So apparently new Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is not the superhero the stock market was expecting to rescue us all, banks included, from an economy in a downward spiral. At least, that's the message that the markets telegraphed (broadcast? texted?) following the introduction of the Obama administration's government bank bailout plan, part deux, earlier this week.
Uh oh. Now what? We'll have to look elsewhere for our savior.
Hey, how about Silicon Valley?
The credentials are certainly here. Silicon Valley was a contributor to a good deal of economic growth in times past: microchips in the ‘70s, PCs in the ‘80s, all things Web since then. The innovation engine of Silicon Valley even managed to right itself after that whole dot com bubble fiasco earlier this century.
So, how about this time around? The global economy certainly could use the help. And, aren't we currently in the midst of inventing and working the kinks out of, among other things, this cloud computing thing that should go great in leaner times: a new way to do IT that delivers only the computing power you need without all that capital outlay. (For more on cloud computing in this economy, you can see what the 451 Group, IDC's Al Gillen, and cloud journalist Derrick Harris have to say.) Sounds ideal, right?
Not likely, say a few folks who’ve watched this kind of thing before.
The recession may have arrived too early for cloud computing to help
According to Gartner analyst Mark Raskino, the Great Recession may have arrived just a little too early for cloud computing to have a role in helping us get out of it. "…[C]ompanies looking for a significant new round of IT cost cuts are having to tackle the challenge creatively," Mark wrote in his blog recently. "That makes many of them very interested in cloud ideas. …The problem is that the cloud isn't ready for corporate prime time. …[Vendors] are doing it as fast as they can -- but a lot if it just isn't ready for the mainstream, moderately risk averse centre of the market. Which is a shame." Understatement alert.
Looking beyond just the realm of cloud computing, Fortune's Jessi Hempel chronicled Silicon Valley’s growth-accelerating history in a recent article, and came to a similar conclusion: "Alas, economists and executives believe that this time tech won't lead the country out of its slump."
Deeper problems with Silicon Valley?
Part of the issue is the near-complete evaporation of money that can be borrowed, the fuel for a lot of the innovation in Silicon Valley. That piece of this puzzle wasn't working against us after the dot com bubble burst. It certainly is working against us now. Without fuel and no way off the highway (as in, no IPOs), the trip of an innovative start-up is a lot rougher right now. Even so, some companies (like business-model challenged Twitter) are still able to attract new funding.
Other commentators, like a few highlighted in the December Steve Hamm cover story for BusinessWeek (which I don't think made him too popular with entrepreneurs or even his own staffers in the Valley), question Silicon Valley's innovation more fundamentally, citing "short-term thinking" and "risk-aversion." He quoted Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel, saying that today's start-ups "give us refinements, not breakthroughs." The man who said "only the paranoid survive" now says Silicon Valley doesn't worry enough (unless they're talking about an exit strategy).
Short-term pessimism, but still long-term optimism
Hamm and others acknowledge ups and downs in innovation in the Valley. The region has been one of the greatest examples of creative destruction (whereas Detroit, as discussed on Twitter recently by James Governor, Tim O’Reilly, and others: not so much).
Another business press editor that I had lunch with this week had a couple interesting comments on this whole situation. First off, the situation is indeed dire. "This is the kind of downturn where we come out different as a society," he said. But from that comes good news for Silicon Valley: "Every downturn forces a tech change. This is good news for people in cloud."
So back to the cloud computing move as a potential economic catalyst, then. Even Mark Raskino at Gartner speculates that the current timing misalignment between what cloud computing can do and what the economy needs now (two items that he described as “annoyingly adrift” of each other) might just accelerate the whole market evolution out of necessity.
Bill Coleman, our CEO here at Cassatt, has seen a downturn or two in his career at BEA, Sun, and a couple other places. He (quoted in the Fortune article I mentioned above) is somewhat pessimistic about Silicon Valley's ability to help launch the recovery in the short term, but reiterates his long-term belief that this place understands how to invent things -- and reinvent itself. "I have every confidence in the Valley," he says.
"The very, very early adopters, I believe, are the people who use a downturn to re-engineer themselves," Bill told Quentin Hardy of Forbes in a video interview posted this week. He rattled off Intel, Cisco, Goldman Sachs, and FedEx as examples of companies who have successfully increased investment during previous economic slides, and have been rewarded for it. Investing while everyone else is running for cover means "you get to buy everything at a discount," Bill said. (More tidbits from Bill on managing a business through a downturn turn up here in Forbes.com as well.)
And as for Silicon Valley, specifically? The Fortune article points out that even in economic depths of late 2001, a couple of guys were already working on a start-up to try to make money on Web searches, creating a company in the process, whose name is now no longer a noun, but a verb. Says Jessi, "the moment that conventional wisdom suggests that innovation is dead is probably the perfect time to go peeking inside Palo Alto garages again."
If you're interested in jumping into the discussion about Silicon Valley's reaction to the recession, the Churchill Club is sponsoring a panel at the Stanford Law School on Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2009, featuring Lisa Lambert of Intel Capital, Bill Coleman from Cassatt, and Patricia Sueltz of LogLogic. Joseph Grundfest, co-director of the Rock Center on Corporate Governance and former commissioner of the SEC, is moderating.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
VMware's Thiele: Never more data center change than right now
Making headway in running a data center is hard. Even if you've worked on it a lot. The guy I'm talking to in today's Cassatt Data Center Dialog interview is someone who -- despite the curveballs that IT and the business it supports can throw at you -- has been consistently making big strides in how data centers are run: Mark Thiele.
Mark is director of R&D business operations for virtualization giant VMware and as part of that job runs data centers in Palo Alto, Massachusetts, Was
hington, and Bangalore, totaling approximately 85,000 square feet. I've also seen Mark in action at his previous job, where his ideas and initiative helped shape parts of our Active Power Management technology and what became Cassatt Active Response, Standard Edition.
I last saw Mark speak at the Gartner Data Center Conference in December where he and Mark Bramfitt of PG&E talked about the state of green IT. I used that as a starting point for our interview:
Jay Fry, Data Center Dialog: In your panel at the Gartner Data Center Conference, you talked about how it's important to bring facilities and IT folks together for improved IT operations. You also touched on bringing operations and process management into the R&D organization and "stretching" people (including yourself) beyond their normal areas of expertise. Do you have some specific suggestions on how to do this or some examples of what's worked for you?
Mark Thiele, VMware: There's no simple answer here. I've been working in IT for a long time and as a result I'm biased in my belief that IT, when used appropriately can solve almost any problem. All joking aside, the reality is that many of the folks that work in IT look at how things get done a little differently than everyone else. An IT person's first reaction to a job that needs to get done is "how can I write a script to automate that?" I've utilized this to my advantage by looking at what are seemingly intractable "non-IT" problems from the IT perspective and shining a new light on them. This IT-centric focus helps to stretch non-IT folks and IT folks alike. As they work together to solve shared problems they come to realize the benefit of the shared experience and uncommon backgrounds. Once this happens, improving operations between groups becomes less of a headache.
DCD: You discussed having a "bridging the gap" person who can look at a data center as a holistic system. How do you find someone to fill that role? What skills should folks look for?
Mark Thiele: This can be a very difficult role to fill. The ideal person is someone who has a strong understanding of IT infrastructure, but an understanding of the importance of dealing with the entire data center as a system. In my case I was able to identify a strong candidate and convince them to take on the new role by explaining the potential opportunity for improvement and bottom-line impact for the company. The data center has become one of the most commonly referenced areas of opportunity in business today. There has never been more focus and change in data centers than there is right now. This kind of change and business importance can be very enticing to forward-thinking and career-driven IT staff.
DCD: One of the things you mentioned in Vegas was that there is a 3-5 year gap between when something is proven to be a good idea for improving IT operations and when people are actually using it. You said you’d like to find a way to shrink that time period. Any specific examples of things that seem "proven" but aren't being used yet? Any ideas how to shrink that time gap?
Mark Thiele: The dynamics of why it often takes years to implement new technology in the data center are many. These dynamics include risk avoidance, cost of entry, myth, intractable staff, and/or inflexible data center facilities. However, the aforementioned factors still don't explain why it often times takes 5 years or even more for proven technologies to be implemented.
The delays are associated with the inability to truly measure and understand the risk/reward of making change in the data center. As an industry we need to carry more responsibility for looking at the long term benefits of new technology vs. the short term potential for disruption in the environment.
Take virtualization as an example. You can pick any of 1,000 white papers that will explain why implementing a major virtualization strategy in your data centers is the best way to improve operations and drive down cost of doing business. Yet almost every day I talk to folks who say "VMware works great, [but] I just can't risk it in production" or "my software provider told me they won't support it on a VM." Thousands of world-class organizations have large "production" VMware solutions installed; how many more do we need before everyone agrees it works?
Part of this problem is aversion to any type of risk perceived or real. If the potential benefit is better Disaster Preparedness, faster provisioning, higher availability, and lower cost of doing business, it should be OK to accept a certain amount of calculated risk. As leaders in business and the IT space we should be obligated to ensure that our teams understand that intelligent risk is OK, in fact it's expected.
