Notes from the Field - Cloud Solutions with VMware vCloud Director

Cloud Solutions with vCloud Director

Notes from the Field

James Charter

Practice Lead, Virtualization Services

• About Long View Systems

• Solution Areas

• vCloud Director & Converged Infrastructure

• Case 1 – Public Service Provider

• Case 2 – Private Development Cloud

• Lessons Learned

• How Can We Help?

Agenda

• One of North America’s largest IT Services/Solutions organizations

• Focused on end-to-end, operational IT Infrastructure

• Industry leading expertise in key technology innovations and best practices

• Extensive project experience (complete lifecycle) with SMB to enterprise corporations

• A people-focused corporate culture dedicated to “Being the Best”

About Long View Systems

Quick Stats

What we do • North American IT Services/ Solutions organization

focused on: • Infrastructure Services • Managed IT • Cloud • End User Computing Solutions • Procurement • IT Outsourcing

Key Statistics • Calgary (CDN HQ), Vancouver, Victoria, Edmonton,

Denver (USA HQ), Houston, Dallas, Phoenix • 2011 expansion plans for US East-Coast

• Largest and Fastest Growing IT Solutions Company 10 to 800+ employees, $2M to $200M+ in 10 years • 600+ employees are technical today • 2011 total headcount trending to 1000+

• Privately owned and debt free, focused organic growth in leading technology areas

2011 expansion offices

Current offices

Strategic Partners

• VMware Premier Solution Provider (Canada/US)

• Cisco Gold Partner

• EMC Velocity Solution Provider Partner

• VCE Certified to Sell and Deliver Vblock

• HP Converged Infrastructure Elite Partner

• NetApp Star Partner

What we do – Virtualization

ASSESSMENTS: • Environment Health Checks • Full Technology Assessments • Operational Readiness Assessments • Business cases and ROI analysis

PLANNING AND DESIGN: • Architect and Design Solutions • Proof of Concepts and Pilots • Disaster Recovery Planning • Solution Strategies and Roadmaps

SOLUTIONS: • Converged Infrastructure • Private Cloud / Infrastructure as-a-Service • Virtual Desktop Infrastructure • Application Virtualization Infrastructure and

Packaging

MANAGEMENT AND OPTIMIZATION: • Backup and Recovery • Performance and Capacity Management • Availability, Monitoring and Alerting

solutions • Systems Automation, Provisioning and

Capacity Allocation

Two use cases with different requirements and success criteria

• Public Service Provider

• Private Development Cloud

• Built with vCloud Director 1.5 on vSphere 5

• Each solution built with a different Converged Infrastructure as the ‘Cloud Engine’

Why vSphere 5 and vCloud Director 1.5?

• We had some usage requirements that could only be met with the new features offered in both products

• The scalability offered by the new products offers more agility

vCloud Director & Converged Infrastructure

Long View Public Cloud Offering – OnDemand Environment (ODE)

Hosted Services for clients:

• Looking for additional resources off premise

• Who no longer wish to own IT Assets

• Want to be able to turn up or turn down services as business needs change

Requirements: Scalable, Secure, Adaptive, Repeatable

Scalable

• Expandable as additional capacity is required.

• Build in Pods

Case 1 – Public Service Provider

Secure

• Multi-tenant, with tenant isolation across the infrastructure

Adaptive

• Architecture that can support future offerings and technologies that may not be exclusively virtual (including new hardware) within the same fabric

Repeatable

• Pod/Block approach to capacity/expansion, repeatable across geographic locations – Canada and the US


How did we build it?

FlexPod Architecture (NetApp, Cisco, VMware)

Cisco Networking and Compute

NetApp Unified Storage (FAS3200 series) via NFS

Space savings via De-Duplication on the Volumes

Two Tiers of Disk

VMware Virtualization – vCloud Director 1.5 on vSphere 4.1*


Private Infrastructure as-a-Service (IaaS) Development Environment

Client looking for a new way to enable development and decrease the time to deliver new products to the business. Current model is based on a combination of traditional virtualization and physical platforms.

Requirements: Scalable, Consistent, Responsive

Scalable

• Capable of hosting 1000’s of VM’s

• Capable of hosting many projects concurrently within their own security boundary (Organizations)

Case 2 – Private Development Cloud

Consistent

• Share re-useable components (master templates) to create standardized offerings. Share these components across projects (Organizations).

Responsive

• Create a framework where development platforms (groups of related VM’s - vApps) can be quickly provisioned (Linked Clones).

• Scale and provide consistent performance for workloads.


How did we build it?

V (VMware) + C (Cisco) + E (EMC) to create a Reference Architecture

Cisco Networking and Compute

EMC Unified Storage on VNX via NFS

• FAST (Fully Automated Storage Tiering) – Using Two Types of Disk

• FAST Cache (Enables Flash Drives to used for Array Cache)

VMware Virtualization – vCloud Director 1.5 on vSphere 5.0


1. Monitoring and Predictive Tools!

• vCloud Director introduces new levels of abstraction, so our methods of monitoring and troubleshooting have to change

• Leverage vCenter Operations and CapacityIQ

• Leverage advanced reporting for your storage platform

• Understand you environment! Set yourself up for success!

Lessons Learned

2. Understand Your Requirements

• IaaS often involves process change, engage with the business an co-develop process together.

• Interface with the business to determine what is required in the Catalogs

Lessons Learned

3. Plan, Plan, Plan, Test, Test, Test

• Take the time to plan out your environment, and then validate it with extensive testing and create an environment baseline

• Test your environment as it grows using the same testing and measure it against your baseline.

Lessons Learned (Continued)

4. Leverage Native VMware technologies to reduce overhead on common processes

• VAAI – Use a compliant array to reduce host overhead for storage tasks

• vShield Endpoint – Use with compliant Anti-Virus product to offload antivirus processing from the guest

Lessons Learned (Continued)

Gartner, predicts that “20 percent of businesses will own no IT assets by 2012.”

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/061511-gartner-private-clouds.html?page=2

Parting Thoughts








Interested in moving forward with your own Cloud Initiative?

• Drop by the Long View table, tell us your story, and talk with one of our experts

• Ask to have one of our Account team book a meeting to discuss your requirements

Contact us

Email: [email protected]

How Can We Help?

mailto:[email protected]

James Charter Practice Lead, Virtualization Main: 403.515.6900 Direct: 403.515.3331 Email: [email protected]

Thank You

http://www.longviewsystems.com/

http://www.linkedin.com/company/17908

http://twitter.com/LongViewSystems

mailto:[email protected]

Notes from the Field - Cloud Solutions with VMware vCloud Director

Technology

Transcript of Notes from the Field - Cloud Solutions with VMware vCloud Director