Private cloud: "blue electrical tape" for the harsh enterprise
That seems to be a cloud - it's great. Rent yourself virtual resources on a virtual server, spread over data centers of the entire planet. And you don’t worry about anything, except for account replenishment - all support, etc. automagically executed by itself. But one day, “Hetzner” or even Amazon will suddenly apologize for a completely force-major fallen server and irretrievably lost data. As compensation for idle time, you will be required to transfer $ 10, according to clause of agreement 122.3 (d). Weak support against counterparties and customers gathered around the central office with torches, canisters and a strange gleam in their eyes.
At such moments, I want to buy a ticket somewhere in Ecuador or Puerto Rico. And the look falls on a cozy dusty server in the back of the office. What to do?
The question "buy your own or rent someone else's" is relevant for thousands of years. Since the times of ancient Egypt, which gave the country's defense to outsource the ancient Greek hoplites. Which successfully replaced the employer and subsequently seized the same Egypt, together with the Persian ruler Cambys II. History has not had the desired effect, and people continue to attack this rake time after time.
')
Greek hoplites defend Granik. Approximately 334 BC.
When computing power, data storage, managed systems like Ansible and things like that - this is clearly not what your head should hurt, the cloud immediately looks interesting. Let's say you have your own plumbing stall. And I really want the site, so that fittings, couplings and locknuts 3/4 look beautiful on a purple background. And the server in the closet is not at all happy - there are already mixers. In this situation, everything is simple and logical - everyone should do what he understands. Otherwise, we would hardly have left the natural economy.
Lack of expensive IT staff. Payment of resources as consumption, in the form of OPEX. Infrastructure flexibility - you can add a couple of terabytes to the storage at any time or use a dozen more virtual machines. These advantages actively contribute to the development of the cloud market, the emergence of all these SaaS, IaaS and all sorts of PaaS. And accounting has already been transferred to the cloud. It seems that soon even the assistant secretary will be on loan and with per-minute billing.
Not everyone is able to fry the right steaks. The choice of a novice looking at glossy packages with pieces of beef is painful. It is doubly insulting to spend a lot of money to get a rubber sole because of the wrong piece or errors in the roasting. Triple if everything was intended as a perfect romantic dinner. In such cases, you think that it was worth shifting the responsibility to invisible professionals who work somewhere in the bowels of the hot kitchen, and immediately enjoy the excellent result. However, nothing is given for free, and the labor of such specialists is paid accordingly.
From this perspective, cloud service models can also be considered - as the cost of a “romantic dinner” increases:
Transfer of responsibility is great, but many technology companies already have at least a few steaks in the fridge. Iron steaks, the purchase of which was accompanied by painful capital expenditures. The desire to maximize the use of the resource of this iron led to the development of virtualization technologies - the private cloud model.
Let's try to figure out what a private cloud is. Maybe it is enough to loudly declare that “we do not use public clouds, since we have enough of our private cloud”, implying the existing IT infrastructure and all the software that has been used on it for the past 15 years?
The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) defines the cloud with five key characteristics:
If in the process of IT evolution all this has been achieved, then the company can safely say that it has its own “private cloud”. The reality is often completely different from such a utopian picture. Cloud technologies are extremely interesting for business, as they provide full cost transparency, provide fast time-to-market and are inexpensive at the expense of efficiency. On the other hand, the security guards are worried about these companies and want to see them on their own site behind the seven steel doors.
In our case, three key components were missing for the implementation of a private cloud:
The situation was aggravated by a significant variety of technologies, including not only ageless x86-classics with virtualization, but also “favorite” enterprise solutions: high-end storage systems and RISC server, clustering and geo-backup. Such a zoo imposes restrictions on the choice of platforms that can be considered to automate the provision of services. In addition, the choice should take into account compatibility with existing software - after all, the new platform should organically fit into the landscape of ITSM systems, realizing its mission of automating the steps of querying and providing resources.
But choosing a platform is only the first step. Many others follow:
It would seem that here it is happiness. But it was not there! There comes a turn of migration to this brave new world of legacy applications. But this is another story, which is not even about the clouds.
Interestingly, in the end, a private cloud is most often attractive for two opposite types of companies. At one extreme - huge monsters from a harsh enterprise with their own developers, admins and everything else. They get all the advantages of saving on a large scale. At the other extreme are companies that are not able to maintain their own data centers, but they have great flexibility in organizing infrastructure and can afford to collect the most bizarre designs from the material at hand, connecting them with almost blue tape. Which is forgivable as long as you can count your servers on the fingers of one hand. This is where unstable software versions and the most exotic solutions can be found. This is the advantage of a private cloud compared to a public one - you have free hands for any interesting experiments. To be continued!
At such moments, I want to buy a ticket somewhere in Ecuador or Puerto Rico. And the look falls on a cozy dusty server in the back of the office. What to do?
The question "buy your own or rent someone else's" is relevant for thousands of years. Since the times of ancient Egypt, which gave the country's defense to outsource the ancient Greek hoplites. Which successfully replaced the employer and subsequently seized the same Egypt, together with the Persian ruler Cambys II. History has not had the desired effect, and people continue to attack this rake time after time.