DCD: You suggested that people get started on energy-efficiency projects in bite-sized pieces, to show some quick wins. Any specific suggestions about how someone should approach creating that list or any particular projects you would suggest they start with?
Mark Thiele: There is a mountain of information available that can help with identifying power/efficiency opportunities in the data center. There's the Green Grid, APC Data Center University, Emerson's Efficient Data Center portal, LinkedIn groups like Data Center Pulse and many more. Once you've gone through some of the information on what can be done, you need to audit your current data centers to identify and prioritize the gap resolution activities. This prioritized list of gaps or opportunities should then be built into a program. I would highly recommend that anyone initiating a large effort like this should ensure they capture current state relative to space, power, and cooling so that you can measure and report the improvements to your management.
DCD: Who else within someone's company or organization should the IT operations people ally themselves with (besides facilities) to make progress on the data center energy efficiency front?
Mark Thiele: Finance is your friend. If you can demonstrate the potential savings and long term cost of doing business improvements, they will likely become ardent supporters of the effort.
DCD: What has surprised you most about what’s going on in this space today?
Mark Thiele: That it's taken so long for data centers to get this much attention. It's about time for the IT Infrastructure folks to be getting the attention they deserve.
DCD: You mentioned Data Center Pulse, the group of data center operations people that you helped found via LinkedIn. Given the wide range of existing organizations focused different aspects of the data center, why did you feel a need to create a new one?
Mark Thiele: Our primary driver for creating Data Center Pulse was to give data center owner/operators a chance to have a direct and immediate influence on the industry that supports them. We are effectively a working group that will deliver information and opportunity-for-improvement information to any and all vendors who support the data center space. I guess our primary difference from most other orgs is that we are not sponsored and we only allow owner/operators to join the group. We don't have any sales, marketing, business development, recruiting, or press folks in the group.
DCD: What are some of the immediate things you hope Data Center Pulse accomplishes?
Mark Thiele: In the near term, our first major accomplishments have revolved around making the group a functioning entity. We've established a board of directors, and we've grown the group to over 600 members. The members represent over 20 countries and virtually every industry. Our next big adventure is the upcoming Data Center Pulse Summit that will be held in February [next week, actually: Feb. 17-19, 2009 in Santa Clara, CA --Jay]. We will be presenting findings generated by the group at the following AFCOM chapter meeting and [Teladata's] Technology Convergence Conference.
...
Thanks, Mark for the interview. In addition to the data center energy-efficiency resources that Mark mentioned, we have a few up on the Cassatt site as well, with some focused on more general green data center information and some focused on recommendations around server power management issues.
Rich Miller at Data Center Knowledge has also posted a more detailed overview of the Data Center Pulse Summit, if you want more information about the event.
Mark is director of R&D business operations for virtualization giant VMware and as part of that job runs data centers in Palo Alto, Massachusetts, Was
hington, and Bangalore, totaling approximately 85,000 square feet. I've also seen Mark in action at his previous job, where his ideas and initiative helped shape parts of our Active Power Management technology and what became Cassatt Active Response, Standard Edition.I last saw Mark speak at the Gartner Data Center Conference in December where he and Mark Bramfitt of PG&E talked about the state of green IT. I used that as a starting point for our interview:
Jay Fry, Data Center Dialog: In your panel at the Gartner Data Center Conference, you talked about how it's important to bring facilities and IT folks together for improved IT operations. You also touched on bringing operations and process management into the R&D organization and "stretching" people (including yourself) beyond their normal areas of expertise. Do you have some specific suggestions on how to do this or some examples of what's worked for you?
Mark Thiele, VMware: There's no simple answer here. I've been working in IT for a long time and as a result I'm biased in my belief that IT, when used appropriately can solve almost any problem. All joking aside, the reality is that many of the folks that work in IT look at how things get done a little differently than everyone else. An IT person's first reaction to a job that needs to get done is "how can I write a script to automate that?" I've utilized this to my advantage by looking at what are seemingly intractable "non-IT" problems from the IT perspective and shining a new light on them. This IT-centric focus helps to stretch non-IT folks and IT folks alike. As they work together to solve shared problems they come to realize the benefit of the shared experience and uncommon backgrounds. Once this happens, improving operations between groups becomes less of a headache.
DCD: You discussed having a "bridging the gap" person who can look at a data center as a holistic system. How do you find someone to fill that role? What skills should folks look for?
Mark Thiele: This can be a very difficult role to fill. The ideal person is someone who has a strong understanding of IT infrastructure, but an understanding of the importance of dealing with the entire data center as a system. In my case I was able to identify a strong candidate and convince them to take on the new role by explaining the potential opportunity for improvement and bottom-line impact for the company. The data center has become one of the most commonly referenced areas of opportunity in business today. There has never been more focus and change in data centers than there is right now. This kind of change and business importance can be very enticing to forward-thinking and career-driven IT staff.
DCD: One of the things you mentioned in Vegas was that there is a 3-5 year gap between when something is proven to be a good idea for improving IT operations and when people are actually using it. You said you’d like to find a way to shrink that time period. Any specific examples of things that seem "proven" but aren't being used yet? Any ideas how to shrink that time gap?
Mark Thiele: The dynamics of why it often takes years to implement new technology in the data center are many. These dynamics include risk avoidance, cost of entry, myth, intractable staff, and/or inflexible data center facilities. However, the aforementioned factors still don't explain why it often times takes 5 years or even more for proven technologies to be implemented.
The delays are associated with the inability to truly measure and understand the risk/reward of making change in the data center. As an industry we need to carry more responsibility for looking at the long term benefits of new technology vs. the short term potential for disruption in the environment.
Take virtualization as an example. You can pick any of 1,000 white papers that will explain why implementing a major virtualization strategy in your data centers is the best way to improve operations and drive down cost of doing business. Yet almost every day I talk to folks who say "VMware works great, [but] I just can't risk it in production" or "my software provider told me they won't support it on a VM." Thousands of world-class organizations have large "production" VMware solutions installed; how many more do we need before everyone agrees it works?
Part of this problem is aversion to any type of risk perceived or real. If the potential benefit is better Disaster Preparedness, faster provisioning, higher availability, and lower cost of doing business, it should be OK to accept a certain amount of calculated risk. As leaders in business and the IT space we should be obligated to ensure that our teams understand that intelligent risk is OK, in fact it's expected.
DCD: You suggested that people get started on energy-efficiency projects in bite-sized pieces, to show some quick wins. Any specific suggestions about how someone should approach creating that list or any particular projects you would suggest they start with?
Mark Thiele: There is a mountain of information available that can help with identifying power/efficiency opportunities in the data center. There's the Green Grid, APC Data Center University, Emerson's Efficient Data Center portal, LinkedIn groups like Data Center Pulse and many more. Once you've gone through some of the information on what can be done, you need to audit your current data centers to identify and prioritize the gap resolution activities. This prioritized list of gaps or opportunities should then be built into a program. I would highly recommend that anyone initiating a large effort like this should ensure they capture current state relative to space, power, and cooling so that you can measure and report the improvements to your management.
DCD: Who else within someone's company or organization should the IT operations people ally themselves with (besides facilities) to make progress on the data center energy efficiency front?
Mark Thiele: Finance is your friend. If you can demonstrate the potential savings and long term cost of doing business improvements, they will likely become ardent supporters of the effort.
DCD: What has surprised you most about what’s going on in this space today?
Mark Thiele: That it's taken so long for data centers to get this much attention. It's about time for the IT Infrastructure folks to be getting the attention they deserve.
DCD: You mentioned Data Center Pulse, the group of data center operations people that you helped found via LinkedIn. Given the wide range of existing organizations focused different aspects of the data center, why did you feel a need to create a new one?
Mark Thiele: Our primary driver for creating Data Center Pulse was to give data center owner/operators a chance to have a direct and immediate influence on the industry that supports them. We are effectively a working group that will deliver information and opportunity-for-improvement information to any and all vendors who support the data center space. I guess our primary difference from most other orgs is that we are not sponsored and we only allow owner/operators to join the group. We don't have any sales, marketing, business development, recruiting, or press folks in the group.
DCD: What are some of the immediate things you hope Data Center Pulse accomplishes?
Mark Thiele: In the near term, our first major accomplishments have revolved around making the group a functioning entity. We've established a board of directors, and we've grown the group to over 600 members. The members represent over 20 countries and virtually every industry. Our next big adventure is the upcoming Data Center Pulse Summit that will be held in February [next week, actually: Feb. 17-19, 2009 in Santa Clara, CA --Jay]. We will be presenting findings generated by the group at the following AFCOM chapter meeting and [Teladata's] Technology Convergence Conference.
...
Thanks, Mark for the interview. In addition to the data center energy-efficiency resources that Mark mentioned, we have a few up on the Cassatt site as well, with some focused on more general green data center information and some focused on recommendations around server power management issues.
