Cloud computing is most important to match business needs

[Introduction] When "cloud computing" roared, the enterprise built private cloud but faced with no way to follow the difficult situation. A large central enterprise CIO in an information conference has openly questioned, "each meeting to the private cloud is very lively most of the software service providers, so far there is no enterprise built private cloud, this time to build a private cloud is not reliable?" "" The server died a whole business on the shutdown, you ask me why not let the server live forever, at that time, there is no ' cloud computing ' ah ... "China Aviation Technology International Holdings Limited (hereinafter referred to as" AVIC International ") the director of the Information propulsion office Zhu side spread out his hands, this is what he did for reporters a" Cloud computing "appears before the image assumes.

And when "cloud computing" roared, the enterprise built private cloud but faced with no way to follow the difficult situation. A large central enterprise CIO in an information conference has openly questioned, "each meeting to the private cloud is very lively most of the software service providers, so far there is no enterprise built private cloud, this time to build a private cloud is not reliable?" ”

It is in this kind of speculation and doubt that Avic International has chosen a bold attempt to build its own private cloud, in fact at this time of Zhu I am afraid also did not realize that China Airlines International this exploratory pioneering initiative has inadvertently opened the enterprise private cloud Domain "Pandora box", so that enterprises optimistic but no breakthrough in the private cloud field in China Airlines international has broken dawn.

"We have mastered the private cloud placement skills, now the private cloud on the information system and server relationship, like the" Journey to the Sun "in the Monkey King and his own hair, dead is the hair changes of the Monkey King, and the Monkey King himself will never die. "Zhu so image of the private cloud built by Avic International."

Awkward "double."

AVIC International launched the "Big concentration" ERP model in 2007, all over the country and overseas affiliates have unified the server to the headquarters, "the entire business of all the servers are concentrated in my place," Zhu said, "Since then I have not slept a day of sleep, always think it is like buried a Stealth bomb ', do not know when will be detonated. ”

In fact, the enterprise nature of AVIC International has already decided the complexity and the arduous nature of enterprise informatization. AVIC International is the core business of aviation technology and product import and export required by national defense and civil aviation. In addition to aviation products, there are large government products exports, ships and large-scale equipment exports, general trading business, as well as electronic manufacturing, retail, watch industry, real estate, hotels and property management, mineral resources and other business. Feida Watch, Deep South circuit board, Tianma LCD display board, etc. are the company's own enterprise production. In the words of Zhu, "the business of the company seems a bit miscellaneous".

AVIC International is a multinational large-scale group company with more than one business form, with 12 subsidiaries in the world and more than 60 overseas institutions in more than 30 countries and regions, with 7 listed companies, more than 50,000 employees, assets of more than 100 billion yuan, annual sales revenue of 60 billion yuan.

Zhu know, such a large state-owned enterprises, the implementation of a "large concentration" of the ERP model, means that all the company's business will be coordinated by the headquarters of the server unified operation, if the headquarters of the server due to earthquakes and other uncontrollable factors have failed, then the entire business operation will face a severe test of lockout.

"If one day, the server ' snapped ', the failure and paralysis, then how to do?" "Before the ERP system came online, Zhu kept thinking and trying to find a foolproof solution," he said.

To prevent the "stealth bomb" from being detonated, AVIC International installed a real-time disaster preparedness system 30 kilometres from its headquarters. In another room dozens of kilometers away, there is an identical system with the ERP system in the headquarters room, and every data on a business headquarters server will pass in real time, which is equivalent to "finding a stand-in for the server at the head office."

Under the careful deployment of Zhu and others, it seems that everything is controllable, but the problems exposed in a very realistic information system disaster preparedness exercise initiated by the initiative made Zhu seem to have been cooled by a basin of cold water, after which he had a high degree of suspicion about the safety of the existing disaster preparedness system.

The disaster preparedness system is normally in a semi dormant state, although it is alive but can not work, can only accept data, the company to do a little business to pass a little data over, Zhu Clearly, the system really start up is to take time, and exactly how much time to spend, this is the core purpose of disaster preparedness exercises.

