Storage inventory: Ten worthwhile cloud deployments

Editing this list is like choosing the top ten Classic rock songs. There are always people who disagree with your choice, and there are too many good things to pick. What you choose depends largely on your personal preferences. But here on cloud deployments, I believe the following cloud deployments are the most interesting:

1. Internal Cloud Promotion Sales

EMC is not just saying nothing on the cloud. Within EMC's internal IT organization, the company is actively serving internal users in the form of cloud-based services. EMC has created a framework based on EMC hardware/software, Dell Servers, and VMware to provide users with a virtual desktop through its cloud.

However, EMC's intent is not to provide all services and applications through the cloud. EMC's model is to provide users with support from the hardware level to the operating system level. Users have a platform that can build any application or host any application. "This is an architecture as a service (IaaS)," said Chris Asing, senior executive of the EMC IT department cloud services.

"The EMC IT department's first self service IaaS product is called Cloud9 Sandbox," says Asing. Anyone in EMC can create 10 VMS (virtual machines) on this platform and share content with friends, departments, or everyone else. The Sales engineer of our setup software, such as Greenplum, can build a display environment for the user with just a few keystrokes. ”

2. Build Smart Cloud

IBM's slogan for "Building Smart Earth" may be loud. But IBM did pioneer the smart cloud. Most of the cloud began as low-end commodity services, and IBM's intention was to provide an enterprise-class security cloud.

The company is attracting more big customers. IBM's Cloud's selling point is high availability, superior performance, top security, data/application segregation, and many of the features that are typically provided by expensive internal data centers.

"Users can choose the level of functionality and service they need to be tailored to their needs and priorities, which can be customized-from advanced data analysis and business applications to it architectures such as virtual servers and storage, or tools to test software code," said Pund analyst Charles King. All services are securely deployed by IBM's Global Cloud Data center network. ”

This smartcloud route has several other services, including IBM workload Deployer (IBM Workload Deployer), Social Business in the Cloud (Cloud Social business), IBM SAP Consolidator Creator Services (IBM SAP managed Application Service) and Lotus Domino Utility Server for LotusLive.

3. Make the Desktop cloud

The manufacturing giant applied materials uses the cloud to replace high-end workstations on the desktop. Deputy Chief information Officer Jay Kerley's idea is simple. Why do you have to use expensive hardware and software everywhere? Companies can virtualize hardware and critical applications. Users only need a simple network connection and a local screen to build a small desktop blade. Users who need to browse through complex images can get support from the image Processing Unit (GPU).

"Now our users can share computer-aided design (CAD) files and applications on the global production base network," says Kerley. ”

4. Cloud Disaster Recovery

There are many cloud-based disaster recovery (DR) solutions on the market. Jeff Rountree, Pump FX Group's global network manager, has pointed out an interesting case. The company uses a cloud for backup and Dr users. The riverbed Whitewater Accelerator serves as the backup target side of the Symantec Backup Exec software, while Whitewater also encrypts, duplicates, and compresses data transmitted to at&t, at& T is the actual cloud service provider.

This setting allows Rountree to keep the cost of the cloud low because he does not need to save multiple copies of the file on the cloud. On cloud services, providers typically charge in gigabytes. The backup window is also reduced by half, and he can recover the data faster in the event of an emergency. Because a copy containing everything remains on the riverbed device, he can also make remote replication and local replication with the help of a cloud service provider. Whitewater devices can also be managed by cloud storage.

"The benefits of the cloud are cost savings, no tape, more flexible Dr, and a daily management-time overhead that can save up to 2 hours," says Rountree. ”

Other providers are also launching powerful cloud Dr Technologies. Tom Trainer, director of product marketing at Gluster, an open-source software provider, says the recent incident at Amazon Web Services (AWS) shows that users need cloud disaster recovery (DR).

"As cloud computing becomes more common, cloud user Dr Practices must be implemented more frequently and are well deployed," he says. "For example, for a cloud based on AWS, Gluster N-way replication supports synchronous data replication between AWS Availability Zones (AWS availability area). He also recommends asynchronous replication to provide greater distance data protection.

5. Cloud Medical

You might think hospitals are less willing to embrace the cloud, but in fact they are among the first innovators. Banner Tiyatien, for example, set up a mock hospital to train medical personnel and build a digital image system to quickly share diagnostic information from X-ray pictures and MRI (NMR).

The banner Simulation Jude Center (Banner Analog Medical Center) located in Arizona, State Mesa is a 55,000-square-foot facility. Its "patient" is 71 computerized human body models. The Centre trains more than 1800 nurses each year. The medical service provider has also increased the number of computer simulations that can be accessed through gaming machines, using computer simulations to assess surgical techniques and training new technologies for physicians to promote improved artificial sensitivity.

