A Pragmatic Cloud Computing Reference Model (CC-RM)

Transcription

1 A Pragmatic Cloud Computing Reference Model (CC-RM) Furthering the Establishment of Cloud Computing Modeling, Architecture, Deployment and Operations Disciplines April 26, 2010 AgilePath Corporation 38 Merrimac St. Newburyport, MA

2 Executive Summary Broad industry adoption of almost all emerging technologies is hampered by the absence of two critical requirements: a vendor-neutral reference model, and industry standards that address key architectural, interoperability and operational requirements of that emerging technology. Cloud computing is the next emerging technology, following, pulling and building on Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) to enable new forms of enterprise value to be realized through appropriate and judicious implementation of Cloud capabilities. This whitepaper establishes a framework for a Cloud Computing Reference Model (CC-RM). The reference model developed herein covers a broad set of Cloud requirements, including Cloud enablement technologies, Cloud deployment patterns, Cloud operations and governance requirements, as well as the development of a Cloud ecosystem that connects Cloud providers of all types with Cloud consumers, as well as the other environmental requirements of a Cloud community. This Cloud Computing reference model will help decision makers focus on key dimensions of Cloud Computing, their relationship to one another, and how they enable the rich potential of Cloudenabled solutions to be created and delivered. Introduction to the Cloud Computing Reference Model The Cloud computing Reference Model (CC-RM) developed in this whitepaper is intended to facilitate the process of Cloud modeling, deployment planning and architecture. As with Service-oriented architecture (SOA), until OASIS promoted the concept of Reference Model, Reference Architecture and Reference implementation, there was not a standardized approach to realize a SOA implementation that could be traced to standards, to a sound reference architecture approach, which both contribute to a successful reference implementation. The proposed Cloud Computing Reference Model (CC-RM) will establish a Cloud computing modeling and architecture foundation from which an organization can realistically plan, model, architect and deploy Cloud computing in a pragmatic fashion to address real and pressing business and technical challenges. Cloud computing should not be treated as a solution looking for a problem, but as a collection of Cloud-enabled resource patterns that can be configured to meet a wide array of business and technical requirements. The Cloud reference model developed in this whitepaper is comprised of four supporting models or sub-models, as described below: 1. Cloud Enablement Model: The core of the Cloud Computing Reference Model is the Cloud Enablement Model. The Cloud Enablement Model describes the tiers of Cloud computing 2

3 foundation, enablement and business capabilities provided by Cloud platform and service providers to potential consumers of Cloud-enabled technology and business capabilities. The Cloud enablement model is comprised of the range of Cloud technologies and enablement solutions such that all Cloud patterns can be realized by providers and consumers. 2. Cloud Deployment Model: Describes the range of Cloud deployment scenarios available to your enterprise internal-private Cloud, external public Cloud, hybrid Cloud and community cloud. These deployment scenarios may be mixed and matched to meet a variety of business use cases and requirements. 3. Cloud Governance and Operations Model: Describes the governance, security and privacy, operations and support, management and monitoring requirements for cloud computing to ensure you have considered all the potential operational risks of adopting Cloud for your enterprise. 4. Cloud Ecosystem Model: The Cloud Ecosystem model considers the requirements of developing and sustaining a Cloud ecosystem comprised of Cloud providers, Cloud consumers, Cloud intermediaries, as well as the Cloud network and Cloud dial tone necessary to ensure the cloud is always there for you. The Cloud ecosystem also includes the various Cloud enablement technologies and cloud providers and consumers of those Cloud enablement technologies to establish the Cloud ecosystem. The Cloud Computing Reference Model (CC-RM) is depicted below in figure 1: 3

4 Figure 1: Cloud Computing Reference Model (CC-RM) The Cloud Computing Reference Model is comprised of four sub-models, with elements or dimensions within each of the sub-models. The components of this Cloud Computing Reference Model are summarized below, and are explained in detail in the subsequent sections. Cloud Enablement Model (CEM) The Cloud Enablement Model is a core element of the CC-RM. The Cloud enablement Model helps you identify and relate various Cloud Enablement technologies and capabilities into various Cloud patterns that help solve business and technology requirements. The Cloud Enablement Model is illustrated below as a collection of tiers of Cloud Enablement capabilities: 4

