Three magic keys to implementing a private cloud

So far, the core technology of cloud computing is distributed only by suppliers, no matter how perfect the public cloud application is, how deep the understanding is, and how rigorous the contract definition is. In such an environment, how we should deploy machines, backups, and deliveries in the cloud is unclear to customers. Especially when the business application involves sensitive data, the public cloud can not meet people's needs, so the private cloud has become the first choice for enterprise users.

As a result, many organizations are trying to promote the superiority of the internal elastic cloud in order to gain complete control over the cloud computing environment. It is highly desirable for those in the early stages of the cloud-computing base and private cloud building to have a smattering of knowledge. The following are the relative recommendations for people who are in the primary level of cloud computing and private cloud construction.

Private cloud deployment Consider existing virtual infrastructure

Any company should take into account the existing infrastructure before implementing a private cloud plan. If a company has achieved significant virtualization implementation, it is important to adopt the same cloud computing platform. This will help achieve minimal project investment, especially for IT personnel who are already familiar with the operation of this platform.

It also allows for collaborative application of existing infrastructure components. If a company invests heavily in virtualization and its necessary supporting networks and storage systems, moving those systems into a whole new environment is of little practical significance compared to the scale of expansion. The era of adding a set of disks to a storage area network or installing licenses for storage management is gone, at least for companies that take advantage of modern storage architectures.

This is not to say that making cloud computing decisions is a piece of cake. IT departments using VMware still have to consider how vcloud can interoperate with their existing vsphere environments. Today, companies that use Amazon products and users who use eucalyptus to test them still need to consider how to configure their Warlus Storage.

The key is to understand that private clouds are an evolution, not a revolution. Many people compare virtualization technology with mainframe technology, because there is something similar between them, where shared resources are one of the biggest similarities. Technology design itself is a changing process, cloud computing is the next step in this development process.

Scalability and resilience of private clouds

Resilient cloud computing is ideal for virtualization, a feature that is important for managing your private cloud environment flexibly and properly. Too little physical hosts, available resources on too few hosts, too little storage resources, or limited bandwidth affect performance. In contrast, server resources retain a certain amount of redundant resources does not save energy, will only lead to idle hardware components unavoidable MTBF idle problem.

A system's dedicated network resources and storage resources should not be idle, simple, and limited. Any cloud design must have a successful scale review as an important milestone. In addition, these subsystems are the foundation of existing virtual systems.

Information about size storage, network resources, and server resources can meet the needs of virtualization. For example, in a Citrix Bae XenDesktop design, it is conservatively estimated that each kernel of the system can run between 6 and 9 desktop applications at the same time. Based on this estimate, a six-core four-processor system can support 144 to 216 users. Each vista user uses 1GB of RAM, while Windows 7 users use 2GB of RAM, which is a very alarming amount of memory. Even with a relatively high share of about 50%, each Windows 7 server still needs 144 to 216GB RAM.

Why use Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) as a reference? Many cloud computing deployments are simple Web and application servers, each of which uses similar specifications to share similar proportions of storage, which must be similar to the high density of VDI. Scaling up 100 Web servers on a large server is easier than expanding 50 Web servers on a system with limited resources. In addition, many storage designs implement a duplicate deletion strategy at the virtual layer, allowing shared storage resources to use the same block-level storage resources as the guest operating system in "Huang", similar to XenDesktop VDI products

Manage your private cloud

Private cloud management is similar to virtualization, based on preset rules for monitoring and running hosts and clients from a higher level, the key difference being that rules in virtualization are often used to ensure uptime (such as vmotion, livemigrate, etc.) Rules in the private cloud are used to ensure that service level agreements (SLAs) are met. On the management side, resilience and resources can be used to build a truly private cloud: expanding those virtual systems based on physical systems, signing contracts and expanding business on demand, while ensuring the health and stability of the entire cloud computing system.

Commercial private cloud products are usually good at this point. VMware combines its operations manager product with the Hyperic software acquired from SpringSource. Citrix and Microsoft are also working on their own systems to keep up with competitors. Open source tools are good but not strong enough, especially eucalyptus can be managed through their own management products (bundled in their Business edition) or several open source tools. None of these software tools have the depth of VMware portfolio offerings, but they do this.

Regardless of the technical advantage of the private cloud, if the management tool fails to implement the feature, the product faces a risk of being unable to deliver or a complete failure of the task, while the flexible public cloud is not.

When designing a private cloud, consider these lessons and a great deal of technical information. A golden key to the private cloud kingdom is to fully investigate and understand when to choose cloud computing products and when to remain intact.