Who moved my cloud? Part I: Introduction to Private, Public and Hybrid clouds and smooth migration

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1 Who moved my cloud? Part I: Introduction to Private, Public and Hybrid clouds and smooth migration Part I of an ebook series of cloud infrastructure and platform fundamentals not to be avoided when preparing to make an organizational move to the cloud. In this part, private vs. public vs. hybrid deployment benefits and disadvantages are covered for DevOps and IT Managers. Intro Cloud adoption can no longer be ignored with many company resources already deployed in the cloud, currently migrating their data centers, or educating and preparing towards the unavoidable requirement. Assessing when and whether to deploy in a private, public or hybrid environment and which IaaS to select is a critical step. Here you will find the insights into the IaaS landscape, what can be expected, and steps to take prior to making the move. cloudyn.com/blog 1

2 Contents Intro Private, Public and Hybrid cloud environments Private, Public, Hybrid cloud definitions Private Public Hybrid The seven inefficiencies of a traditional data center Private cloud advantages over data centers Public cloud advantages over data centers Private vs. Public: security and control Introducing the Hybrid cloud The Hybrid cloud is no nirvana Migrating smoothly to the cloud Pre-migration steps to avoid extra costs and delays Can your application run on the cloud? Best practices Conclusion

3 Private, Public and Hybrid cloud environments Private, Public, Hybrid cloud definitions Private Cloud infrastructure operated for an individual organization or company, hosted internally or externally. Public Cloud services provided over a network which is open for public use. Hybrid A cloud infrastructure combination made up of both private and public resources. The seven inefficiencies of a traditional data center Cloud popularity is the direct result of the complexities, inefficiencies and high costs of traditional data centers. Three to five year requirement projections are typically needed in order to build or expand a 'sufficient' data center. However, in such a dynamic landscape, calculating such projections is a rather impossible mission. Attempts to do this more often result in high business overprovisioning, as administrators purchase too much computing or storage capacity to avoid insufficient resources. Furthermore, various deployment costs are much more time consuming within data centers, including opportunity cost of not attending other areas. reduce overall costs per year and time to deploy infrastructure by almost 25%. Integrated infrastructure systems reduce overall costs by 55% and time to deployment by 65%. Additionally, the integrated infrastructure system approach or model enables more efficient use of available IT capacity than traditional IT. The higher utilization rates drive down hardware costs and make long-term infrastructure planning more reliable and efficient - IDC 201 Date center costs typically comprise of: Facilities: cost of maintaining and/or expanding facilities with cooling systems, electrical infrastructure to support hardware, furniture to house multiple servers, etc. Additionally, state of the art (physical and cyber) security is needed to protect the investment and data. Networking: a reliable network requires provisioning of redundant networking devices, as well as transit and physical connections between data centers. Data recovery: data protection is a must, so a secondary data center or an off-premise backup solution is required. Hardware: beyond the actual server and desktop purchases, depreciation must also be calculated. Additionally, as equipment ages it becomes increasingly less reliable and cost-effective.

4 Upgrades and patches: hardware and software maintenance requires arduous and time consuming tasks such as patch installation and ongoing upgrades. Electricity: the Uptime Institute reported that most data centers have a power usage effectiveness of (PUE) of 2.0, meaning that for every watt delivered to the server another is used in overhead. Personnel: constant IT presence 24/7 every day of the year is required to just to maintain a data center. Owning vs. renting: Hardware Reliability Decrease After 1 year of service: Server has a failure rate of 5%, costs $4.2/10 users to maintain, and a yearly downtime of 2.5 hours. After 7 years of service: Servers have an 18% failure rate, $17/10 users to maintain, and yearly downtime of 6.7 hours. *IDC 201 Private cloud advantages over data centers At first glance it seems that a private cloud and a traditional data center are identical as both are owned and maintained privately and require significant Capital Expenditure [Capex] upfront, as well as ongoing Operating Expenses [Opex] for hardware, maintenance, electricity, cooling and more. However, many companies already own data centers and the hardware needed for the move into private cloud which ultimately allows enterprises to extract more value from existing assets with more effective management and opportunity. The key differences between private cloud and data center are: Scalability Migrating to the private cloud grants scalability, enabling to efficiently spin up resources as needed, instead of planning ahead. Automation Automation has become a game changer, making it is easier to provision new servers within minutes, thus increasing productivity and cutting down on wasted resources. Automation does not only relate to hardware. Scott Johnson of Puppet Labs explains: Automation extends to the software layer, where complex systems can be configured once and then rolled out on the fly as needed, using cloud automation tools. Intelligent systems architecture can balance the load among compute, network or storage resources, bringing systems online or offline as demand dictates. 4

