Best Cloud Computing and Operating Tools

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Top Cloud computing and operating software.

OpenStack

OpenStack is a free and open-source cloud-computing software platform.[2] Users primarily deploy it as an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS). The technology consists of a group of interrelated projects that control pools of processing, storage, and networking resources throughout a data center—which users manage through a web-based dashboard, through command-line tools, or through a RESTful API. OpenStack.org released it under the terms of the Apache License.

CloudStack

CloudStack is an open source cloud computing software for creating, managing, and deploying infrastructure cloud services. It uses existing hypervisors such as KVM, VMware vSphere, and XenServer/XCP for virtualization. In addition to its own API, CloudStack also supports the Amazon Web Services (AWS) API and the Open Cloud Computing Interface from the Open Grid Forum.

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Cloud Computing and ROI

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Cloud Computing and ROI

Most think cloud computing is about the ability to save operational costs. That may or may not be the case, depending upon your enterprise or ecommerce problem domain. Indeed, there are many dimensions to consider here, including:

  • Ongoing operational cost reduction.
  • The value of preserving capital.
  • The value of upsizing on-demand.
  • The value of downsizing on-demand.
  • The value of shifting the risk.
  • The value of agility.

Let’s explore each:

Operational Cost Reduction

We all know that cloud computing is cheap…okay, cheaper…okay, it can be cheap. Thus it’s a good idea to figure out the actual cost reductions that cloud computing can bring to your enterprise IT. The trick here is not only to figure out how much money can be saved, but how much it will cost to save that money.

Preserving Capital

It’s money in the bank which allows the business to run. The more money we have in the bank, the more we can purchase things for the core business such as inventory that can be sold, or new plant equipment that will save the company money during production. In any event, it’s good to keep as much capital as possible on hand to invest in the business, and not into infrastructure such as data centers, hardware, and software.

Upsizing On-Demand

Core to the ability to preserve capital is the ability to upsize your IT infrastructure on demand, or simply pay more operational dollars for additional computing capacity which would traditionally require a capital expenditure. Many cloud computing providers call this being elastic, or the ability to grow or contract to accommodate the business. For example, you can call upon the cloud computing provider to support an additional user and processing load through the holiday, when considering ecommerce solutions.

Downsizing On-Demand

Like upsizing on-demand, you need to consider what it will take to reduce computing capacity and dollars paid. What does it take to scale down in case you no longer need the computing resource and want to reduce costs as well? Such is the case within many ecommerce systems with capacity requirements that are seasonal.

Shifting the Risk

Another core value of cloud computing is the ability to shift the risk from your enterprise to the cloud computing provider. This concept refers to the fact that, since it’s up to the cloud provider to handle the computing processing load and you’ll pay by use, then it’s possible to reduce the risk that you’ll run out of capacity to support your customers and core business processes. The risk functionally shifts to the cloud provider who is better suited to accept that risk.

Agility

Agility means the ability to change the IT infrastructure faster to adapt to the changing needs of the business, such as market downturns, or the introduction of a key product to capture a changing market. This, of course, provides a strategic advantage and allows the business to have a better chance of long-term survival. These days many enterprises are plagued by IT infrastructures that are so poorly planned and fragile that they hurt the business by not providing the required degree of agility.

Article Source: http://www.getelastic.com/cloud-computing-and-roi/

 

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Overcoming Cloud Computing Obstacles – Cloud Computing adoption challenges

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Overcoming Cloud Computing Obstacles

How to Make the Case to Switch to the Cloud

Companies choosing the cloud computing route often have to make the case for the switch to new technology to a board or investors. The most common obstacles raised towards adoption of cloud technology are concerns around the availability of service, security and auditability of company data and performance issues around data transfer or loading speeds.

Availability of Service

The utility computing economy is currently such that competition is growing among providers. There are a few large, corporate providers of cloud services, such as Amazon and Google, as well as a large handful of small and medium players in the market. The number of companies jumping on the cloud provision bandwagon is growing very rapidly, and because of this, there is great focus on providing a reliable and stable service. Many providers will offer their clients a Service Level Agreement (SLA), stating the acceptable levels of unplanned service downtime, as well as what amount of compensation is available should the SLA be breached. Companies signing up with a cloud provider should look for an SLA offering at least 99.9% availability, but preferably 99.99%. The best way to ensure full systems available for a company’s cloud services is to engage more than one cloud provider for the provision of the same service. This way, if something should happen to the first provider, the second one will be able to pick up the slack.

