•Automated provisioning and configuration

Piston Cloud’s Moxie HA platform automates the application of system upgrades, the re-balancing of VMs, and the provisioning and configuration of new resources in collaboration with CloudBoot, an advanced system orchestration platform. As a result, system administrators can monitor and manage their infrastructure with such ease that the platform is analogous to “managing your servers like cattle – you number them, and when they get sick and you have to shoot them in the head, the herd can keep moving,” as described by CTO and co-founder Joshua McKenty.

The graphic below illustrates the centrality of the Moxie HA and CloudBoot orchestration platform to the platform’s architecture:

•Shared storage that leverages open source storage solution Ceph

Piston’s open source Ceph storage solution allows customers to leverage virtual SAN solutions as well as take advantage of existing hardware such as RAID-based Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) or SATA devices.

•Capability To Add Additional Virtual Machines In Less Than A Second

Virtual Memory Streaming (VMS) delivers unique capabilities to clone VMs and thereby launch extra virtual machines in less than a second. VMS is a software extension to the KVM hypervisor that leverages sophisticated hypervisor memory management technologies to enable the creation of new VM instances through cloning.

Overall, Piston Enterprise OpenStack version 2.0 is an unequivocally more robust product that provides an integrated, private cloud deployment and management experience over and beyond a simple OpenStack distribution. The release is compatible with all major software defined networking (SDN) platforms and additionally boasts complete interoperability with other OpenStack distributions and the ability to integrate with commodity hardware from x86 vendors such as IBM, Dell, Cisco, HP and Supermicro. One of the platform’s core differentiators consists of its integrated orchestration and configuration management technology that minimizes the degree of day to day operational oversight of the private cloud, IaaS environment. Piston’s CEO Jim Morrisroe surmises the value of the platform by noting:

Piston Enterprise OpenStack 2.0 is perfect for enterprise DevOps teams and AWS customers that want to reduce operating costs and dependencies with a private cloud solution, while maintaining the agility and scalable performance of a true cloud architecture.

In the wake of the release of OpenStack Grizzly and widespread backing of OpenStack for cloud platforms by the likes of IBM, Red Hat and even Oracle, Piston Enterprise OpenStack version 2.0 points to the emergence of a turnkey OpenStack solution for IaaS private clouds that brings all of the agility and scalability of public clouds to the enterprise’s doorstep. For the first time, the product also claims premium levels of customer support that attempt to allay concerns about the ability of a smaller vendor to nimbly respond to the needs of its customers.

So with that in mind let’s look at some of the possibilities where the cloud can complement a virtualization platform, as compiled by information week.com.

1. Public cloud as off-site backup:
2. Public Clouds As Disaster Recovery Site:
3. Public clouds as bursting option:

By: SiliconIndia

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Stephan J. Cico, SR Director, TigerCloud

What’s more, he was deadly honest about the realities in the field. Only 2% of customers are effectively using a private cloud … He also offered some very simple tool for getting started with projects to get things done and deliver results. All you need is a Hotmail account and an internet connection to use the tool. It produces reports and MS Project files for the needed projects, Visio diagrams etc. The Optimization Assessment Tool generates reports that can serve as the baseline for planning an effective roadmap and as an incentive for optimizing your IT infrastructure. The detailed Roadmap plan will be generated as part of the Discovery tools.

Now we can be skeptical and realistic that this tool is not perfect. But that same reality is that I have seen a lot less results from expensive consulting and “non committed” attempts at doing something with cloud. The two Dilbert cartoons below demonstrate this very adequately while at times being a bit to close to reality for comfort.

You know what I mean here — the tips here are some of the things that you actually already know, but how often is it that we forget the little things?!

