As mentioned previously to be considered a cloud a service must be On Demand, provide Resource Pooling and also Rapid Elasticity. And whilst Virtualization in general can provide the majority of these features the difference is that a private cloud using internet based technologies can actually provide the mechanism for end users to self provision virtual systems. Think of this as the ability to self-check in at an airport or print your boarding pass from home.
You login to a browser with a reference code, plug in some personal details and print or walk up to a screen enter a few details and voila out pops the boarding card and off you go (business or hand luggage only) otherwise off to bag drop before you go - virtually eliminating the need to queue up at a check-in desk to get your boarding card.
But it's more than just virtualizing systems and hosting them internally, it’s about giving control to the end user.
Now of course, some administrators may wince after reading this but there are ways in which self- provisioned systems can be controlled by using the virtualization technology that underpins cloud technology. Using resource pools within your private cloud gives you the ability to control resources via limits and shares and / or reservations so you can specify the amount of resources that users are allowed to provision. These control settings can also be changed very quickly to increase or decrease the amount of resources that are available within that pool. This helps prevent over specification and VM sprawl.
Another way to control resource deployment and / or usage is to internally charge. Users and their departments will soon reign back on creating over provisioned systems if they are charged on their system configuration usage rather than just on the usage itself.
It can be quite difficult to implement some form of internal charging. What do you charge with? Maybe by utilizing project codes or some other internal monetary system?
On Monday I’ll be looking at Capacity on demand and how you can get your sizing right.
Jamie Baker
Principal Consultant
You login to a browser with a reference code, plug in some personal details and print or walk up to a screen enter a few details and voila out pops the boarding card and off you go (business or hand luggage only) otherwise off to bag drop before you go - virtually eliminating the need to queue up at a check-in desk to get your boarding card.
But it's more than just virtualizing systems and hosting them internally, it’s about giving control to the end user.
Now of course, some administrators may wince after reading this but there are ways in which self- provisioned systems can be controlled by using the virtualization technology that underpins cloud technology. Using resource pools within your private cloud gives you the ability to control resources via limits and shares and / or reservations so you can specify the amount of resources that users are allowed to provision. These control settings can also be changed very quickly to increase or decrease the amount of resources that are available within that pool. This helps prevent over specification and VM sprawl.
Another way to control resource deployment and / or usage is to internally charge. Users and their departments will soon reign back on creating over provisioned systems if they are charged on their system configuration usage rather than just on the usage itself.
It can be quite difficult to implement some form of internal charging. What do you charge with? Maybe by utilizing project codes or some other internal monetary system?
On Monday I’ll be looking at Capacity on demand and how you can get your sizing right.
Jamie Baker
Principal Consultant
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