Private cloud just "chicken ribs"?

Absrtact: Cloud Computing announces the end of the era of device-centric computing, replacing it with an interconnection-centric computing approach. Cloud computing is not a castle in the clouds to win praise. But at this point it architects will find themselves confronted with a thorny question of whether they should choose a public cloud or a private cloud.

Google can be said to promote the public cloud is a strong promoter, and at home, due to the importance of privacy, major companies have tried to develop private cloud, which is contrary to the spirit of the cloud, but is the reality of the requirements. The focus and distributed computing battle for cloud computing may not last a long time.

Public Cloud vs Private Cloud

According to observation, most enterprises prefer private cloud as the operating environment of cloud computing tools to protect enterprise IT security. A recent report by Info-tech, an IT survey consultancy, showed that 76% of IT decision makers preferred or chose to deploy private cloud only, and only 33% of respondents preferred the public cloud. "Most of our customers are willing to choose a private cloud," says Joe Coyle, CTO of Gemini, a consultancy and outsourcing company. They want to know about cloud computing, and that private cloud is the best way to gain hands-on experience in cloud computing. ”

Many enterprises are hesitant to adopt cloud storage services for security, service availability, technology maturity, and vendor reputation. But the most important thing is what the private cloud can do to the enterprise. Efficiency improvement or money saving? Utilitarian companies cannot see the immediate effects of ERP like the "Private cloud", and it seems that the problem of data storage is not a hot issue. An executive at a gaming firm even says to the author: "It's a big deal to add two more blades." "Private cloud is not very practical at present, but also too concept, there is no way to save money and improve the efficiency of the two major aspects of stimulating the user's nerves."

"Don't dream of a private cloud"?

Although money is the root of all evils, it is not a determinant of everything. We all know that a simple but the rationale, "more money, say more salt", "A penny a penny", the company or individuals, of course, will be considered from the economic aspect is undoubtedly, but the final decision does not always use the word "final". I think, the enterprise is even more so, although the first consideration is money, the final consideration is also money, but the last "money" should be in the long run earned income. What they value is something other than money. Speaking of public cloud computing, it is easy to associate with our existing power system, the power system has been developed for more than 125 years, the entire industry has matured to be studied from the inside out, the infrastructure has been built almost. It is easy to understand that as long as there is a centralized power generation capacity and a large distribution network can reduce the cost of the power system, but few companies to build their own power plants for domestic demand.

Private cloud is a much more noble choice than public cloud computing services. According to the Microsoft white Paper "Cloud computing Economics" for small and medium-sized companies with fewer than 100 servers, private cloud is a much more expensive option than public cloud computing services. For these small businesses or departments, the only way to share the benefits of scale cloud computing is to migrate to the public cloud computing model. However, the private cloud is feasible for large enterprises with a server device size of approximately 1000 units. But it still has to face the problem of 10 times times the cost of a private cloud over the public cloud, under the same service, scale, diversity of requirements and multiple tenant effects.

Technology is the simplest challenge to build a private cloud computing service that needs to be overcome first, and the scale and cost issues are just the beginning; the immaturity of management software is also a major obstacle to its development. Moreover, the private cloud technology market is still immature. Countless companies-from traditional infrastructure and management vendors to start-up virtualization vendors-are developing cloud management products. This area of congestion will only complicate the process of choosing a manufacturer.

Migrating business to a public cloud platform is a more innovative step than migrating to a private cloud platform, and is less risky than a private cloud platform. Buying Amazon Web Services (Amazon Web) offers less expensive virtual servers, and investing hardware software to build its own in-house cloud platform is certainly expensive, and may also mean significantly improving the entire infrastructure. In addition, the current market environment has been volatile.

Cloud computing requires the self-service services of end users. Businesses that think they can build private clouds without investing are daydreaming. To automate and implement a process redesign, you need to invest a lot of resources, and this process is never free. Process Improvement (often called "process redesign") requires more than an upgraded Omni Graffle flowchart. Process improvement usually means that the enterprise needs to implement some modification or reorganization, forcing some departments to accept some less important responsibilities in the day-to-day operations, and in some cases, to be subsumed into other departments, whose functions become part of the larger product in the restructured department.

Do not create an internal cloud for development purposes only. If you invest all of your cloud investment in it optimization within your organization, the consequences can be severe. Or a "hybrid cloud" approach that allows you to restructure your data center instead of using a public service provider to implement cloud planning. It is hard to understand why some people are particularly keen on implementing internal clouds. Most data centers are used to support existing applications, which typically do not require a cloud environment. Why should the cloud be implemented when these applications are still running? And the cloud does not bring any advantage to these applications.

Enterprises should not put a lot of capital into their own data centers, why not use other people's resources? So the enterprise is to pay only some operating expenses.

Private clouds are not able to achieve the scale effect of the public cloud. The web based public cloud has unique advantages in terms of service quality, utilization, cost and diversity. This shows that the private cloud does not have the means to match the public cloud. At this point, we can also draw the conclusion that private cloud will be eliminated sooner or later, there is no future. However, the private cloud is indispensable to the real environment.