Here are my tips for Hyper-V after it is installed, in no particular order:

1. Install updates, then decide how to do updates. 

2. Make the domain decision.

3. Configure storage.

4. Set administrators.

5. Name network interfaces clearly.

6. Disable unnecessary protocols.

7. Ensure Windows is activated.

8. Configure remote and local management.

9. Set default VM and disk paths.

10. Test your out-of-band remote access options.

By: Rick Vanover

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Stephan J. Cico, SR Director, TigerCloud

While this list is not specific-enough to work everywhere, chances are you will pick up something and say “Oh, yeah, that’s a good idea!” I don’t include specific networking or storage topics, as they apply to each specific environment, but this generic list may apply to you in each of your virtualization practices. Most if not all of these settings can be pushed through vSphere Host Profiles, but I don’t always work in environments licensed to that level.

Here we go!

1. Set DNS.

2. Create the DNS A record for the host.

3. Set NTP time servers.

4. Raise the maximum number of NFS datastores.

5. Disable the SSH warning when it is enabled.

6. Install correct licensing for the host.

7. Set any VM’s for automatic startup.

8. Set enable vMotion on vmkernel.

9. Rename local datastores.

10. Test your remote access options.

By: Rick Vanover

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Stephan J. Cico, SR Director, TigerCloud

Just a few short years ago, server virtualization proved its worth in datacenters around the world. VMware made a significant mark with its ability to consolidate servers, significantly reducing the demands for power and cooling.  Unfortunately at the advent of this technological evolution, if you wanted to take advantage of consolidation thru virtualization you had really only one option.

Fast forward to today; technology evolves at crazy speeds.  Virtualization is no longer a one-horse show.  Hypervisors from Microsoft, Citrix and even open source communities have evolved to be on par with or even exceed the capabilities of VMware.  So too have the tools to manage these technologies.  Let’s take a look at some of the features between various hypervisors.

By: Derrek Kim

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-Stephan J. Cico, Senior Director, TigerCloud

As Walter Bailey writes on CloudTweaks.com, the entire educational system is suffering from a lack of resources: small classrooms, staffing cuts, shortage of qualified teachers and constantly changing standards. But, as Bailey points out, the cloud is a valuable tool that can be used to improve accessibility to quality education and to boost achievement.

The cloud can help address these challenges in a number of ways, Bailey said, including by capitalizing on economies of scale. The problem of outdated, too-small, overcrowded classrooms can be addressed by virtualizing the classroom environment, he said.

By: Sharon Florentine

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-Stephan J Cico, SR Director, TigerCloud

Active Directory

AD, being the backbone of any organisation is likely to be well implemented in your organisation. At this point, I will refer to a comment made about one of my previous organisation’s AD environments by a senior MCS consultant. “There’s nothing wrong with your AD, its just that it isn’t great”. Now, what did he mean by that? Well, simply put AD had been configured according to Best Practice, in terms of its infrastructure however, what let the side down was the OU structure and security groups. Multi-layered and with more Domain Admins than there were Domain Controllers would not have allowed things like Opalis (back then) to function well. Yes, it would still function but it would have taken longer for the automation to work, given that the tool would have been looking in multiple locations.

So, there is work to be done with AD prior to commencing the configuration designs of the Private Cloud infrastructure. Firstly, form a view over the OU structure itself. If you have for instance, multiple layers within the users OU, look to flatten it. Typically, the layers are based on locations within the business. My advice at this point is to have a vanilla user object, which can then be assigned rights via security and group policies. This will eventually make orchestration tasks involving users much simpler to handle.

Secondly, you will need to review the security policies and elevated security rights that have been assigned. The whole point of a Private Cloud, is that the infrastructure team provide a service to the rest of IT. In this respect, you do not want developers, service desk admins and remote admins wandering around the Production environment with Domain Admin privileges. Planning for Role-Based Access Control is an essential task in preparation for transitioning services into the cloud. RBAC itself should be fairly self-explanatory with regards the benefits of good security practices, but in the Private Cloud, they are pretty vital, particularly where orchestration takes up the vast majority of routine tasks.

