E-Guide CLOUD COMPUTING VS. VIRTUALIZATION

Transcription

1 E-Guide CLOUD COMPUTING VS. VIRTUALIZATION

2 A lthough cloud computing uses virtualization, virtualization is simply one element that makes cloud computing. In this e- guide, brought to you by SearchServerVirtualization.com, learn how private cloud computing and virtualization differ. Also, our experts advise that private cloud computing cannot be a reality unless your organization has traveled through the four stages of IT virtualization maturity. To go from a virtual data center to a private cloud, IT teams must instate features such as automation, self-service provisioning and chargeback. PAGE 2 OF 14

3 IS VIRTUALIZATION CLOUD COMPUTING? So you have deployed virtualization, but do you have a private cloud? Maybe. What exactly is the difference between virtualization and private cloud computing? That is like asking, What is the difference between blue and green? When combined with yellow, the color blue makes the color green. Similarly, virtualization is simply one of the elements that makes cloud computing.* To continue this analogue, cloud computing can happen without virtualization. Certain hardware, operating system and even application clusters can deliver cloud services. But these technologies can be complicated and costly, often requiring a lot of work to provide a limited set of features. The more likely scenario is that a private cloud computing environment is built on a virtual infrastructure. Many organizations have deployed virtualization by creating virtual servers on top of their existing networking, storage and security stacks. But with private cloud computing, you need to think about and design these technologies in conjunction with one another. PAGE 3 OF 14

4 In other words, you built previous virtual infrastructures on these stacks, but you need to build a private cloud with these stacks. VIRTUALIZATION AS AN ELEMENT OF CLOUD COMPUTING Cloud computing is as much a methodology as it is a technology. You cannot plan any single element without considering the effect on the others. You also have to add in practices and policies that govern chargeback, monitoring, procurement and many other facets of your IT infrastructure. For example, the ability to rapidly provision virtual machines does no good if it still takes six weeks to order and install a host server. Furthermore, procurement will always be a problem if chargeback is not recovering costs, and that requires resource and utilization monitoring. If your storage and compute resources have different provisioning schedules, they ll have to be documented and reconciled to properly forecast demand. I could go on, but your business requirements ultimately drive everything. Private cloud computing does not center on virtualization or any one technology. It uses a set of technologies that have been aligned to be highly flexible and provide a wide range of services. This approach does not require virtualization, but virtualization does lend well to the core concepts of cloud computing. PAGE 4 OF 14

5 Virtualization and cloud computing are also so closely connected because the major hypervisor vendors -- VMware, Microsoft and Citrix Systems -- are putting a lot of emphasis on the cloud. They have closely aligned their products with tools and complementary technologies that promote the adoption of private cloud computing. Cloud computing is a rapidly evolving discipline, and one that will reshape org charts as fast as it will change data center layouts. It closely aligns with virtualization, but it takes many technologies to be successful. *There is debate about whether green is a primary color. It takes blue and yellow to make green, but green occurs naturally. That is the reason for the competing CMYK and RGB color standards, and this controversy makes the analogy even more fitting. ADOPTING A PRIVATE CLOUD STRATEGY Many of us have heard the hype about reaping the benefits of public cloud infrastructures without compromising service levels, security or compliance PAGE 5 OF 14

6 requirements -- it s called private cloud computing. But when is it the right time for companies to pull the trigger on private cloud without shooting themselves in the foot? Some industry experts say it s now. They re quick to caution decision-makers, however, that private cloud is a journey, not a destination. Private cloud computing isn t something you simply go out and buy; it s an evolution from what we have today, said Tom Bittman, vice president at Gartner. Furthermore, he adds that the private cloud is a stopgap or stepping stone to utilizing more mature public cloud services when they become available, any time from six months to ten years from now. Think of private cloud as a new item in the IT toolkit for different economics. Private cloud computing goes beyond virtualization and includes automated workload management, self-service interfaces and some form of usage metering or chargeback. Private cloud computing also requires the ability to share resources to maximize utilization -- among business units, divisions and other groups that may not share resources today -- a change that will affect existing corporate culture, politics, processes and even business relationships. WHAT IS PRIVATE CLOUD, AND WHEN CAN I HAVE IT? PAGE 6 OF 14

7 Forrester defines an internal cloud as a multi-tenant, dynamically provisioned and optimized infrastructure with self-service developer deployment, hosted within the safe confines of the enterprise data center. Forget about getting started with a big bang. Think of adopting a private as a series of steps that requires that the organization to have the technical pieces in place for private cloud computing and be experientially and culturally ready. If a company isn t ready, they can t reap the benefits, said James Staten, analyst at Forrester Research. Taking a more somber tone, Randy Bias, CEO of Cloudscaling.com, a cloud engineering services firm that has designed, built and managed large and complex public and private clouds, said that most organizations don t have the DNA, organizational structure or business incentive to be successful at building a private cloud. I think that over the next several years, we re going to see a lot of attempts with the private cloud that will result in failure and misery, he said. That said, he strongly advises companies working on private cloud initiatives to go into it with their eyes wide open. Whatever you re building, see it as a short-term goal, not an end goal, he said. A recent survey of Gartner clients found that 75% of companies expect to PAGE 7 OF 14