Rich Miller at Data Center Knowledge has also posted a more detailed overview of the Data Center Pulse Summit, if you want more information about the event.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Is your organization ready for an internal cloud?
I'm going to take a post off from the "-ilities" discussion (Disaster Recoverability will be up next) and spend a little time talking about the technical and organizational challenges that many Fortune 1000 companies will face in their move to an internal cloud computing infrastructure.
Since I've lived through a number of these customer engagements over the past few years I thought I'd write up my cheat sheet that basically outlines the things that you need to be aware of and get worked out in your organization before you embark on a move to cloud computing. If you don't pay attention to these, I predict you'll be frustrated along the way by the organizational tension that a move such as this will cause.
Internal clouds are a game-changer on the economics front for companies that have large investments in IT. Creating a cloud-style architecture inside your own data center allows the company to unlock the excess capacity of their existing infrastructure (often locked into vertical stovepipes supporting specific applications.) Once this excess capacity is released for use within the IT environment, the company can then decrease their capital purchasing until the newfound capacity is consumed by new applications. In addition to the capital savings as a result of not having to purchase new hardware to run new applications, there are substantial power savings to the company as well, since the excess capacity is no longer powered up all the time, and is instead brought online only when needed.
Now, this sounds like motherhood and apple pie to me. Who wouldn't want to move to an IT environment that allowed this type of flexibility/cost savings? Well, it turns out that in many large companies the inertia of "business as usual" gets in the way of making this type of transformational change, even if they could see huge benefits in the form of business agility and cost savings (two things that almost everyone is looking for in this current economy to make them more competitive than the next guy).
If you find yourself reading the list below and going "no way, not in my company," then I'd posit that while you may desire the virtues of cloud computing, you'll really struggle to succeed. The limits you'll be placing on the solution due to the organizational issues will mean that many of the virtues of a cloud approach will be lost (I'll try to call out a few while I walk though the list to give you an idea of the trade-offs involved).
What you’ll need to be successful at internal cloud computing:
• Organizational willingness to embrace change. To fully adopt an internal cloud infrastructure, the system, network, and storage admins -- along with application developers -- are all going to have to work together as each group brings their specialty to bear on the hosting requirements of the application being deployed into the cloud. Also, if your organization likes to know exactly where an application is running all the time then cloud computing is only going to be frustrating. In cloud computing, the environment is continually being monitored and optimized to meet the business needs (we call them service-level agreements in Cassat Active Response.) This means that while at any point in time you can know what is running where, that information is only accurate for that instant. Why? In the next instant, something may have failed or an SLA may have been breached, causing the infrastructure to react, changing the allocation of applications to resources. Bottom line, be willing to embrace change in processes, policies, roles and responsibilities or you'll never be successful with a cloud computing solution.
• Willingness to network boot (PXE/BOOTP/DHCP) the computing resources. One of the major value propositions of an internal cloud computing approach is the ability to re-use hardware for different tasks at different times. To allow for this rapid re-deployment of resources, you can't use traditional approaches for imaging a node’s local disk (it takes a long time to copy down a multi-Gb image across the network and once done, if that node fails then the data is lost, since it resides on the local disk). Instead, the use of standard network protocols (NFS/iSCSI) allows for the real-time association of the image to the hardware. This approach also has the byproduct of allowing for very fast failure recovery times. Once a node is found to have failed, it only takes a few seconds to associate the image to new node and start the boot (we recover failed nodes in the time it takes to boot a node plus a few seconds to affect the re-association of the image to its new compute resource)
• Computing resources that support remote power management either through on-board or off-board power controllers. For all of this dynamicism to work, the internal cloud infrastructure must be able to power-control the nodes under management so that a node can be powered down when not needed (saving power) and power it back up when necessary. Most recent computing hardware has on-board controllers specifically for this task (iLo on HP, DRAC on Dell, ALOM/ILOM on Sun…) and the cloud computing infrastructure simply uses these existing interfaces to affect the power operations. If you find yourself in an environment that has older hardware that does not have this support, don't despair. There are numerous vendors that manufacture external Power Distribution Units (PDUs) that can provide the necessary power management for otherwise "dumb" compute nodes.
• Understand that your current static Configuration Management Database (CMDB) becomes real-time/dynamic in an internal cloud computing world. I touched on this under the "embrace change" bullet above, but it's worth calling out specifically. In a cloud computing world where you have pools of capacity (computing, network, and storage) that are associated in real time to applications that need that capacity to provide service, NOTHING is constant. As an example, depending on how you set up your policy, a failure of a node in a higher priority service will cause a node to be allocated from the free pool. If one is not available that matches the applications requirements (number of CPUs, disks, network cards, memory…) then a suitable replacement may be "borrowed" from a lower-priority service. This means that your environment is always changing and evolving to meet your business needs. What this also means is nothing is constant and you'll only find yourself frustrated if you don't change the mindset of static allocation.
• Understand that much of the network configuration will be handled by the internal cloud infrastructure. Now this doesn't necessarily mean your core switches have to be managed by the cloud infrastructure. However, if you want the ability to allocate new compute capacity to an application that has specific networking requirements (like a web server would have if you want it behind a load balancer), then the infrastructure must reconfigure the ports connected to the desired node to be on the right network. This issue can be a show-stopper to providing a full cloud computing solution so talk about this one early and often with your network team so they have input on how they want to architect the network and have time to become comfortable with the level of control required by the infrastructure.
• Boot image storage on the IP network. As I mentioned above, for internal cloud computing to work, you have to separate the application image from the physical node so that the image can be relocated on the fly as necessary to meet your policies. We currently leverage NFS for this separation as it can easily be configured to support this level of dynamicism. Also, using a NAS allows the leveraging of a single IP network and reduces cost/complexity as redundant data paths only have to be engineered for the IP network rather than the IP and the Storage network. I don't mention SAN for the boot device because it can be problematic to move around LUNs on the fly due to the myriad of proprietary vendor switch management APIs. In addition, every server out there ships with at least two on board NICs while SAN HBAs are aftermarket add-ons (to the tune of hundreds of dollars if you want redundant channel bonding). Now this single network approach comes with a downside that I'm going to be upfront about: currently, IP networks are in the 1Gigabit range with 10Gigabit on the horizon, while SAN networks are 2-4Gigibit (you can bond or trunk multiple Ethernets together to get better throughput, but for now we'll leave that aside for this discussion). If you have a very disk-intensive application, you'll need to architect the solution to work within a cloud infrastructure. Specifically, you don't want to be sending that traffic across to a NAS as the throughput can suffer due to the limited bandwidth. You should look to either use local tmp space (if you only need temporary storage) or locally attached SAN that is zoned to a specific set of nodes that can act as a backup to one another in case of failure.
• Applications that run on commodity hardware. Internal cloud computing provides much more benefit when the applications to be managed run on commodity hardware. This hardware could be x86, POWER, or SPARC, depending on your environment, but should be the lower- to mid-level servers. It doesn't make a lot of sense to take something like a Sun SPARC F25K and put it into a cloud infrastructure, as it is already built to address scalability/availability issues within the chassis and has built-in high-speed interconnects for fast data access. With commodity hardware comes numbers and that is where a cloud infrastructure really shines, as it dramatically increases the span of control for the operators as they manage more at the SLA level and less at the node level.
Well, that's a lot to digest so I think I'll stop now. I'm not trying to scare anyone away from moving to an internal cloud computing infrastructure. On the contrary, I believe they are the future of IT computing. The current “best” practices are, to a large extent, responsible for the current management and over-provisioning issues facing most IT shops. However, for you to address the over-provisioning and benefit from a continuously optimized computing environment where the excess capacity you have is efficiently allocated to the applications that need it (instead of sitting idle in a specific stove pipe), you need to understand the fundamental issues that stand ahead of you. In your transition to internal cloud computing you will need to actively work to address these new issues, or else you will find yourself with just a different set of problems to chase than the ones you have now.
Since I've lived through a number of these customer engagements over the past few years I thought I'd write up my cheat sheet that basically outlines the things that you need to be aware of and get worked out in your organization before you embark on a move to cloud computing. If you don't pay attention to these, I predict you'll be frustrated along the way by the organizational tension that a move such as this will cause.
Internal clouds are a game-changer on the economics front for companies that have large investments in IT. Creating a cloud-style architecture inside your own data center allows the company to unlock the excess capacity of their existing infrastructure (often locked into vertical stovepipes supporting specific applications.) Once this excess capacity is released for use within the IT environment, the company can then decrease their capital purchasing until the newfound capacity is consumed by new applications. In addition to the capital savings as a result of not having to purchase new hardware to run new applications, there are substantial power savings to the company as well, since the excess capacity is no longer powered up all the time, and is instead brought online only when needed.
Now, this sounds like motherhood and apple pie to me. Who wouldn't want to move to an IT environment that allowed this type of flexibility/cost savings? Well, it turns out that in many large companies the inertia of "business as usual" gets in the way of making this type of transformational change, even if they could see huge benefits in the form of business agility and cost savings (two things that almost everyone is looking for in this current economy to make them more competitive than the next guy).