Remote Sites

Another aspect of preparation for moving to the Private Cloud is to review the current setup for remote sites. Organisations have typically placed Domain Controllers, file servers and perhaps a few other services in remote sites, to ease the burden on networking. In modern IT, security of data is fast becoming the overall driver behind datacenter design and as such, it should be quite obvious that the safest place for your data is behind the firewalls and security mechanisms of the datacenter. If you haven’t already done so, think about BrancheCache and Read-Only Domain Controllers. Also, think about virtualising the servers in remote sites, as provisioning via VMM will be of benefit to you.

When you review your remote sites, a good starting point will be to analyse the total amount of storage held locally and take a figure of between 10 – 20%. The last figure is potentially how much of that data is in actual use. If you can actually measure the amount of data in use in any one period, then that’s great. What you’ll find is that users aren’t actually using that much. The vast majority of data held on local storage is dumb i.e. just sat there in a fileshare not being accessed. This is the case for BrancheCache. While you are waiting for the HLID and associated project work for the Private Cloud, start bringing this data back to the core and let the architects worry about any networking problems you might face moving forward.

Adopting the Private Cloud is a huge undertaking that will affect all elements of the IT infrastructure. It will not do to ignore the remote sites, nor will it do to just think that specialist architects will do all the work for you. Making changes to existing infrastructure services such as AD will most likely be met with resistence. If I had a grand for every admininstrator I heard utter the words “there’s nothing wrong with our AD” I would probably be sat on a beach somewhere, not writing this blog. True, there probably is nothing wrong with your AD, but is it ready for the Private Cloud?

Review and decide, but do not ignore.

 Note the key requirement in the above definition that the cloud infrastructure is for exclusive use by a single organization.

Why is a private cloud important at all?  After all, if the major technology companies are spending billions of dollars on building public cloud infrastructures, why should anyone care about the private cloud?  I think there are a couple of good reasons for why private clouds are important.

1. Better control of the stored information 
2. The need to leverage existing assets in the data center more effectively
3. The improved maturity of the tools needed to create a private cloud 

Is it time to consider creating a private cloud for your business?  I want to emphasize that a private cloud is much more than just a bunch of virtualized servers.  Instead, it is the natural evolution of the data center from physical to virtual to cloud, both private and public, providing significantly better responsiveness to your customers.  A private cloud is a good fit your business if:

-        You have domain specific security requirements that cannot be accommodated in the public cloud.

-        You have significant, existing data centers that could be better utilized.

-        You have large teams of developers, testers and support personnel.

By: dstampfli

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-Stephan J. Cico, Sr. Director, TigerCloud

It adds that the ability to quickly create virtual machines without the disciplines and controls of the physical world results in machines being provisioned unnecessarily without proper justification and approval, over-provisioned (too much CPU, memory or disk), or consuming resources well after they are no longer required.

The company points out that e-mail messages, files, databases and storage resources are some information technologies that suffer from sprawl issues.

by: Admire Moyo,

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-Stephan J. Cico, Sr. Director, TigerCloud

Virtualisation revolves around the idea of one device pretending to be another. In a server room environment, that might mean one large server pretending to be several smaller servers – perhaps a mail server, file server and web server. Each virtual server behaves as if it was a separate physical machine, even though they’re all sharing the same underlying hardware.

Alternatively, a server room might contain a cluster of powerful servers which work together and pretend to be a range of different servers. That cluster could even pretend to be some of your desktop computers, or simply manage centralised virtual applications.

All this pretending might seem like an extra level of complication, but you get a lot of benefits in return. Obviously consolidating your hardware offers cost-savings, but the true benefits of virtualisation come from increased flexibility and reliability.

By: David Hancock

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-Stephan J. Cico, Sr. Director, TigerCloud

Most IT professionals correctly refer to the internal cloud as their virtualization project, and often roll their eyes when a vendor refers to it as a cloud.