Security and Auditability of Company Data

Many cloud computing providers offer data encryption as part of their service. Small and medium sized businesses, that are not accountable to regulatory bodies can probably use the standard encryption technologies provided by most utility computing services. Companies, such as small investment firms or hedge funds, will need to invest in higher security measures for storing data in the cloud. By nature, most of the cloud computing infrastructures currently available by mainstream providers are what is known as public clouds. (Armbrust, et al) This means that computer systems are purposed for general use among all customers, and no distinction is made as to which company is using what hardware. This is generally fine for the standard SME, but those requiring data audit capabilities will need what is known as a private cloud. The private cloud is a collection of computing systems that has been walled off, both physically (in a caged area of a data center) and logically, using combinations of Virtual Private Networks (VPN), firewalls and, often, private leased line data connections which are installed to directly connect a company to its cloud service provider.

Performance Issues

There is often concern around the performance of data transfer within cloud applications. However, it has been shown that, generally, once data has been transferred to the cloud, the speeds of transfer between cloud servers is then much faster than it was on local drives. This is because most current cloud computing infrastructure is far more powerful than what is normally seen in SMEs. The obstacle here is the initial transfer of data onto the cloud service. This can be overcome by loading all data on portable hard drives and shipping it to the cloud service provider for the initial load. Generally, once the initial load is complete, subsequent file transfers will be much smaller in size. Exceptions to this are the data-intensive users of elastic cloud services. For these users, hard drive transfer would currently still be the most economically viable option, but there is evidence that the cost of a private leased line may decrease in future as the cost of high-end routers decreases. (Armbrust, et al)

With a careful analysis of company IT infrastructure requirements, and an appropriate plan to minimize the risks associated with the top obstacles to adoption of cloud computing, business now have the opportunity to adopt a technology which has matured over the past decade into a feasible manner in which to provide reliable and efficient corporate computing at the fraction of the cost of a full IT hardware refresh.

http://business-technology.suite101.com/article.cfm/overcoming-cloud-computing-obstacles
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Cloud Tools now supports Amazon Elastic Block Store

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One of the exciting new features of Amazon EC2 is Elastic Block Store, which provides truly durable storage for your instances. Prior to EBS, the contents of the file system disappeared once an instance was terminated. This meant that if you wanted to run a database server on EC2 you had to use MySql master-slave replication with frequent backups to Amazon S3. With EBS running a database on EC2 is a lot easier. You can simply create an EBS volume, attach it to an instance, and create a filesystem that gives you long-lived disk storage for your database. Moreover, you can easily back up an EBS volume by creating a snapshot (stored in S3). And, if you ever need to restore your data, you can create a volume from a snapshot.

Cloud tools now supports Amazon EBS. You can launch an application with a database stored on a brand new volume; on an existing volume; or on a volume created from a snapshot. You can also convert an already running application to use elastic block storage. Finally, you can create an EBS snapshot of the database. Currently, only the Maven plugin supports this functionality but I plan to update the Grails plugin shortly.

Please check out the project’s home page for more information and send me feedback.

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Cloud Computing Trends | Cloud Adoption Analysis | Organizations

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We just finished the first decade of this century/millennium. The early part of this decade saw great worry about the Year 2000 problem. Much gloom and doom was predicted, but things passed off smoothly. No apocalyptic upheaval.

As we usher in the next decade, the biggest buzzword is “Cloud Computing”, a rapprochement of ASP, SaaS, SOA, Virtualization, Grid Computing, Enterprise 2.0, etc. All these buzzwords have been making the rounds over past few years. Finally, computing as a “utility” seems practical and doable. Amazon took the lead in introducing AWS (Amazon Web Services) way back in 2003. It then brought in Storage as a Service concept via S3 (Simple Shared Storage). It also introduced EC2 (Elastic Computing Cloud), where Infrastructure as a Service became viable.

I just read a nice summary of this written by M.R. Rangaswamy of the Sand Hill Group. While the momentum is on, MR says large enterprises are going to be slow adapters. Much cloud adoption is in the SMB arena where lower TCO and capex override any concern for security and scale. Older vendors like IBM will offer a hybrid model – In-house systems and cloud. This is a no-brainer, as there is a huge legacy of production systems in Fortune 1000 companies running in the premises. But “pure cloud” vendors like Google, Amazon, and SalesForce.com will push for “cloud-only” approach.

