How Microsoft uses the private cloud

recently, Microsoft Asia Pacific Research Group, Server and Development Tools Division, research and Engineering laboratory manager Liu Yin, to share Microsoft's own use of private cloud infrastructure, the successful development of testing cloud platform and self-service portal process. He said that the cloud computing-the hottest technology of the moment-is being sought after by the IT community. Simply put, it is a way of computing it as a service provider, and virtualization is a core technology for cloud computing services. Virtualization using infrastructure as a service to transform existing hardware platforms in the enterprise is a relatively simple way to try cloud computing and to see the effects quickly. Virtualization is an indispensable implementation technology for most infrastructure-and services-based cloud computing. For example, through the integration of the server to reduce energy consumption, reducing the increase in equipment space and energy pressure.

starting in 2007, the team led by Liu Yin, using Microsoft's proprietary cloud technology to build the development test cloud. It improves the efficient utilization of server resources, realizes flexible server resource configuration management and shortens service cycle. At present, only 3 people will be able to operate nearly 1600 servers, supporting the development and testing of many development teams in Shanghai and Beijing. "After the deployment of this platform, we also do a detailed statistics," Liu Yin shared: "Overall server utilization increased 8 times times, the engineer's development efficiency increased 4~5 times." ”

Improve work efficiency and reduce resource cost

Development and testing is typically the first business to use virtualization technology, and developers can leverage virtual machines to build and test in secure and mutually independent virtual environments. "Before we had a virtualized platform, engineers were going to deploy a test environment that usually takes about 2-4 to four hours," Liu Yin, using an image example: "It only takes 18 minutes to deploy a parallel system, That is, 20 minutes or so can be composed of a team of 8 Windows environment for product testing, to a great extent improve efficiency. ”

In most application systems, workloads take up only a fraction of the total hardware capacity, adding workloads to process and memory consumption through virtualization, so it platforms can reduce the number of physical servers needed to support business operations. "Typical server usage is typically 15%, and if the utilization of the server remains in 70%~80%, the space, hardware, and supported power consumption required by the infrastructure infrastructure is reduced to one-third per cent," Liu Yin said, starting from 2010 We set the procurement server configuration to a fairly high hardware standard, in this way on the same machine can run more virtual machines, then for a single node, and its daily work compared to the task, the cost of the pay has been reduced to very low, you can use the ordinary PC market price of the private cloud equivalent to 4 Xeon servers, 8G Memory Virtual Machine computing resource. ”

Microsoft internal Development Test Cloud Platform real-time use status

In the traditional IT environment, the physical machine provides the way needs to carry on each time the actual server equipment the purchase flow, then carries on the field deployment, when the user can actually use these physical resources, generally needs a relatively long service flow. "Virtualization in a way that user request a virtual machine only need to have a simple application with the administrator, perhaps a few minutes later, your memory from 4G to 8G, hard drive from 500G to 800G, Liu Yin said:" This is also to the enterprise IT department service process optimization and adjustment, IT services will no longer be the fire brigade's role. ”

Unified hardware and Virtualization management platform

Virtualization technology can indeed benefit businesses in many ways, but at the same time it also poses a challenge to the management of origins in some way. "Without a good control, virtualization can bring chaos to the management of the infrastructure," Liu Yin. "You will find that the server environment becomes more volatile and more complex, and that the convenience of virtualization will be offset without good management." ”

The private cloud platform built by Microsoft Research and Development Engineering Labs manages infrastructure resources primarily through the System Center series of management products. The main application platform has system Center virtual Machine Manager, the virtual machine management, resource integration. System Center Twist Manager, which provides monitoring, performance reporting, Error alert, and so on, and can be deeply integrated with VMM. "We have also evaluated other management tools platforms in our set-up," Liu Yin, who says: "System Center provides an extensible integration platform to manage IT resources, which is important." ”

Unified Virtualization Management Platform Interface

VMM provides centralized management of virtualized environments, enabling administrators to quickly allocate new virtual machines. Its self-service portal is a web-based optional component that administrators can configure to authorize users to create and manage their own virtual machines in the context of a virtual host. You can migrate virtual machines from a failed cluster in Windows Server 2008 R2 to other nodes in the same cluster without any downtime. Liu Yin The system Center Twist manager end-to-end Visual monitoring platform, from servers, applications to clients, as a full view management interface.

For the landing of the cloud computing platform, the reporter also communicates with Liu Engine several major concerns of users, for the effective management of physical and virtual machine mixed with the IT environment, through a set of tools to centrally manage the virtualization technology of different vendors, as well as the conversion of physical machines to virtual machines, virtual machines and virtual machines, There are high availability of virtual machines, template management, disaster recovery and other targeted optimization tools. Liu Yin's team has a good experience in real-world applications, and these experiences are constantly being deepened and optimized in Microsoft's private cloud solutions, providing best practices for more companies built on cloud computing platforms.