A Cloudy Day is Coming - Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing is becoming more mainstream and it is a matter of time before more organizations jump into the bandwagon. Cloud computing is a disruptive  phenomenon and makes organizations become more responsive and agile. Today it is difficult to have a conversion on the future of technology and not mention Cloud. Cloud computing promises economic advantages; speed, agility, flexibility, infinite elasticity and innovation. Computing is shifting from a Commodity and into a Utility. Why is cloud computing becoming more mainstream? An interesting analogy to understanding this, is the Evolution of Electricity in 1879 when the light bulb was invented by Thomas Edison.

When Edison invented the light bulb he had to build a power station since there was not publicly available electricity to power the bulb. People did not want the power station they needed the light. You could say this was truly the first light bulb moment in the utility model of thinking.  

In the period of industrialization, industries needed power to run and therefore were forced to generate their own power. This power generation plant was ideally collocated where the industry was built. Workers whose work was to take care of power supply did not add to the output of the factory. As Utility power became mainstream, Factories were able to focus on their core business and NOT on generation of power. This meant that workers employed to run the power supply could now shift focus on the factory's core business and make it more productive. This analogy is not only true for electricity but also water and gas which are consumed as Utilities.

Now as with electricity, water and gas, Computing is also shifting into a Utility. It is a resource to be switched ON and OFF,  when it is needed and as much as is needed. Organizations should be able to scale up from one to tens of thousands of users or compute nodes in a short time and only pay for what they use. The ability to burst resources when needed assure organizations of rapid elasticity.

IT departments for a long time have been sizing resources by guessing what they might require in 3 to 5 years. This model means that you run the risk of over-sizing or under-sizing and thereby not matching technology and expenditure with business requirements.

Today any business no matter its size can have the benefits of scalability, reliability, security, transparency and compliance by running their workloads on cloud. The entrance of many players in the Public Cloud market means that costs will continue going down and business can reap from this benefit. In addition the big players in Cloud business have Economies of Scale which result in lower pay as you go pricing.

Pressure is mounting on organizations to be more flexible and innovative to rapidly address competitive threats and satisfy user demands. There is need to deliver higher levels of efficiency and responsiveness to compete with low cost, on-demand services from external suppliers. 

Of course not all workloads will move to cloud as security and compliance is key for some organizations among other factors. Cloud is a journey and the move for traditional organizations begins with migration of non-critical applications, test and development workloads, productivity and collaboration applications among others.   

In conclusion organizations need to stick to their core business and shift focus from keeping the lights on. The power of technology is in what it can deliver to both the business and its customers and not on where it seats. More and more business will be forced to look at IT as a Service (ITaaS) and trade off capital expenses for operational expenses. Employees also need to be more productive and empowered. Cloud Computing is a truly disruptive technology and will continue to take shape in businesses as it evolves.  

Converged Infrastructure by VCE (Virtual Computing Environment) Company

Converged Infrastructure by VCE (Virtual Computing Environment) Company

Virtual Computing Environment Company, is a privately held American computer integration company formed in 2010 by EMC Corporation, Cisco Systems with additional investments from VMware and Intel Corporation. In just 4 years VCE has grown to be a billion dollar company with annual revenues exceeding $1.8 billion. VCE builds and assembles Vblock Systems using EMC storage, Cisco UCS Servers and networking, and VMware virtualization technology. It bundles and tests these systems before shipping them to customers. This VBlock system is referred to as a Converged Infrastructure, Engineered Systems or by Gartner as Intergrated System. Gartner Magic Quadrant for Intergrated Systems named VCE as the Leader in the 2014 Gartner Report.The integrated system market is growing at 50% or more per year, creating an unusual mix of major vendors and startups to consider. 

 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Intergrated Systems, June 2014

VCE has dispelled many of the earlier market doubts. The vendor's momentum is due, in large part, to growing adoption in large global organizations and among large service providers.

VBLOCK System Platforms

Vblock 100 

 Vblock™ System 100 provides the next evolution of IT—built on the world’s most advanced converged infrastructure, and right-sized to fit your needs. The result is exceptional IT performance, delivered efficiently and at an unprecedented value, so you can respond to fleeting business opportunities, improve services, and maintain high application and data availability. The Series consists of;

• C-Series Rackmount servers
• EMC VNXe storage

VBlock 200

Vblock™ System 200 Offers mid-sized organizations a highly efficient virtualized infrastructure to run their entire business. Tap the impressive power and capacity of the Vblock System 200 in a broad range of configurations, with plenty of room for expansion. Supports a variety of applications—from core IT services to virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).

Vblock System 240 makes use of;

• Cisco UCS rack servers and 
• EMC VNX5200 unified storage systems with MCx multicore optimization to ensure exceptional performance across a range of applications. 

Vblock System 240 addresses the high-performance, low-latency requirements of virtualized environments. In addition, deduplication and compression reduce the space and cost requirements for effective data protection.

VBlock 300

Vblock™ System 300 Series Enables the substantial scale needed for large virtualization and cloud implementations. Vblock System 300 is built to support mission-critical enterprise applications with the capacity, flexibility, and performance to run vast mixed workloads, and essential cloud services while ensuring operations and management simplicity. The system can run VDI environments, Microsoft Exchange 2010, Oracle, SAP, and many other enterprise applications and vertical-specific solutions.