If you find yourself reading the list below and going "no way, not in my company," then I'd posit that while you may desire the virtues of cloud computing, you'll really struggle to succeed. The limits you'll be placing on the solution due to the organizational issues will mean that many of the virtues of a cloud approach will be lost (I'll try to call out a few while I walk though the list to give you an idea of the trade-offs involved).
What you’ll need to be successful at internal cloud computing:
• Organizational willingness to embrace change. To fully adopt an internal cloud infrastructure, the system, network, and storage admins -- along with application developers -- are all going to have to work together as each group brings their specialty to bear on the hosting requirements of the application being deployed into the cloud. Also, if your organization likes to know exactly where an application is running all the time then cloud computing is only going to be frustrating. In cloud computing, the environment is continually being monitored and optimized to meet the business needs (we call them service-level agreements in Cassat Active Response.) This means that while at any point in time you can know what is running where, that information is only accurate for that instant. Why? In the next instant, something may have failed or an SLA may have been breached, causing the infrastructure to react, changing the allocation of applications to resources. Bottom line, be willing to embrace change in processes, policies, roles and responsibilities or you'll never be successful with a cloud computing solution.
• Willingness to network boot (PXE/BOOTP/DHCP) the computing resources. One of the major value propositions of an internal cloud computing approach is the ability to re-use hardware for different tasks at different times. To allow for this rapid re-deployment of resources, you can't use traditional approaches for imaging a node’s local disk (it takes a long time to copy down a multi-Gb image across the network and once done, if that node fails then the data is lost, since it resides on the local disk). Instead, the use of standard network protocols (NFS/iSCSI) allows for the real-time association of the image to the hardware. This approach also has the byproduct of allowing for very fast failure recovery times. Once a node is found to have failed, it only takes a few seconds to associate the image to new node and start the boot (we recover failed nodes in the time it takes to boot a node plus a few seconds to affect the re-association of the image to its new compute resource)
• Computing resources that support remote power management either through on-board or off-board power controllers. For all of this dynamicism to work, the internal cloud infrastructure must be able to power-control the nodes under management so that a node can be powered down when not needed (saving power) and power it back up when necessary. Most recent computing hardware has on-board controllers specifically for this task (iLo on HP, DRAC on Dell, ALOM/ILOM on Sun…) and the cloud computing infrastructure simply uses these existing interfaces to affect the power operations. If you find yourself in an environment that has older hardware that does not have this support, don't despair. There are numerous vendors that manufacture external Power Distribution Units (PDUs) that can provide the necessary power management for otherwise "dumb" compute nodes.
• Understand that your current static Configuration Management Database (CMDB) becomes real-time/dynamic in an internal cloud computing world. I touched on this under the "embrace change" bullet above, but it's worth calling out specifically. In a cloud computing world where you have pools of capacity (computing, network, and storage) that are associated in real time to applications that need that capacity to provide service, NOTHING is constant. As an example, depending on how you set up your policy, a failure of a node in a higher priority service will cause a node to be allocated from the free pool. If one is not available that matches the applications requirements (number of CPUs, disks, network cards, memory…) then a suitable replacement may be "borrowed" from a lower-priority service. This means that your environment is always changing and evolving to meet your business needs. What this also means is nothing is constant and you'll only find yourself frustrated if you don't change the mindset of static allocation.
• Understand that much of the network configuration will be handled by the internal cloud infrastructure. Now this doesn't necessarily mean your core switches have to be managed by the cloud infrastructure. However, if you want the ability to allocate new compute capacity to an application that has specific networking requirements (like a web server would have if you want it behind a load balancer), then the infrastructure must reconfigure the ports connected to the desired node to be on the right network. This issue can be a show-stopper to providing a full cloud computing solution so talk about this one early and often with your network team so they have input on how they want to architect the network and have time to become comfortable with the level of control required by the infrastructure.
• Boot image storage on the IP network. As I mentioned above, for internal cloud computing to work, you have to separate the application image from the physical node so that the image can be relocated on the fly as necessary to meet your policies. We currently leverage NFS for this separation as it can easily be configured to support this level of dynamicism. Also, using a NAS allows the leveraging of a single IP network and reduces cost/complexity as redundant data paths only have to be engineered for the IP network rather than the IP and the Storage network. I don't mention SAN for the boot device because it can be problematic to move around LUNs on the fly due to the myriad of proprietary vendor switch management APIs. In addition, every server out there ships with at least two on board NICs while SAN HBAs are aftermarket add-ons (to the tune of hundreds of dollars if you want redundant channel bonding). Now this single network approach comes with a downside that I'm going to be upfront about: currently, IP networks are in the 1Gigabit range with 10Gigabit on the horizon, while SAN networks are 2-4Gigibit (you can bond or trunk multiple Ethernets together to get better throughput, but for now we'll leave that aside for this discussion). If you have a very disk-intensive application, you'll need to architect the solution to work within a cloud infrastructure. Specifically, you don't want to be sending that traffic across to a NAS as the throughput can suffer due to the limited bandwidth. You should look to either use local tmp space (if you only need temporary storage) or locally attached SAN that is zoned to a specific set of nodes that can act as a backup to one another in case of failure.
• Applications that run on commodity hardware. Internal cloud computing provides much more benefit when the applications to be managed run on commodity hardware. This hardware could be x86, POWER, or SPARC, depending on your environment, but should be the lower- to mid-level servers. It doesn't make a lot of sense to take something like a Sun SPARC F25K and put it into a cloud infrastructure, as it is already built to address scalability/availability issues within the chassis and has built-in high-speed interconnects for fast data access. With commodity hardware comes numbers and that is where a cloud infrastructure really shines, as it dramatically increases the span of control for the operators as they manage more at the SLA level and less at the node level.
Well, that's a lot to digest so I think I'll stop now. I'm not trying to scare anyone away from moving to an internal cloud computing infrastructure. On the contrary, I believe they are the future of IT computing. The current “best” practices are, to a large extent, responsible for the current management and over-provisioning issues facing most IT shops. However, for you to address the over-provisioning and benefit from a continuously optimized computing environment where the excess capacity you have is efficiently allocated to the applications that need it (instead of sitting idle in a specific stove pipe), you need to understand the fundamental issues that stand ahead of you. In your transition to internal cloud computing you will need to actively work to address these new issues, or else you will find yourself with just a different set of problems to chase than the ones you have now.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Is it safe to discuss automating your data center yet?
I've been at Cassatt for over 3 years now and during that time one of words that I've wanted to use the most in describing what our software does is "automation." The only problem: it's a four letter word for IT. Until now. Maybe.
In the strictest sense of the word, Cassatt's software is all about automation. The goal of the software is to run your data center more efficiently by doing most of the work for you. It balances the resources you have (your hardware, virtual servers, applications, networks) with the application demand on those resources using policies you set -- and it does the balancing and re-balancing automatically. You end up with a big pool of compute power that gets called into service to support your apps only as needed, without someone having to manually adjust anything.
(By the way, you should probably be saying about now: "hey, that sounds like a cloud, but one that uses the stuff you already have inside your own data center" -- but that's another topic altogether.)
So why be timid about using the word "automation," then, if it's accurate? Because, in fact, it's something that IT folks have proven to be very gun-shy about. It's a concept that, frankly, doesn't have a lot of fans. As an example, the InfoWorld article by Eric Knorr debating the legitimacy of internal clouds also expressed some of this skepticism about automation.
Why is everyone afraid of automation?
From our experiences with customers, there are probably three reasons. First, IT and data center operations groups fear change. And with good reason. Their job is to make sure stuff works. Their motto usually is: if it's working, don't mess with it.
Second, automation itself requires a great deal of trust. You are replacing what a thinking person has been doing with a set of code. An IT ops person is going to want to see it working in action before he or she feels good about that. It's the way these guys are wired. (See previous paragraph for the reason.)
Third, vendors have shot themselves in the foot repeatedly by overpromising and underdelivering. (This was Eric Knorr's point noted above.) When things don't live up to the hype and fail to work as promised, successful IT ops folks write that down in their little black book of "see, I told you sos."
However, the bad economy may be changing all that. The 451 Group and others deeply involved in this space (including us here at Cassatt) have been noting that change may be afoot. Why? Automation is something that higher-up execs begin to think about in a downturn, especially when lay-offs are happening all around them. Wouldn't it be great to be able to do more stuff with fewer people? Or worse: now that we have fewer people, how do we keep the lights on in the data center?
In the Great Recession, automating how you run your data center may be something you need to consider in order to survive.
Of course, there are several angles on what "automation" actually is. There's the HP/Opsware and BMC/BladeLogic automation, which sets up configurations of your software and apps on your servers. And then there's automating the run-time of your data center -- the day-to-day running of your IT systems after you have them configured -- where a huge percentage of your operational expenses go, like Cassatt does.
Either way, it's smart to get ahead of this. It's always a good idea to be one of the folks helping to push forward change rather than clinging to the current business-as-usual plans. Especially when business-as-usual might actually mean going-out-of-business. Or at least an extended "vacation" for some of your IT staff.
