Cloud computing Infrastructure "diagram"

Cloud computing is not only the technology, but also the innovation of service mode. Cloud computing can bring users more efficiency, flexibility and scalability, is based on the entire IT field of change, its technology and applications related to hardware systems, software systems, application systems, operation and maintenance management, service patterns and other aspects.

IaaS (infrastructure as a service) as one of the three parts of cloud computing, cloud the infrastructure to better support the online, deployment, and operation of application systems to improve efficiency and reduce TCO. At the same time, because IaaS contains various types of hardware and software systems, the cloud migration process also faces unprecedented complexity and challenges. So what are the components of the cloud infrastructure? What are the main problems? What are the main solutions?

Cloud infrastructure

As shown in Figure 1, the traditional It deployment architecture is "chimney-style", or "private jet" system.

Figure 1 Traditional It chimney Mode deployment architecture

In this architecture, when the new application system on the line needs to analyze the application system's resource requirements, to determine the infrastructure required for computing, storage, network and other equipment specifications and quantities, this deployment pattern is the main problem with the following two points:

Hardware is high with low. In view of the application system in the next 3-5 years of business development, as well as business burst demand, in order to meet the performance of the application system, capacity requirements, often in the selection of computing, storage and network hardware equipment configuration will leave a certain percentage of the margin. But when the hardware resources are on line, the load of the application system in a certain time will not be too high, so the utilization of the hardware device with high configuration is not high.

Integration difficulties. Users are also aware of the low utilization of resources in practical use, when the need for a new application system, will be given priority to deploy in the existing infrastructure. However, because of the operating environment required by different application systems, the preemption of the resources will be very different, more important is to consider the reliability, stability, operation and maintenance management issues, the new and old application system integration in a set of infrastructure is very difficult, more users often choose new and application system matching calculation, hardware devices such as storage and networking.

This deployment pattern, resulting in each set of hardware and the host application System "special plane", many sets of hardware and application system constitute a "chimney-style" deployment framework, so that the overall resource utilization is not high, occupy too much room space and energy, with the increase of application systems, IT resources efficiency, scalability, Manageability faces great challenges.

The introduction of the cloud infrastructure effectively addresses traditional infrastructure issues (as shown in Figure 2).

Figure 2 Cloud Computing Fusion Mode deployment architecture

The cloud infrastructure, based on traditional infrastructure computing, storage, and network hardware layers, adds virtualization layers and clouds:

Virtualization layer: Most cloud infrastructures employ virtualization technologies, including computational virtualization, storage virtualization, and network virtualization. Through the virtualization layer, the difference and complexity of hardware layer are shielded, and the virtual resource pool with standardization, flexible expansion and contraction and elasticity is shown up.

Cloud: The resource pool for the deployment, combination, according to the needs of the application system automatically generate, expand the required hardware resources, more applications through the flow, automated deployment and management, improve it efficiency.

Compared to the traditional infrastructure, through virtualization consolidation and automation, the cloud infrastructure uses systems to share infrastructure resource pools for high utilization, high availability, low cost, low power consumption, and automated management of the cloud Platform layer to enable rapid deployment, easy scalability, and intelligent management to help users build IaaS ( Infrastructure as a service) cloud business model.

II. Cloud Infrastructure Integration

The cloud infrastructure resource pool makes computing, storage, networking, and corresponding virtualization a single product and technology is no longer the core, it is important that these resources are integrated to form an organic, flexible and scalable resource pool for automated deployment, monitoring, management, and operation of cloud applications.

The integration of cloud infrastructure resources puts forward new challenges to computing, storage and network virtualization, and drives a series of network and virtualization technology changes. In traditional mode, the server, network and storage are based on physical devices, therefore, the server, Storage access control, QoS bandwidth, traffic monitoring and other policies based on physical port deployment, management interface is clear, and the device and corresponding policy is static, fixed. In the cloud infrastructure model, virtualization technology is used in servers, networks, storage, and security, and resource pooling makes devices and their corresponding policies dynamically changing (see Figure 3).

Figure 3 Cloud Infrastructure Fusion deployment

As a result of the deployment of virtualization, a separate physical server becomes more than one virtual machine, and these virtual machines are dynamic, migrating, increasing, and decreasing as the application system, data Center environment changes. For example, the Server1 in Figure 3, for some reason (such as Server1 overload), one of the virtual machines VM1 migrated to Server2 in the same cluster. In this case, if you want to keep VM1 business access uninterrupted, you need to implement VM1 access policies from Port1 to Port2, which requires the switch to perceive the state changes of the virtual machine and automatically update the policies on the ports before and after the migration.

