Understanding Enterprise Cloud Management What You Need to Know About Managing Your Cloud Applications Enterprise Cloud Management
New applications, driven largely by the economics of cloud computing, raise three critical questions for those who own operations for these applications: 1. 2. 3. Who is managing your cloud applications? How wisely are you managing your cloud applications? What freedom do you have in managing your cloud applications? Let Enstratius introduce you to enterprise cloud management and why your business needs it whether you are just now exploring cloud computing, or have a business built on it. Enterprise Cloud Management Page 1.
Why are enterprises adopting cloud? Today the economics of IT are changing rapidly, thanks in large part to cloud computing. The new economics of cloud enable positive change to the fundamental operating principles of enterprise IT: Cloud delivers powerful new cost models to IT financials, including: 1. A cash-flow friendly accounting model 2. Shared (or no) sunk capital investment Cloud brings an entirely new level of agility to enterprise IT, providing: 1. Faster time to market 2. Simplified automation 3. New ways to scale, distribute and safeguard applications Cloud enables new classes of applications and services, such as: 1. Global-scale web, social media and mobile applications 2. Large scale or big data storage, data processing and analytics 3. New online businesses built on new cloud platforms Who is managing your cloud applications? Governance Enterprises have a different problem to solve when it comes to cloud management than the web companies that pioneered the approach. For web companies, the problem is taking a few workloads and scaling each one across hundreds or thousands of servers. For the enterprise, the problem is managing many different workloads, most of which need only a few servers to meet demand. However, these workloads frequently have different ownership, compliance needs, integration requirements, and so on. Enterprise cloud governance is essential for maintaining control over an increasingly complex and integrated systems, services, and human resources environment. What to look for from Enterprise Cloud Governance Advanced user authentication Multi-factor authentication Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) Federation Open ID with trusted providers LDAP and Active Directory integration Tight access controls Fine-grained role-based policies for all resources Resource use can also be tied to budgetary policies Policies can be applied to existing IT LDAP/AD groups User definable alerts for specific actions or issues Encryption Cloud credentials maintained outside each cloud provider Communication secured by trusted third parties Strong VM file system encryption Budget management Track your multi-cloud spending to the resource level Associate cloud resources with distinct cloud budgets Support for multiple currencies Enterprise Cloud Management Page 2
What clouds are enterprises adopting? Cloud services can generally be categorized as a combination of two basic models: Service Models 1. Software as a Service Delivery of business and consumer applications directly to users 2. Platform as a Service Delivery of software development platforms directly to developers 3. Infrastructure as a Service Delivery of infrastructure abstractions (servers, networks and storage) directly to operators Deployment Models 1. Private cloud Cloud services provisioned for exclusive use by a single organization 2. Public cloud Cloud services provisioned for open use by the general public 3. Hybrid cloud Multiple distinct cloud services (public and/or private) operated as one How wisely are you managing your cloud applications? Automation The basic needs of enterprises for operations hasn t changed since the first business software was created make sure the required functionality is available when it is needed, is provided securely, and meets key performance goals. The advantage that cloud computing provides to that equation is the ability to precisely control how services are consumed to balance demand, cost, reliability, security and performance. Optimizing that balance is what makes the cloud model a game changing IT model. This requires consistent automation, applied across cloud platforms and services, integrated with your IT operations tools. Enterprise cloud automation is key to realizing the economic and operational advantages of cloud computing. What to look for from Enterprise Cloud Automation Autoscaling Create scaling policies around the data you wish to measure, such as transaction rates, page load times, etc. Apply scaling policies application-wide across multiple cloud services and/or regions Maintain automation for application from a single console Automated Recovery Policy-based recovery of failed server instances Built-in disaster recovery using data from last backup Automated Backups Snapshots of images and data on user-defined schedule Optional encryption of snapshots for increased security Smart Cloud Topology Automated distribution of application across availability zones, regions or cloud services Backup from one cloud service to another, to increase resiliency of application Enterprise Cloud Management Page 3
