Skills experience: What preparations should be made to build a private cloud?

When talking about cloud computing, everyone sees it as an alternative to traditional computing models. But many people are still cautious about passing the company's data to public cloud service providers. As a result, some companies that want to adopt cloud architectures are starting to build their own private cloud environments. So, what is the definition of a private cloud architecture compared to a traditional data center? Is it just a matter of claiming that the existing data center is a private cloud?

It's actually not that simple. A private cloud means that the company is self-managing and deploying a separate data center that reflects several features that are different from traditional data centers, including:

- Highly scalable: should be dynamic on demand Add or reduce available resources

- High availability: Cloud architecture can guarantee the longest possible service runtime and the shortest possible service interruption time

- Cost monitoring model: Cloud resource consumption can be Monitor and calculate user sharing costs

- Self-service: Users can make requests and obtain corresponding cloud resources

- Automation: Data processing in the cloud architecture should be automated as much as possible to ensure Delivering data to users in a timely manner

At the same time, it also assesses the maturity of the migration of existing enterprise environments to private clouds. Virtualization is one of the prerequisites for building a cloud architecture, so first determine if the existing virtual environment meets the needs of the cloud architecture - if not, what changes need to be made.

Because cloud environments are dynamic and flexible environments, they must be able to cope with the surge in load--not just meeting the average load requirement. So the most likely thing to do is to add functionality to the virtual environment to improve usability, automation, measurement of resource allocation, and the ability to provide self-service.

Private Cloud Architecture Products

The above mentioned features are sometimes available from the hypervisor vendor, which is sold as a companion product or a high-priced custom version. For example, the VMware vSphere release provides the following features: Dynamic Resource Management, VMotion, High Availability, and Fault Tolerance, which help balance host resources and provide continuous high availability for virtual machines. The VMware vCenter server product line, along with LifeCycle Manager, Orches-trator, and Chargeback, can be used to manage virtualization and automation.

In addition, there are many third-party vendors that can provide features related to the private cloud architecture. VKernel has a product for Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware platform called Capacity Analyzer, and another Chargeback product for VMware. Akorri's BalancePoint supports both Hyper-V and VMware platforms. Akorri also supports physical servers -- in case some part of the cloud architecture is not virtualized.

Private cloud requires that the storage system virtualized maturity is not enough, then it will cost a lot. Similarly, when it comes to the network, you must consider the maximum redundancy and sufficient bandwidth to ensure high availability of the cloud.

Private Cloud Storage and Network Virtualization

For private clouds, there is more than just server virtualization. You should also pay attention to deploying storage and network virtualization to ensure that there are layers between private clouds. Maximize synergy.

Storage virtualization combines multiple storage devices into a single resource, reducing the complexity of the back end and simplifying visual effects. In addition, many storage products are directly integrated with the server virtual platform for automated, intelligent multipathing and failover, which are beneficial to the cloud architecture.

Network virtualization combines physical and virtual networks so that it can operate as if it were just one network. Products such as the Cisco Nexus 1000v extend the advanced performance common to general physical switches to virtual environments, enabling higher levels of security, better management, and quality of service in private cloud environments.

What part of the private cloud environment does not need to be virtualized

The last thing to consider is whether to virtualize in a private cloud environment. Cloud applications are usually multi-tiered, so you need to consider whether you want to virtualize all levels to meet the requirements of cloud applications.

Cloud characteristics may require certain levels to suddenly increase resources when needed, but may not require all levels to meet this standard. To determine which applications can benefit the most from virtualization, and which may not require virtualization.

Even though virtualization can produce some of the benefits that are not related to cloud computing, virtualizing all existing applications can be meaningless—especially those that are expensive.

However, on the other hand, not all levels of virtualization will increase the difficulty of chargeback deductions because resources span virtual and physical servers. In the early stages of planning, assessing requirements and conditions is a key factor in determining which ones are virtual and which are not.

The overall architecture must be considered in the analysis. Servers, storage, and networks all have their own specific requirements and dependencies, and ignoring any one aspect can have a negative impact on other parts.