualized, the use of virtualization opens the door to features like internal virtual machine (VM) firewalls and intrusion detection, agentless-free virus scanning, as well as the functionality of the API, like VMware's Vmsafe. While many clouds use traditional methods to build security, openness to new methods can save time and cost and increase flexibility. For example, internal VM firewalls and internal intrusion detection can replace complex private VLAN settings, saving time and reducing complexity.

Another type of security measure is disaster recovery (DR), a lot of products and choices dedicated to the maintenance of a replica of an over-the-counter virtual machine. Storage duplication at a virtual machine level helps to obtain and maintain expensive matrix-based replication licenses, WAN accelerators, and storage admins for FIBRE-CHANNEL-TO-IP converters. Replication can also be done in different matrices, and is usually not possible for matrices based methods. You can easily manage recovery point objectives (RPO) and Response time objectives (RTO) at the VM level through an updated cloud-oriented selection. Some product industries manage failover and failback and significantly reduce the ability to automate the deployment of Dr Rules to VMs to maintain enterprise disaster recovery. Typically, the Dr plan is added after the new server is implemented, and the server is unprotected for a short period of time.

8. Understanding the importance of monitoring

There are many benefits to entering a private cloud after centralization of services, but it is not easier to monitor performance. Service relocation usually means more reliance on network performance, which in turn requires extended monitoring and adds tools to perform this task.

More and more performance monitoring tools have started to provide a single monitoring interface that is useful for troubleshooting systems, storage, and network administrators. Collecting data from the Application Monitoring System report is a symptom of the problem, not the root cause. But saving a lot of time to quickly tell us what looks like a network problem is actually a storage problem. Some performance monitoring tools also provide help for desktop services and support, and end users, developers, and administrators can trigger High-definition network, storage, and VM performance data records when problems occur. This feature is especially effective for intermittent problems and environments that do not trigger other performance alerts. In addition, the data can quickly identify the root cause of the problem.

Application monitoring often greatly improves the private cloud environment, primarily because of better documentation requirements and the directory processes used by the enterprise for consolidation. Virtualization also provides high availability and fault tolerance options at the virtual machine level, and high availability is applied throughout the VM.

9. Complete the future use of the function

Private cloud and virtualization technologies break down organizations from a number of issues that the IT community has been trying to solve over the years. Centralize, standardize, and automate workloads and workload management tasks idle time to do other things, like focusing on new technologies. This reduces reliance on external consultants and builds expertise and experts within the enterprise.

Computational scientist Alan Kay recognizes the significance of this when it says "predicting the future is the best way to create the future". This is also entirely true in the enterprise. The team will have an open mind in the right place, how to implement the enterprise goals, how to change it to make it more predictable and easy to support. Ultimately, instead of just trying to keep following, people will have more time to invest in the process of enterprise development.

10. Remember, we are always together

The biggest problem with corporate travel to the cloud is internal collaboration. The political system and operating walls that have been built up over many years between the various parts of the enterprise are obstacles to cloud projects.

Private clouds are so expensive that you don't achieve any cost and time savings when you implement this technology in a single department or department. The key to concentrating on the private cloud when it is flexible and meets the needs of all aspects of the enterprise. To achieve this, all parties must be open and honest about their needs, have useful documentation, and work iteratively.

Make sure that the cloud plan has space to adjust and change as everyone learns in a new environment. It islands to disappear. Typically the enterprise's network, storage, and system administrators work alone, guarding their territory against each other. The most effective way to achieve virtualization and private cloud is to have a team that includes members of every department in all areas, working together and achieving benefits for the enterprise.

Cloud applications often rely on networks, especially when applications are concentrated in the data center, not the user. Storage is the key to virtualization, and storage plumbing decisions affect service delivery, service level agreements, costs, and time over the long term. New technologies allow enterprises to gain greater benefits, provided IT staff remember that this is not their network, their storage, and their systems. The cloud and its infrastructure belong to the enterprise.

The system adjusts to reduce network and storage load. Cloud environments also start to replicate in software, and storage and network managers need to know these

Performance, like firewalls and storage duplication. The process of turning to the cloud brings automation and standardization that may make it uncomfortable for people who are in these jobs or who are working to be automated. Creating good communication mechanisms without blaming and ensuring that IT staff understand how important the changes are to them, the cloud will have more interesting jobs waiting for them. The IT blueprint has also changed, the enterprise has changed, cloud computing is a rich lens skill. Changing the point of view, rather than changing the technology, will go a long way towards a successful private cloud!

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