5 Figure 2: CC-RM Cloud Enablement Model (CEM) Below, we describe the functional and technical capabilities of each Cloud Enablement tier in the Cloud Enablement Model, working from the bottom upward in Figure 2. Cloud Physical Tier: This tier describes the physical resources of an enterprise that may be Cloud enabled to create an elastic pool of shared resources in a Cloud deployment. Resources in the Cloud physical tier typically include computing resources (data centers, servers, et al), storage resources (local, enterprise, et al), and network resources. Cloud Virtualization Tier: This Cloud enablement tier focuses on the range of technologies and tools that provide hardware and infrastructure virtualization, computing, storage, network and security virtualization, all as a Cloud foundation upon which the other Cloud enablement tiers are layered. Virtualization technology is fairly mature, but in the context of Cloud computing, it is still evolving. Virtualization technologies will most likely be absorbed into the next tier, the Cloud Operating System tier. Cloud Operating System Tier: The Cloud Operating System Tier (OS) focuses on the class of Cloud enabling technologies that enable physical resources to be abstracted and accessed as a shared pool of Cloud enabled capabilities. As such, the Cloud OS tier provides the basic required functionality of Clouds a pool of shared, dynamically elastic resources, available via self service and automatic resource provisioning, billing and metering, load balancing, resource management and 5

6 monitoring, workflow and orchestration of Cloud-enabled resources into pattern-based solutions, and more. The Cloud OS tier enables the essential characteristics of Cloud computing that differentiate it from virtualization technologies, and enables higher order Cloud patterns and solutions to be created. We should note the term Cloud operating system is an abstraction to describe the range of Cloud enabling technologies and tools that establish core functions of true Clouds. This is a dynamic and emerging category of software, providing a range of Cloud enabling capabilities. Cloud Platform Tier: The Cloud Platform Tier is comprised of the tools and technologies that enable platforms to be assembled and delivered as a service (Paas), as well as the individual middleware technology capabilities that enable platforms to be assembled and provisioned. These include SOA and Web services, application server and runtime containers, content management, Web and application servers, and more. The Cloud platform tier builds on the Virtualization and OS tier to enable application platforms and PaaS capabilities to be built, delivered and consumed as a service. Cloud Business Tier/Cloud Mission Tier: The Cloud business tier consists of a broad range of business capabilities and business solutions that are designed and provisioned to consumers as services via the Cloud. (In Department of Defense uses, this tier is called the Cloud Mission Tier.) While SalesForce CRM and gmail are common examples, the general use case is broader than the typical software as a service (SaaS) construct offered by analysts. Any end-user solution or capability provided as a service via a Cloud-enabled delivery model fits the Cloud Business Tier. For example, data as a service, knowledge as a service, processes as a service, are all possible Cloud business tier solutions that are within the range of the possible given this construction. The Cloud business tier opens up a broad array of potential Cloud business solutions, far beyond the SaaS convention we have known to date. The Cloud Enablement Model is meant to organize the range of Cloud technologies and solutions into sensible tiers that build upon one another, yet enable the complete range of potential Cloud solutions to be imagined, modeled and delivered. Each of the Cloud Enablement Tiers is unique, addresses a targeted class of potential Cloud consumers, and support Cloud patterns that can address a broad range of business and technical needs. Cloud Deployment Model (CDM) The Cloud deployment model (CDM) is a critical dimension of the CC-RM in conjunction with the Cloud enablement model. The CDM provides an explicit framework for identifying the requirements and differences of various Cloud deployment scenarios. When the Cloud deployment model and the Cloud enablement model are used together, the core of the CC-RM comes to life. These are the core decisions that will have the biggest impact on your Cloud implementation. The CDM is illustrated in Figure 3 below as a box surrounding the Cloud Enablement Model: 6

