How To Buy A Crikit For A Fraction Of The Price

Transcription

1 2012 CriKit- Desktop Private Cloud Paul Morse 5/7/2012

2 Overview CriKit, which stands for Cloud Resource and Infrastructure Kit, was created out of necessity. As of January 2012, there was no low-cost, energy-sipping, compact, multi-node and powerful private cloud hardware solution on the market. Anyone who wanted to experiment with complex Private Cloud software technologies needed to pay the major hardware vendors significant sums or try to build one themselves. CriKit brings the commercial cost entry point for Private Cloud platforms into a cost range that is affordable for the mass audience. CriKit is intended to be used by a wide variety of roles, including software developers, testers and QA, plus training, demonstration and educational users. Because it employs generic Intel x86 computing platforms that run all major hypervisors and operating systems, it can be used across industries on a wide variety of applications in addition to cloud computing, including general purpose, financial and scientific computing. In many ways, CriKit is the future of small business and departmental computing, in addition to being a cloud platform. What is in a CriKit? CriKit has been designed to meet the requirements of a user that puts the system through its paces. Testers, trainers and developers need to have a platform that is fast, flexible and changeable as required. CriKit is expandable in a wide variety of ways, but the base system contains the following items: Computing Nodes CriKit contains 4 energy-efficient compute nodes that include an Intel Server Motherboard, a 64 Bit Intel Xeon Server CPU, 16 GB of RAM, Dual 1 Gb Ethernet Network Interface Controllers ( NIC s) and a 180 GB Solid State Drive ( SSD). The SSD can be upgraded on request and additional compute nodes can be added as needed. External Storage CriKit comes standard with a 2 TB NAS system that provides NFS, CIFS, FTP and HTTP capabilities to meet the persistent storage needs of virtualization and cloud computing environments. Storage is upgradeable to 16 TB in a single desktop enclosure and multiple enclosures are possible. 1 Gb Ethernet Switch CriKit comes standard with an 8 Port, unmanaged, 1 Gb Ethernet switch. Managed switches, and switches with more ports for larger CriKit implementations are available. Keyboard, Video and Mouse Switch A high-quality, 8 node DVI/USB switch is included with CriKit. This switch can be daisychained with additional switches to accommodate 511 CriKit compute nodes and one Management Workstation. Paul Morse Page 1

3 Management/Development Workstation CriKit comes with a high-powered workstation to manage the cloud environment and provide high developer productivity. Included in the workstation are: Intel Core i5 processor 8 GB of RAM 1 TB Hard Disk Drive 1 Gb Ethernet NIC 19 LED Monitor Keytronic Keyboard Microsoft optical mouse In addition, all cables are included with CriKit. Additional installation options are available on request. Why buy a CriKit? There is an unfortunate truth in the enterprise software world computing solutions have become increasingly complex. This complexity has increased the costs of almost all aspects of testing, training, demos and general infrastructure around these solutions. Before CriKit, the entry level price for multi-node, complex software platforms was in the vicinity of $50, Plus, the solutions took up a lot of space and still consumed a lot of energy. CriKit is a completely new type of solution that allows a wide variety of roles to increase their productivity while lowering costs and energy consumption. CriKit and its varied configurations are great for Private and Hybrid Cloud and Big Data projects where you need to develop, test, evaluate, demo, or just plain tinker, with multi-node or cluster solutions. Everybody that does those things for a living looks at a CriKit and instinctively knows it has value. It s a zippy, quiet, energy-sipping, multi-terabyte, mini-data-center-on-a-desk. What s not to like? But, that is just the beginning. CriKit Will Change The Game The compact size of CriKit brings an entirely new dimension to cloud and cluster computing. If you are involved in training or trade show demonstrations, you now have a portable solution to help accomplish your goals. Think how much more effective you can be with a true multi-node system that fits in a box or suitcase? If you currently haul a heavy blade system or racks to trade shows and events, think about how much money you can save in shipping costs and labor. Anyone who deals with event invoices knows exactly what that means. Further, if you currently only bring literature to shows because there is no cost-effective way to demonstrate your multinode solution, well, now you can strut your stuff in public. And, we ve all seen the multi-node virtualized demo running on a laptop and heard the excuses of why it is running so slow, or not at all. Those days are over. Paul Morse Page 2

