understanding iaas requirements & design cloud

© 2013 Cloud Technology Partners, Inc. / www.cloudtp.com

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[email protected] / Senior Vice President / @cloudbzz / May 6, 2013

Understanding IaaS Requirements, Design & Performance


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What are the key design characteristics for IaaS clouds?

What are some of the key IaaS cloud patterns that emerge from these choices?

What fundamental capabilities are impacted by these decisions?

How do you use this knowledge to better construct a portfolio of IaaS cloud services best suited to your portfolio of

applications?

Agenda


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Horses for Courses

Would you bet on a horse…

without knowing how it runs on today’s course?

Grass? Dirt? Muddy? Dry? Long? Short?


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Would you bet on a cloud if you didn’t know how it’s built?


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• Performance• Elasticity• Security• Reliability• Interoperability & Portability• And more…

Clouds Can Vary Significantly In Terms of…

Clouds have their own unique fingerprints…


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What’s In a Cloud?


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The Choices They Make Affects The Behavior of your Apps

• Many smaller vs. fewer larger servers?• How much memory per server/blade?• What is my network topology?, • How fast is my network? 1G, 10G, 40G• How is QoS managed? Is it managed?• Where is storage – Local? SAN? Both?• What type of storage – iSCSI? SATA?

SSD?• What is the redundancy that is in the

infrastructure?• What high-availability functionality is

resident in the cloud?


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Does Your Chosen Cloud Have a Noisy Neighbor Issue?

Contention happens…

… How is it managed?

Can you pay for lower resource contention at the network, storage (LUN), CPU or RAM level?

Is your cloud architected to provide maximum through-put with advance technologies such as Infiniband and SSDs?


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Is your cloud more of a PaaS? If so, does that limit you?

• A PaaS can be more prescriptive– OpenShift for JBOSS vs. Cloud

Foundry for Tomcat

• Do you use the PaaS features being layered onto IaaS environments?– RDS, SQS, Elastic Beanstalk

(Tomcat – not WebLogic),


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Three Cloud Design Patterns (of many)

Advanced, highly elastic, open technologies,

commodity gear

So-called “Enterprise Clouds” – traditional

tools, approaches, and vendor gear du jour

High-performance clouds with state-of-the-art technology

• Limited redundancy – 1 NIC, power supply, etc.

• HA in the application• All custs/ workloads get

same QoS• Developer-centric• PaaS features

• Dual NIC, power, etc.• HA in the hypervisor

and middleware• Possible QoS configs for

custs and workloads• IT operations-centric

• High-performance hardware

• SSDs, Infiniband, etc.• Dual NIC, power, etc.• HA in the hypervisor

and middleware• Application-centric


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What is impact of fast storage coupled with fast networks?

Cloud 1Cloud 2Cloud 3



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How does a faster network help you?




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• Where are their data centers?• How do they handle security and certifications?• What about SLAs? • Can you connect your data center to theirs on an MPLS circuit?• What types of tools do they provide for management and

administration?• Is their cloud supported by leading tools and service providers?• Pricing and support options?• What’s in their service catalog?• How much work will it be to get your applications running on

their cloud?

There’s so much more to evaluate beyond technical design…


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Example public PaaS / IaaS provider high-level comparison*

Technical Requirements AmazonGoogle App

EngineVerizon

TerremarkCenturyLink

SavvisMicrosoft

Azure

Global Deployments

Webscale, Total Capacity

Autoscaling, Dynamic Allocation of Compute and Storage

Cloud Management Tools

Security Certifications

Connectivity to Legacy Systems

Completeness of Solution (how much still has to be built?)

Terremark

Not ready Fully ready

*Not actual ratings. Data not intended for use in cloud vendor evaluations.


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As with betting on horses, handicapping your cloud based on detailed requirements can give you the edge you need

Handicapping clouds takes analysis


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In other words, do your research before you bet on a cloud…


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… and maybe you can be a cloud WINNER too!


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Ask by email / [email protected] / www.cloudtp.com

Questions?