7 Figure 3: CC-RM Cloud Deployment Model (CDM) The Cloud deployment model and the Cloud Enablement Model are key decisions that determine in many respects the security, architectural and management challenges you will face with Cloud computing. Below we describe the primary Cloud deployment model scenarios. Private Internal Cloud: Internal clouds, or private clouds, focus on optimization of internal resources and capabilities leveraging Cloud solutions. Private clouds avoid many of the perceived security risks associated with Cloud, while limiting potential benefits of leveraging external Cloud providers to host your clouds. Public External Cloud: Public clouds are where may of the outsourcing benefits of Cloud can be realized, as well as the time to market, proven technology solutions. Public cloud service providers, such as Amazon, Salesforce, Google and many other easy-to-access pre-integrated Cloud solutions accessible in minutes via credit card and simple to onboard your data or business needs into their Cloud. Hybrid Integrated Cloud: This will be the dominant Cloud deployment configuration sooner rather than later. Hybrid Clouds mix the features and capabilities of public and private clouds to address business or mission needs. There is already industry momentum behind defining standard APIs to enable Cloud integration and interoperability, a critical requirement of hybrid Clouds. Hybrid Clouds 7

8 can offer compelling Cloud patterns that mitigate security risks while taking advantage of public Cloud service offerings. Community Cloud: A community Cloud deployment is one that is shared by a community of interest (COI) or a group of stakeholders with shared interests. Community Clouds could be established for any number of interest groups, such as industry groups, mission domains in the Department of Defense (DoD), or more specific communities of interest. A community Cloud is public to its members, but private to outsiders. The Cloud Deployment Model and the Cloud Enablement Model are central requirements of the Cloud computing Reference Model. Establishing the parameters of these two submodels will enable you to plan and implement Cloud for your enterprise with clarity about the deployment and Cloud enablement patterns necessary to solve your business requirements. Cloud Governance and Operations Model The Cloud Governance and Operations Model is in many respects determined after you have made your choices about Cloud Enablement approaches in the context of your Cloud deployment model. If you know your Cloud deployment model, and you have modeled your Cloud enablement patterns and technology choices, you can then go about defining and implementing appropriate Cloud governance, operations and management capabilities, security controls, and customer support. Below, the Cloud Governance and Operations Model is illustrated in Figure 4 as a box surrounding both the CEM and the CDM: 8

9 Figure 4: CC-RM Cloud Governance & Ops Model (CGM) Below are the primary elements of the Cloud Governance and Operations Model: Cloud Governance, Culture and Behavior: Cloud governance is an emerging requirement of Cloud computing, and encompasses a broad set of business and technical requirements, from the planning and architecture process through the design-time considerations of Cloud computing, functional and non-functional requirements analysis, and the actual process of onboarding your enterprise onto a cloud (internal, public or hybrid), and the critical monitoring and operational requirements of Cloud once you have successfully deployed. Culture and behavior are also addressed in this sub-model, as successful Cloud computing deployments must explicitly recognize the cultural and behavioral requirements to achieve success with Cloud as a trust-based architectural approach. Security and Privacy: A hot topic, Cloud security and privacy focuses on challenges of data security, privacy, regulatory compliance for privacy, as well as data integrity, physical and logical security, and all other related security requirements for services, applications, and interactions in a Cloud ecosystem. The choice of Cloud deployment models will in many respects help constrain your Cloud security challenges. Management and Monitoring: Cloud management and monitoring focuses on the instrumentation and tooling necessary to monitor and manage your Cloud, whether your deployment is an internal private cloud, or whether you are leveraging third-party external clouds from Amazon or 9