Nevertheless, virtual infrastructures can benefit from the actual public cloud to augment what they are doing. The public cloud can help provide smaller businesses a place to send data for off-site backup storage, a place to recover in the event of a disaster, and even a place to move applications when peak loads have exceeded the capabilities of the internal data center. Let’s look at the possibilities.

1. Public Cloud As Off-Site Backup.

2. Public Cloud As Disaster Recovery Site.

3. Public Cloud As Bursting Option.

By: George Crump

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-Stephan J. Cico, Sr. Director, TigerCloud

The irony comes when some of them change the conversation and they want to discuss orchestration. (VMware vCenter Orchestrator and Microsoft System Center Orchestrator are examples, and are both great orchestration products.) I can’t help but smile at that point because they are going down the path of a private cloud without realizing it.

Orchestration is at the heart of the private cloud. It’s the tool that you will use to automate repetitive tasks that you do daily or weekly. When designing your private cloud, orchestrators are what you will need to tie in with your ticketing system so that you can automate user requests.

Your private cloud might be designed so that when a user needs a new server, he fills in a service request from the service request portal. That service request will then require one or more approvals and once approved it is then passed on to orchestrator for execution at the different levels of systems within your private cloud.

If you were building your private cloud around Microsoft technologies, Orchestrator would receive the approved service request from System Center Service Manager and execute the automation in System Center Virtual Machine manager, thereby completely automating what is otherwise a manual process of right clicking and deploying a VM from scratch or template.

It is imperative to realize that orchestration is a fundamental building block of your private cloud and while today you may only be interested in automating repetitive, boring tasks, you should recognize that you are almost half way there from a cloud perspective. What is left is integration with ticketing and change management systems, monitoring and some other components.

By: Elias Khnaser

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TigerCloud

Cloud computing has allowed organizations to enjoy scalability and flexibility along with better distribution of workload without really increasing the IT budget manifold. But this has also given rise to issues that companies haven’t experienced before, like sharing data in a virtual set up that can also be accessed by others. Honestly many companies would still feel comfortable in retaining some control over their digital data.  Also there is a growing concern over data security and compliance in public cloud environment. Private cloud can be your solution for these problems.

• Benefits of setting up private cloud
• Extending IT capacity:
• Better manageability:
• Data security:
• Workload management:
• Reducing cost:

While deciding about setting up your very own private cloud you need to keep the following points in mind:

• It is compatible to your business goal:
  1. Your current infrastructure struggles to keep up with your current IT demands
  2. There is a sudden growth in number of users
  3. Your datacenter can’t keep pace with your growth rate
• You have on-demand delivery of applications:
• The cloud capacity is capable of handling organization workload:

By: Charles Smith

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TigerCloud

Getting a SQL database is often an essential part of running any business.

It is one of the most desired IT services in existence, so finding the right team to create yours should be of utmost priority. While you may think that all IT companies are alike, the fact is that some of them will lead you to more success than others. You have to find the right ones for your needs. Here is a look at some of the factors you may consider when selecting a group of people to develop your databases.

You can always find out information about a company by looking at the company website. Look around the site for information you may want to know, but consider its function as well when looking for someone to develop your SQL database. Try to inquire about how a group of people may go about developing an SQL database for you. Are they going to analyze your business and try to come up with the best possible solution for you, or are they going to use the same database and other programs that they use for all of their clients? Your business is different than anyone else’s, and you need a custom database and plan to reflect that. If a company cannot provide you with that kind of tailoring, they may not be right for you.

When it comes to keeping track of your company technology, there are a lot of different things that you have to consider. Of course, the first and most important choice to make is which professionals will handle things like your SQL database needs. Now, you might be thinking that you can have a tech team on staff to take care of these issues, or even that you can figure it out yourself. However, the reality is that outsourcing to professional tech resources is not only the smarter solution, but it is the more affordable one, as well.

