To understand our Capacity and Performance concerns around cloud, we need to fully understand what the cloud is and its relation to UNIX/Linux systems. As mentioned previously cloud is underpinned by virtualization due to the ability to provide virtualized systems rapidly, providing services such as Capacity on Demand and then charging accordingly.
Cloud (Internal, External, Hybrid)
• Rapid Provisioning
• Metering (Chargeback) Capacity on Demand
• Resource Pooling and Elasticity
Hybrid popularity is growing.
At present less secure tasks are being handled in external clouds - The initial use of Hybrid clouds (a mixture of Public and Private) was traditionally to run tasks that were not classed as data sensitive. The use of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) in a Public cloud was very much favored by Test and Development departments to get quick and easy access to resources.
Increasing confidence in security - As security has improved and individuals and businesses confidence in Public clouds increases, the popularity of the Hybrid cloud is growing, providing an extension to business systems as and when required.
How easy is access to data? - How can we apply effective Capacity Management to a Hybrid cloud? We can and should have access to data from within an Internal cloud and also know what applications are running on what systems sharing what resources. Getting the same information from an External cloud provider however is not easy if you can get it at all.
Would we want to and do we care? - Does the cloud provider give guarantees for availability, capacity and performance?
SLA’s and appropriate penalties if breaches occur - Do you have or need to have any Service Level Agreements in place? If so, what penalties are in place in terms of a breach or number of breaches?
Hopefully that gives you food for thought.
I'll be looking at another hot topic next time, Big Data - what it is and what the concerns are. We've got some great webinars available to download on these and other capacity management topics, so sign up to access them for free
http://www.metron-athene.com/_resources/index.html
Jamie Baker
Principal Consultant
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