On the digital imaging side, its picture archiving and communication Bae (PACS: Image archiving and communication systems) capture, transmit, display, and store X-rays, MRI, CT/CAT scans, Digital images obtained from nuclear medical equipment and ultrasonic medical equipment. An image that would take hours or days to be available is now just a few minutes away. These images can be large-ranging from 5MB to 5GB. The volume of the picture is also great--banner a facility in Phoenix produces 2 million pictures a month.

The whole set was backed by a cloud behind it. Banner uses NetApp (formerly Bycast) Storagegrid object storage software to manage PACS images. After 6 months of trial Storagegrid, banner the 300TB cloud-based grid in the Arizona, State Primary Data Center (and is ready to extend to 1.2PB), installing the 70TB grid in the level two data center at Colorado State Greeley. Both data centers use HP Jude Archive FX (MAS: Medical archiving solution), HP StorageWorks Modular Smart Array (modular Smart Array) and HP ProLiant DL380 server. Data is migrated between storage tiers according to policies set by different departments. For example, the data for a patient undergoing treatment is placed on the first tier of storage and migrated to a lower tier of storage after a period of time.

In the network, banner uses Cisco's Wide area creator services (WAAS: Wide area Application service). WAAS uses Cisco 281 integrated Service routers (ISR: Integrated service routers) and Cisco WAE 512 devices at remote sites, using a Cisco 7200-series Router and Greeley in Wae 7326 devices to speed application and file performance and minimize Wan (WAN) bandwidth usage. To monitor and look for potential cloud problems, Banner uses Plixer's Scrutinizer NetFlow and Sflow Analyzer to process data from Cisco devices. Scrutinizer enables IT personnel to observe top-level interlocutors, applications, and protocols, and to ensure that each transmission has the appropriate priority in the cloud.

6. Cloud Fusion

As the word fusion becomes a buzzword in many it areas, we have reason to think that the cloud can accelerate storage and network convergence.

Cimi is located in Voorhees, New Jersey. "To support cloud computing, you have to look for more robust data center internal connections and data center connections," said Tom Nolle, the company's president. The network must be more available and reliable. ”

Cimi Brocade Virtual Cluster Switching (VCS: Virtual cluster Switching) second-tier Ethernet technology (Brocade's virtual Cluster switching 2 Layer) There are three components: Ethernet Fabric (Ethernet fibre Architecture), distributed FDI (distributed intelligence), and logical chassis (logical chassis). Any switch in the system can communicate with any other switch because Ethernet fabric is connected to all servers and devices as a single logical switch. You do not need to manage each switch individually at the top of the rack or on the blade chassis. Each physical switch is managed like a port on the chassis. A logical chassis can consolidate more than 1000 ports without having to manually set up or install separate collection switches. This fibre-optic architecture has a port that can be as small as 48 ports and can be extended to thousands of ports. This can lead to faster, more flat networks. This VCS technology has been integrated into the Brocade VDX series data center switches, mainly to improve cloud computing.

7. Cloud Backup

Zmanda upgrades its own cloud backup solution. This ZCB 4.0 can store backups directly on the cloud, on a local disk, or on a composite backup, which is the combination of the first two. Better application support allows users to selectively back up data that is stored in Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft SQL Server and perform a differential backup of Microsoft SharePoint. Chander Kant, chief executive of Zmanda, said that Zmanda's ZCB Global dashboard was an internet-based interface that could monitor backup activity and cloud storage used in multiple ZCB configurations.

8. Multi-site, low-cost replication

Panzura Alto Cloud Controllers provides features that allow users to replicate data between multiple sites in combination with a single cloud service provider, multiple cloud service providers, or public and private clouds.

Howard Dratler, chief executive of Panzura, said: "Combining the departure and professional management architecture of well-known cloud service providers with the convenience of high-performance cloud controllers can make Dr (disaster recovery) simpler and more cost-efficient, It also ensures that critical data can be obtained anytime, even in the harshest environments. ”

9. Faster Data Recovery

Zetta Marketing director Jeff Bell says the traditional outbound storage solution is too slow to meet the enterprise's data recovery requirements.

"The tapes are slow and unreliable," he says. Online backup services require lengthy data retransmission times before data recovery can take place. ”

Zetta maintains a copy of the data that can be loaded, which can be accessed directly from the Zetta data center or quickly replicated back to the customer's site, he said. This process does not require tape or data reformatting. The data is always online and accessible. Zetta performs continuous detection and storage error correction to avoid errors during data recovery.

10. Cloud Development

Application development is also turning to the cloud. Exo developed a platform, a service (PaaS), to become the Exo Cloud IDE. This IDE makes it easy to deploy Java applications on the cloud. The code exists in the cloud and can be accessed over the Internet. As a result, moving an application from the development phase to the production phase can be faster.

VMware's Cloud Foundry PAAs is already using this method. It helps developers create Java, Spring, Ruby, and other types of applications and deploy them to cloud Foundry in minutes. All of this is done in the cloud.