xstream 2.0 Datasheet The Enterprise-Class Cloud Enterprises require a different type of cloud. Until recently, the majority of clouds have been best-effort public clouds, consisting of basic virtualization, a toolkit, a set of APIs and Web access. Businesses have used these public clouds for testing and development and for web-scale applications. But enterprises also need to bring the economic and business benefits of cloud to their entire portfolio of enterprise applications including mission-critical legacy applications and web-scale applications. These enterpriseclass clouds need to be secure, dynamic, multi-tenant efficient, simple to manage, compliant with auditing and regulatory policies and include backup/disaster recovery. In addition to supporting mission-critical applications in the cloud, enterprises require guaranteed application performance. Since enterprises need to seamlessly mix existing IT with private clouds and benefit from public/virtual private clouds, they are increasingly looking for a hybrid solution that combines private and public clouds. Virtustream s xstream 2.0 cloud solution meets enterprise-class cloud requirements and offers a private, public and hybrid solution while enabling more savings, flexibility and business benefits than any other alternative. Virtustream delivers the enterprise class cloud for mission-critical legacy applications, delivering the cloud value that public cloud vendors have pioneered for test/dev and web-scale applications.
xstream 2.0: Running the Enterprise-Class Cloud xstream 2.0 is enterprise-class cloud software for private, virtual private, public and hybrid clouds available as software, as an appliance or as a managed cloud service. xstream is powered by Virtustream µvm technology, which delivers enterprise security and compliance, multi-tenant efficiency, consumption-based pricing and performance SLAs for both legacy and web-scale applications. xstream works with existing enterprise hardware and virtualization to deliver enterprise-class clouds. xstream is the first true enterprise hybrid cloud solution secure and compliant whether private or public. Enterprises need to run a complex IT environment that supports multiple applications, with a broad mix of hardware and software. xstream provides a hybrid cloud solution private, public or mixed which enables the enterprise to securely benefit from the cloud with multi-tenant efficiency, dynamic scale and on-demand delivery. Enterprises can now operate secure, compliant private clouds on-site and combine them with virtual private/public clouds in a hybrid solution for both legacy and web-scale applications. Applications running on an xstream cloud are supported by commercial application performance SLAs and consumption-based pricing, enabling mission-critical applications like ERP, CRM, databases, mail, web apps and thousands more to be moved to the cloud and outperform traditional operations. Your cloud solution is tailored with policies to run your applications in the configuration that fits your business. You can simply operate your own private cloud, you can combine it with virtual private/public clouds or you can use managed cloud services in any combination for the entire IT landscape, while delivering up to 25% more efficiency than existing virtualization. The cloud brings significant benefits to IT: making it more dynamic and allowing it to operate on-demand and at multi-tenant economies of scale. Cloud resources are securely shared available dynamically and on-demand. But without a solution like xstream, shared resources in private and public clouds cannot deliver reliable application performance. xstream was built from the ground up to be enterprise-class, using Virtustream μvm technology to achieve the reliability and assured high performance of a dedicated private cloud combined with the flexibility, scalability and economic benefits of the public multi-tenant cloud. xstream enables you to run the most complex, mission-critical legacy applications from SAP, Oracle, Microsoft and thousands more with full cloud benefits, but without rewriting your applications. The Benefits Optimal hybrid cloud solution: private, virtual private and/or public Supports both legacy and web-scale applications Enterprise-grade security and compliance Performance SLAs for mission-critical applications Multi-tenant economic benefits of cloud Consumption-based pricing: pay only for what s actually used Operational simplicity by pooling resources and applying policies to those pools Supports all leading hypervisors and runs on the majority of enterprise hardware Role-based management portal for CxOs, CIO, IT ops, business leaders and users Optional managed services for secure cloud bursting (auto scaling or cold migration), backup and disaster recovery Backed by comprehensive cloud professional services: strategy, migration, setup and management
xstream with Virtustream µvm Technology Virtustream s μvm is a fundamental cloud unit of measure comprised of compute, memory, network and storage. Using a μvm as an analytical building block, the optimal configuration of cloud resources needed to support any application (legacy or web-scale) can be identified and delivered. Delivers economic benefits of the cloud along with the reliability of dedicated resources. Dynamically tailors resources to meet application needs. Each application is assessed for resource needs and the optimal set of µvms is combined to deliver mission-critical performance, all backed by an SLA. As applications execute, xstream ensures that each application has the resources it needs. Offers a true consumption-based pricing model in which customers pay only for what they actually use (in 5-minute increments), not for compute, memory, storage or network capacity that is not used (virtual machines are typically idle 30% of the time). Works with a heterogeneous collection of existing hardware and software so that companies can use existing hypervisors, compute, storage and networking resources and still benefit from an enterprise cloud. Designed for a wide range of enterprise applications working