Effectively Managing Amazon Web Services in Hybrid IT Environments

White Paper White Paper Managing Public Cloud Computing in the Enterprise Effectively Managing Amazon Web Services in Hybrid IT Environments A Quick Start Guide 1

Table of Contents Abstract... 3 Amazon in the Enterprise How is it Being Used?... 4 Best Practices for Public Cloud Computing in the Enterprise... 5 Cloud Automation Technologies... 6 Hotlink Platform & Workload Transformation Technology... 7 Hotlink + Cloud Automation... 9 Conclusion... 10 2

Abstract Public cloud computing, with Amazon Web Services (AWS) as the most prominent example, creates an entirely new class of enterprise IT services with very low financial barriers to accessing a broad menu of compute resources. As a result, many business units, development organizations and other enterprise end users have independently embraced public cloud services, generally at a lower budgetary cost, and in a much shorter timeframe than if the same resources were procured from corporate IT. The ease with which public cloud resources can be accessed has led to proliferation of loosely managed or unmanaged AWS accounts in many enterprises. Non-IT professionals are often creating and operating sizable computing environments that are outside of any consistent management controls and are completely non-standard with respect to policies and procedures that internal IT follows when creating and ensuring enterprise-compliant computing. This activity usually flies under the radar until one of several things happen: (1) the aggregate costs become large and finance starts asking questions, (2) the expense volatility sounds a budget or accounting alarm, or (3) a security or compliance breach becomes visible at the corporate level. At this point, public cloud computing usually becomes an enterprise priority. What s the right answer? Business units and developers need to be able to easily instantiate cloud-based services, matching the quantity consumed to their budgets. But, those services need to be provisioned and monitored according to reasonable standards, compliance guidelines and management controls. And, the enterprise needs to be able to easily migrate workloads back and forth between on-premise internal environments and public clouds, so workloads are truly portable during their lifecycle. If these conditions are met, business units and developers can continue to enjoy the productivity benefits of public cloud computing, but with cloud-based resources being deployed in a structured, managed and compliant manner consistent with enterprise requirements. Moreover, if a proper management and operating model for public cloud services is well integrated into the existing virtualization management environment, internal IT would be in a position to improve its own operating leverage by selectively migrating other workloads to public cloud-based services. This white paper addresses how enterprises can simultaneously meet three goals: (1) allowing business units and developers to maintain freedom and agility in the use of public cloud services, (2) enabling enterprise-appropriate provisioning and operating standards for the workloads deployed in public clouds, and (3) accomplishing the first two goals while continuing to improve the operating agility and leverage of internal IT departments. We will explain how these three seemingly conflicting objectives can be addressed easily with HotLink Hybrid Express the industry s simplest solution for deploying, administering and managing hybrid IT environments in the enterprise. 3

Amazon in the Enterprise How is it Being Used? There is no denying the popularity and rapid growth of AWS and other public cloud services. On-demand resources have become extremely popular with application developers, QA professionals and business units across the enterprise for the following key reasons: Non-IT professionals can quickly and easily order and deploy relatively complete and packaged servers with the required database, application and web server software. s can be purchased in a variety of sizes, with a range of committed resources. Server operations are completely outsourced to the public cloud provider and do not require internal infrastructure. A range of price plans are available including spot pricing, consumption-based resources and always on instances. If applications need to scale up or down, this is easily and automatically accomplished without significant pre-planning. Users do not have to go through a protracted corporate procurement process as they often do with internal IT services. However, the tremendous popularly of AWS with non-it professionals, combined with the low barriers to procurement and deployment, are creating a range of problems in the enterprise: A significant divergence exists in the build and operating procedures of users who independently establish public cloud accounts and those of corporate IT from how accounts are established, who can access them, management of proprietary information, decommissioning of resources, how costs are controlled, etc. Running workloads in a public cloud on a small scale or on transient basis is extremely cost effective. In fact, application prototyping, development and testing have never been more economical. Deploying applications at scale, 24x7, at a public cloud provider is usually much more costly and variable month-to-month than anticipated. Due to cost, many adopt a start public and end up private model. Development and testing are resourced at a public cloud vendor. Production releases are then deployed in the corporate data center. But, the public cloud workloads are often not compliant with IT standards, and migrating off these services can be a big problem. The bottom line is this. Public cloud resources are a significant opportunity for enterprises to deliver more innovation, in a shorter period of time and at a reduced total cost. Proactive steps and leadership by corporate IT to provide best practices, a low-overhead management approach for public cloud resources, and an efficient bridge between on- and off-premise IT infrastructure will substantially increase corporate IT s strategic value to the business. 4

