July 4, 2011 at 16:14The infrastructure is simple and easy with a "private cloud"
A month ago, Cisco, NetApp, and Microsoft announced the development of collaborative cloud platforms as part of the Hyper-V Cloud FastTrack initiative. This initiative aims to bring together hardware manufacturers and the Microsoft cloud platform in order to build such solutions as quickly and easily as possible.
Let's now take a closer look at the components of this solution by NetApp and Cisco. The solution is built on a flexible unified architecture (Unified Architecture). As a rule, the main components of the Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track solution - in terms of hardware - are the following elements:
1) x64-server architecture (It is recommended to select several identical server nodes and combine them into a cluster)
2) storage systems (it is desirable that these systems have the capabilities of disk space virtualization)
3) communication equipment for transmitting IP and SAN traffic (these can be either converged devices or separate devices for IP traffic and SAN traffic, respectively)
In our particular case the circuit looks like this:
1) Servers Cisco UCS - Cisco recently in the server market, however, actively presents its solutions in this category. Distinctive features of these servers are optimization for voice and video data transfer applications both on virtual and on physical platforms. Also, technologies such as Cisco VN-Link and Cisco Extended Memory Technology can simplify data transfer tasks, as well as increase RAM capacity, thereby increasing the scalability of the system without extra costs.
2) NetApp Unified Storage System - this component is perfectly adapted to cloud solutions, it has disk virtualization technology, and at the same time it can provide access via different interfaces (iSCSI, FC, FCoE) and supports various file systems (NFS, CIFS). This is a truly unified solution - you can easily place your Linux and Windows virtual machines within the same storage system, each on its own file system. Thanks to deduplication technologies, the cloud infrastructure is becoming not so “thick”, only unique data blocks are stored, all duplicate data blocks are replaced by links to unique original blocks.
3) Communication equipment Cisco UCS Fabric and Cisco Nexus - unified and convergent equipment from the leader of the telecom sector. To provide a reliable fault-tolerant and dynamic cloud infrastructure, you should use 10 Gbit Ethernet solutions using iSCSI or FCoE on top of this channel (NetApp supports both). To transfer user data, it is proposed to use switches with lower bandwidth depending on business tasks and capabilities.
We have listed all the main hardware components of the solution, now let's see what all the same makes a cloud platform out of this pile of metal:
1) Microsoft Hyper-V - the hypervisor, the main component for virtualization, is part of the Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 operating system. Allows you to create clustered virtualization platforms, which is an important component of the cloud platform.
2) Microsoft System Center family - a set of products for managing, supporting and developing a heterogeneous cloud infrastructure. It consists of many products, the key ones are:
a. System Center Virtual Machine Manager - Product for creating and managing virtual machines, virtual networks, cloud environments. Allows you to manage storage systems of the product using the SMI-S protocol. It supports various virtualization platforms: VMware, Citrix, Microsoft. It also allows you to control the process of deploying Hyper-V to bare servers by supporting the BMC, iDRAC, SMASH protocols. He is also responsible for updating virtualization server processes.
b. System Center Operations Manager is a product for optimizing performance and supporting IT infrastructure. When integrated with SCVMM, it allows you to use the PRO-functionality of the cloud platform, namely, to track the loading of virtual machines, optimize their placement depending on the load, and manage power consumption by disabling redundant server nodes.
c. System Center Data Protection Manager is the product that is responsible for backing up and restoring IT infrastructure components. Works with both physical and virtual components. It supports holistic online copying of all Microsoft products (SQL, Exchange, SharePoint, Lync). It integrates seamlessly with NetApp storage, allowing you to get instant and reliable backups.
d. System Center Service Manager is a service desk system that integrates closely with the rest of System Center components and allows you to automate routine tasks through service desk requests. Allows you to implement the work of IT services in accordance with ITIL and MOF.
e. System Center Orchestrator (Opalis) is a product of building and automating IT processes within the framework of infrastructure. It is a key component for the integration of solutions and tasks of automation of routine processes that are present in any IT service (creating new virtual machines, starting backups or restoring when a certain event occurs, etc.)
All of these components together form a cloud. Whether it will be private or public depends on you and your tasks: you can provide your enterprise with a high-quality, reliable, flexible and fast IT infrastructure or provide high-quality service for third-party users, implement various cloud solutions - IaaS, SaaS and others.
In Russia, so far there are few such solutions due to the novelty of cloud platforms. But, despite the novelty, some companies are already preparing and are ready to demonstrate such solutions today. You can see how the Microsoft cloud platform based on Cisco and NetApp equipment works in the Mikrotest demo center. The company has deployed a private cloud based on the products of the System Center 2012 family of products. This family of products is still in the Beta state, but at the end of 2011 the final version of the products will be presented. However, today there is an opportunity to try and verify in practice what they will literally use tomorrow.