with all leading hypervisors: VMware ESX, IBM PowerVM, Red Hat KVM, Xen, CentOS KVM and more). xstream also supports a mixed environment, letting the enterprise mix and match hypervisors for flexible cost/licensing options by application. Integrates backup, data replication and disaster recovery as selected by the enterprise. Enables enterprise clouds to be secure and compliant, meeting the most rigorous cloud standards: NIST 800/FISMA/G-Cloud (government), HIPAA (healthcare), PCI (ecommerce), DIACAP (defense), ICD 503 (intelligence) and industry (SSAE 16, ISO 27001, SAS 70 and more) Built to be managed from a single pane of glass. xstream-based clouds running in multiple locations (private, virtual private and public) can all be monitored and managed from a single console that provides a unified view. The μvm Unit of Measure Compute: 200 MHz of CPU Memory: 768 MB Storage: 40 Input/output operations per second (IOPS) Network: 2 Mbps
VM Sized for Peaks Next Size Up Selected VMs Assigned to μvm Pool Only Pay for What You Use Space Needed Pay for Full VM Allocation Method VM-Based Consumption Method Micro VM (μvm )-Based μvms Share Overhead Enabling Application Performance xstream is designed to deliver and assure application performance in the cloud. xstream takes a policy-based approach to service quality and offers application performance SLAs across an entire resource pool compute, memory, network and storage. For the first time, enterprises can be assured that application performance in the cloud meets or exceeds dedicated hardware performance enabling mission-critical applications to be moved to the cloud, whether legacy or web-scale. Hybrid cloud connections including the communication, transfer of data and migration of workloads between private, virtual private and public clouds is automated, allowing backup and disaster recovery, cloud-bursting and test/ development to be delivered primarily by setting policies versus manual configuration. Policies that reflect your business priorities help to prevent applications from contending for resources. If sub-second response time is the critical performance factor of an application, resource pools can be designed to help assure that performance level. xstream Components for Application Performance SLAs: Integrated monitoring and alerts hypervisor and application. Monitors the four μvm constituents while supporting integration with third-party monitoring tools such as Nimsoft and Nagios to deliver app-level metrics. IOPS and storage performance. Synchronizes and maximizes expected application and storage performance using a unique optimization technique. Bursting. Uses app-specific configuration to burst to available capacity. Bursting can involve adding memory, restarting instances in different locations or adding application instances. Hypervisor Support The first step to the cloud is virtualization, and that means hypervisors. Among others, xstream supports: VMware ESXi Red Hat KVM CentOS KVM IBM PowerVM, supporting the IBM pseries chip Open-Source Xen
API capabilities. Supports Amazon EC2 compliant APIs, a very common platform for the public cloud. Customers using the APIs get benefits of controllability and configurability without having to recode their applications specifically for Virtustream. APIs are extended for SLAs and performance. Supporting Legacy Applications Many enterprises have encountered obstacles migrating legacy applications to the cloud. Today s best-efforts public clouds are only designed for test/dev and web-scale applications with no performance guarantees. xstream removes those obstacles. xstream enables the most complex, mission-critical legacy applications to run in the cloud. Whether the application is from SAP, Oracle, Microsoft or thousands of others, Virtustream µvm technology allows it to be brought into the cloud and operate faster, cheaper and backed by performance SLAs. For example, Virtustream is an SAP-certified solution provider, so enterprises can move applications such as SAP ERP into the cloud. We have over 50 production SAP enterprise instances running on xstream. We even support automated migration of applications written for mainframes in languages such as COBOL and Fortran, while also providing an ideal environment for web-scale applications. Security and Compliance xstream offers enterprise-grade security and compliance with automatic management, using resource and security policies established by IT, enabling users and applications to securely use both private and virtual private clouds. Features include: Two-factor authentication using soft tokens from SafeNet. A one-time password is generated, then destroyed once the transaction is complete. Password-based authentication in Microsoft Active Directory. Hardware-based authentication. When we move a workload to a new physical host, we don t take any chances. We use Trusted Execution Technology (TXT) from Intel. TXT verifies the integrity of the hypervisor or operating system running on the chip or motherboard, ensuring that the software running on a given host has not been compromised. Physical and logical separation. The customer chooses the acceptable level of multi-tenancy. Whether it s on-premise, in a private cloud or in a shared environment, on shared or separate storage, we can support your business s needs. Single Pane of Glass xstream is built to be managed from a single pane of glass. Regardless of where your physical and virtual machines are housed (private cloud, virtual private cloud or public cloud), you ll be able to see all of them through a single management portal. xstream-based clouds running in multiple locations (private, virtual private and public, in multiple geographies) can all be monitored and managed from a single console that provides a unified view. Role-Based Management Just as important as which applications should go in the cloud is the question of who is allowed to access or change the applications. The xstream portal provides self-service and role-based management, displaying information appropriate for a CXO, CIO, IT operator, business leader or end-user, for example.