Whether you are searching for SQL database development, support, or management, professional tech firms will ensure that everything is taken care of from start to finish. You really need to check out reputations and backgrounds to make sure that you are working with people that you can really depend on in terms of getting what you need from your tech support services. There are a lot of companies out there and just because they have a website, that doesn’t mean that they’re right for the job. Do your research so that you know, without a doubt, that you’re working for the best every single time.

When it comes to managing a SQL database, you have a lot of different issues to think about. However, as long as you take the time to do whatever it takes to get the solutions that you deserve, it will be easy for you to find exactly what you need. This isn’t something that should be taken lightly, by any means. It is really an issue that you need to think about carefully so that you can get the most for your business, regardless of what type of technical solutions you might be searching for.

Developing and managing the SQL database is what professionals do best. You don’t have to hire a full-time staff to do the work that you can pay someone else less to do when you outsource. A lot of companies don’t realise how accessible these services are and will therefore try to do it themselves. However, professional tech support is out there to make your business operation that much easier when it comes to data management and support of all kinds. Take advantage of these services and make sure that you do whatever you can to get the best professional services every single time.

Experience means everything in the modern world, so try to find a group that has experience working with SQL database projects. If you are the first client they have worked with for this task, you will essentially be a guinea pig for them to test their knowledge on. You do not want that, no matter what sort of business you have. What you do want is a friendly, knowledgeable, and experienced staff of people that can help you with all of your IT needs.

The right group is out there for you somewhere if you know where to look.

Best Regards,

Cassidy Poon; AFAMI CPM
National Marketing Manager
1300 858 117

Visit our official website at www.logicaltech.com.au

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Cloud, Private Cloud, Public Cloud, Cloud Computing

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The technology first made inroads in many firms at the server level, thanks to a simple business case: organisations could significantly reduce the running costs of their server estate by consolidating the number of physical systems they needed to maintain.

Now with desktop virtualisation maturing, technology provider Zinopy believes there are benefits to this technology in addition to saving money.

Sales director Aidan McEvoy said the cost model for desktop virtualisation differs from that of server virtualisation, with a typical return on investment of between three to five years.

by: Gordon Smith

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TigerCloud

RELATED MATERIAL
A vision for the data centre
Private cloud in context

The outsourced foundation of the cloud is driving this sector, but businesses are increasingly looking at how they can take more control of the platforms they already own. Enter the private cloud.

A whitepaper from Cisco defines the private cloud as follows: “With a private cloud, enterprises can run processes internally and externally, having established the private cloud as the control point for workloads.

“With control through a unified management tool and a user-centric view, the private cloud thus enables IT to make the best decisions about whether to use internal or external resources, or both. And it allows that decision to be made on a real time basis to meet user service needs.”

Taking control

Business case

Planning for a private cloud

By: David Howell 

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As discussed earlier, having a clear vision of where you want to go is the key to defining a realistic scope. True, there will be limitations on cost, time or quality to consider but above all, the definition and order of a planned set of activities is incredibly important.

Servers or Services?

To begin with, you need to understand whether you think a Private Cloud is all about servers and compute resources or the services that are delivered to the consumer within the organisation. To be fair, it is a bit of both. However, the start point for your journey to the cloud should be at the server layer. All other technological elements spin off the back of this first element and defining a clear and concise list of services that are provided is the first step. As such, System Center Operations Manager will help here. Packaging up each service, including its dependencies allow you to visualise the infrastructure in its entirety and feeds other activities down the line.

Another quick method of defining the existing infrastructure service is to implement Spiceworks as this can give you the granularity of information you will need, without having to fully appreciate or determine the license and implementation planning associated to Operations Manager. It is worth pointing out at this stage, that Spiceworks is temporary, as the integration of Operations Manager in later parts of the programme is crucial to the success of a Private Cloud.

Technology Platforms

Once the infrastructure has been fully mapped out, decisions must be made on the technology platforms that you will require. The hardware itself falls into a few categories which I use to determine hardware manufacturer. Ultimately it is up to you, but the following is given as a guide, more than anything else.