Another area of interest is data management, the volume of which has never been seen before. There is the NoSQL movement to deal with unstructured data and framework like Hadoop combined with the MapReduce algorithm is getting quick adoption for fast search.

This decade will see a big landscape change in the computing arena – from the model of computing to how we store and manage data for access and analytics.

Welcome to 2010.

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Cloud Computing: The Computer is out the Window!

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Debates have been heating up about Cloud Computing (CC). Biggest challenge is security and bigger bigger challenge is ‘control’ of a company’s tech assets. The only limitation so far has been internet bandwidth, reason why it took CC a while to become mainstream. Futurists such as Nicolas Negroponte saw it coming a while back and evangelized about it repeatedly in his book ‘being digital’ (a masterpiece). Entrepreneurs like Marc Andreessen saw the opportunities early and started Loud Cloud back in 1999 (now Opsware) and Amazon today generates millions in revenue because of Amazon Web Services (Amazon launched its Elastic Compute cloud (EC2) for companies to use back 2006: yes, commercially). What really triggered CC is none other than Web 2.0: all them browser-based enterprise applications! In Summary: we’ve all contributed to Cloud Computing, without realizing it. You’ve been using Cloud Computing.

Cloud Computing is fantastic for emerging economies and their speed in adopting ‘affordable’ new technology. Look what’s happening in Africa, where mobile internet and new telecom infrastructures are making it possible to leap into internet adoption. So why a computer in the first place. Computers are becoming more of a luxury item vs. a need?

Conclusion: Cloud Computing is not a trend, but a major shift in how we ’smartly’ manage technology. For those who are still in denial and resisting change, they’re already lagging and need to catch up fast, cuz that computer is out of the Window!

Great reference here on the history of CC and how far it dates back (60’s) thanks to Computer Weekly http://tinyurl.com/yj7rln3

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Cloud Computing Selection: Cloud Infrastructure Service Providers

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There are list of solution which provides Cloud Infrastructures for Hardware as a service (HAAS) or Software as a Services(SAAS).

AllenPort
AllenPort’s technology handles file management chores like backup, file sharing, disaster recovery, remote access and managing user requirements.

AppZero
AppZero offers OS-free Virtual Application Appliances that are self-contained, portable units, meaning enterprises can experiment with moving applications to the cloud while avoiding cloud lock-in.

Boomi
Boomi and its AtomSphere connect any combination of cloud and on-premise applications without software or appliances.

CA
NetQoS’s monitoring prowess and Cassatt’s data center automation and policy-based optimization expertise, CA can boost the functionality of its Spectrum Automation Manger to let it manage network and systems traffic in both public and private cloud computing environments.

Cast Iron Systems

Cast Iron offers an option for integrating SaaS applications with the enterprise. That method, which involves configuration, not coding, can in some cases slash integration costs up to 80 percent.

Citrix
Citrix Cloud Center (C3) ties together virtualization and networking products, arming cloud providers with a virtual infrastructure platform for hosted cloud services. The service, which is available on a monthly, usage-based pricing model and support mode, is an architecture comprising five key components: a platform powered by Citrix XenServer; applications and desktop services via Citrix XenApp; delivery powered by Citrix NetScaler; a bridge using Citrix Repeater; and orchestration through Citrix Workflow Studio.

Elastra
Elastra makes software that enables enterprises to automate modeling, deployment and policy enforcement of the application infrastructure. Its products tie in with provisioning and virtualization tools. Elastra’s Enterprise Cloud Server software handles the management and provisioning of complex systems. Users can quickly model and provision application infrastructure; automate changes to the system deployment process; efficiently utilize internal, external and virtualized resources on demand and enforce IT policy rules. Elastra Cloud Server can also run on Amazon Web Services.

EMC
With its Atmos and Atmos onLine offerings, EMC is evangelizing its approach to the cloud to deliver scalability, elasticity and cost savings by building, virtualizing and deploying services and applications. Atmos onLine is a cloud storage service built on Atmos, EMC’s policy-based information management platform. EMC Atmos onLine provides Cloud Optimized Storage, or COS, capabilities for moving and managing large amounts of data with reliable service levels and in a secure fashion.