This is a simple example of computational virtualization and network integration linkage. The latest eVB (Ethernet Virtual Bridge) standard Vepa (virtual Ethernet port aggregation, 802.1QBG) is the technical standard to implement this fusion linkage scheme, which includes VDP Virtual machine Discovery and association, CDCP virtual machine multi-channel forwarding and other protocols, By standardizing the association control of virtualization information between host and network, the mapping of virtualized environment to physical environment is realized, so that the service change of virtual machine can be automatically responded through network perception.

In fact, the key to cloud infrastructure convergence is the network. At present, computing virtualization, storage virtualization technology has been relatively mature and self-contained system, however, as far as the entire IT infrastructure is concerned, the network is a link between computing resource pools, storage resource pools, and user connection groups, and only when the network is fully aware of dynamic changes in computing resource pools, storage resource pools, and user accesses can dynamic response While maintaining network connectivity, the consistency of network policy is ensured. Otherwise, manual intervention and manual configuration can significantly reduce the flexibility, scalability, and manageability of the cloud infrastructure.

III. Cloud Infrastructure Integration Scheme

As shown in Figure 4, the cloud infrastructure is divided into three levels of integration.

Figure 4 level of cloud infrastructure integration

Hardware Layer Fusion

For example, the VEPA technologies and scenarios mentioned above are the integration of computational virtualization with network devices and network virtualization to achieve the association between virtual machines and virtual networks. In addition, there are FCOE technology and programs to integrate storage and network, as well as horizontal virtualization, vertical virtualization to achieve the integration of network equipment itself.

Integration of the business layer

A typical scenario is a cloud security solution. Through the fusion between virtual firewall and virtual machine, the virtual firewall can realize the sense and association of virtual machine, and the firewall policy can be automatically correlated when the virtual machine is migrated, added or reduced. In addition, there is the linkage between the virtual machine and the LB load balance. When the business unexpected resources are insufficient, the traditional scheme needs to manually discover the virtual machine resources, then manually create the virtual machine, and configure access strategy, the response speed is very slow, and very time-consuming and laborious. By automatically detecting the user access and resource utilization of a business virtual machine, it automatically increases the corresponding number of virtual machines on demand when the business bursts, and the LB linkage carries out the business load sharing. At the same time, when the business burst to reduce, can automatically reduce the corresponding number of virtual machines, save resources. It not only solves the business burst problem in the virtualized environment effectively, but also improves the efficiency and intellectualization of the business response greatly.

Management integration

The cloud infrastructure improves the reliability of IT systems through a combination of virtualization technology and management. For example, a virtualization platform can be used with network management, computing management, storage management linkage, when the equipment failure to affect the virtual machine business, can automatically migrate virtual machines to ensure business normal access; In addition, for the normal equipment, operating system, but not access to a business system, the virtualization platform can also be linked with application management, Detect the status of application systems, such as Web, APP, DB and other response speed, when an application does not normally provide access, automatically restart the virtual machine, restore business normal access.

Iv. concluding remarks

The transformation of the data center from traditional infrastructure to cloud infrastructure greatly improves the necessity and feasibility of infrastructure integration. Through cloud network integration of resource pools, building a unified, integrated and linkage infrastructure system not only improves the reliability, flexibility, scalability and manageability of application system deployment, but also promotes the application and practice of cloud computing.

At present, the information system of the people's Procuratorate will evolve from the traditional data center architecture to cloud the basic structure, meet the demands of the rapid batch deployment of the Procuratorate information system, optimize the system performance, reduce the workload of management and maintenance, adapt to the demand of scientific and technological inspection of the investigation information and equipment modernization, To promote the scientific development of criminal investigation work and prosecutorial management work.

Cloud computing systems are already in the government, education, large enterprises, operators and other industries have been more and more mature applications, emerging a number of domestic and foreign customers with a comprehensive solution of cloud infrastructure, including China third, VMware, Microsoft, Amazon and other companies, especially the domestic three companies can also provide set calculation, storage, UIs Unified Infrastructure System for integrated delivery of network, virtualization and cloud management It can significantly simplify the deployment and operational costs of the inspection cloud infrastructure, and provide professional and efficient operational support with extensive engineering implementation experience, reducing the deployment time of the cloud infrastructure system by more than 70%.