The thing that got me thinking about all this was a podcast that Mike Vizard of eWeek did with Cassatt CEO Bill Coleman this week about how data centers are run, why it has been so hard for IT to adopt automation to help them out, and how we might get out of this "rut of complacency."
The main problem running data centers, said Bill, "is not scale; it's complexity. We've had a good run with virtualization and data center consolidation, but they've attacked the scale problem and in doing so have added to the complexity problem. The issue going forward is that if we don't attack this, we'll get beyond human scale. I don't think there's any way to do that without automating the operations part, doing for data centers what the telephone switching system did for the telephone system."
So how do company IT departments begin to make these changes? "The only way to do this is an evolutionary process, not a revolutionary process," said Bill. "And I think we are seeing the beginning of that with cloud computing, both internally and externally."
You can listen to the whole podcast here. Total running time is about 18 minutes.
In the strictest sense of the word, Cassatt's software is all about automation. The goal of the software is to run your data center more efficiently by doing most of the work for you. It balances the resources you have (your hardware, virtual servers, applications, networks) with the application demand on those resources using policies you set -- and it does the balancing and re-balancing automatically. You end up with a big pool of compute power that gets called into service to support your apps only as needed, without someone having to manually adjust anything.
(By the way, you should probably be saying about now: "hey, that sounds like a cloud, but one that uses the stuff you already have inside your own data center" -- but that's another topic altogether.)
So why be timid about using the word "automation," then, if it's accurate? Because, in fact, it's something that IT folks have proven to be very gun-shy about. It's a concept that, frankly, doesn't have a lot of fans. As an example, the InfoWorld article by Eric Knorr debating the legitimacy of internal clouds also expressed some of this skepticism about automation.
Why is everyone afraid of automation?
From our experiences with customers, there are probably three reasons. First, IT and data center operations groups fear change. And with good reason. Their job is to make sure stuff works. Their motto usually is: if it's working, don't mess with it.
Second, automation itself requires a great deal of trust. You are replacing what a thinking person has been doing with a set of code. An IT ops person is going to want to see it working in action before he or she feels good about that. It's the way these guys are wired. (See previous paragraph for the reason.)
Third, vendors have shot themselves in the foot repeatedly by overpromising and underdelivering. (This was Eric Knorr's point noted above.) When things don't live up to the hype and fail to work as promised, successful IT ops folks write that down in their little black book of "see, I told you sos."
However, the bad economy may be changing all that. The 451 Group and others deeply involved in this space (including us here at Cassatt) have been noting that change may be afoot. Why? Automation is something that higher-up execs begin to think about in a downturn, especially when lay-offs are happening all around them. Wouldn't it be great to be able to do more stuff with fewer people? Or worse: now that we have fewer people, how do we keep the lights on in the data center?
In the Great Recession, automating how you run your data center may be something you need to consider in order to survive.
Of course, there are several angles on what "automation" actually is. There's the HP/Opsware and BMC/BladeLogic automation, which sets up configurations of your software and apps on your servers. And then there's automating the run-time of your data center -- the day-to-day running of your IT systems after you have them configured -- where a huge percentage of your operational expenses go, like Cassatt does.
Either way, it's smart to get ahead of this. It's always a good idea to be one of the folks helping to push forward change rather than clinging to the current business-as-usual plans. Especially when business-as-usual might actually mean going-out-of-business. Or at least an extended "vacation" for some of your IT staff.
The thing that got me thinking about all this was a podcast that Mike Vizard of eWeek did with Cassatt CEO Bill Coleman this week about how data centers are run, why it has been so hard for IT to adopt automation to help them out, and how we might get out of this "rut of complacency."
The main problem running data centers, said Bill, "is not scale; it's complexity. We've had a good run with virtualization and data center consolidation, but they've attacked the scale problem and in doing so have added to the complexity problem. The issue going forward is that if we don't attack this, we'll get beyond human scale. I don't think there's any way to do that without automating the operations part, doing for data centers what the telephone switching system did for the telephone system."
So how do company IT departments begin to make these changes? "The only way to do this is an evolutionary process, not a revolutionary process," said Bill. "And I think we are seeing the beginning of that with cloud computing, both internally and externally."
You can listen to the whole podcast here. Total running time is about 18 minutes.
Friday, January 30, 2009
How one editor cuts through the cloud computing hype
Earlier in the week, I posted the first part of an interview I did with Derrick Harris, editor of the late On-Demand Enterprise site. He offered a few thoughts of his own about the state of cloud computing before heading off to his new gig with GigaOM.
Highlights from Derrick's interview so far: he thinks the table is set in 2009 for some major strides in cloud computing, despite the economic downturn. Why? Cloud computing's value prop is, plain and
simple, impressive. Not that it won't be rough out there for customers and vendors this year. Derrick wasn't willing to go too far with predictions for that very reason. I can't say I blame him. Especially with those two competing forces currently dominating the landscape on cloud computing: the unflappable vendor hype machine counterbalanced by the bleak reality of a super-cautious, recession-inspired IT spending environment.
In the concluding part of the interview, I asked Derrick to talk a bit about how as a journalist he weeds through everything people tell him, especially with a topic as popular as cloud computing, to help IT management readers find the really useful nuggets.
Jay Fry, Data Center Dialog: There's obviously some criticism out there that all the cloud stuff is way, way overhyped. Do you feel it is? How do you avoid falling into that trap as a journalist?
Derrick Harris: Over-scrutinized maybe, but definitely not overhyped. As I might have made clear, I'm a firm believer in the cloud. The problem as I see it is that it's still so early, but some commentators seem to expect cloud solutions to be as mature and robust as their legacy counterparts. Pardon the cliche, but we need to give the seeds some time to grow.
I also see an issue with too much coverage, especially as it relates to the outer edges of what is considered cloud computing. I wrote several blogs over the past few months bemoaning how everything is labeled as cloud computing, even if it is little more than SaaS or consumer Web services (e.g., iPhone apps). This leads to unnecessary terminology saturation, as I don't think too many consumers consider what they're doing to be cloud computing. I try to avoid this trap by constantly reminding myself that my focus is on commercial use (for the most part), as well as by drawing distinct lines between cloud computing and cloud services.
DCD: What part of being a journalist following this space is the most interesting?
Derrick Harris: I have two favorite parts. One is watching Amazon continue to expand the scope of its cloud operations into areas unfathomed when EC2 was first announced, and the other is speaking with start-ups about why their solutions are the next big thing. Across the board, everyone is just so excited, which makes it fun to cover.
DCD: What part do you dread?
Derrick Harris: Journalistically, I dread having to decide where to draw the line between what is cloud and what is not. Every publication has its editorial scope, and as more vendors (and, increasingly, managed hosting providers) try to leverage cloud computing's good will, it becomes difficult to decide what's cloud and what's something else -- and then figure out where, if anywhere, that something else belongs within a given site.
DCD: What happened with On-Demand Enterprise? Was the bad economy the publication's death knell, or is it a commentary about the level of interest in this topic (which would seem odd, given that all of the other pubs are currently covering the same topics very aggressively)?
Derrick Harris: A lack of advertising revenue is a surefire killer of any publication, so the economy definitely bears some of the blame. Of course, that explanation ignores other factors that no doubt played into the decision to suspend publication, among them the increased competition to which you alluded. Both the company and I knew it was somewhat risky to change from the established GRIDtoday to the, essentially, new On-Demand Enterprise, but we also knew it was the right decision. Unfortunately, a confluence of factors just overpowered our best intentions.
DCD: In our Cassatt 2008 data center survey, respondents said they got most of their information about the data center energy efficiency topic from vendors rather than "independent" industry experts. How do you think IT folks are getting their information these days? How is this changing and how rapidly? What should/can industry publications (or even vendors, since, apparently people do listen to them for some things) do to help them?
Derrick Harris: I hope soon that IT folks all will be getting their information from GigaOM (kidding, but not really). Seriously, though, I think for many topics, including energy efficiency, vendors are an abundant source of information (albeit biased information) because news publications are too busy debating whether a particular paradigm can work. I understand that a key role of the press is to question authority (in this case, IT vendors), but IT users are results-oriented people, and if information about how they can best leverage cloud computing is more useful to them than a commentary on why cloud computing will never work, they will seek out what they need regardless the source.
I see tried and true areas like storage and networking covered very well by the IT press, and I think this is rapidly becoming the case with technologies like virtualization or energy efficiency, and whole paradigms like cloud computing. Outside forces are making certain things even more important to readers, and as publications become more comfortable with these technologies, they can provide the kinds of information that readers crave. From a publication's point of view, it needs to make sure a trend is for real before it starts publishing best practices and acquiring granular knowledge.
...
Thanks to Derrick for the interview. I suppose I should update our blogroll to remove Derrick's old On-Demand Enterprise links, but I think I'll wait until he kicks off his new role at GigaOM. Oh, and Derrick, I hope they spring for a new photo for you.
