Apply Windows Server 8 to create an IaaS cloud

Small companies and large businesses will be able to use Windows Server octal to build their own cloud services. A Microsoft white paper reveals details of the application of the upcoming server operating system to build the IaaS platform.

After offering PAAs cloud services through the Windows Azure platform and two SaaS solutions--office 365 and Dynamics CRM online--, Microsoft is ready to offer another new option, Provide a Windows Server 8-based solution for customers who want to build their own private IaaS cloud. In addition to Windows Server, the solution uses AppFabric and system Center, and the following illustration shows the details:

Windows Server 8 (WS8) allows organizations to move from traditional or virtualized data centers to "clouds", WS8 to automatically allocate resources, and allows multiple users to create isolated virtual machines (VMS) to ensure scalability and manageability. Not only that, with live migration, multiple running virtual machines can be migrated across Hyper-V hosts between clusters, subnets, or WAN subnets, without having to stop the service or reconfigure the IP address, Storage Migration can be used to move virtualized hard disks between networks without downtime, and Microsoft introduces these features on build 2011. Live migration allows businesses to migrate from internal Hyper-V-based virtualization solutions to private or managed clouds without downtime.

In terms of security, the Hyper-V extensible switch provides the following features: Private virtual LAN, ARP Attack/spoofing protection, DHCP spoofing protection, virtual port access list, and support VLAN trunk mode. WS8 also provides resource metering, including static metering-virtual CPUs or allocated disk space-and dynamic metering such as CPU usage or network bandwidth usage. It also provides a range of performance counters--SMB2 file sharing utilization, RDMA utilization, network traffic, and virtual machine metrics-to quantify the performance of various resources.

WS8 supports the setting of QoS policies, for example, you can set SLAs to ensure minimal and maximum network bandwidth, so customers can be protected from the high bandwidth usage of other customers, and for host providers, setting network bandwidth SLAs can protect themselves and avoid some software flaws that consume too much bandwidth. The SLA is enforced automatically.

WS8 Cloud can be managed through Windows PowerShell 3, and Windows PowerShell 3 has a predefined thousands of cmdlet that can be used to perform different cloud management commands and Windows PowerShell workflows,windows PowerShell workflow is a modern substitute for batch processing commands.

Microsoft recommends using WS8 for a wide range of clouds, from midsize businesses that require only dozens of servers, to businesses with hundreds of servers, to host providers with thousands of servers.

The white paper "Applying Windows Server 8 to build infrastructure services (IaaS)" includes more information about how to apply Windows Server 8 to create cloud services, including scalability, accessibility, and extensibility.

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)