Informatica
Informatica basically pioneered cloud computing for data integration, offering a host of offerings for customers of various shapes and sizes. It offers fast and easy pay-as-you-go and pay-for-use options that let users move data into or out of the cloud or manage data within the cloud of from one app to another.

NetApp
Call it IT-as-a-Service (ITaaS) or call it an enterprise cloud infrastructure. Data ONTAP 8, NetApp’s latest cloud computing infrastructure, ties together its two previously separate platforms: Data ONTAP 7G and Data ONTAP GX. It delivers improved data management functions and tighter integration with data center management systems. Ultimately, NetApp Data ONTAP 8 enables storage, server, network and applications layers to talk to each other.

New Relic
New Relic is running full throttle with its RPM offering, an on-demand performance management tool for Web applications. It takes only minutes to implement and offers visibility and code-level diagnostics for Web apps deployed in both private and public clouds, along with traditional and dedicated infrastructures, and any combination thereof. With RPM, New Relic delivers real-time metrics, unlocking the ability to monitor, troubleshoot and fine tune app performance in the cloud.

Novell
Novell is looking to the cloud to tie together all things IT. It is combining products like Moblin, a cloud-centric desktop OS developed by Novell and Intel; the SUSE Appliance Program, a program for ISVs to build software appliances and receive go-to-market support; Novell Cloud Security Service; and PlateSpin Workload Management Solutions for IT managers.

Open Nebula
This open-source toolkit fits snuggly into existing data center environments to build any type of cloud deployment. OpenNebula can be used to manage virtual infrastructure in the data center or to manage a private cloud. It also supports hybrid clouds to combine local infrastructure with public cloud infrastructure for hosting environments. Additionally, it supports public clouds by offering cloud interfaces to expose its functionality for virtual machine, storage and network management.

OpSource
OpSource is all about cloud operations, offering everything from an enterprise-grade cloud infrastructure to fully managed hosting and apps management. Essentially, OpSource Cloud is a virtual private cloud within the public cloud, giving users control over their degree of Internet connectivity. Meanwhile, OpSource On-Demand combines technical operations, application operations and business operations into a Web operations offering that includes application management, compliance and business services. Lastly, OpSource Billing CLM is a self-service offering for SaaS and Web customer on-boarding, subscription management and payment processing.

Paglo
This IT search and management service startup recently launched its Log Management application to let IT managers capture and store their logs as well as search and analyze them in the cloud. Paglo compares it to a Google-like search for logs, collecting data from all network devices. Paglo has also recently launched a new application to monitor Amazon EC2 application instances, such as disk reads and writes, CPU utilization and network traffic. Users can access the cloud-based information from any Web browser.

RightScale
RightScale’s Cloud Management Platform eases deploying and managing apps in the cloud and enables automation, control and portability. The platform helps users get into the cloud quickly with cloud-ready ServerTemplates and best-practice deployment architectures. And users retain complete visibility into all levels of deployment by managing, monitoring and troubleshooting applications. Lastly, RightScale’s Cloud Management Platform helps users avoid lock-in by letting them choose their deployment language, environment, stack, data store and cloud for portability.

Stoneware
Stoneware’s mission is simple: To enable organizations to move from a client-centric to a Web-based, private cloud computing environment. With products aimed specifically at core verticals education, healthcare, manufacturing, legal, financial and enterprise Stoneware offers private cloud technology that is being used to create solutions that enable organizations to access applications, content, data and services from anywhere in a secure fashion.

VMware
Last August, VMware acquired SpringSource which provides Web application development and management services. SpringSource speeds the delivery of applications in the cloud using a process that has become known as lean software. VMWare also acquired Hyperic, an open-source monitoring and troubleshooting vendor. The VMWare-SpringSource-Hyperic trifecta creates an amalgamation that ties together VMWare’s virtualization vision, SpringSource’s strong development tools and application servers as well as Hyperic’s monitoring.

Zeus Technology
Zeus gives users the ability to create, manage and deliver online services in cloud, physical or virtual environments, letting companies visualize and manipulate the flow of traffic to Web-enabled apps. And early this year, they will release the Zeus Cloud Traffic Manager so customers can monitor and control cloud usage, offering a single control point for distributed applications, reporting on datacenter usage and allowing for goals like cost, SLA, security and compliance to be applied.

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