The "Six Senses" that FedEx put into the private cloud

Now, for the x86 architecture based large servers, we've been able to make it out of the moment. But its application to Moore's law (at least doubling the computational power requirement every two years) is still at an early stage and not so mature. in this respect, CIO Rob Carter describes how FedEx is involved in the private cloud journey by looking at partners and industry leaders.

Just in the fall of 2010, FedEx set up a new data center in Colorado, and executive vice director and CIO Rob Carter said thatFedEx tried provides a "common, workload agnostic" computing environment feature. In simple terms, as a private cloud, the

Rob Carter thinks he's implementing the "mainstream market design" for future data centers, which he has hinted at and confirmed by Salesforce.com,twitter and Facebook for their own data centers. At the information 500 meeting, according to his conversation, the following is a six-point implementation process of experience:

1. Bet on Moore's Law and x86

Today, we have entered a stage where a large server based on the x86 architecture can be easily manufactured, but its application to Moore's law (at least doubling the computational power requirement every two years) is still in its infancy. In 30 days, the number will double from the initial 1 pence and eventually reach 5 million dollars.

In the course of x86 's development, we were only on the 19th day of the process, Carter said, big changes and harvests are coming. Stick to x86, even if you think you need the ability of existing application systems to handle workloads. The Colorado data Center "looks like a row of extended x86 server groups," Carter said, "We have a large related data center environment." In terms of hardware support, we've invested hundreds of millions of dollars in this process. We've spent 10 million of dollars in the last few years, Carter said. The same environment, now on x86, is equivalent to spending 30,000 of dollars on running Linux hardware.

2. Participation in SOA courses

Perhaps the term "service-oriented Architecture (SOA)" is not often mentioned and heard, but Carter used two of times to organize your applications based on x86 architecture, a service that meets the needs of many applications. Applications running in new data centers rely on what Carter calls "assimilation (similar) services" in a shared environment, through standardized user access paths, authentication, messaging, security, and database access.

This approach avoids the IT department repeating the same thing over and over again. This simplifies the server and network environment and makes the application more accurate. Often complex fault handling is also simplified. "The ability to scale and the ubiquity of application software (fully tested services) may bring low failure rates," Carter said.

3. Virtualization, Virtualization

Colorado Data Center virtualization is high and fedex70% servers run as virtual machines. "That means it's a green datacenter with less energy and less footprint," Carter said. Electricity spending now accounts for a 25% of the typical data center consumption budget. Through virtualization, FedEx eventually controlled the rising power consumption and saved costs effectively.

4. Seek the reluctance of top management support

Persuading top management to take action, Carter did not make a five-year plan or a decade of investment returns report. Instead, he compares existing data centers with simplified data center diagrams that they want to apply. From the figure, the existing application infrastructure and ancillary equipment is so complex, dense and confusing that top management is ultimately determined to act. "I have a lot of ugly pictures," Carter said.

5. Do not have to wait for the right software

Carter was not paralyzed by analysis. He does not want to introduce an external vendor's private cloud system to start or wait for cloud computing standards such as OpenStack to make the system more secure and stable. As a salesforce.com customer, Carter and his IT staff and Salesforce.com "compare notes" in its data center operations, and FedEx knows how Twitter and Facebook set up new data centers. His employees work on the platform of Lamp, a Linux system with proven integrated Open-source code, to build a sharable x86 infrastructure, and then create experimental, guided services at the top level.

This involves cultural issues. Some IT staff feel that the results of their work benefit from the old system running. Carter explained that for FedEx to use 200 different applications to manage the key components of its business-address, and in fact an address service can improve efficiency and reduce costs. Carter told his staff that your work on managing the details of your existing infrastructure was effective. "What looks unsustainable is the big picture (future data center operations)."

6. What about the public cloud?

Carter points out that his approach does not include blueprints for the public cloud environment. But in fact FedEx is an important partner for Salesforce.com. "I've known Marc Benioff for a long time," Carter said, and it is important that FedEx will "coexist with the Salesforce CRM application in a mixed cloud environment". But Carter also talked about the seasonal nature of the FedEx business and how to double the channel during the holidays. "Our business has unique characteristics on peak factors ... Amazon's web application capacity can cope with intensive workloads like Netflix videos, which means it might be appropriate for our part to work, "Carter said.

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How do you monitor a private cloud with 10 steps to implement a private cloud? The bottleneck and obstacle of private cloud development "editor: Xin Wei TEL: (010) 68476606"