One final comment: following up on one of the topics Derrick and I discussed, Cassatt is putting the finishing touches on a new data center survey to see how attitudes and plans about data center operations, cloud computing, and energy efficiency have changed since last year. We'll share that as soon as we have all the data in. Results from the Cassatt 2008 survey are summarized here (no registration required), or available in more detail in this white paper (quick registration required). Change has been the watchword in politics and the economy over the past 12 months; will data center operations be any different?
Highlights from Derrick's interview so far: he thinks the table is set in 2009 for some major strides in cloud computing, despite the economic downturn. Why? Cloud computing's value prop is, plain and
simple, impressive. Not that it won't be rough out there for customers and vendors this year. Derrick wasn't willing to go too far with predictions for that very reason. I can't say I blame him. Especially with those two competing forces currently dominating the landscape on cloud computing: the unflappable vendor hype machine counterbalanced by the bleak reality of a super-cautious, recession-inspired IT spending environment.In the concluding part of the interview, I asked Derrick to talk a bit about how as a journalist he weeds through everything people tell him, especially with a topic as popular as cloud computing, to help IT management readers find the really useful nuggets.
Jay Fry, Data Center Dialog: There's obviously some criticism out there that all the cloud stuff is way, way overhyped. Do you feel it is? How do you avoid falling into that trap as a journalist?
Derrick Harris: Over-scrutinized maybe, but definitely not overhyped. As I might have made clear, I'm a firm believer in the cloud. The problem as I see it is that it's still so early, but some commentators seem to expect cloud solutions to be as mature and robust as their legacy counterparts. Pardon the cliche, but we need to give the seeds some time to grow.
I also see an issue with too much coverage, especially as it relates to the outer edges of what is considered cloud computing. I wrote several blogs over the past few months bemoaning how everything is labeled as cloud computing, even if it is little more than SaaS or consumer Web services (e.g., iPhone apps). This leads to unnecessary terminology saturation, as I don't think too many consumers consider what they're doing to be cloud computing. I try to avoid this trap by constantly reminding myself that my focus is on commercial use (for the most part), as well as by drawing distinct lines between cloud computing and cloud services.
DCD: What part of being a journalist following this space is the most interesting?
Derrick Harris: I have two favorite parts. One is watching Amazon continue to expand the scope of its cloud operations into areas unfathomed when EC2 was first announced, and the other is speaking with start-ups about why their solutions are the next big thing. Across the board, everyone is just so excited, which makes it fun to cover.
DCD: What part do you dread?
Derrick Harris: Journalistically, I dread having to decide where to draw the line between what is cloud and what is not. Every publication has its editorial scope, and as more vendors (and, increasingly, managed hosting providers) try to leverage cloud computing's good will, it becomes difficult to decide what's cloud and what's something else -- and then figure out where, if anywhere, that something else belongs within a given site.
DCD: What happened with On-Demand Enterprise? Was the bad economy the publication's death knell, or is it a commentary about the level of interest in this topic (which would seem odd, given that all of the other pubs are currently covering the same topics very aggressively)?
Derrick Harris: A lack of advertising revenue is a surefire killer of any publication, so the economy definitely bears some of the blame. Of course, that explanation ignores other factors that no doubt played into the decision to suspend publication, among them the increased competition to which you alluded. Both the company and I knew it was somewhat risky to change from the established GRIDtoday to the, essentially, new On-Demand Enterprise, but we also knew it was the right decision. Unfortunately, a confluence of factors just overpowered our best intentions.
DCD: In our Cassatt 2008 data center survey, respondents said they got most of their information about the data center energy efficiency topic from vendors rather than "independent" industry experts. How do you think IT folks are getting their information these days? How is this changing and how rapidly? What should/can industry publications (or even vendors, since, apparently people do listen to them for some things) do to help them?
Derrick Harris: I hope soon that IT folks all will be getting their information from GigaOM (kidding, but not really). Seriously, though, I think for many topics, including energy efficiency, vendors are an abundant source of information (albeit biased information) because news publications are too busy debating whether a particular paradigm can work. I understand that a key role of the press is to question authority (in this case, IT vendors), but IT users are results-oriented people, and if information about how they can best leverage cloud computing is more useful to them than a commentary on why cloud computing will never work, they will seek out what they need regardless the source.
I see tried and true areas like storage and networking covered very well by the IT press, and I think this is rapidly becoming the case with technologies like virtualization or energy efficiency, and whole paradigms like cloud computing. Outside forces are making certain things even more important to readers, and as publications become more comfortable with these technologies, they can provide the kinds of information that readers crave. From a publication's point of view, it needs to make sure a trend is for real before it starts publishing best practices and acquiring granular knowledge.
...
Thanks to Derrick for the interview. I suppose I should update our blogroll to remove Derrick's old On-Demand Enterprise links, but I think I'll wait until he kicks off his new role at GigaOM. Oh, and Derrick, I hope they spring for a new photo for you.
One final comment: following up on one of the topics Derrick and I discussed, Cassatt is putting the finishing touches on a new data center survey to see how attitudes and plans about data center operations, cloud computing, and energy efficiency have changed since last year. We'll share that as soon as we have all the data in. Results from the Cassatt 2008 survey are summarized here (no registration required), or available in more detail in this white paper (quick registration required). Change has been the watchword in politics and the economy over the past 12 months; will data center operations be any different?
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Derrick Harris interview: Cloud computing 'blows away' grid's value prop
For those who watch the cloud space, you probably noticed that the bad economy took down one of the more rational voices in the conversation a few weeks back. On Dec. 19, On-Demand Enterprise (once known as GRIDtoday) froze its content and sent its editorial staff packing. Their depressing blurb saying as much is atop all of their site’s pages now.
Derrick Harris, the editor of that publication, was one of the casualties. Derrick covered the move to on-demand computing in the virtual pages of that pub, helping clear away some of the
fog for readers. He had been providing a sort of measuring stick for the expansion and shifts in the cloud discussion, and along the way was never afraid to call vendors on what they were doing. Needless to say, it was a bummer for the community to have that pub collapse.
The good news: I have it on good authority that you'll be hearing from Derrick again soon. In fact, he's due to resurface with the good folks over at GigaOM shortly. In the meantime, I thought I'd get Derrick's thoughts on the cloud computing space that he has covered pretty thoroughly for so long. (How's that for turning the tables a bit on one of our journalist friends?)
To give you an idea of his healthy skepticism, here's a bit from one of his posts last summer: "Personally, I have had my fill of cloud computing for a while. Depending on who you ask, it's either great or it's terrible, it's either the biggest IT innovation since the PC or it's an elaborate ruse designed to both take your money and leave you and your data as vulnerable as a newborn. As I've stated on numerous occasions, the truth -- presently and in the real world -- resides somewhere in the middle."
I also like this snippet (from the same post), which, whether he meant it that way or not, is a great summary of the State of the Cloud, which seems to still be holding true at the moment: "Long story short: I'm tired of writing about cloud computing every week (I really am), but I cannot stand to see the propagation of misconceptions without at least voicing a rational opinion in the name of clarification. Enterprise-wise, cloud computing is not ready for primetime just yet, but there are plenty of reasons that make it an attractive option, with production-ready in-house versions being a near-term reality. In the meantime, big companies will use it for testing purposes, small companies might use it for real, and the cloud providers will continue to hone their offerings." Three cheers for rational discourse.
With that, here's the first part of my interview with Derrick:
Jay Fry, Data Center Dialog: From your time as managing editor at GRIDtoday and then as it became On-Demand Enterprise, you've had a chance to watch (and bring attention to) the rise of cloud computing. What convinced you that this "cloud" stuff was going to be something worth covering and something impactful?
Derrick Harris: I think what most convinced me that cloud computing is worth covering is how it parallels -- and then blows away -- the value propositions touted by grid vendors a few years ago. When I first started at GRIDtoday, there was much talk about capacity on demand, utility-style access, etc., as they related to grid computing, but the reality was that these capabilities only benefited certain application types, and then only grid-enabled applications. As cloud computing (both internal and external) started to take shape, this capacity-on-demand value prop was expanded to reach many more applications, flexibility was increased, and, generally, far less work and infrastructural change was required to take advantage of these benefits.
DCD: How important do you think cloud computing is going to be? What sort of impact do you think it will have on enterprises?
Derrick Harris: I think it's going to be very important, eventually becoming all but ubiquitous -- there are just too many cost savings and competitive advantages to be had by moving certain operations to the cloud. (That said, I'm not about to venture a guess as to when this ubiquity will be reality.) As far impact goes, I think Werner Vogels says it best when he talks about eliminating "undifferentiated heavy lifting" and focusing human and financial resources on a company's strengths. That could mean unprecedented levels of productivity.
DCD: What are some of the most interesting/compelling components of what's going on in the cloud space right now? What’s headed in the right direction?
Derrick Harris: I think one of the dead-on trends right now (and not just because I'm talking to someone from Cassatt) is the incorporation of policy-based power management into internal cloud offerings. This really melds the on-demand, hands-free promise of cloud computing with the harsh realities that companies need to save money wherever they can and, in some areas, additional power is tough to come by. It also allows internal vendors to compete with external providers on the cost-savings and green fronts. The increased availability of external clouds supporting Windows would seem to be a big deal, as well.