The day of 2008, when the international information system of AVIC and the normal operation of the usual, "Pa", the system suddenly failed, in order to ensure that the whole company up to 50,000 people working properly, Zhu immediately commanded his engineers will be away from the headquarters of the 30 kilometers of the engine room in the backup system to start, but time a minute passed, The engineer stamped his feet, and Zhu's heart tightened, his eyes fixed on the computer screen for a minute and a second. It was not until 1 hours and 40 minutes later that the disaster preparedness system was officially launched and the business began to operate normally. This is a scene of a "double" emergency start exercise, although just a drill, but let Zhu had to secretly think, "in my careful preparation, layout in place, start disaster preparedness system still need 1 hours and 40 minutes, then in unprepared for unexpected circumstances, still do not know when to start up." "This makes Zhu's nerves tighten again," the ' double ' function of the disaster preparedness system is really bad.

At the same time, let Zhu quite a headache also has a problem, that is in the data transmission process there are uncontrollable factors. In the process of data transmission from the headquarters server to the disaster standby system, often have a third party construction will line dug up the situation, or telecom, netcom itself what the problem, resulting in the company's dedicated line system stagnated for half an hour, a stop data will not pass, which appeared new data not pass, The data in the disaster preparedness system is still in the old state. "At this point, the data for the backup system is different from the data in the formal system, which means there is a mistake." Zhu told reporters.

With Avic International in the company's continuous promotion of the ERP system, the more Zhu feel like "The dancer on the tip", always cautious dance, but do not know when the knife will be stabbed black and blue.

That year "cloud computing" has not arisen, since the establishment of disaster preparedness system is only the worst, but also the only way to minimize the possible loss. And when "cloud computing" is really coming, Zhu feels that happiness really knocks at the door.

"Experimental plots" involving clouds

"When it comes to cloud computing as an advantageous ' weapon ', my first consideration is to use it to dismantle a stealth bomb in a large centralized ERP model. "Zhu has had a strong interest in cloud computing since 2009.

Cloud computing is rapidly shining in the macro sector, with public clouds, private clouds and other such words have also become the focus of corporate concern, but many large state-owned enterprises are sceptical about the security of the public cloud, but also to the private cloud of the construction of corporate concerns, and even a large state-owned enterprise CIO complained to reporters, "the company built private cloud although not ' Difficult to the sky ', but also in a hazy, impossible stage. ”

Once Zhu also unceasingly asked oneself, "cloud computing" in the end is what? He was confused because of the complexity of the views that even "cloud computing" experts could hardly explain. He asked himself, "is virtualization a necessary condition to build a private cloud of corporate ownership?" "He is still difficult to answer himself, because no one enterprise to take this step, the industry has no valuable case for reference."

"So do you want to get involved in the private cloud?" Zhu asked himself for the third time, in order to answer his many questions, he led it engineers to devote a lot of energy to research, analysis and argumentation, to study whether the private cloud is good for the enterprise, the research results prove that the private cloud has great benefit to the enterprise, however, In the whole industry many questions are suspended without solution, China Airlines International is to continue to wait and see or dare to try? "We thought about it very simply, so long as it is good for the business we do it." "Zhu is very grateful for the company's unanimous support for this project.

As a result, from the beginning of 2010, Zhu has been in the whole company to promote the ERP system to the hands of the department manager to take care of their own 80% of the energy in the enterprise private cloud. At first, Zhu took a small range, less money in the test form, when they are ready: first, if the experiment is successful, in the whole company officially launched private cloud; second, if not successful, because the investment in capital and manpower is not large, can be used as the future of the road of information "precedent." "It now appears that this model is available to other companies for reference." Zhu recalls quite gratified.

The general view is that virtualization is the foundation of cloud computing, and some companies are preparing to virtualize their transition to cloud computing. But the Zhu of deploying cloud systems is amazing, "virtualization is not the only way to deploy a cloud platform for an enterprise." Cloud architecture can also be implemented without virtualization.

At first, however, Zhu also used virtualization as a prerequisite for cloud platform deployments. However, after continuous exploration and trial, they found that the company used scattered throughout the entity machine, when the user requests to come in, the user itself does not know where the request is allocated, by which server response. But the cloud has its own features, and it has no effect on the cloud's implementation. While virtualization is useful, it can also be deployed when more application requirements arise.

"Other people generally speculate that virtualization is an essential prerequisite for cloud making, and we try to practice virtualization and non-virtual." "Zhu is very happy to share the experience, he believes," the entity's server cluster can also do resource pooling, dynamically fetch resources, assign different tasks to each server. The advantage of the virtual machine is that it can be separated from the physical form of the specific server and deploy more flexibly. With virtualization, you can deploy multiple servers on a single physical server, and flexibly add and subtract systems, not limited by the number of physical machines, which is the only difference between a physical machine and a virtual machine. As a result, the deployment of the cloud platform is not absolutely dependent on virtualization. At the same time, virtualization does not mean the implementation of the cloud. ”

"We stumbled on this road, in fact, there is a certain luck." "In Zhu's view, the ERP system in the company faced the choice of two kinds of technology, one is to buy a larger small machine, the other is to buy a PC server." In their argumentation, they found that the company's information system needs to have such technology as the cluster and load on demand, and the company's rather wise decision is to choose the PC server eventually. Practice has proved that the construction of corporate private cloud, with a larger minicomputer, the need to make full use of resources, is bound to embark on the path of virtualization, and take the PC server this road is obviously more complex.

