Building a Cloud-Based Computing Infrastructure: Where Star Trek and a London Data Center Meet
Let's face it - the concepts behind cloud computing and cloud storage are just plain cool. The whole idea that an organization can move any application to any hardware platform and pro-actively meet the constantly changing needs of an application is more akin to something you might see in an episode of Star Trek than something you might find in today's data centers. Yet cloud computing and cloud storage are becoming a part of today's reality for tech-savvy data centers because these feature are not just cool, they ease the complexity of common data center management tasks, drive down costs and increase profitability.
Recently I had the opportunity to speak to Jason Reid, Carrenza Hosting's Director of Information Services, who is implementing "Star Trek"-like cloud computing and cloud storage technologies into his data center. As he explains it, cloud computing and cloud storage are cool marketing terms and reflect what he hopes to accomplish someday but at this point, he is still putting a foundation in place to deliver that functionality.
He prefers to call the infrastructure that he is creating now a "utility". While "utility" may not sound as sexy as "cloud", he wants to take his organization's existing and new computing resources and use them as efficiently as possible. By creating an infrastructure where all of his resources - server, network and storage - are virtualized, he can raise the level of conversation that he has with his clients so they do not just discuss what type or size of server or storage they need to support a specific application.
He says, "I want my customers to tell me how many CPU cycles, how much RAM and how much disk they need and then I will deliver it without getting into the specifics of what type of hardware is going to support the application. This is creating an infrastructure that operates like a utility."
Carrenza found that as it virtualized its infrastructure and managed it more like a utility, it realized just how low its levels of utilization had been as a physical environment. This was costing Carrenza in a number of different ways but a big one was in its inefficient use of data center space.
Carrenza's data center is located in London, England, where the per square foot cost of data center space is very high. However by using this space more efficiently, it had a huge impact on Carrenza's profitability. This resulted in it being able to lower the price it charged to its existing clients as well as made it more competitive as it sought to attract new clients.
Because Carrenza operates as a managed hosting company, Reid regularly has conversations with clients - new and old. During these conversations, he encounters a wide range of sophistication among Carrenza's clients where some customers are extremely sophisticated while others are less aware of how Carrenza's infrastructure is architected.
But once he explains to them how Carrenza has re-architected its data center to act more like a utility, their interest in the technology wanes. Reid comments, "Even technically savvy clients seem to become less interested in what is going on underneath the covers once we give them the impression that we understand what it is they are trying to do."
Carrenza still does receive requests for it to configure its infrastructure in certain ways to meet specific application requirements. This can pose a problem in the eyes of some customers accustomed to working in a physical environment since Carrenza uses 3PAR InServ Storage Systems. Its virtualization technology efficiently provisions storage and the data that is placed on the system is striped across all or most of the disk drives in the system.
The 3PAR storage system functions as a shared storage pool, which traditional wisdom would suggest creates the potential for contention. 3PAR addresses the usual concerns of quality of service on a shared storage platform with a combination of the wide-striping mentioned above as well as mixed workload support--the ability to run both transactional and sequential applications without the usual impact seen on traditional arrays. The upside is that all the storage is shared, performance needs are met, and service becomes much more economical for Carrenza's clients.
To counter these types of concerns, Reid told me that even as he and I spoke he had a demo running for a prospective client that had requested dedicated disk on a 3PAR system for their application. However, the disk had not yet arrived from 3PAR so he went ahead and put the customer's application in the shared disk pool on the 3PAR storage system.
After letting it run for a period of time and taking some performance benchmarks, the prospective client found that the performance of the application on 3PAR's shared disk pool was "quite good" so the client is re-assessing what they really need right now. To get dedicated disk in Carrenza's environment means they have to pay extra whereas if they leave the application in the shared disk pool, their storage costs decrease.
Everyone loves the sound of "cloud based infrastructure" if no other reason than it sounds cool and hip and the possibilities of what one can do with a virtualized infrastructure are seemingly endless. But the reality is that companies like Carrenza that are putting in cloud based computing infrastructures are doing so to solve real-world problems with no aspirations for guest appearances in upcoming Star Trek episodes. If anything, most are just happy to use cloud computing to solve today's business and technical problems so they can simply get home in time to watch that evening's episode of Star Trek on TV.