1. Organisations with healthy IT budgets and a driver for fast transactional or safety critical information systems could ideally go with a mixture of IBM server hosts and NetApp storage.
2. Organisations with robust IT budgets and important business systems which do not require overtly high transaction rates or impact on safety could choose HP server hosts and HP or EMC storage.
3. Organisations with limited IT budgets and limited high transactional systems would perhaps be better off served by Dell server hosts and Dell storage.

The idea being, that you do not necessarily have to go for the Rolls Royce of hardware platforms to create a Private Cloud. It is possible that you already have existing hardware with spare capacity for introducing more RAM or Disk or even existing hardware relationships that are advantageous.

The network question is a little more difficult to explain. A lot of organisations I come into contact with are heavy Cisco users. Whilst the technology is indeed best of breed, it is not perhaps commercially suited to most organisations. Personally, I much prefer Juniper networks from a cost and functionality perspective but the decision is really up to you.

Hypervisor

VMware is undoubtably the market leader in hypervisor technology at present however, Microsoft’s Hyper-V platform is fast catching up. Choice of hypervisor comes down predominantly to capability v cost. If you are a VMware house, the question you should ask yourself at this stage is “Why do I need VMWare? Really, what does it offer me above and beyond Hyper-V and do I really need that level of technology?”. You might think I am trying to turn you off VMware and you would be right. VMware is great for some organisations (those that have high transactions or safety critical systems) but for 90% of organisations, it is a bit of overkill. There are also issues with training. Administrators all want to be VCP certified and when you consider this against the training needs of the Private Cloud, it can be a drain on the training budget for the IT department.

Now that we have made a decision on the hardware platforms that we wish to use, its time to open up a can of scope and get going. First step, is to choose a technology partner to help you on your journey. Do not be fooled into thinking that you have the skills in existence to move to the Private Cloud; you haven’t. The Private Cloud is massively complex and difficult to comprehend as a complete unit. Also, the level of deep technical knowledge of each individual platform needs to be of a level far greater than that of an administrator. That is not to say, that you have to break the bank with technology partners, you should see them as helping you on the journey as opposed to doing all of the work. Indeed, around 80% of the work will be conducted “in-house” that is to say, by your own people when it comes to transitioning services into the Private Cloud.

Bearing in mind, we are on a journey here, we must define our scope with one key component. The High Level Infrastructure Design. This document should contain the high level topology, the size and scale of hardware needed, software licence requirements, the network layout and the various platforms which will manage the Private Cloud and their features. As we are on the subject of the Microsoft Private Cloud and to make matters easier for procurement obligations, you should choose a Microsoft technology partner, with the following Gold partnership status:

1. Management and Virtualisation
2. Server Platform

The Microsoft Partner should also provide you with access, under their initial control, to appropriate storage and network partner organisations in relation to the hardware that you have decided upon. The most important partner competency is Management and Virtualisation, simply because the Private Cloud is more System Center than it is anything else. When you are ready to go, hold the Design Workshop, have the partner produce the design (one version of the truth with storage and networks) and once that is all complete, you have the fully defined scope of work that you will need in order to implement a Private Cloud solution, but not necessarily in any order. The next stage is to combine everything and add a comprehensive benefit management strategy in order to produce the delivery plan.

One final note, if you are being quoted more than £20k for the HLID, then you need to choose a different partner.

The VMM networking poster is available for download here.

Now: If you are going to be at MMS, I am told that the Windows Server team will be giving out printed copies – I had one of the original Hyper-V environment and wore it out – it was my most referenced document for months!

If you are interested in evaluating Windows Server or System Center 2012 you can can do so by clicking here:

• Windows Server 2012 
• System Center 2012  

Cloud, Private cloud, Public cloud, Personal cloud

Please read more- What You Need to Know About Cloud