What traits do cloud applications exhibit? While a wide variety of applications can be deployed to cloud infrastructure and platform services, the most successful applications in the cloud exhibit a few basic properties: Distributed architecture Cloud applications take advantage of the distributed nature of cloud infrastructure and platform services to achieve performance, survivability and scale. Scalable execution The real advantage of the cloud model is the ability of applications to scale both up and down to meet current demand. While the need for scale varies by application and demand, cloud computing allows applications to scale to extremely large loads if required. Designed to survive Reliability, in cloud application architectures, is the responsibility of the application and platform, not the infrastructure. This reliability is achieved by replication and automating recovery from lost components. Automated operations Cloud computing applications run at scales that typically defy manual management of common tasks. Key to cloud applications is the ability to automate provisioning, scaling, backups, failure recovery, and so on. In fact, an entire IT culture, DevOps, has formed around this automation. What freedom do you have in managing cloud applications? Independence Among cloud computing s many benefits is the ability to select infrastructure and platform services from a variety of providers. It is this freedom of selection that enables IT to benefit from a competitive market for cloud services. To enable freedom of service selection, enterprises must adopt cloud management solutions that allow them to take advantage of the cloud services they feel are right for each project, while maintaining consistent controls over how all cloud services are consumed. Furthermore, the cloud management solution must integrate with the overall IT operations environment. Enterprise cloud independence is essential for maintaining consistent control over vendor choice in services and technologies. What to look for from Enterprise Cloud Independence Multi-cloud support Management of all major infrastructure services Governance and automation applied consistently to all clouds under management, public or private Control of both compute and storage service consumption from the same cloud management console Multi-tool support Option to select configuration management tools, e.g. Chef, Puppet, Juju, or your favorite scripting language Option to take action on data from a variety of sources, including monitoring tools and server agents Integration of application operations lifecycle tools, such as continuous deployment, testing, billing and CMDB Consumption Choices Utilize Software as a Service or on-premises installation as required by your IT requirements Enterprise Cloud Management Page 4
Examples of Enterprise Cloud Management Use Enterprises today are incorporating various aspects of governance, automation and independence into their cloud management strategies. Here are some real-world examples of common challenges that enterprises face. Cross-Cloud Consistency A global financial services company finds themselves utilizing an increasing number of big data applications and web properties on an increasing number of cloud providers. They are faced with the problem of how to manage these applications and their data consistently across those clouds. Enterprise Scaling An online commerce platform division of a major web property finds themselves with a large number of development teams and projects utilizing their private cloud services. They are faced with the problem of how to scale control of cost, compliance and operations across the entire organization. Unified Governance and Automation One of the worlds largest construction services companies must replicate an entire company s IT applications and services for each major project they contract. Huge efficiencies are gained through cloud, but this requires consistent governance and automation across projects. Enterprise Cloud Management Page 5
About the Enstratius Enterprise Cloud Management Solution Enstratius provides cloud governance, automation and independence for enterprises. Think of Enstratius as the enterprise console to the world of cloud computing. Your Applications Public/private/hybrid clouds, IaaS, PaaS Cloud Services Dasein API Governance Automation Independence Enstratius API Operations Tools Monitoring, Config. Mgmt, Billing, etc. The Enterprise Cloud Management Solution Enstratius helps you manage your cloud infrastructure. We support the provisioning, management and automation of applications in all leading public and private clouds. We do this while retaining the ability for developers and application operators to choose the configuration management, monitoring and other operation tools that make the most sense for each application. Enstratius integrates into the leading operations tools and your internal systems to ensure your IT policies and procedures extend into the cloud. Enstratius is available as Software as a Service, or as on-premises software that enables you to control the cloud from within your own data centers. Enstratius provides: Governance - Enstratius enables you to meet your governance needs with flexible access controls, logging, financial controls and integration into your internal management systems and access directories. Automation - Enstratius helps you meet the economic and operational advantages of cloud computing through a variety of automation tools including auto-provisioning, auto-scaling, automated backups, and more. Independence - Enstratius supports over 20 of the leading public clouds and private cloud platforms. To view a full list of the clouds we support, please visit http://www.enstratius.com/clouds. Across these clouds, Enstratius enables enterprises to leverage leading configuration management solutions, such as Chef and Puppet, as well as PaaS solutions, such as Cloud Foundry. Enstratius also provides Consulting Services to assist you in your migration into the cloud. We can help you design a deployment to meet your target SLAs and address issues such as scaling parameters, security and compliance. To learn more, visit http://www.enstratius.com. Enterprise Cloud Management Page 6 http://www.enstratius.com 612.746.3091 contact@enstratius.com