In a previous blog, I spoke to Jason how he was creating a more flexible IT infrastructure so Carrenza could meet a client's forecasted spike in the need for computing and storage resources with minimal or no disruption to the client's application service levels.
Recently I had the opportunity to speak to Jason Reid, Carrenza Hosting's Director of Information Services, who is implementing "Star Trek"-like cloud computing and cloud storage technologies into his data center. As he explains it, cloud computing and cloud storage are cool marketing terms and reflect what he hopes to accomplish someday but at this point, he is still putting a foundation in place to deliver that functionality.
He prefers to call the infrastructure that he is creating now a "utility". While "utility" may not sound as sexy as "cloud", he wants to take his organization's existing and new computing resources and use them as efficiently as possible. By creating an infrastructure where all of his resources - server, network and storage - are virtualized, he can raise the level of conversation that he has with his clients so they do not just discuss what type or size of server or storage they need to support a specific application.
He says, "I want my customers to tell me how many CPU cycles, how much RAM and how much disk they need and then I will deliver it without getting into the specifics of what type of hardware is going to support the application. This is creating an infrastructure that operates like a utility."
Carrenza found that as it virtualized its infrastructure and managed it more like a utility, it realized just how low its levels of utilization had been as a physical environment. This was costing Carrenza in a number of different ways but a big one was in its inefficient use of data center space.
Carrenza's data center is located in London, England, where the per square foot cost of data center space is very high. However by using this space more efficiently, it had a huge impact on Carrenza's profitability. This resulted in it being able to lower the price it charged to its existing clients as well as made it more competitive as it sought to attract new clients.
Because Carrenza operates as a managed hosting company, Reid regularly has conversations with clients - new and old. During these conversations, he encounters a wide range of sophistication among Carrenza's clients where some customers are extremely sophisticated while others are less aware of how Carrenza's infrastructure is architected.
But once he explains to them how Carrenza has re-architected its data center to act more like a utility, their interest in the technology wanes. Reid comments, "Even technically savvy clients seem to become less interested in what is going on underneath the covers once we give them the impression that we understand what it is they are trying to do."
Carrenza still does receive requests for it to configure its infrastructure in certain ways to meet specific application requirements. This can pose a problem in the eyes of some customers accustomed to working in a physical environment since Carrenza uses 3PAR InServ Storage Systems. Its virtualization technology efficiently provisions storage and the data that is placed on the system is striped across all or most of the disk drives in the system.
The 3PAR storage system functions as a shared storage pool, which traditional wisdom would suggest creates the potential for contention. 3PAR addresses the usual concerns of quality of service on a shared storage platform with a combination of the wide-striping mentioned above as well as mixed workload support--the ability to run both transactional and sequential applications without the usual impact seen on traditional arrays. The upside is that all the storage is shared, performance needs are met, and service becomes much more economical for Carrenza's clients.
To counter these types of concerns, Reid told me that even as he and I spoke he had a demo running for a prospective client that had requested dedicated disk on a 3PAR system for their application. However, the disk had not yet arrived from 3PAR so he went ahead and put the customer's application in the shared disk pool on the 3PAR storage system.
After letting it run for a period of time and taking some performance benchmarks, the prospective client found that the performance of the application on 3PAR's shared disk pool was "quite good" so the client is re-assessing what they really need right now. To get dedicated disk in Carrenza's environment means they have to pay extra whereas if they leave the application in the shared disk pool, their storage costs decrease.
Everyone loves the sound of "cloud based infrastructure" if no other reason than it sounds cool and hip and the possibilities of what one can do with a virtualized infrastructure are seemingly endless. But the reality is that companies like Carrenza that are putting in cloud based computing infrastructures are doing so to solve real-world problems with no aspirations for guest appearances in upcoming Star Trek episodes. If anything, most are just happy to use cloud computing to solve today's business and technical problems so they can simply get home in time to watch that evening's episode of Star Trek on TV.
In a previous blog, I spoke to Jason how he was creating a more flexible IT infrastructure so Carrenza could meet a client's forecasted spike in the need for computing and storage resources with minimal or no disruption to the client's application service levels.
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Cloud computing will inevitably take off, especially with the introduction of Google Wave and other web based initiatives, you can forget central servers and data management, soon it will be working from home with cloud based infrastructure and will be the best way of IT cost cutting !