Cloud Management is well prepared

Once upon a time, you might just have to deal with one or two of strategic contractors, which may not be difficult. And now, in the cloud world, you're going to face more than 10 or even more service providers, who may be SaaS (software as a service) provider or IAAS (infrastructure services) provider, what are you doing with so many service providers?

Application workloads were previously transmitted through private connections within the datacenter, and now they are transmitted over the Internet. Servers and storage capacity were previously owned by the IT department, and now anyone can quickly get the resources they need by claiming and filling out forms and entering credit card numbers.

Faced with the huge management challenges posed by cloud computing, how do corporate IT managers respond? Here are some suggestions for how to manage cloud computing.

Building Consistent data Models

"It sounds simple, but don't be fooled," said Beth Cohen, senior architect of Cloud Marvell, a cloud computing consultancy.

Most companies have a common set of standard terminology in data logging and databases, so cloud applications should continue to use these terms. You can also store data as a standard ID number, as well as the basis for using the same naming conventions across the CRM platform. These are easily controlled when the IT department directs procurement and deployment. But what happens when the marketing department turns to Saleforce.com to meet its CRM requirements? Cohen says IT departments must be aware that business people who operate applications through SaaS mode do not necessarily consider problems at this level.

"When you want different applications to work together, as long as the data model matches, both in the cloud and within the enterprise, the integration process is very easy," Cohen said. Note that it is ' when ' you want to do it, not ' if ', because that's what you have to do. Problems do exist, but they are not unresolved, but there are still some technical problems. But we must know that integration is the ultimate goal that we ultimately want to achieve. ”

Develop a data consolidation plan

With the continuous development of enterprise cloud application, integration is unavoidable. The wise IT department should lead cloud providers to address this tricky management problem, Cohen said. Most providers are not too keen on consolidation, and they are concerned and concerned only with service delivery, rather than consolidating 10 or 100 applications owned by a company. ”

The IT department of the Chicago American Hospital Association (AHA) has rigorously evaluated all potential cloud service providers, said Karthik Chakkarapani, Technology solutions and Operations Company's IT director. But without consolidation related to checklist, no SaaS service provider can pass their IT reviews.

Users should be aware of how potential service providers will consolidate existing and upcoming SaaS applications, and understand how they work together with the company's existing single sign-on (SSO) environment based on a hybrid cloud, while also realizing how critical the database access they provide. "The best way to exchange data is to use Web services, so we also need to know what kind of Web services they support," says Chakkarapani. ”

Create a provider ecological environment

Because of the complexity of SaaS application interactions and internal applications, update upgrades become the most intractable problem in management, often addressing an application problem that may have an impact on other applications, Chakkarapani said. Management is an art, and an internal service center based on a strong IT Infrastructure library is critical.

The AHA has 30% SaaS applications that need to be coordinated, and other applications are located in isolated islands of information. Prior to the AHA Upgrade product application, SaaS service provider Socialtext introduced a simplified test and certification service with the SSO service working with the latest social collaboration.

Chakkarapani said: "After the manufacturer launches the new upgrade product, we must carry on the test before applies to the network." There may be a lot of problems during this period, and the more problems that we have, the more important it is for us to build a good environment for our manufacturers. ”

Set up a DevOps team

The most difficult infrastructure management problem for IT operations is the inability to manage resources at all. This can happen when developers prefer to bypass the IT department to get cloud computing resources and are unwilling to wait for traditional in-house provisioning programs

Rachel Chalmers, 451 Group analyst at the market research firm, said the establishment of a DevOps team was the best way to solve the problem, and that the team was able to quickly provide the resources and flexible configuration needed for cloud-based developers. This means that IT departments must accept changes in thinking habits and new tools.

At a later point, Chalmers encourages the DevOps team to use cloud infrastructure automation tools developed by companies such as Opscode or puppet labs.

To implement the drag-and-drop function

If organizations want to take full advantage of dynamic private cloud or hybrid cloud infrastructure, they need some management tools. These tools must be able to shorten cycle times, provide better automation, control resource consumption, meet safety standards, and, of course, quickly and easily promote the development of new environments and resources.

This means adding cloud management to the top of the company's virtualization management, said Dhiraj Pathak, chief information officer of PwC. This is an excellent capability layer to efficiently manage virtualized resources. It is still in its infancy and, although not yet fully mature, many parts of the layer are maturing.

It was also the goal of the Roundarch company to create a more automated and flexible resource usage layer, when they tried to find a corporate cloud management tool. Geoff Cubitt, the company's president and chief technology officer, said the company wanted to allow users to manage their resources, reduce pressure on it teams, and provide greater flexibility through a virtual-tier environment.

Cubitt says the ability to create, drag and drop and reuse mirrors and templates from other environments in another environment is critical in dealing with cloud computing. He stressed that Roundarch has implemented all of their cloud management goals through the ABIQUO Enterprise cloud management software.

In addition, Cubitt said: "The drag-and-drop mirroring feature lets us copy it to where we need it and helps us quickly build a standard environment that may be the operating system, application servers, and databases that meet our security standards and configuration requirements." This means that we no longer need to send the best system administrators to set up these environments, and anyone can do it. This is a very simple operation, but it allows us to better leverage our resources, accelerate cycle times, and make it response time faster. ”

Select a management tool that supports multiple virtual tiers

Experts recommend that you choose an enterprise cloud management tool that can support multiple virtual tiers, even if you now use only one virtual layer. Many companies have created their own virtual data centers through VMware, and as they migrate to cloud computing, they are increasingly looking to build new virtual tiers to reduce costs and have more flexible supply options.

Cubitt, for example, Roundarch, with the help of abiquo management software, migrated from the vmware/red Hat Linux environment to lower-cost Xen OS environments. Abiquo management software supports multiple virtual tiers, allowing Roundarch corporate IT administrators to transfer mirrors created in vmware/linux environments to Xen environments. "It allows us to expand our existing infrastructure while making the most of the internal and external cloud and using public resources where appropriate," says Cubitt. We want to be more flexible in cross mode management. ”

In this respect, PwC's Pathak also said: Finding the right management tools is the key to the success of cloud computing deployment.

Improve cost management

The use of cloud resources makes it more complex to manage the total cost of IT management, especially when companies make decisions, according to Phil Garland, a partner at PwC's advisory services division.

Pathak said: "We found that the integration of cloud operations is a very difficult problem, especially from the public cloud and enterprise internal standard procurement process resources." It is difficult to establish a connection, but it is also important for efficiently tracking the cost of cloud resource consumption and consuming those resources. As a result, users should look for cloud management tools with financial engineering in their cloud services. It is not hard to find that this significant difference has gradually emerged among many tool developers.

Pathak also points out that if cloud services are introduced internally, IT departments need to develop a consistent cost model. Because transparency is a big expectation for users of cloud computing services, you don't want to value each particular service.

Don't omit any rules.

Overall, the challenges of cloud management are similar to traditional management, but larger and more challenging. As a result, the enterprise IT department can copy all the rules that have been made for the previous environment.

These provisions cover areas such as applications, networking and system management, as well as governance, policy synergies and service-level agreements. So companies should improve their management capabilities before turning to cloud computing.