Best Practices for Enterprise Public Cloud Computing The most important point when considering best practices in enterprise public cloud computing is the following. If people opt out, it will not work. Amazon Web Services caught on like wildfire because end users were not getting the IT services needed, in a reasonable timeframe for an acceptable cost. Erecting all the same barriers or dispensing heavy-handed best practices for public cloud in the enterprise is exactly the wrong thing to do. Best practices in enterprise public cloud usage must be lightweight and occur without negatively impacting the productivity of developers, business units and other end users of public cloud services. Critically important is that these constituents be able to use public cloud services in the same flexible and productive manner as before, but now have access to new and useful capabilities like a seamless workload on- and off-ramp for AWS workloads. For best practices to be accepted, end users and their managers must derive actual benefit from the new operating model, not just become victims of a new set of corporate restrictions. With extensive infrastructure and operations experience in managing virtualized resources, corporate IT can deliver tangible value to public cloud consumers in the enterprise by: (1) helping new users quickly and effectively utilize AWS resources without training or knowledge of the details of Amazon services, (2) arming managers with real-time tools to monitor AWS workloads, usage and costs, (3) providing automated, painless capabilities for migrating workloads to and from AWS, and (4) delivering guidance in the construction and configuration of workloads that will transition in-house for production. If corporate IT has standardized on ware vcenter to deploy, administer and manage onpremise virtual machines, this infrastructure can and should be leveraged for all public cloud workloads. Ultimately, cloud-based services become part of a global IT resource pool. The investments made for managing on-premise virtual resources need to be extended to include off-premise resources so the enterprise can: 1. Utilize the existing on-premise management infrastructure and skills across AWS accounts and instances 2. Manage all functions of on-premise virtual environments and off-premise resources within this singular console 3. Enable end user managers to have trusted access roles for AWS resource visibility and management 4. Standardize snapshots and templates for provisioning across internal data centers and off-premise public clouds 5. Implement seamless two-way migration of all workloads (both Windows and Linux) between on- and off-premise environments 6. Use consistent enterprise policies for role-based access and change management across all on-premise virtual resources and off-premise public clouds 5

Virtual Infrastructure Management Cloud Automation Technology now exists that enables full platform interoperability and workload portability as a seamless extension of existing ware vcenter management environments. IT architects would benefit from a robust understanding of this technology to design streamlined infrastructure for hybrid management in the enterprise. More about this will be covered later in the paper. If corporate IT takes a leadership role early in delivering useful tools and operating models for enterprise end users of AWS resources, they can not only provide strategic value to the business but also avoid having their own productivity derailed in the future by the use of fragmented, overlapping and incompatible processes and toolsets that will inevitably proliferate among developers, business units and other public cloud end users as operations grow. Cloud Automation Technologies Some vendors are promoting the notion that hybrid on- and off-premise management can be solved through cloud automation. With this approach, a self-service portal, orchestration layer and service catalogs are implemented on top of the public cloud resources and on-premise private clouds, including all of their associated and disparate management consoles. Self-Service Portal Orchestration Service Catalog API API API API API API ware vcenter Microsoft SCM Xen Center RHEV Manager Amazon Console Other Cloud Console vsphere Hyper-V XenServer K Amazon Other On-Premise Off-Premise While layering a self-service provisioning portal on top of disparate on- and off-premise virtual environments provides benefits for certain use cases, these capabilities alone do not address the fundamental manageability requirements for public cloud computing in the enterprise, as outlined in the earlier best practices section. 6

First of all, each virtualized environment still requires its own management toolset for deployment, administration and management. Enterprises often support multiple hypervisors onpremise and a variety of public cloud platforms, so the complexity of operating all these management consoles is considerable. Second, there is no mechanism for common templates and snapshots that span the heterogeneous on- and off-premise environments to ensure public cloud instances are both initially provisioned and remain consistent with IT standards and compliance requirements. Third, no seamless or automated mechanism exists by which workloads can migrate across all these environments. The net result is that cloud automation solutions alone will not deliver a cohesively managed solution for enterprise IT and the business unit and development teams currently utilizing public cloud resources. Moreover, cloud automation is a complex and expensive endeavor, often referenced as a journey because of the many products, management layers, databases, custom scripts, service catalogs, self-service portal and professional services required to implement. Enterprises should not confuse the requirement for seamless hybrid operational management, spanning on- and off-premise resources, with a cloud automation journey. HotLink Platform & Workload Transformation Technology Most enterprise IT organizations have significant investments in ware vsphere for on-premise virtual infrastructure and have invested substantially in training administration staff and architects on the ware administration tools, particularly ware vcenter. Additionally, 3 rd party tools, custom scripts and workflows have been built and deployed around the on-premise virtual management infrastructure. Effective hybrid management of on- and off-premise resources mandates interoperability with existing infrastructure and operations. Any hybrid management solution that that does not enable the ware management infrastructure to readily extend to public cloud resources will be complex to integrate into current operations, challenging to scale and expand, and difficult to administer and manage. That s why HotLink assumes hybrid management in the enterprise must utilize ware vcenter as the single point of administration, management and integration across hybrid on- and off-premise virtualized resources. HotLink invested extensively in the patented platform and workload transformation technologies that enable the industry s simplest solution for deploying, administering and managing hybrid onand off-premise compute environments HotLink Hybrid Express. The HotLink software natively extends the existing ware vcenter management environment to Amazon EC2, with the full management functionality of on-premise now extended to public cloud. There is no prerequisite of any other management consoles, databases, connectors, new templates or professional services. With HotLink technology, hybrid platforms, both on- and off-premise, can be incorporated into the existing management infrastructure and operational model without increasing management complexity or requiring professional services to implement. HotLink also enables fully unified administration and management of multiple-hypervisors on-premise, as shown below. 7