')
When computing power, data storage, managed systems like Ansible and things like that - this is clearly not what your head should hurt, the cloud immediately looks interesting. Let's say you have your own plumbing stall. And I really want the site, so that fittings, couplings and locknuts 3/4 look beautiful on a purple background. And the server in the closet is not at all happy - there are already mixers. In this situation, everything is simple and logical - everyone should do what he understands. Otherwise, we would hardly have left the natural economy.
Lack of expensive IT staff. Payment of resources as consumption, in the form of OPEX. Infrastructure flexibility - you can add a couple of terabytes to the storage at any time or use a dozen more virtual machines. These advantages actively contribute to the development of the cloud market, the emergence of all these SaaS, IaaS and all sorts of PaaS. And accounting has already been transferred to the cloud. It seems that soon even the assistant secretary will be on loan and with per-minute billing.
Responsibility and money
Not everyone is able to fry the right steaks. The choice of a novice looking at glossy packages with pieces of beef is painful. It is doubly insulting to spend a lot of money to get a rubber sole because of the wrong piece or errors in the roasting. Triple if everything was intended as a perfect romantic dinner. In such cases, you think that it was worth shifting the responsibility to invisible professionals who work somewhere in the bowels of the hot kitchen, and immediately enjoy the excellent result. However, nothing is given for free, and the labor of such specialists is paid accordingly.
From this perspective, cloud service models can also be considered - as the cost of a “romantic dinner” increases:
- IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) - infrastructure as a service. No need to worry about the choice of meat. You have already picked up a good piece of thin edge, packed, put a set of spices, butter and a sprig of rosemary. It remains to come home, ideally fry the meat, lay the table, arrange the glasses and pour the champagne.
- PaaS (Platform as a Service) - platform as a service. The courier will deliver perfectly roasted rib-steak in a heat-insulated container within a few minutes. It remains only to arrange cutlery.
- SaaS (Software as a Service) - software as a service. You go with your soulmate to the restaurant and enjoy good music, perfectly selected wine and tender meat.
Private clouds
Transfer of responsibility is great, but many technology companies already have at least a few steaks in the fridge. Iron steaks, the purchase of which was accompanied by painful capital expenditures. The desire to maximize the use of the resource of this iron led to the development of virtualization technologies - the private cloud model.
Let's try to figure out what a private cloud is. Maybe it is enough to loudly declare that “we do not use public clouds, since we have enough of our private cloud”, implying the existing IT infrastructure and all the software that has been used on it for the past 15 years?
The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) defines the cloud with five key characteristics:
- self-service on demand
- free network access
- pooling resources
- fast elasticity and / or expandability
- measured service
If in the process of IT evolution all this has been achieved, then the company can safely say that it has its own “private cloud”. The reality is often completely different from such a utopian picture. Cloud technologies are extremely interesting for business, as they provide full cost transparency, provide fast time-to-market and are inexpensive at the expense of efficiency. On the other hand, the security guards are worried about these companies and want to see them on their own site behind the seven steel doors.
In our case, three key components were missing for the implementation of a private cloud:
- self-service portal - for on-demand service
- service measurement and billing capabilities
- resource automation mechanisms
The situation was aggravated by a significant variety of technologies, including not only ageless x86-classics with virtualization, but also “favorite” enterprise solutions: high-end storage systems and RISC server, clustering and geo-backup. Such a zoo imposes restrictions on the choice of platforms that can be considered to automate the provision of services. In addition, the choice should take into account compatibility with existing software - after all, the new platform should organically fit into the landscape of ITSM systems, realizing its mission of automating the steps of querying and providing resources.
But choosing a platform is only the first step. Many others follow:
- designing a standardized catalog of services,
- design and implementation of the cloud platform itself,
- phased automation of services from the catalog (and the more heterogeneous the IT landscape, the longer and more difficult this step)
- development and automation of a model for calculating the cost of services. You need to be able to translate the cost of hundreds of physical servers of several models into the cost of a virtual core, not forgetting to put in it a bit of the cost of LAN, SAN, switching equipment and everything. This is still entertainment.
- changing internal IT processes (this is not Amazon - after all, it’s necessary to agree on the provision of the service)
It would seem that here it is happiness. But it was not there! There comes a turn of migration to this brave new world of legacy applications. But this is another story, which is not even about the clouds.
Interestingly, in the end, a private cloud is most often attractive for two opposite types of companies. At one extreme - huge monsters from a harsh enterprise with their own developers, admins and everything else. They get all the advantages of saving on a large scale. At the other extreme are companies that are not able to maintain their own data centers, but they have great flexibility in organizing infrastructure and can afford to collect the most bizarre designs from the material at hand, connecting them with almost blue tape. Which is forgivable as long as you can count your servers on the fingers of one hand. This is where unstable software versions and the most exotic solutions can be found. This is the advantage of a private cloud compared to a public one - you have free hands for any interesting experiments. To be continued!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/342598/
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