5 Agility Lastly, the private cloud enables immediate adoption of agile development methodologies. No need to delay for IT specialists and QA staff to test applications, as developers can test on demand in cloud test environments and deploy on their own. Private Clouds For a data center to migrate and be considered a 'real' private cloud, the following 5 key attributes are needed: Offer resources (infrastructure and applications) as services Flexibility and scale that meet client demands Resource sharing among a large number of users Measurement and payment according to use of service (metering) Use of Internet protocols and technologies to access cloud resources - Gartner Public cloud advantages over data centers Building and running a traditional data center is cost intensive to set up and requires constant maintenance. Renting space in existing data centers is often also an unviable option for small and medium sized businesses who then turn to the public cloud. Even enterprises with financial resources have migrated to the public cloud to increase efficiency and decrease expenses. IDC reports that businesses using Amazon s public cloud over a five year period have enjoyed many benefits including: ROI of 626% Software development productivity increase: 507% Downtown reduction of 72% Increase in IT productivity of 52% TCO savings of 70% The public cloud shares the scalability, agile development and instant provisioning features of the private cloud, as well as elasticity, limitless compute and storage capacity, and a global reach, thus removing geographical barriers. However, the two distinct advantages of the public cloud are: i) Its business model, IaaS, which encourages business to be agile and 'do on-demand' as opposed to planning computing requirements in advance. 5

6 White Paper ii) The shift from Capex to Opex. I.e. customers require zero capital expenditure in order to get up and running. Do and pay-as-you-go is attractive for most businesses. Great savings can also be found in human resources costs. Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon, explained how many organizations do not realize the amount of personnel needed to build and maintain an on-premises private cloud or traditional data center. Here are some of the functions of enterprise personnel required when owning a private data center. Hardware procurement teams: evaluate hardware, negotiate, hold hardware vendor meetings and manage delivery and installation. Data center design and build teams: create and maintain reliable and cost-effective facilities. Operational staff: 24/7/65 in each facility. Networking teams: run a highly available network by designing, debugging, scaling and operating the network as well as dealing with external relationships necessary to have cost-effective Internet transit. Security personnel: during all phases of the design, build, and operation process. Private vs. Public: security and control The public cloud offers immediate savings, elasticity, global reach and reduced maintenance and management, making it a very appealing choice when moving to the cloud. On the other hand, IT specialists insist the private cloud provides much more configuration control and customization, as well as security capabilities for ongoing, compliancy and regulatory requirements. For example, finance and banking industries have many compliance requirements restricting the use of the public cloud, with some legal regulations also concerning storing information outside of the country of origin. Security is definitely one of the key concerns of migrating to the public cloud, for it is multi-tenanted, whereas the private cloud belongs and is utilized by only one consumer. The private cloud in effect remains behind the organization s private firewall. IT specialists believe that they can perform enhanced security measures when attending their own private cloud, rather than the public. The CIA and AWS Details: 10-year, $600 Million contract Ease of application deployment for proper enablement Smart software: AWS orchestration and services software, offering scalability, agility, and capability to create new services and applications Rich services ecosystem, providing broad solutions and availabilities to use, integrate, combine and build upon It s an AWS private cloud 6