Hybrid IT Simplicity with HotLink Cloud Automation Virtual Infrastructure Management Self-Service Portal Orchestration Service Catalog API Existing Mgmt Console (e.g. ware vcenter) HotLink Platform vsphere Hyper-V XenServer K Amazon Other On-Premise Off-Premise HotLink hybrid management does not just mean being able to accomplish tasks on each platform in its native manner; it means being able to accomplish cross-platform on- and offpremise tasks in a manner consistent with the standards and processes that have been wellhoned for the existing on-premise virtual data center and with a management console that is intuitive, robust and already in use ware vcenter. Public cloud users and managers in business units and development teams can now be given roles-based ware vcenter access to enable easy management of their public cloud resources including the ability to: Clone & migrate workloads to/from public cloud with simple point & click Create, use & manage hybrid snapshots Convert workloads bi-directionally Utilize existing on-premise templates in hybrid environments Monitor, track and manage team and individual usage Apply automation across hybrid resources The Hotlink technology also allows unified templates for provisioning to/from public cloud resources, consistent with internal standards. This provides significant productivity benefits by eliminating the complexity and time involved in rebuilding workloads for hybrid environments. 8

With the HotLink platform and workload transformation technology, enterprises can readily extend existing consoles to public cloud resources so deployment, administration and management of all on- and off-premise resources can be consolidated with a single pane of glass and single point of integration ware vcenter. Because other platforms are managed natively, compatible orchestration tools, service catalogs and self-service portals work out-of-the-box. Best of all, these hybrid capabilities can be added to the existing environment in less than a half a day, with no special IT skills. HotLink plus Cloud Automation The Hotlink technology is complementary to self-service provisioning models and cloud automation deployments. In fact, deploying HotLink substantially streamlines the implementation and operation of cloud automation infrastructure by enabling ware vcenter to be the single point of administration, management and integration for all hybrid resources. Native management toolsets for disparate virtual infrastructures can be eliminated since full functionality is available through ware vcenter. Example solutions Single admin & mgt console for on & off-premise hybrid platforms ware vcenter Eliminates multiple native consoles Seamless cross-platform snapshots, cloning, single template provisioning Workload conversions & migration Unified security, monitoring, performance reporting Single point of integration ware vcenter Self-service portal Workload orchestration Service catalog HotLink Transformation HotLink plus ware vcenter Cloud Automation vcloud Suite, RightScale, Eucalyptus YES NO 9

Conclusion Best practices in enterprise public cloud computing need to provide value to all parties, whether corporate IT, developers or business units otherwise, they will not be embraced and adopted. In this paper, we have outlined straightforward and practical methods for IT to provide important services to the public cloud users and managers inside the enterprise by leveraging existing IT infrastructure, knowledge and best practices. When considering the best overarching management strategy for hybrid on- and off-premise resources, the logical approach is to extend a known management construct, selectively deploying high value capabilities to the new users who need them. At HotLink, our charter is to enable hybrid computing using the IT management infrastructure already installed a simple idea with sizable impact for the enterprise. We believe this is the most pragmatic way to enable compute resources, whether on- or off-premise, to pooled and consumed on-demand while supporting responsible corporate governance and efficient resource delivery. To that end, the HotLink patented platform and workload transformation technology addresses hybrid platform complexities at a fundamental computer science level, so enterprises can easily and cost-effectively provide public cloud based services in a managed model. The best news is that with HotLink, hybrid capabilities can be added to the existing environment in less than half a day. Many vendors will financially benefit from a more radical reengineering of the environment over an extended period of time and characterize it as a journey. History strongly suggests that leveraging existing investments and building new enterprise capabilities on a solid foundation is more highly correlated with future success than a taking a journey. If your organization is facing any of the challenges or opportunities presented in this paper, please contact us to learn more about HotLink Hybrid Express the industry s simplest solution for deploying, administering and managing hybrid IT environments in the enterprise. Contact Us HotLink Corporation 3130 De La Cruz, Suite 211 Santa Clara, CA 95054 (408)463-6130 www.hotlink.com info@hotlink.com 2016 HotLink Corporation. All rights reserved. HotLink and HotLink Hybrid Express are trademarks or registered trademarks of HotLink Corporation. All other company and product names may be trade names or trademarks of their respective owners. 10