Dairyun, to provide you with satisfactory cloud services

In the business world, all we have to do is listen to the needs of our customers and satisfy them as much as they can, just as children like to listen to rock music, and we have to offer more rock choices in the jukebox. If an enterprise administrator wants to buy cloud services, we have to put the cloud service in place. Dell is a hooping in this area-if you don't have enough to send a device purchase order to Dell and wait for the delivery and , you can actually use the company's datacenter resources directly.

Dell's new cloud services are fully equipped with Dell's distinctive features. The company has been close to Microsoft, and the relationship between the two has been more intimate after the acquisition. As other cloud vendors have a slightly higher license charge than Microsoft, we might as well use Windows Server 2008 R2 in this heap of packaged resources. We can control the device on the Dell Cloud portal, but the feature is only allowed to log on via IE or Firefox, and Chrome is not even in the list.

The entire sales process also reflects Dell's consistent style. You can buy a device by the time you use it, but the default option is to recommend that users buy one-month permission directly-which may not be the case for a user who has a real plan for long-term use, but that's far too much for most users. Dell's marketing team has sometimes been a disservice, and many people are probably disgusted by the explicit marketing strategy. The "small" device in the product scenario has a virtual CPU, 2GB memory, and 100GB storage space, with a monthly lease cost of USD 125, equivalent to 17.5 cents per hour.

A midsize instance--the solution I used in my test--has four virtual CPUs, 8GB of RAM, and 400GB storage, with a monthly rental cost of $500. If you want to pay by the hour, the rent for each virtual CPU per hour is 5.5 cents, 7 cents per GB of memory each hour, and 30 cents per GB of storage each month. As long as you order this hardware configuration, we can split it into multiple sets of VMware virtual machines, and the whole process of purchasing actual hardware and installing VMware is not the same.

Virtualization and Freedom

The biggest difference from this Dell scenario might be the openness of the virtual machines on the stack. All other mainstream cloud vendors will provide root privileges for a virtual machine before taking the user's money, and then pretend that the virtualization mechanism does not exist. The root password is what makes us feel like we use our own devices when we log in the leased resource, but we actually log into the virtual machine and all the hardware resources are shared by many customers.

On the Dell side, you will find VMware VAPP when you open the Dell Cloud Portal. According to a Dell technical support engineer, it is equivalent to a set of server racks where the user can set up any virtual machines within a specified resource range. To fill this virtual rack, you can design several sets of standardized templates for creating F5 load balancers, Windows Server 2008 R2 servers, or SuSE Linux 11 hosts. Of course, we can also upload any vmware or OVF virtual machines to the cloud environment.

Another option is to help users build virtual machine systems through specific ISO files-a feature that is important when you want to start a specific LIVECD version of Linux or other operating systems. This management portal even allows us to use the CD/DVD drive in the same way as the native, except that you need to upload ISO files.

It is a pleasure to explore the function at this level. You can use VMware Workstation or VMware Fusion as a desktop system in a virtual machine and enable it on the server room side after uploading to your virtual rack. Most other cloud products also allow us to create server mirrors, but usually we need to stop the work at hand to create a mirror image.

The VMware software layer will also join us as we talk to a running device. You can freely open the SSH port according to your custom, but the easiest way is to use the remote client provided by VMware. The Admin portal interface displays all existing virtual machines in the list, and the VMware remote client initiates the connection in a new browser window as soon as the corresponding item is clicked. I have had some minor hurdles in testing this feature, but finally found that Firefox is the perfect support for the entire process. After the feature is enabled, I am able to perform various operations on my own desktop server. The display effect is not sensitive, but what can we ask as a set of programs that will allow you to manage servers across the country?

To get an intuitive idea of the speed of Dairyun devices, I tried to use the DaCapo benchmark-a set of Java routines for testing common Java server applications-for performance reviews of Windows Server 2008 R2 virtual machines. Compared with other virtual machines in other cloud environments, the difference between the test results is quite obvious. The Dell cloud is 50% to 100% faster than the Amazon High-cpu instance (14.5% per hour) in most benchmark projects. But in other areas of the project, such as image rendering testing (batik and sunflow), the same is true.

These differences mean that we have to try our apps ourselves to see if we can really get the performance benefits that are most focused on. For example, the Lucenea index program will perform more than the Amazon HIGH-CPU device on a Dell midsize solution, but the results of search tests are comparable. The good news is that you can step through the VMware virtual machines on your desktop and slowly find the right software suite and the combination of device routines that improve performance.

Users who like VMware products will also love the Dell Cloud. The above illustration shows the Dell Cloud Management portal, providing intuitive feature descriptions for users running virtual machines in VMware Vapp.

What we know about network capabilities

Dell also offers a network configuration with the same transparent features. You can choose from a range of different network options for your own virtual machines in a running state, configure your internal and external networks, and reconfigure your virtual devices in a similar way to physical servers. When we need equipment to connect with the outside world, we just tinker with NAT and DHCP to release the external IP address.

I'm a bit DOJ about this kind of plan. Other cloud facilities put the entire process on the ground floor, connecting the device directly to the external Internet. As long as you have the root password and the corresponding IP address, you can get a completely open access effect. This approach is simpler and, of course, discounts on flexibility.

Other cloud products have also made special adjustments to internal and external networks, but vendors have declined to disclose their specifics. Dell's program will be ideal for users running the network in an office environment or in an internal server room, because the steps are very similar. As the relevant technologies are fully consistent, we can give full play to their flexibility as needed. There may be some extra effort in the process, but this is the price to pay for openness.

Like other vendors, Dell does not charge for the amount of data that goes into the system, but only the amount of data that is flowing out of the system (24 cents per gigabyte). The Dell cloud is not yet differentiated into finer, more targeted use zoning, which is somewhat lagging behind other cloud vendors. Amazon, for example, lists at least 18 different entries in the Data Price table detailing what price scheme to use for the flow of data from point A to point B.

Summary

Dell Cloud is not yet complex. But with its steady growth in the market and the addition of various types of storage and database options, the simplicity of its immediate pride may also fall. For now, Dell Cloud is attractive to it people who have purchased and configured Dell or Windows devices on their networks. The Dell cloud is ideally open, and any administrator who has set up a VMware virtual machine rack in its own server room can easily get started.

Of course, the biggest advantage of migrating to Dairyun products is that the usual headaches of deployment details-such as connecting equipment to a rack with bolts and installing air-conditioning-can now be handed over to Dell's dedicated team. Others are exactly the same as the process we are familiar with: Call Dell's aftermarket representative, submit the request, and then install the software required for the business. The only difference is that we don't have to wait for FedEx staff to knock on the sit, and the server room team doesn't have to be upset about screwing screws.

"Responsible editor: Xiao Ming TEL: (010) 68476606"