DCD: What's headed toward a dead-end?
Derrick Harris: I think it's too early to call anything a dead end just yet, as most offerings are in their early stages, but I do think large vendors need to be wary of building their external cloud platforms too cumbersome and/or too proprietary. It is the simplicity and openness of cloud computing that are so compelling.
DCD: What's the most surprising trend, innovation, or happening that you’ve seen recently?
Derrick Harris: I don't know that it's surprising, but I am very intrigued by the notion of using humans as cloud resources. Amazon Web Services' Mechanical Turk probably is the most prominent example of this, but I've also seen it in the QA testing area with uTest. Cloud computing is all about evolving how we compute, so I always am interested when I see unique ways of defining "computing."
DCD: Any predictions you'd care to make for 2009 or cloud computing or enterprise IT in general?
Derrick Harris: Not really, other than that I think the table has been set for 2009 to be a big year for cloud players – particularly when it comes to attracting enterprise users. Most everyone has put their stake in the ground, some have really solidified their offerings, and there is plenty of user interest.
DCD: What effect do you think this lovely economy will have on the adoption of cloud computing? I've heard comments both ways.
Derrick Harris: Well, vendors and some analysts have said cloud computing will be a savior of IT budgets in this nightmarish economy. Logically, this forecast makes a lot of sense, and companies willing to give cloud a try could reap substantial rewards. However, I think the reality might be that many organizations will see the economy as another reason to naysay cloud computing, feeling that failure could be fatal so it's better to just maintain the status quo. I don't mean to skirt around the question, but I just think it's too early to tell.
If there is a surefire bright spot, it is start-ups. Innovation certainly hasn't died, and with credit and funding becoming scarce, cloud computing will continue to be a great way for start-ups (particularly Web-based start-ups) to keep their IT costs manageable so they can grow the end product. Success stories already are piling up.
...
Next time: More from Derrick on the perils of being a high-tech journalist in this economy.
Derrick Harris, the editor of that publication, was one of the casualties. Derrick covered the move to on-demand computing in the virtual pages of that pub, helping clear away some of the
fog for readers. He had been providing a sort of measuring stick for the expansion and shifts in the cloud discussion, and along the way was never afraid to call vendors on what they were doing. Needless to say, it was a bummer for the community to have that pub collapse.The good news: I have it on good authority that you'll be hearing from Derrick again soon. In fact, he's due to resurface with the good folks over at GigaOM shortly. In the meantime, I thought I'd get Derrick's thoughts on the cloud computing space that he has covered pretty thoroughly for so long. (How's that for turning the tables a bit on one of our journalist friends?)
To give you an idea of his healthy skepticism, here's a bit from one of his posts last summer: "Personally, I have had my fill of cloud computing for a while. Depending on who you ask, it's either great or it's terrible, it's either the biggest IT innovation since the PC or it's an elaborate ruse designed to both take your money and leave you and your data as vulnerable as a newborn. As I've stated on numerous occasions, the truth -- presently and in the real world -- resides somewhere in the middle."
I also like this snippet (from the same post), which, whether he meant it that way or not, is a great summary of the State of the Cloud, which seems to still be holding true at the moment: "Long story short: I'm tired of writing about cloud computing every week (I really am), but I cannot stand to see the propagation of misconceptions without at least voicing a rational opinion in the name of clarification. Enterprise-wise, cloud computing is not ready for primetime just yet, but there are plenty of reasons that make it an attractive option, with production-ready in-house versions being a near-term reality. In the meantime, big companies will use it for testing purposes, small companies might use it for real, and the cloud providers will continue to hone their offerings." Three cheers for rational discourse.
With that, here's the first part of my interview with Derrick:
Jay Fry, Data Center Dialog: From your time as managing editor at GRIDtoday and then as it became On-Demand Enterprise, you've had a chance to watch (and bring attention to) the rise of cloud computing. What convinced you that this "cloud" stuff was going to be something worth covering and something impactful?
Derrick Harris: I think what most convinced me that cloud computing is worth covering is how it parallels -- and then blows away -- the value propositions touted by grid vendors a few years ago. When I first started at GRIDtoday, there was much talk about capacity on demand, utility-style access, etc., as they related to grid computing, but the reality was that these capabilities only benefited certain application types, and then only grid-enabled applications. As cloud computing (both internal and external) started to take shape, this capacity-on-demand value prop was expanded to reach many more applications, flexibility was increased, and, generally, far less work and infrastructural change was required to take advantage of these benefits.
DCD: How important do you think cloud computing is going to be? What sort of impact do you think it will have on enterprises?
Derrick Harris: I think it's going to be very important, eventually becoming all but ubiquitous -- there are just too many cost savings and competitive advantages to be had by moving certain operations to the cloud. (That said, I'm not about to venture a guess as to when this ubiquity will be reality.) As far impact goes, I think Werner Vogels says it best when he talks about eliminating "undifferentiated heavy lifting" and focusing human and financial resources on a company's strengths. That could mean unprecedented levels of productivity.
DCD: What are some of the most interesting/compelling components of what's going on in the cloud space right now? What’s headed in the right direction?
Derrick Harris: I think one of the dead-on trends right now (and not just because I'm talking to someone from Cassatt) is the incorporation of policy-based power management into internal cloud offerings. This really melds the on-demand, hands-free promise of cloud computing with the harsh realities that companies need to save money wherever they can and, in some areas, additional power is tough to come by. It also allows internal vendors to compete with external providers on the cost-savings and green fronts. The increased availability of external clouds supporting Windows would seem to be a big deal, as well.
DCD: What's headed toward a dead-end?
Derrick Harris: I think it's too early to call anything a dead end just yet, as most offerings are in their early stages, but I do think large vendors need to be wary of building their external cloud platforms too cumbersome and/or too proprietary. It is the simplicity and openness of cloud computing that are so compelling.
DCD: What's the most surprising trend, innovation, or happening that you’ve seen recently?
Derrick Harris: I don't know that it's surprising, but I am very intrigued by the notion of using humans as cloud resources. Amazon Web Services' Mechanical Turk probably is the most prominent example of this, but I've also seen it in the QA testing area with uTest. Cloud computing is all about evolving how we compute, so I always am interested when I see unique ways of defining "computing."
DCD: Any predictions you'd care to make for 2009 or cloud computing or enterprise IT in general?
Derrick Harris: Not really, other than that I think the table has been set for 2009 to be a big year for cloud players – particularly when it comes to attracting enterprise users. Most everyone has put their stake in the ground, some have really solidified their offerings, and there is plenty of user interest.
DCD: What effect do you think this lovely economy will have on the adoption of cloud computing? I've heard comments both ways.
Derrick Harris: Well, vendors and some analysts have said cloud computing will be a savior of IT budgets in this nightmarish economy. Logically, this forecast makes a lot of sense, and companies willing to give cloud a try could reap substantial rewards. However, I think the reality might be that many organizations will see the economy as another reason to naysay cloud computing, feeling that failure could be fatal so it's better to just maintain the status quo. I don't mean to skirt around the question, but I just think it's too early to tell.
If there is a surefire bright spot, it is start-ups. Innovation certainly hasn't died, and with credit and funding becoming scarce, cloud computing will continue to be a great way for start-ups (particularly Web-based start-ups) to keep their IT costs manageable so they can grow the end product. Success stories already are piling up.
...
Next time: More from Derrick on the perils of being a high-tech journalist in this economy.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Public/private 'hybrid' cloud computing: Sooner or later?
It's good to know that amid bank and technology stock prices cratering, and joblessness hitting 15-year highs here in California, and the feel-good sobriety of Barack Obama's inauguration, the tech industry is still up for a good debate. The debate on the legitimacy of internal clouds (called private clouds by many) raged on last week in the blogosphere, Twitter, and even on the official sites of industry publications and an analyst or two. The internal cloud topic continues to strike a chord.
But as all of this discussion swirled around, some of the ground started shifting a bit, too. If internal clouds are interesting to IT, then a hybrid of internal clouds and external clouds must be really interesting, right? I say maybe not quite yet. Read on.
Listening to strong voices in the internal cloud dialog
First off, here are some of the places you should have been reading last week (consider this a "how to" for catching up on some recent conversations about internal clouds): Rich Miller's Data Center Knowledge, James Urquhart's Wisdom of Clouds, Elastic Vapor, Chuck's Blog, Rational Survivability, among others. The Cloud Connect event in Mountain View was probably ground zero for all this.
But it didn't stop there. Gartner's Tom Bittman weighed in on private clouds as part of discussing Cisco's "unified computing" announcements (a subject for another day). "There is huge industry energy pushing in the direction that will make internal computing more real-time, on demand, adaptive, dynamic, unified," Tom said. "...What was custom will become packaged, and we will see a growth both in the numbers of cloud computing providers and in the number of organizations that feel they are building 'private clouds' to be used only by their internal customers." A pretty strong endorsement, there.
