Overview of the five Cloud management solutions

For enterprise users, how to implement the hybrid management of traditional infrastructure and "cloud" infrastructure is a problem that must be faced. At present, the cloud management market brings together the heroes of the road, including large it vendors, but also has a very innovative ability of emerging companies.

As cloud computing in the enterprise environment gradually landing, vendors for cloud management products and solutions are emerging. The global Cloud management software market will reach $2.5 billion trillion by 2015, according to IDC research. Today, the market's cloud management software and solutions have formed a scale of objective suppliers camp.

In this article, I selected five representative cloud management software solutions, which are IBM Service IBuySpy Manager, BMC Cloud Lifecycle management solution, CA cloud-connected Management Suite, HP Cloud Management Platform Cloud System and Novell Cloud Manager. We will analyze and comment on their management characteristics and product characteristics in cloud management.

IBM Service IBuySpy Manager

IBM has always regarded cloud computing as an important strategy, not only to set up a dedicated cloud computing department, and has established nine cloud computing centers around the world, providing customers with cloud computing technology support and services to provide comprehensive End-to-end cloud computing solutions. As a cloud computing management platform, IBM service IBuySpy Manager supports automated IT service deployments and provides resource monitoring and cost management in cloud computing. It enables data centers to more quickly create service platforms for various types of workloads, while leveraging these core service management capabilities to achieve high levels of consolidation, flexibility, and resource optimization.

Specifically, IBM Service IBuySpy Manager provides a self-service portal interface that can be used for predefined retention of virtualized environments, including storage and network connectivity resources, and it supports automatic provisioning and cancellation of supply resources, as well as real-time monitoring of physical and virtual cloud computing resources; It also provides integrated use and account deduction to help system administrators manage, track, and optimize system usage; for the most common types of resources, IBM Service IBuySpy Manager can provide pre-packaged automation templates and workflows. (IBM Service IBuySpy Manager Functional module as shown in the attached diagram)

Figure IBM Service IBuySpy Manager function module

IBM Service IBuySpy Manager uses the following software to implement these features:

Tivoli Service Don Manager: This software assists users in automating the provisioning, management, and cancellation of the IT architecture. On System x, System p, or System z, Tivoli Service Don Manager provides support for end user-initiated virtual server provisioning and management. Its built-in self-service virtualization management capabilities meet the long-term needs of data center management for self-service deployments of virtual servers and associated software.

IBM Tivoli Monitoring: Monitors and manages system and network applications, tracks the availability and performance of enterprise systems, and provides reports to track trends and troubleshoot problems.

IBM Tivoli Usage and Accounting pret: The software measures service usage data to track the creation, modification, and deletion of the instance itself and the capacity to allocate it. This information can be periodically extracted and transformed into a so-called CSR (Public server Resource) file, and then a CSR file can be retrieved to produce the report.

BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management Solutions

The BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management solution (referred to as CLM) supports the adjustment of the list of services based on the user's job functions and customizes the services. The solution is designed for private cloud and public cloud service provider applications and enables dynamic configuration across the entire stack of services, including computing, networking, storage, applications, and spanning different infrastructures. In addition, the BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management solution provides an out-of-the-box cloud management workflow that drives the monitoring, performance, and compliance of cloud services through automated allocation of compliance policies and performance monitoring tools.

The BMC launched the second generation Cloud lifecycle management solution in June 2011. The new solution provides multi-level cloud service support, from service requests to service termination, and full support for business-oriented cloud environment deployments. At the same time, the BMC's new policy-based Service Manager, contained within CLM, enables customers to take full advantage of automation and policy and to quickly install, configure, and manage cloud services.

CA Technologies Cloud Connection Management Suite

The Cloud Connection Management Suite (cloud-connected Management), developed by the veteran management software vendor CA Technologies, integrates Cloud Insight, Cloud Compose, Cloud Optimize, Cloud Orchestrate and other software tools. Among them, the Cloud Insight focuses on providing customers with information related to cloud computing documents; Cloud compose allows users to create new applications directly in the cloud environment in a more intuitive and convenient way; Cloud optimize allows users to decide whether or not to purchase their services based on the rating and Word-of-mouth of a cloud computing software in the Cloud Commons community; Cloud orchestrate is mainly used to help users realize the application migration between the traditional environment and the cloud environment.