4 Another game changing aspect of CriKit is how it will be used by software vendors to win business. For the first time, a complete multi-node solution is available at a much lower cost than other alternatives. This allows software vendors to purchase a CriKit and use it to win business. For example, if a vendor is competing for an enterprise software deal that could result in a large sale and many years of support revenue, the cost of a CriKit is trivial and they can buy the prospect a CriKit and let them use the software at their leisure, while dramatically lowering the burden on the IT department. A desk, some power and maybe a network tap are all that is needed to run very complex solutions for customers and prospects. This is actually huge for many software vendors and sales productivity could skyrocket for complex, multi-node solutions. Education and Training The world of education and training will be changed dramatically by CriKit. Because CriKit can run enough light servers for a 30 person class, it is ideal for education and training. For a school classroom, with CriKit, the students come in, log in, start up their virtual machine, use it for the duration of the class, save their config and then shut it down before they leave the room. The next class comes in, logs in, starts up their virtual machines and goes through the same process. In the future, teachers will routinely tell their students, Ok kids, don t forget to save and shut down your virtual machines before you leave. For business training, companies will be able to have complete environments in the classroom to assist with the training of complex, multi-machine systems. All trainers understand the superior value of providing hands-on training for complex systems. Hands-on training has downstream benefits such as lower support costs and CriKit can play an extended role in on-site support and problem resolution as well. Being Zippy Makes a Big Difference We designed CriKit to use Solid State Hard Drives, or SSD s. The enhanced productivity that SSD s bring to the CriKit environment can t be overlooked. Every routine task happens faster with SSD s. Start ups, shut downs, log ins, application execution, compiles and user interface actions that read or write from disk are all approximately 3 times faster with SSD s compared to spinning disk. If you are a developer or tester, you want things to happen now. Slow machines suck. If you are a product trainer or demonstrator you want your product to perform quickly to give the best impression of your solution. Every product demonstrator or trainer knows the value of an application that starts up quickly vs. one that chugs into existence, or a user interface that snaps into place vs. one that takes its sweet time loading in front of a big prospect. Being zippy makes a difference, and CriKit is zippy in most everything you request of it. Further, we compared Spinning, Hybrid and Solid State Drives and determined that SSD s are worth every extra penny because of the increase in productivity they deliver. SSD s let you do more things in a given period of time and that means increased productivity, period. The main question to ask when considering the value of SSD s is, What s my time worth? Paul Morse Page 3

5 Green is Required Attire There are many very cool and valuable aspects to CriKit, but being super energy-efficient may be the coup de grace. Each CriKit compute node draws about 1 KiloWatt Hour of electricity every 40 hours. The rate for Kwh s varies by utility, from cheap to expensive. Washington State is around 7.5 cents per Kwh, to Connecticut being around 18 cents per Kwh. So, that means a CriKit node in Washington costs 7.5 cents to operate for a 40 hour work week, and in Connecticut it costs 18 cents. But wait, there s more. If each CriKit node can run 4 virtualized servers, that means each server costs just 1.85 cents in electricity in Washington to run for that week. Breaking it down further, each virtualized server costs just cents per hour in electricity. However, If you run 8 servers per compute node, the cost is a miniscule.023 cents an hour, or.185 cents a day ( less than 1/5 of 1 penny). If you are running any servers that are 5 years old and use a single thread per processor, you owe it to the people of this planet to make some serious changes and reduce your energy consumption, like buy a CriKit to consolidate some of the energy hogs. There is another aspect with CriKit that is not addressed very much in the server world, and that is reuse and disposal of the units. How long will the system have a useful life?, and What are the disposal costs? are key questions that need answers. With CriKit, these are two areas in which we absolutely demolish any competition. Here s why : CriKit is modular for a reason. Each CriKit compute node can be used unmodified as a desktop computer. The compute nodes are server boards and processors, but they run Windows 7 very fast and will be Windows 8 capable. This means each node can have an extended life in the organization far beyond the original intended use, if so desired. Further, because there is only one moving part- and that is an easily replaceable CPU fan- the MTBF is mainly dependent on a replaceable fan which is designed for long life. Disposal advantages. All computers come to an end of life and need to be disposed of. Disposal is costly. In 10 years, when the CriKit nodes you buy today may reach the end of their life cycle, disposal will be even more expensive. So, the question becomes, In 10 years, would you rather dispose of a 3 pound compute node, or a 15 pound compute node?. The answer is obvious. CriKit will save disposal costs and reduce required landfill space in the future. The costs of every aspect of the disposal chain will be reduced in the future by using CriKit today. We designed CriKit with green aspects as key design points. It had to have superior energy efficiency and be reusable to extend value with low disposal costs compared to any other option. From a green perspective, CriKit wins and there isn t anybody else even close. Trail blazing is hard work, but in this case, CriKit sets a bar that others will strive to beat and that will eventually benefit us all. Conclusion As you have seen, there is more to a CriKit than being a compact, energy-efficient Desktop Private Cloud computing environment. The computing world needs compact, energy-sipping solutions that are built to help protect the planet and increase productivity at the same time. Paul Morse Page 4

6 For more information on CriKit, please visit Paul Morse Page 5