The Series makes use of;

• Cisxo B-Series Blade Servers
• EMC VNX Storage

VBlock 500

Vblock™ System 500 Series VCE Vscale Architecture delivers ultimate agility, simplicity, assurance of adapting to the varying applications, scale, and flexibility needs for customers’ diverse operational models. At the core of the architecture are VCE Vblock Systems for your mission-critical or well-defined workloads. With its next-generation; 

• Cisco Unified Computing System, ACI-ready network, and 
• EMC XtremIO storage, the Vblock System 500 series offers the industry’s first all-flash-based converged infrastructure. 

The factory-integrated and validated systems in the Vblock System 500 series deliver scale-out performance at ultralow latency. This helps consolidate data center-class applications, performance-centric databases, and emerging 3rd platform applications such as cloud, mobile, and social media

VBlock 700

Vblock™ System 700 Series VCE Vscale Architecture delivers ultimate agility, simplicity, assurance of adapting to the varying applications, scale, and flexibility needs for customers’ diverse operational models. At the core of the architecture are VCE Vblock Systems for your mission-critical or well-defined workloads. The Vblock System 700 series is comprised of enterprise- and service provider-class systems designed to help organizations benefit from virtualized and cloud computing faster and easier. The systems are designed for mission-critical application environments, offering the highest level of data and application availability.  Powered by the next-generation;

• Cisco Unified Computing System, ACI-ready networking, and 
• EMC VMAX3 storage, the system offers 3x the performance and 2x the storage bandwidth

Cisco Data Center Unified Computing System (DCUCS)

Cisco Data Center Unified Computing System (DCUCS)

Just attended a Training on DCUCS and wanted to break it down for folks out there. Cisco is a leader in Networking and a few years back they went into production of compute servers.
The Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) is an (x86) architecture data center server platform composed of computing hardware, virtualization support, switching fabric and management software introduced in 2009.

The most widely used Cisco UCS product comes in two flavours; B-Series (Blade Server Series) and C-Series (Rack Servers Series).

B-Series Blade Servers

C-Series Rack Mount Servers

In Cisco's own words the Cisco Unified Computing System represents a radical simplification of traditional architectures, dramatically reducing the number of devices that must be purchased, cabled, configured, powered, cooled, and secured. The solution delivers end-to-end optimization for virtualized environments while retaining the ability to support traditional OS and application stacks in physical environments.

Uniting Compute, Network, and Virtualization Platforms

Management

The UCS Servers are managed by the UCS Manager which sits on the Fabric Interconnect.

VMware NSX, Software Defined Networking (SDN)

VCA-NV Vmware Certified Associate in Network Virtualization(VCA-NV)

Background

Just started my exciting Journey to Software Defined Networking (SDN) by taking an E-learning Course on Vmware Certified Associate in Network Virtualization (VCA-NV). This is the entry Level VMware course for Mastering VMware NSX product which focuses on Network Function Virtualization (NFV).

Some background on how VMware got into the NFV space was the buy out of Nicira. VMware paid $1.26 billion to buy a tiny startup called Nicira in 2012. Nicira was a company focused on Software Defined Networking and Network Virtualization. Important to note is that Cisco who are the leaders in the $50 Billion a year network market bidded for Nicira. Their bid was about $800 million which was short of what VMware bid.

Focus of the E-learning Course

The focus of the VCA-NV e-learning course is to provide an overview of the NSX product. NSX network virtualization is a transformative architecture from VMware that enables the full potential of a Software-Defined Data Center, making it possible to create and run entire networks in parallel on top of existing network hardware. This results in faster deployment of workloads, as well as greater agility in the face of increasingly dynamic data centers. There are three modules in the course and below is a summary;

1. Module 1: Define Datacenter Networking, Compare Physical and Virtual Networking and the Challenges encountered without NFV
2. Module 2: Describe the VMware NSX Virtualization Platform and how it benefits the Data Center, 
3. Module 3: Identify Use Cases for NSX, Introduction to NSX components and their functions

It  important to have some basic training, knowledge or certification in Vmware Certified Professional Data Center Virtualization (VCP-DCV) before diving into Network Virtualization. This is because the basic building block of network virtualization is based on the vSphere product and on prior knowledge of the VMware Standard and Distributed Switch. I took my VCP-DCV exam and I would say it is a great resource in advancing to Network Virtualization.

Challenges without Network Virtualization

1. Automation - Integrate with vRealize Automation and open REST API
2. Elasticity - Create Logical Networks that can span the entire Data Center
3. Security - Allows complete Isolation of network segments, granular fire-walling and integration with Third Party endpoint services
4. Management - Centralized Management of Routing, Switching and Firewall service. Allows integration for a large eco-system of partners

What are the Differentiators of NSX?

1. Logical Switching - Layer 2 over Layer 3 decoupled from the physical network
2. Logical Routing
3. Logical Firewall
4. Logical Load Balancer
5. Logical VPN
6. VMWare NSX API

NSX Components

1. Consumption Model - Self Service Portal, Management, vRealize Automation
2. Management Plane - NSX Manager, vCenter, Message Bus Agent
3. Control Plane - NSX Logical Router Control machine, NSX Controller, User World Agent
4. Data Plane - Vmware Distributed Switch, VXLAN, Distributed Logical Router, Firewall, NSX Edge Services Gateway

NSX Partner Integration

I am planning to take the Exam in coming days and I will update on how that goes. NSX is a game changing product in the ever changing landscape of Information Technology. VMware are staying ahead of the curve once more in innovation for the Software Defined Data Center (SDDC). Other vendors are also following fast in the new era of Software Defined "Everything".

Read More from VMware at http://www.vmware.com/products/nsx

Also posted on http://victorbotto.blogspot.com/