Enterprise: My safety and my decision

According to Bernard Golden, chief executive of Hyper Stratus consultancy, one study after another showed that security is a potential concern for public cloud computing. For example, a April 2010 survey noted that more than 45% of respondents felt the risk of cloud computing outweighed the benefits. A similar concern was found in a survey conducted by CAS and Ponemon Cato. However, they also found that, despite these concerns, cloud applications were being deployed. The continuation of similar surveys and results shows that people's distrust of security continues.

Of course, most of the concerns about cloud computing are related to public cloud computing. The global IT community continues to ask the same questions about using a public cloud service provider. Golden, for example, went to Taiwan this week and delivered a speech at the Taiwan Cloud SIG Conference. 250 people attended the meeting. As expected, the first question that people ask him is "is public cloud computing safe enough that I should use a private cloud to avoid any security problems?" People everywhere seem to believe that public cloud service providers are untrustworthy.

However, the formula for cloud security to boil down to the "public cloud is unsafe, private cloud security" seems simplistic. Simply put, this view is a big lie (or a basic misunderstanding). The main reason is that this new computing model forces a dramatic change in security products and practices.

The lie is that the private cloud is safe. This conclusion is based solely on the definition of a private cloud: The private cloud is deployed within the boundaries of the enterprise's own data center. The misconception arises from the fact that cloud computing contains two key distinctions that differ from traditional computing: virtualization and dynamism. The first difference is that the technology base of cloud computing is based on an application management program. The management program can isolate calculations (and their associated security threats) from traditional security tools, and check for inappropriate or malicious packets in network traffic. Because virtual machines in the same server can communicate entirely through communication in the hypervisor, packets can be sent from one virtual machine to another without having to go through a physical network. Generally installed security devices check traffic on the physical network.

Crucially, this means that if a virtual machine is compromised, it can send dangerous traffic to another virtual machine, and the organization's defenses are not even aware of it. In other words, an insecure application can cause attacks on other virtual machines, and there is no way for the security of the Organization to do so. Just because an organization's applications are located in a private cloud does not protect the application from security issues.

Of course, one might point out that this problem comes with virtualization and does not involve any aspect of cloud computing. This observation is correct. Cloud computing represents a combination of virtualization and automation. It is the second element of another security flaw that arises from the private cloud.

Cloud computing applications benefit from automation for flexibility and resilience, and can respond to changing applications by rapidly migrating virtual machines and launching additional virtual machines to manage changing workloads. This means that the new instance can be online within minutes without any human intervention. This means that any necessary software installation or configuration must also be automated. Thus, when a new instance is added to an existing application pool, it can be used as a resource immediately.

It also means that any required security software must be automatically installed and configured without human intervention. Unfortunately, many organizations rely on security personnel or system administrators to manually install and configure the necessary security components, usually the second step after the installation and configuration of other software components of the machine.

So the result of a big lie about cloud computing is that the private cloud itself is unsafe. A private cloud application that is poorly managed and poorly configured is vulnerable to attack. A properly managed and configured public cloud application can achieve good security. Portraying the situation as Black-and-White is an oversimplification that can jeopardize the discussion.

Private cloud: abandonment, food tasteless

June 8, Hewlett-Packard CEO Léo Apotheker at Las Vegas's Hewlett-Packard Discover 2011 meeting introduced the HP Cloud Platform program, pledged to spend billions of of dollars for research and development innovation, and to promote the HP hybrid cloud technology research and development. In addition, HP has demonstrated a range of hardware and software platforms with integrated storage strategies, as well as new products for mobile technology.

For the first time in the industry to talk about hybrid cloud computing or in 2008, pure cloud seekers were struggling to fight back. After all, they think the private cloud is just a new method of data center, and it's stupid. For them, a hybrid cloud built with a private cloud or a traditional computing platform is ridiculous.

At present, the public cloud is still a noticeable trend of cloud development. With the solution of core issues such as public cloud security, the ultimate goal is to move private clouds as far as possible to the public cloud. It can be said that the private cloud is the first step towards the public cloud. The public cloud is proving its value to attract new users by maintaining a bridge between the common and private cloud through the maintenance of different forms of technology.

Public cloud is the embodiment of IT industry Internet, can provide the more complete IT application outsourcing service to the user, solve the storage security problem to some extent, deliver the service completely in SaaS mode, because it is already SOA, the user's application extension becomes very convenient. Therefore, a variety of services through the public cloud can be completed one at a a while, it will undoubtedly reduce IT outsourcing costs.

A private cloud is an ambiguous term. Many people use this concept without hesitation at a time when the concept is still in disarray. The fundamental changes in it, namely, the explosive growth of applications and data, will make traditional methods of work and their artificial processes and islands of institutions become obsolete and wasteful.

At the same time, cloud computing offers a prospect for cheaper, faster, and more agile computing. Unfortunately, many enterprises offering IT services believe that the new operating model must be tailored to the existing assumptions and processes of the enterprise, rather than as an opportunity to eliminate waste and inefficiency, as well as the necessary means of combining computational efficiency with operational effectiveness.

The current mess will take at least a year or so before the dust settles. Only then will the real opportunities, demands and challenges of the private cloud manifest themselves clearly and unambiguously. Until then, a large number of confusing and contradictory articles, surveys and reports are still emerging, and private cloud, even as a concept, remains a real chicken.

(Responsible editor: Lu Guang)