10 Salesforce.com, or deploying hybrid integrated Clouds. Either way, you must be able to integrate and automate the monitoring, performance management, alarming and alerting of Cloud events and performance metrics in order to respond to outages, performance degradations, and related operational concerns. Operations and Support: Cloud operations and support focuses on the post-deployment phases of the Cloud Lifecycle Model, and is poorly understood in the context of Cloud operations and support. While many of these processes can be adapted from current ITIL, COBIT and other IT management frameworks, you will also need to leverage your current data center and IT support, help desk and operations processes and adapt them based on your chosen Cloud deployment model. Operations and support for hybrid and public clouds will be a fast-moving area of emphasis, and you must spend appropriate time understanding the operations and support requirements based on the Cloud deployment, based on which Cloud enablement tiers and cloud patterns you intend to exploit. Taken together, the elements of the Cloud Governance and Operations Model provide a foundation from which you can establish governance processes, policies, management and operations controls to facilitate the process of transitioning smoothly to Cloud enabled enterprise. Cloud Economic and Ecosystem Model The last key dimension of the CC-RM is the Cloud Economic and Ecosystem Model. The Cloud Economic and Ecosystem Model creates and enables the business, economic and operational relationships between Cloud consumers and Cloud providers, as well as the technical and physical connections that enable business operations to be provided and performed over the Cloud. The Cloud Ecosystem is the physical, logical and virtual environment in which Cloud providers, Cloud consumers, cloud solution and technology providers all operate to drive the economic and transactional foundation of Cloud computing as a legitimate business and technology trend. The Cloud Economic and Ecosystem Model is illustrated in Figure 1 as the outside box surrounding the other sub-models of the CC-RM. The key elements of the Cloud Economic and Ecosystem Model are described below. Cloud Network/Cloud Dial Tone: Cloud dial tone refers to the essential requirement that the network always be available, and that Cloud-enabled resources are accessible, or on. If you cannot get a Cloud dial tone, trust in Cloud will erode the true potential of Cloud will not be realized. Cloud Ecosystem Enablement: Cloud ecosystem enablement refers to the capabilities and technologies that allow the Cloud ecosystem to be built and managed, thus connecting Cloud providers and consumers such that they can find one another, operationally engage, and conduct business transactions via the Cloud network. Do not mistake Cloud ecosystem enablement as solely a technical problem. It also must address economic, social, cultural and behavioral dimensions of the Cloud ecosystem. 10

11 Cloud Consumers and Cloud Providers: The Cloud ecosystem must provide support for all Cloud consumers and providers to engage. There cannot be a Cloud ecosystem unless all stakeholders in the Cloud ecosystem are involved from business and technical consumers to developers, cloud providers, consulting organizations, standards bodies and more. The Cloud ecosystem must connect and enable all these Cloud stakeholders to participate on equal terms. Cloud Industry Standards, Integration & Interoperability: The Cloud Economic and Ecosystem model must be enabled by broad adoption of industry standards for key Cloud computing requirements, such as APIs, interoperability, integration and portability, Cloud bursting, and more. Absent these key industry standards, supported by major Cloud software vendors, Cloud service providers, and end-user enterprises, the Cloud ecosystem will be slow to develop, thereby inhibiting the economic model as well. Cloud integration, interoperability and portability standard are essential to ensuring fluidity of the Cloud ecosystem participants between Clouds and Cloud service providers, and avoiding vendor lock-in. The Cloud Computing Reference Model (CC-RM) provides an analytical framework from which you can establish your Cloud computing technology standards from the CC-RM, transition to a Cloud Computing Reference Architecture (CC-RA), and ultimately succeed with Cloud computing Reference Implementations (CC-RI). The power of the Cloud Computing Reference Model is that it allows your organization to envision and realize the full potential of Cloud by extending the model to higher order Cloud patterns. How to use the CC-RM There are many ways to leverage the Cloud computing Reference Model developed in this whitepaper. Below are a few suggestions to facilitate Cloud planning, modeling, architecture and implementation for your enterprise. 1. Begin the CC-RM Inside-Out, then Iterate. Start with the Cloud Enablement Model, then go to the Cloud Deployment Model, and iterate. The majority of your Cloud requirements will be determined through an analysis of the Cloud Enablement Model first, and then determining the Cloud Deployment Model. A few iterations of Cloud patterns and scenarios using the inside-outiterate CC-RM approach will be extremely useful to your efforts. Once the Cloud Enablement and Deployment patterns have been determined, proceed to the outer two sub-models of the CC-RM. 2. Define your Cloud Enablement Model based on key business, technology and economic drivers. Start by defining the Cloud Enablement Model and exploring the range of Cloud enablement patterns that may address your critical business and technical requirements. Understand how the various Cloud enablement tiers, and the capabilities within each tier, can be 11

