5 Tips for avoiding private cloud failures

Piston Cloud Computing's CTO Josh McKenty says the main force for converting the pilot project into a production-private cloud is based on the OpenStack provider, and the conversion rate is very low. "Only one out of every 20 pilot projects can be turned into a production type," he said. "Before creating piston Cloud computing, Josh McKenty worked for NASA and worked as a technical director for a OpenStack project," he said. OpenStack is one of the three most open source IaaS (infrastructure services) platforms that are competing to attract corporate attention.

So why do the other 19 fail? McKenty thought the question was very well asked. Analysts, developers, and cloud practitioners believe that the answer boils down to a misconception (between the enterprise IT department and their potential "customers"), the reliance on (some preference for data centers or network devices), and the unmanageable nature of applications that were not designed to run on the cloud at the beginning of the design.

To improve the chances of a successful deployment of a private cloud, experts have summed up some tips on how to avoid some of the typical pitfalls.

1. Get rid of data centers and communicate with all those who have an impact on the business

Marten Mickos, CEO of Eucalyptus, an open-source private cloud provider, points out that this will help it executives better understand how the private cloud will ultimately be used. Eucalyptus has been in close relationship with Amazon's public cloud solution. Mickos tells us a story about a big customer who is doing business in the technology industry. To carry out the business, the big client created a private cloud to support the development/testing of the enterprise. "Without figuring out how many of their ' clients ' will consume private clouds, their customers are growing at a rate of 50% a quarter," Mickos said. "The size of the private cloud was created by the IT team prior to the Test level, but the user found it very easy to prepare and test, so the user wanted to be able to do more testing."

2. Set user Expectations

"Many people know that cloud automation promotes cost savings," says Jim O ' Neill, HubSpot's CIO. "HubSpot is a cloud-based marketing service provider whose marketing services can connect to Amazon's public cloud, or Rackspace's managed private cloud infrastructure. "So you have to make developers and business users aware of paying for outstanding services." Even if they already know the economic advantage of cloud services, you have to let them fully understand that in the three 9 budget, do not expect five 9 uptime. "O ' Neill said.

Lauren Nelson, a Forrester analyst, argues that the economy of a private cloud varies based on the type of workload the user wants to run on. "If the application is variable and is written for running on the public cloud, the basic calculation is very cheap on the public cloud." If applications require intensive computing, or non-standard virtual machines that require large amounts of I/O or memory, it is certainly more economical to run these applications on a private cloud. "said Nelson.

3. Motivate users to take advantage of private cloud

Cirba, CTO Andrew Hillier, a professional capacity management software provider for virtualization and cloud environments, suggests that it should consider incentives that encourage users to take full advantage of the new private cloud infrastructure. Hillier said: "Forced use does not solve the problem." ”

4. Don't be obsessed with old data center devices.

To better understand which parts of the data center and the underlying network will hinder the deployment of private cloud applications, it is important to break the current situation. "List all the devices and non-standard features that are in use," McKenty said. Discard the proprietary features of your preferred router or firewall, and then find alternatives. You may be very interested in a certain OpenFlow feature provided by a router vendor, but you may have to give up this functionality. Only in this way can you strictly observe the open standards without worrying about any proprietary functions. ”

5. Ensure that existing applications are migrating to private clouds

"The main reason private cloud projects fail in the enterprise is that they are only used in new projects," said Torsten Volk, an analyst at the EMA (Enterprise Management Association). "In fact, companies must have a well-planned plan to cover existing business applications to assess the reasonableness of the initial cost of the public cloud." Eucalyptus's Mickos explains that these initiatives need to be modified in order to be aware of the potential failure risks of the underlying commercialization infrastructure and to figure out how to effectively make other virtual machines run on a private cloud.

McKenty suggests that IT departments that are seeking to create private clouds should not be afraid to build the risk of failure in the cloud infrastructure, but to confront them bravely. McKenty said: "To systematically stop a portion of the server regularly, and then observe what will happen." "(Receptacle World", Gundy compiled)

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)