Let's now take a closer look at the components of this solution by NetApp and Cisco. The solution is built on a flexible unified architecture (Unified Architecture). As a rule, the main components of the Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track solution - in terms of hardware - are the following elements:
1) x64-server architecture (It is recommended to select several identical server nodes and combine them into a cluster)
2) storage systems (it is desirable that these systems have the capabilities of disk space virtualization)
3) communication equipment for transmitting IP and SAN traffic (these can be either converged devices or separate devices for IP traffic and SAN traffic, respectively)
In our particular case the circuit looks like this:
1) Servers Cisco UCS - Cisco recently in the server market, however, actively presents its solutions in this category. Distinctive features of these servers are optimization for voice and video data transfer applications both on virtual and on physical platforms. Also, technologies such as Cisco VN-Link and Cisco Extended Memory Technology can simplify data transfer tasks, as well as increase RAM capacity, thereby increasing the scalability of the system without extra costs.
2) NetApp Unified Storage System - this component is perfectly adapted to cloud solutions, it has disk virtualization technology, and at the same time it can provide access via different interfaces (iSCSI, FC, FCoE) and supports various file systems (NFS, CIFS). This is a truly unified solution - you can easily place your Linux and Windows virtual machines within the same storage system, each on its own file system. Thanks to deduplication technologies, the cloud infrastructure is becoming not so “thick”, only unique data blocks are stored, all duplicate data blocks are replaced by links to unique original blocks.
3) Communication equipment Cisco UCS Fabric and Cisco Nexus - unified and convergent equipment from the leader of the telecom sector. To provide a reliable fault-tolerant and dynamic cloud infrastructure, you should use 10 Gbit Ethernet solutions using iSCSI or FCoE on top of this channel (NetApp supports both). To transfer user data, it is proposed to use switches with lower bandwidth depending on business tasks and capabilities.
We have listed all the main hardware components of the solution, now let's see what all the same makes a cloud platform out of this pile of metal:
1) Microsoft Hyper-V - the hypervisor, the main component for virtualization, is part of the Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 operating system. Allows you to create clustered virtualization platforms, which is an important component of the cloud platform.
2) Microsoft System Center family - a set of products for managing, supporting and developing a heterogeneous cloud infrastructure. It consists of many products, the key ones are:
a. System Center Virtual Machine Manager - Product for creating and managing virtual machines, virtual networks, cloud environments. Allows you to manage storage systems of the product using the SMI-S protocol. It supports various virtualization platforms: VMware, Citrix, Microsoft. It also allows you to control the process of deploying Hyper-V to bare servers by supporting the BMC, iDRAC, SMASH protocols. He is also responsible for updating virtualization server processes.
b. System Center Operations Manager is a product for optimizing performance and supporting IT infrastructure. When integrated with SCVMM, it allows you to use the PRO-functionality of the cloud platform, namely, to track the loading of virtual machines, optimize their placement depending on the load, and manage power consumption by disabling redundant server nodes.
c. System Center Data Protection Manager is the product that is responsible for backing up and restoring IT infrastructure components. Works with both physical and virtual components. It supports holistic online copying of all Microsoft products (SQL, Exchange, SharePoint, Lync). It integrates seamlessly with NetApp storage, allowing you to get instant and reliable backups.
d. System Center Service Manager is a service desk system that integrates closely with the rest of System Center components and allows you to automate routine tasks through service desk requests. Allows you to implement the work of IT services in accordance with ITIL and MOF.
e. System Center Orchestrator (Opalis) is a product of building and automating IT processes within the framework of infrastructure. It is a key component for the integration of solutions and tasks of automation of routine processes that are present in any IT service (creating new virtual machines, starting backups or restoring when a certain event occurs, etc.)
All of these components together form a cloud. Whether it will be private or public depends on you and your tasks: you can provide your enterprise with a high-quality, reliable, flexible and fast IT infrastructure or provide high-quality service for third-party users, implement various cloud solutions - IaaS, SaaS and others.
In Russia, so far there are few such solutions due to the novelty of cloud platforms. But, despite the novelty, some companies are already preparing and are ready to demonstrate such solutions today. You can see how the Microsoft cloud platform based on Cisco and NetApp equipment works in the Mikrotest demo center. The company has deployed a private cloud based on the products of the System Center 2012 family of products. This family of products is still in the Beta state, but at the end of 2011 the final version of the products will be presented. However, today there is an opportunity to try and verify in practice what they will literally use tomorrow.