7 White Paper Introducing the Hybrid cloud For businesses looking to retain control and security, while at the same time enjoy public cloud benefits such as elasticity, scalability and global reach, the solution is the hybrid cloud. The hybrid cloud combines the advantages of using an internal data center with a public cloud. This is a cost effective solution in a number of scenarios such as: Limited on premise capacity some of the workload can be kept on premise, for example, customer or product records, while elements such as testing can be conducted on the public cloud. Limited staff and budget additional computing and storage requirements can be rented on demand as opposed to purchased and maintained by dedicated staff. Unpredictable traffic peaks in traffic can be handled on demand through the public cloud. The hybrid cloud is also ideal for temporary projects that do not justify the purchase of more equipment. The Hybrid cloud is no nirvana By utilizing the hybrid cloud, security perimeters will be extended making businesses more vulnerable. Additionally, security policies that are utilized on the public cloud may differ from the private cloud such as the management of encryption keys on the private compared to a public cloud. Furthermore, managing both clouds as one seamless unit is quite difficult and businesses may require third party management tools to facilitate this. Lastly, not all applications running on private cloud are compatible with public cloud. Private, Public and Hybrid Clouds Private cloud is based on a private data center owned by an individual entity and isn t shared with others, commonly running on VMware or OpenStack. Public cloud is owned by a cloud provider with users accessing and using virtualized computing resources. Hybrid cloud is the integration and usage of public and private clouds as one seamless entity. 7

8 White Paper Migrating smoothly to the cloud With fifty percent of migrations going over-budget and two thirds taking longer than the original time allotted, organizations would do well to prepare. Pre-migration steps to avoid extra costs and delays Taking inventory of all assets is the first step to migration. It is extremely common that businesses are unaware of all the software apps, upgrades and patches installed over the years. Additionally, IT specialists may have left their positions, taking with them essential information about the infrastructure and programs. Verifying licensing agreements is highly important before migration. Many agreements preclude usage of the cloud, which requires businesses to find solutions and alternatives to licensing limitations. Creating a backup is essential in case migration fails or is delayed. As this is not uncommon, having the capability to return to previous status is pertinent. Avoiding vendor lock-in by creating an exit strategy before migration. This may save money and time in the future. Determine compatibility prior to migration. Many cloud venders such as Amazon convert data to another format on the cloud. So businesses may be running applications on outdated operation systems which would not function on the cloud. It is beneficial to upgrade software, OS, etc. Identify dependencies. Being aware of dependencies will ensure that primary applications moved to cloud will have the proper support to function, as well as ensure that all applications that remained in-house continue to function efficiently. Understanding how end-users interact with the application is essential to a successful migration. Moving to the cloud should help businesses cut costs without affecting end-users, but if applications cannot meet expectations, the savings may not be worth a dissatisfied customer base. Taking the necessary steps to ensure that the migration does not interfere with current business activities. There are two options for performing migrations: Live migration, meaning it is performed as all business activities continue to function. Achieving a live migration without affecting the daily tasks of the business is challenging, but might be necessary. Cease business activity during the migration process to ensure that migration goes smoothly. 8

9 White Paper Can your application run on the cloud? Many applications were custom designed to run on a legacy OS such as Windows XP or specifically built for specific infrastructure and cannot be ported to the cloud in an as is state. These applications need to be rearchitected and sometimes even completely rewritten. Even if applications are able to run on the cloud, adjustments to the code may be necessary in order to take advantage of the scalability, load balancer and other cloud benefits. Readying applications for the cloud is often a costly and time intensive process which must be considered before migration. Best practices Run a test migration with the application already re-architected to ensure that it runs as expected. Do not try to upgrade during the migration process, as this would increase the probability of something going wrong. Move data incrementally in order to analyze the advantages of the cloud before becoming completely committed. Conclusion The age of cloud and agility is here to stay. Organizations may drag their heels or run in hot pursuit, but some form of migration is inevitable. The cloud itself is complex and must be studied well prior to migration. As with any other platform, no one solution fits all. Each alternative carries with it significant advantages and disadvantages. Organizations must select the best cloud direction for operations, whether private, public or hybrid infrastructure. cloudyn.com/blog sales@cloudyn.com