8 pursue private cloud by THE FOUR STAGES OF PRIVATE CLOUD PREPARATION Every organization considering the private cloud is destined to travel on a maturity journey that industry experts agree consists of a number of stages, from laying the IT infrastructure groundwork to assessing early scenarios for private cloud deployments. All agree the initial step, IT virtualization maturity, is the essence of evolving to the private cloud. Forrester s Staten outlines four stages of virtualization maturity -- acclimation, strategic consolidation, optimization, and automation -- to assess where your organization is in the process. The first stage, acclimation, is the time it takes for an organization to learn about virtualization, how it works, test it against simple applications, and then determine where it can safely be applied. A company is in stage two, strategic consolidation, when its comfort level with virtualization shifts from concept to strategic implementation, having recognized the value proposition of virtualization as an agent of cost savings and change. At this point the case has to be made for why a workload should not be virtualized, said Staten. PAGE 8 OF 14

9 Stage three, optimization, is when virtualization empowers process improvement and organizations get serious about life-cycle management of virtual machines and cleaning up virtual server sprawl. It s at this stage where there must be an experiential shift in thinking about the IT infrastructure. Thinking in the physical world will hurt you in the virtual world, said Staten. Companies at stage four of virtualization maturity sit at the precipice of being cloud-ready. These organizations grasp the importance of policy-based automation of the virtualization pool, which, explains Staten, pushes the organization to share services and treat the virtualization pool as an internal cloud service. SET THE STAGE FOR YOUR CLOUD Inherent in the four steps to virtualization maturity are key elements that set the stage for private cloud computing; namely, a willingness to change the organization and internal processes and gain the political clout to overcome resistance. Companies who are grounded in stage three are ready to create a greenfield project for private cloud. Experts recommend test and development workloads as a safe place for organizations get their feet wet with private cloud. It s PAGE 9 OF 14

10 a good proving ground and learning ground, said Fausto Bernadini, director of IT cloud portfolio services at IBM. Additionally, a greenfield project of noncritical workloads at stage three can help accelerate an organization to stage four. Private cloud return on investment (ROI) evolves alongside this virtualization maturity path. Ultimately, ROI comes from high utilization of the resources that are dedicated to the private cloud. The higher the sustained utility of the private cloud, the better the payback, said Staten. Digging a bit deeper, companies venturing into the private cloud can expect to make big investments in people and processes, as well as new automation and policy enforcement tools. Unlike the public cloud, where companies can grow and shrink usage (and ultimately costs) based on need, internal private cloud costs are perpetual. WHAT S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A PRIVATE CLOUD AND A VIRTUAL DATA CENTER? PAGE 10 OF 14

11 A private cloud is not really an alternative to a virtual data center. Instead, a private cloud infrastructure builds on the capabilities that virtualization already provides -- so virtualization is a critical underlying, or enabling, technology for the private cloud. For example, virtualization provides a high level of system utilization, which also abstracts the workloads from the underlying hardware. This means the applications in each virtual machine (VM) are decoupled from the servers. Workloads can then run on any suitable virtualized server, and workloads can easily be migrated between virtualized servers with little, if any, discernible disruption in performance. These characteristics are absolutely essential to the cloud. Although virtualization provides some significant benefits in workload provisioning, management and protection, it still requires direct support and intervention from IT staff. A private cloud infrastructure builds on the benefits of virtualization to add new features that reduce reliance on IT staff, including self-service, scalability and chargeback. Self-service, or automation, allows users to provision and launch new virtual machines without the direct intervention of IT. For example, if a department wants to introduce a new server application, the department can set up PAGE 11 OF 14

12 the VM, allocate the computing resources, install the application and handle related tasks themselves rather than waiting for IT. In addition, users can scale the computing resources for their VMs. For example, if that new server application needs more -- or less -- storage, memory, CPU cycles and so on, the VM owner can scale those resources on demand. And a private cloud also integrates reporting and chargeback features, which can automatically track computing resource use and bill the VM owners based on their utilization. In this way, VM owners feel the financial implications of their computing choices and are incentivized to make frugal computing decisions, such as eliminating unneeded VMs rather than continuing to pay for them each month. However, a private cloud isn t always easy; it takes discipline and planning for business leaders to own their IT destiny. Cloud computing is the ultimate manifestation of utility computing, and businesses built on the traditional IT paradigm may not adapt well when forced to manage their own workloads and pay for them out of their own budgets. PAGE 12 OF 14

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