HP Cloudsystem

As HP's cloud management platform, HP Cloudsystem's core design concept is to put all the IT resources in the system, including servers, storage, network, etc., as a large resource pool for unified management, and a set of software for unified deployment and coordination. The central component of Cloudsystem is the Cloudservice Don Software, which is based on opsware technology. HP Cloudsystem currently sells three core components: HP converged infrastructure (running matrix keyboard-based environnement), Cloudservice Don ( Referred to as CSA) and HP own support services to ensure the normal operation of the Cloudsystem.

HP emphasizes that HP Cloudsystem can span private cloud, public cloud and mixed cloud environment, including "double burst" ability to help users to deal with the peak/trough-like irregular requirements. This innovation will allow customers to supply and dynamically adjust the computing resources they need through the public cloud provider or in-house pay-for-private cloud environment. Currently, the HP Cloudsystem solution contains three versions, namely HP Cloudsystem Matrix, HP Cloudsystem Enterprise Edition, and HP Cloudsystem Carrier edition.

Novell Cloud Manager

Novell Cloud Manager is designed for the reality of the diversity of most IT environments, and users have the freedom and flexibility to create and manage private clouds that support a variety of key system management programs, operating systems, and hardware platforms. IT administrators can encapsulate, price, and render IT services on demand through a user-tailored interface. Customers can leverage this cloud management flexibility to save costs without having to worry about the security and compliance risks inherent in the public cloud. Novell Cloud Pret also allows private cloud builders to identify hardware assets, centralize resource pools onto virtual servers, package applications, and then implement billing through the Active Directory and LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) security model and track usage.

Summary

The Cloud management solutions of the vendors mentioned above have essentially similar core elements: first, these companies have improved their cloud management capabilities through technology acquisitions for the past two years, such as the BMC's acquisition of Phurnace software to step up cloud management from an application automation perspective; In 2009 and 2010, CAS acquired the data center automation manufacturer Cassatt, the network performance management manufacturer Netqos and the service level management manufacturer OBLICORE;2010 IBM also achieved the management technology cloud expansion through two acquisitions.

Second, cloud management solutions claim to support different cloud types, and the products and solutions of these cloud management have been continuously improved in terms of integration and compatibility with the active promotion of standard organizations. At the same time, the real-time and automated management is also an important feature of these products, which can support the dynamic creation of new objects at system run time, make them available for service, or dynamically delete objects that are no longer needed, including services, storage, or applications.

In this area, there are also a number of second-tier vendors focused on management monitoring, which can also provide excellent and unique cloud management solutions. The Novell Cloud Manager mentioned above is one of them. Other cloud management solutions, which claim to provide the next generation of cloud management capabilities, can enable users to convert virtual machines to virtual machines via platforms that are easy to implement and operate, as well as open source Toolbox Opennebula for cloud computing, allowing for abiquo, KVM or VMware The ESX builds and manages the private cloud together, while providing Deltacloud adapters to manage the hybrid cloud in conjunction with Amazon EC2, and Rightscale provides the tools needed to design, deploy, and manage cloud resources deployed on multiple public or private clouds, Enables users to directly access servers and storage resources in the cloud, as if these resources are located in the Enterprise Data center.

It is not to be overlooked that, unlike large companies, the second line of small manufacturers has been the pioneer of IT technology innovation and the shining light. As cloud computing matures, a large number of companies are moving into cloud management, and the cloud management software and solutions market we are now seeing is still in its infancy. From the current situation, this market is lively and unique, and some lack of order. But thankfully, we have reason to expect more choices for future users and more orderly markets. (One of the authors, Chenhong, deputy general Manager and research director of Shanghai John Wei Information Management Consulting Co., Ltd., another author Zhu Yingju as senior researcher of Shanghai John Wei Information Management Consulting Co., Ltd. )