12 combined to solve your business challenges. Define the Cloud enablement patterns that meet your needs. 3. Define the Cloud Deployment Model based on key business, technology, economic and security drivers. After developing your Cloud Enablement Model, begin to frame up various Cloud deployment patterns that meet your business and technology needs. Is an internal private Cloud best for your current requirements, and based on relative maturity of Cloud technology? Is a public Cloud viable for your enterprise? Does a hybrid, integrated Cloud make most sense, or is there need for a community Cloud? These decisions will resolve quickly along with the Cloud Enablement requirements. 4. Determine various Cloud patterns that may satisfy your requirements. Cloud patterns are the combination of Cloud enablement patterns and Cloud deployment patterns, based on specific use cases and a Cloud computing reference architecture (CC-RA). Document your targeted Cloud patterns using both the Cloud Enablement Model and the Cloud Deployment Model as a framework. The documented Cloud patterns will serve as a reference artifact to support your Cloud Computing Reference Implementation. 5. Iterate. Be sure to iterate between the Cloud Enablement Model, and the derived Cloud patterns, and the Cloud Deployment Model and its associated patterns. A few iterations will help clarify the optimal Cloud patterns that map to business, technical, economic and security requirements. From this, can proceed to applying the remaining dimensions of the Cloud Computing Reference Model. 6. Complete the Remainder of the CC-RM. The Cloud patterns you have documented based on the inside-outside-iterate application of the CC-RM will now allow you develop the remaining two dimensions of the CC-RM the Cloud Governance and Operations Model, and the Cloud Ecosystem Model. Of these, the Cloud Governance and Operations Model is the more critical, and will be tightly linked to the Cloud patterns defined previously. 7. Proceed to Cloud Computing Reference Implementation (CC-RI). From here, you can proceed to planning and realizing your Cloud computing Reference Implementation (CC-RI), which will be an application of the CC-RM and CC-RA based on business use cases and applying the Cloud patterns we have defined earlier. These steps will help you make use of the suggested Cloud computing reference model as an initial step in your overall Cloud modeling and architecture planning process. These activities, however, are 12

13 best performed in the context of a Cloud Adoption Lifecycle, where you have end-to-end planning and operational context in mind. Things to Do Tomorrow This whitepaper presents a Cloud Computing Reference Model (CC-RM) that we believe offers a pragmatic framework to apply Cloud computing to today s business and technology challenges, while providing a broad Cloud framework to help you envision and imagine new and far reaching applications of Cloud computing to a new class of business needs. Below we offer some thoughts for your pending or future Cloud computing needs: Develop Cloud Adoption Lifecycle Context. Be sure to apply the Cloud Computing Reference Model in the context of the Cloud Computing Adoption Lifecycle Model, so that you are performing cloud modeling and architecture activities in the context of a Cloud strategy and overall adoption roadmap. The CC-RM is just a beginning. It must be used to develop your own Cloud computing reference model, reference architecture and reference implementation, of course in the context of business use cases and requirements. Keep an open mind. Cloud computing is new and emerging, but has already captured tremendous attention in the industry. Do not put the new technology blinders on, but do not go overboard with irrational exuberance either. SOA and Cloud are complementary. If your organization was slow to embrace Serviceoriented architecture (SOA), Cloud will offer ways to realize both technologies as a converged business and technology strategy. SOA enables Cloud, and Cloud is pulling SOA initiatives through. Both are relevant and necessary. Cloud computing is going to be a very real and relevant paradigm for business and technology executives to explore. Be cautious with respect to the analyst and vendor hype around Cloud computing, but be open minded with respect to the potential Cloud may offer to your enterprise. There are some obvious use cases where Cloud makes all the sense in the world, and there are some use cases where caution should be exercised. Either way, the Cloud computing reference model in this whitepaper will help you make sense of both ends of the spectrum. References: Marks, Eric and Robert Lozano, Executive s Guide to Cloud Computing, 2010, Wiley & Sons. Hoboken, New Jersey. 13

14 AgilePath Corporation Whitepaper: Cloud Computing and SOA: Enabling the Agility Double Play, May