Continuous threat management. All of our systems log events and notifications related to intrusion detection and malware, which are aggregated by a Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) engine for operations (customer or xstream ops) to resolve. Continuous event monitoring and audit trail support. The GRC engine can receive events, compare them to the customer s compliance requirements and assess the level of compliance across a number of standards, including NIST 800/FISMA/G- Cloud (government), HIPAA (healthcare), PCI (ecommerce), DIACAP (defense), ICD 503 (intelligence), and industry (SSAE 16, ISO 27001, SAS 70 and more). xstream can also feed into a customer s existing GRC engine. Inside the Virtustream cloud, within our data centers, there are additional safeguards at the firewall and core switching level. We support: Hypervisor-based intrusion detection and intrusion prevention Hardware-based intrusion detection Firewalls between customers Multiple layers in a customer deployment, including Internet zone, DMZ, and enterprise-grade zone: This feature specifically supports back-office traffic that is not exposed to the public Internet Disaster Recovery and Backup xstream 2.0 can support enterprise-class backup and replication. Give us the recovery point and recovery time objectives (RPOs and RTOs) and the size of the data to be carried between sites, and we can give you a performance guarantee. SLAs are primarily only limited by bandwidth constraints and the customer s choice of storage-agnostic replication or storage vendor s replication technology. Our combination of disaster recovery and backup options is unparalleled. A Fortune 100 company was able to conduct a 1-hour failover of its SAP system using xstream, when competitors could offer recovery times no faster than 2.5 days. xstream backup is typically capable of RPOs of lower than 5 minutes and RTOs of less than one hour. Additionally, xstream supports VM, cluster and data center failover. If a virtual machine or set of machines within a pool fails, recovery will take place on another node within that cluster. If the cluster fails, it can be recovered at a remote site. In other words, a catastrophic data center failure would still be recoverable.
Approval Workflow Management End users can request all of the components that will comprise their cloud environments with an xstream catalog request, then send the package of components through an internal workflow, which can be routed to the responsible parties for each budget line item, ensuring all components are approved for the cloud before launch. Operational Simplicity xstream 2.0 affords customers the capability to use policies to manage all µvms in a pool. These policies could include monitoring, patching and backup and disaster recovery. When customers define a data-protection or retention policy for a pool, then instruct each virtual machine or application within that pool to adopt or conform to that policy, overhead is reduced because the administrator need not manage each VM individually; VMs are managed in concert according to the policies set for their particular pool. Cloud Professional Services Moving critical applications to the cloud is a difficult and complex decision. Our Cloud Professional Services team can help you determine how to get the optimal tradeoff between pricing and performance and between virtualization and the cloud. The Cloud Professional Services team helps customers with vendor agnostic advice to set strategy and assess, design, migrate, manage and operate clouds. The Cloud Professional Services team also uses the Advisor tool for first-time cloud customers. Advisor can collect performance information from existing environments so that only the required cloud resources are provisioned when customers migrate to the cloud. Customers select the desired service level for each application, then provision and migrate those applications onto xstream s resource pools. Remote Infrastructure Management If required by customers, Virtustream also offers a cloud monitoring and management service. In an xstream cloud (private cloud, virtual private, public or hybrid), customers can use our Cloud Cover group for monitoring and managing systems full-time or outside normal business hours.
Delivery Models Hybrid Run a Private Cloud (at your site) About Virtustream Virtual Private Cloud Service (in the Virtustream Cloud) Hybrid Hybrid Enterprise Public Cloud (in SP/Government Cloud) Virtustream is the leading enterprise cloud solution provider. xstream 2.0 is Virtustream s enterprise-class cloud solution, allowing both legacy and web-scale mission-critical applications to run in the cloud whether private, virtual private, public or hybrid. xstream uses patented Virtustream µvm technology to securely enable enterprise hybrid clouds on existing hardware and virtualization, backed by application SLAs, consumptionbased pricing and multi-tenant efficiency. xstream is available as software, as an appliance, or as a managed service and backed by comprehensive cloud professional services. xstream 2.0 is available in three editions: Private Cloud Edition for enterprise customers Virtual Private Cloud Edition as a set of cloud managed services Public Cloud Edition for service provider and government customers xstream 2.0 is available in multiple delivery modes to suit a wide variety of business needs: For private clouds, xstream can be installed in your environment as software or as a ready-made appliance. For public clouds, xstream is available as a set of managed services for enterprise customers (from Virtustream or other service provider clouds) For service providers and government customers, xstream is available as software, an appliance or a managed service for inclusion in an existing public cloud Customers can benefit from the cloud, without having to build one.