One of the other Gartner bloggers, Dan Sholler, revealed this "shocking truth about 'private clouds'" among others: "Private clouds (or whatever we end up calling them) are about combining the thing that infrastructure folks are doing with the things that the app folks are doing."
Here's where things got interesting: the concept of hybrid cloud computing
Throughout these discussions, many pondered the future of cloud computing. In his thorough, well-articulated piece on the reason private clouds make sense, Chuck Hollis of EMC envisioned a future phase of cloud computing that includes "federated service providers that provide customers choice." It's not hard to extrapolate from there to include your internal systems as one of those choices. But, says Chuck, "it's early days indeed. Near as I can tell, there are only a few service providers who've built environments from the ground up to [receive] virtualized applications and [information] -- and provide back to IT the control they need."
Then, this weekend, John Foley of InformationWeek published 10 predictions about cloud computing in 2009 (I guess I wasn't the final Top 10 list after all!). "IT departments will create public-private hybrid clouds. They'll use virtualization, APIs, and platforms like Elastra's Cloud Server to devise cloud-like environments in their own data centers that work seamlessly with public cloud services. ...Some experts talk of 'private clouds' as an alternative to public clouds, but hybrid clouds mix the best of both worlds."
So, in addition to arguing about whether internal clouds are something most large enterprises will pursue in the near term (for what it's worth, we are working with some significant organizations, both commercial and public sector, that are already partway through internal cloud implementations, even if that's not exactly the term they're using), this conversation also moved forward to the next step: hybrid clouds. That is, as John explained, the possibility of using both public and private. Both external and internal cloud computing. Simultaneously.
Why hybrid cloud computing is even more interesting than internal clouds. And farther off.
"Regular" cloud computing is about leveraging outside compute resources "by the drink." Internal cloud computing is about applying those same concepts to the infrastructure you already have in your data center. Internal cloud computing, though, is a reaction to the current (but not necessarily permanent) inadequacies of using cloud services. These are inadequacies like having to rewrite apps in order to run them using cloud-based resources, or not being able to handle security or compliance sufficiently. Or like the lock-in that can result from using many of the services available today.
Now, if you could get your internal cloud up and running AND could iron out the devil-in-the-details issues with external cloud computing, a hybrid between the two does, indeed, sound like the best of both worlds. You would have an internal infrastructure that uses your existing hardware, software, and networks very efficiently by dynamically balancing your computing demand with your supply. And, when even your internal supply is inadequate (or doesn't meet your policies for some reason), you can lean on the cloud providers to help you through a sudden, unexpected spike in demand from customers (like, say, to watch the aforementioned inauguration using the laptop in your office, without receiving the message I got from CNN's site, which went something like: "Congratulations, you made it, but so did everyone else. You are now in line for the next available spot for our live Internet video feed." I stuck with the nytimes.com, by the way).
With hybrid clouds, you'll need some way to make it OK to move workloads out to the cloud and back again. You'll need a policy engine so your systems can figure out when to do this and with what. And those are just a couple serious requirements off the top of my head for starters.
And I guess that's my point. The 451 Group and others have called this hybrid cloud capability the Holy Grail of computing. I've heard our CEO, Bill Coleman, talk about a world where (eventually) your systems are checking constantly with your set of external compute providers and comparing what they can supply with what you have going internally, and then having your infrastructure direct your apps to run here, there, or everywhere, depending on how prices or other conditions look on any given day/hour/minute. (This is where "follow-the-moon" computing comes in -- picture one option where your workloads run wherever computing is cheapest in the world at any given moment.)
But like tooling up to make hybrid cars, this is not something that's going to appear overnight in your IT department. That's why I'm betting we'll see some pretty robust implementations of both cloud-style architectures running inside your data center and outside of it in the cloud before you see anyone start mixing the two.
It's worth quoting Dan Sholler at Gartner again at this point: "[A]s with all innovations, the chatter will die down as we all get our hands dirty implementing this in practice." If you're seeing evidence one way or the other, I'd love to hear about it.
But as all of this discussion swirled around, some of the ground started shifting a bit, too. If internal clouds are interesting to IT, then a hybrid of internal clouds and external clouds must be really interesting, right? I say maybe not quite yet. Read on.
Listening to strong voices in the internal cloud dialog
First off, here are some of the places you should have been reading last week (consider this a "how to" for catching up on some recent conversations about internal clouds): Rich Miller's Data Center Knowledge, James Urquhart's Wisdom of Clouds, Elastic Vapor, Chuck's Blog, Rational Survivability, among others. The Cloud Connect event in Mountain View was probably ground zero for all this.
But it didn't stop there. Gartner's Tom Bittman weighed in on private clouds as part of discussing Cisco's "unified computing" announcements (a subject for another day). "There is huge industry energy pushing in the direction that will make internal computing more real-time, on demand, adaptive, dynamic, unified," Tom said. "...What was custom will become packaged, and we will see a growth both in the numbers of cloud computing providers and in the number of organizations that feel they are building 'private clouds' to be used only by their internal customers." A pretty strong endorsement, there.
One of the other Gartner bloggers, Dan Sholler, revealed this "shocking truth about 'private clouds'" among others: "Private clouds (or whatever we end up calling them) are about combining the thing that infrastructure folks are doing with the things that the app folks are doing."
Here's where things got interesting: the concept of hybrid cloud computing
Throughout these discussions, many pondered the future of cloud computing. In his thorough, well-articulated piece on the reason private clouds make sense, Chuck Hollis of EMC envisioned a future phase of cloud computing that includes "federated service providers that provide customers choice." It's not hard to extrapolate from there to include your internal systems as one of those choices. But, says Chuck, "it's early days indeed. Near as I can tell, there are only a few service providers who've built environments from the ground up to [receive] virtualized applications and [information] -- and provide back to IT the control they need."
Then, this weekend, John Foley of InformationWeek published 10 predictions about cloud computing in 2009 (I guess I wasn't the final Top 10 list after all!). "IT departments will create public-private hybrid clouds. They'll use virtualization, APIs, and platforms like Elastra's Cloud Server to devise cloud-like environments in their own data centers that work seamlessly with public cloud services. ...Some experts talk of 'private clouds' as an alternative to public clouds, but hybrid clouds mix the best of both worlds."
So, in addition to arguing about whether internal clouds are something most large enterprises will pursue in the near term (for what it's worth, we are working with some significant organizations, both commercial and public sector, that are already partway through internal cloud implementations, even if that's not exactly the term they're using), this conversation also moved forward to the next step: hybrid clouds. That is, as John explained, the possibility of using both public and private. Both external and internal cloud computing. Simultaneously.
Why hybrid cloud computing is even more interesting than internal clouds. And farther off.
"Regular" cloud computing is about leveraging outside compute resources "by the drink." Internal cloud computing is about applying those same concepts to the infrastructure you already have in your data center. Internal cloud computing, though, is a reaction to the current (but not necessarily permanent) inadequacies of using cloud services. These are inadequacies like having to rewrite apps in order to run them using cloud-based resources, or not being able to handle security or compliance sufficiently. Or like the lock-in that can result from using many of the services available today.
Now, if you could get your internal cloud up and running AND could iron out the devil-in-the-details issues with external cloud computing, a hybrid between the two does, indeed, sound like the best of both worlds. You would have an internal infrastructure that uses your existing hardware, software, and networks very efficiently by dynamically balancing your computing demand with your supply. And, when even your internal supply is inadequate (or doesn't meet your policies for some reason), you can lean on the cloud providers to help you through a sudden, unexpected spike in demand from customers (like, say, to watch the aforementioned inauguration using the laptop in your office, without receiving the message I got from CNN's site, which went something like: "Congratulations, you made it, but so did everyone else. You are now in line for the next available spot for our live Internet video feed." I stuck with the nytimes.com, by the way).
With hybrid clouds, you'll need some way to make it OK to move workloads out to the cloud and back again. You'll need a policy engine so your systems can figure out when to do this and with what. And those are just a couple serious requirements off the top of my head for starters.
And I guess that's my point. The 451 Group and others have called this hybrid cloud capability the Holy Grail of computing. I've heard our CEO, Bill Coleman, talk about a world where (eventually) your systems are checking constantly with your set of external compute providers and comparing what they can supply with what you have going internally, and then having your infrastructure direct your apps to run here, there, or everywhere, depending on how prices or other conditions look on any given day/hour/minute. (This is where "follow-the-moon" computing comes in -- picture one option where your workloads run wherever computing is cheapest in the world at any given moment.)
But like tooling up to make hybrid cars, this is not something that's going to appear overnight in your IT department. That's why I'm betting we'll see some pretty robust implementations of both cloud-style architectures running inside your data center and outside of it in the cloud before you see anyone start mixing the two.
It's worth quoting Dan Sholler at Gartner again at this point: "[A]s with all innovations, the chatter will die down as we all get our hands dirty implementing this in practice." If you're seeing evidence one way or the other, I'd love to hear about it.
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