Journey to Cloud
DCV Engineering
Hello
Everyone, DCV Engineering would like to wish all of you A Big Welcome to a Journey
to the Cloud.
DCV
Engineering was formed in 2011 as a Cloud and DC services company based in
APJC. In addition to cloud services we
offer other solutions such as server, storage and network based services. If
you want to know more visit our website at www.DCVEngineering.com.
I
know for sure that my boss is not going to be happy with me for putting such a
small introduction, but this is a blog site and I am free to do whatever I want :) Additionally, the purpose of this blog is not
to talk about DCV but to talk about Cloud and Cloud solutions. Instead of me
telling you what DCV can offer or do, I want the people who read this blog to
decide based on what we put into this blog.
So,
enough with the introductions and lets get going with what we are going to
discuss in this blog. Now I know that lot of people, when they start a blog on
cloud, they start directly talking about the different cloud offerings, IAAS,
PAAS, XAAS and other offerings. Now, I am going to be very frank here. I am
going to be very biased and am going to talk a lot about Cisco and the cloud
offerings from Cisco.
Now,
why Cisco? Is it because I am a solutions architect and also a trainer who does
lots and lots of trainings for Cisco? Or may be due to the fact that I am a
Ex-EMC employee who spent the last 7 years of his life doing nothing but
working on EMC and Netapp products (I know, EMC employee, Netapp products, can
be confusing, but hey, that’s the way I used to work at EMC, working on
everything the customer had) and most of the cloud offerings from EMC and
NetApp are tied with Cisco. Or is it because Cisco is the market leader in
network based solutions and they have a very good server market in a short span
of time.
So,
to start of the blog, we are going to have a small discussion on the different
type of cloud infrastructures available. Now, this is not the IAAS or any
offering, but rather, how Cloud data centers are setup. I feel the need to
discuss this as I find most people (apart from cloud architects or cloud
pre-sales people) don’t have an idea on the different infrastructures available.
Once we have discussed that, we will discuss UCS, Nexus, Vmware, Cloud
Orchestration solutions and Storage over the course of the next few weeks.
Cloud
Infrastructures:
Many
people I know want to move into Virtualization and Cloud, but they are not able
to decide what is the best way to move forward. For some them, server
Virtualization is cloud. Also, people need to know what kind the Cloud
infrastructure the vendor is offering them so that they can make sound business
decisions.
There
are three different type of infrastructures available in the market today:
1. Stack Architecture – As the name sounds, stack architecture is just that, a stack of components that come from one vendor. A good example is something like open stack or a cloud solution from HP or IBM. Most, if not all of the hardware are from one vendor. Now there are advantages and disadvantages.
Advantage – everything is from one vendor, which
means that one throat to choke.
Disadvantage – everything is from one vendor, which
means one throat to choke :) The vendor might not have the equivalent of
some of the industry innovating technologies from other vendors. And since it’s
a stacked architecture, we cannot incorporate other vendors inside the cloud
offering. Not so good from customer point of view.
2. Mixed vendor: Now in mixed Vendor, we have two type of architecture
available. Validated Design vs. Reference Architecture
a. The best example I can think of for a converged infrastructure – Validated design is something that 8 out of 10 people have right now – an apple IPhone. Now, I know most of you people think that an IPhone is stack architecture, but no, it’s not stack architecture. Samsung and other companies make most of the IPhone components for Apple. Apple is just rebranding it and selling it in the market. Similarly we have VBlock which is again a converged infrastructure made by VCE, which in turn uses products from EMC, Cisco and VMware. Again, we have advantages and disadvantages.
Advantage – Guaranteed performance, how many times have you seen an
apple IPhone crash? How many applications or apps, than an IPhone can run,
without compromising on performance?
Same thing with Vblock, its guaranteed for performance.
Disadvantage – You cannot run flash in an IPhone, you cannot install
applications on IPhone without jail breaking it, and if you do that, there is
virtually no support for your phone anymore. In short, your IPhone was designed
with a purpose in mind, and we cannot alter it to suit our needs without
compromising on support and performance. Sometimes this can be itchy for some
people.
b. Reference Architecture – The best of both worlds, kind of using a
Samsung phone. It still uses components used by leading industry vendors, but
its fine tuned so suit the customer’s needs.
Advantage - It’s a set of best practices by which you should connect
the different components to achieve requested performance, but unlike a
converged infrastructure, the components are not tied to each other. It means
that, a customer for some time, can compromise on performance, while running a
higher load on storage, and he may buy the additional server and switch later,
when he has the money and time. Another advantage when compared to a CI is
that, the customer need not buy all the components that make up the cloud
initially. He may start with a simple virtualization solution with shared
storage and then move towards a RA cloud, when he feels he is ready.
Disadvantage – There is no single point of support in a RA solution.
Try calling Samsung and tell him that an app is not working properly; the reply
is going to be, please call the app owner. But, its not that bad, considering
that, most of the RA partners are interlinked, and they will eventually, find a
solution for you, but during that time, you may just have to wait.
Now,
I hope that this gave us a good picture on the different type of
infrastructures available to us in the market. In my next blog, we will
probably try to look at Cisco UCS and its features. Till then, take care.
For
DCV
K
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