Since Avic International did not make large-scale changes or replacements in hardware, also did not invest in large sums of money, on the other hand, the crystallization of these efforts are the company to explore their own practice, not with the relevant software services companies to cooperate, so that, on the private cloud platform, the company up and down transition becomes much easier.

In October 2010, AVIC International's first ERP system was formally moved to the private cloud of enterprise, in December, the company's second ERP system moved to the private cloud, and earlier this year, the company was on a single sign-on and unified identity Management system, combining the two systems with the ERP system, The ERP system that contains single sign-on and unified identity Management system is then moved to the private cloud. "That's even more complicated. Zhu added, "but eventually it was achieved." ”

The cheapest way

In China Airlines International government products Export Department of the work of the Wang (alias) recently found that their office can not be separated from the ERP system running very stable, before Gesanchaiwu sent a notice about the system needs to be patched has been canceled.

In the past, the company has to make a patch for the system to send a notice, covering the scope of the whole country and overseas agencies, tell them at what time to do not do business on the system, to play patches. "Now has the cloud platform, at any time toss the system to respond at any time, the entire system is no longer interrupted." Zhu told reporters.

When the cloud platform was set up, Zhu's "stealth bomb", which had previously been feared, was easily dismantled. Although the company still implemented a large centralized ERP system, but the server is no longer just the headquarters of this place, Zhu is quite excited to say, "The cloud distributes in my design place, I want it to be anywhere, this question we have solved technically, now, we put the cloud in the headquarters and 30 kilometers outside of the room." ”

What makes Zhu quite exciting is that if the headquarters server fails, there will be no impact on the system operation. For example, a user of a branch office abroad has done a business on the ERP system, and the cloud automatically assigns which server to respond to his actions. Because all the servers are alive, any server is broken and does not affect the rest of the server to continue to work.

The private cloud platform also brings other unexpected benefits to the enterprise. Before the company to buy a server needs about 1.5 million yuan, because to consider its long-term operation of the problem, so to stay about 20%~30% of the amount of space, and this design of more than more than 400,000 yuan in the system operation is basically unnecessary, is an emergency standby, but this part of the design of the empty volume is still part of the cost. In addition, these empty parts, although not working, but its CPU to work, memory and hard drive to turn, all need to power consumption. This part of the loss of the corresponding power, as well as the power to match the air-conditioning also consumes electricity, which has caused the increase in costs. And that's just a waste of the cost of a single server. These problems have been solved since the company's private cloud was built. "How much to buy, when to need new resources, to buy a plug in the good." Zhu said easily.

The private cloud's hardware investment in computing resource updates is also more economical than the original model. A few months ago, Zhu and other people to do a calculation of resource updates cost input test, at that time was designed ibm3650m3, two CPU, each CPU is 6 cores, 20G RAM about 5 hard disk, the cost is 60,000 yuan. With 10 such devices, the design of 120 CPU computing capacity of the equipment cost only 600,000 yuan, compared to the original mode of the 1 million or 2 million yuan investment significantly reduced. "The most important thing is to calculate the resources to update the funds are based on demand at any time, rather than in the original model in the initial investment in the design." When to spend and how much to spend, this pattern is seen as a good way to really save money for the business. Zhu said happily.

AVIC International in the enterprise private cloud first the news in the industry spread, let the enterprise optimistic but no breakthrough private cloud build the problem has broken dawn. Recently, Zhu particularly busy, he not only to busy the company's information system landing, but also invited to participate in a series of industry organizations CIO forum activities, without stint with many eager to build the private cloud of the CIO share experience.

But Zhu that not all businesses are suitable for private clouds. "The enterprise CIO needs to have an in-depth understanding of what the cloud is and what it can bring to the enterprise, and to make a match between them." If the cloud can better meet the needs of enterprises, then the cloud is a good choice; if the match is not high, then the cloud may not be the best choice. ”

(Responsible editor: Liu Fen)