Cloud Computing stressing aging networking infrastructures
One of the things that drives datacenter architects and engineers absolutely mad is that networking is still a second-class citizen overall. While server processor speeds, number of cores, memory density and speed, hard drive size and other pieces of the infrastructure have increased dramatically over the years, networking has moved at a comparatively glacial pace. Before the modern push for Cloud Computing, this was a minor annoyance, only seen at certain junctions where large amounts of data needed to be sync'd across long distances. The Cloud, however, has brought this issue to the forefront of engineers' minds. If the Cloud is the heart of an infrastructure, the network is the blood vessels. Instead of substantive arteries and veins, however, we are working with capillaries.
If we compare the progress of disk sizes over the last decade from megabytes to terabytes, it would follow that in order to move that data quickly between machines we need terabit connections. Unfortunately, progress essentially stopped with the gigabit ethernet connection until recently when we saw the 10 gigabit ethernet connection hit the market. Overall, however, the amount of 10 gigabit networks in place today versus gigabit networks is tiny. Systems architects and engineers have known about this issue for a long time, but the Cloud has pushed the issue to the forefront as it stresses the current capacities of networks around the world.
Cisco has just released its Global Cloud Index for 2010 to 2015 and it estimates that global cloud computing traffic will grow by a factor of 12, from 130 exabytes to 1.6 zettabytes annually by 2015. Keep in mind that 1 zettabyte is 1 trillion (that's right - with a T) gigabytes. That is a massive amount of data that will be moving across connections that are predominantly 1 gigabit or slower. According to the report, the Cloud currently occupies 11 percent of datacenter traffic but will triple to occupy 33 percent of that traffic by 2015.
Also, by 2015, the composition and direction of datacenter traffic will shift to where 76 percent of that traffic will remain within the datacenter, 17 percent of the traffic will leave the datacenter toward and end-user and 7 percent of the traffic will go between datacenters for things like storage replication, multi-site application communication, off-site backups and Cloud bursting (federation). By 2014, Cisco estimates that over half (51%) of the datacenter workload will be within the Cloud infrastructure versus the traditional infrastructure. This is huge for private and public Cloud vendors as they must prepare to handle this massive shift of workloads to their Cloud infrastructures.
"Cloud and data center traffic is exploding, driven by user demand to access volumes of content on the devices of their choice. The result: greater data center virtualization and relevance of the network for cloud applications and the need to make sense of a dynamically evolving situation,” said Suraj Shetty, vice president of product and solutions marketing for Cisco. “The Cisco Global Cloud Index provides insight into this traffic growth and trends so that organizations can make strategic long-term decisions. We will continue to develop and release the Cisco Global Cloud Index on a regular and ongoing annual basis, contributing to ‘cloud readiness' efforts worldwide."
As a Cloud Architect, all I have to say is that Cisco, or another networking vendor better bring the terabit connectivity, and fast! When you add the total amount of Cloud traffic that will need to flow between datacenters to the growing amount of data being replicated between SANs, you quickly realize that even 10 gigabit networks are inadequate for where we are headed. Its time networking caught up to disk, processor and memory density, and that means terabit networks.
Successful CA World 2011 Yields New Opportunities for ScaleMatrix and Cloud Commons
ScaleMatrix leverages leading cloud technology events to attract new clients, while driving cloud adoption through support of the “Cloud Commons” ecosystem.
November saw more than 6000 IT management experts descend on the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas for one of the year’s largest cloud technology events: CA World 2011. ScaleMatrix, a Bronze Level event sponsor and strategic partner of CA Technologies, joined a variety of industry leading solutions experts and thousands of enterprise class end users to exchange insights on various CA products and platforms, with specific emphasis on the Private Cloud platform, “CA AppLogic™.”
As one of the key infrastructure partners for CA Technologies, ScaleMatrix used the event as the official launch platform for their “Cloud in a Box™” mobile compute platform. This revolutionary offering simplifies the deployment of Private Cloud infrastructure by combining servers, cloud software, networking hardware, and HVAC/Fire Suppression, all within a mobile and proprietary ScaleMatrix high density, self-contained server rack. “We couldn’t think of a better venue or audience to debut the Cloud in a Box™ platform”, said Chief Sales & Marketing Officer Chris Orlando. “In a convention center, you don’t have access to racks, cooling, or infrastructure support – so the Cloud in a Box™ platform was ideal for housing the extensive infrastructure CA needed to run the CA World show floor and numerous product demonstrations”, Orlando said.
Attendees enjoyed numerous exhibitions, in addition to a number of key breakout sessions which included presentations from ScaleMatrix CEO Mark Ortenzi. As an established leader in the AppLogic Private Cloud revolution, ScaleMatrix presentations centered about the flexibility and feature sets offered by AppLogic. Mark said, “Events like these are great, because our team gets the opportunity to engage with such a wide variety of end users and service providers. One of the beauties of AppLogic is that the feature set and pricing model naturally lend itself to so many different scenarios. Our team walked away from the event with new opportunities from both the SMB and Enterprise space, as well a number of Service Providers looking to “quick-start” their entrance into the cloud space. “
Additional show highlights included the much-heralded launch of the Cloud Commons Marketplace and Developer Studio. This one-stop-shop for Building, Buying and Selling Enterprise Class Cloud Solutions contains a wide variety of resources for those navigating the cloud landscape. The site aims to become “the” resource destination for cloud aficionados, including those looking to take a more detailed look at the CA AppLogic platform. As such, ScaleMatrix infrastructure and professional services offerings are part of the available options visitors can choose from within the Cloud Commons Marketplace. These offerings can be seen in the Cloud Commons Marketplace or viewed here.
A common takeaway from the CA World 2011 event was the need for turnkey solutions which allow IT organizations to more easily leverage Cloud technology. Solutions need to be easily integrated and when possible should include readily available business use cases to support them. The pre-configured options available from ScaleMatrix through the Cloud Commons Marketplace answers this call, and allows clients to test-drive these highly scalable cloud solutions before they buy.
About ScaleMatrix
ScaleMatrix takes an infrastructure-based approach to providing best-in-class cloud solutions to clients at every stage of their IT Lifecycle development. By investing heavily in both facilities and personnel, and developing strategic relationships with critical hardware, software, and support service vendors – we are able to offer our clients industry leading solutions which include design, deployment, and ongoing management as part of our standard offering. For additional information, visit ScaleMatrix at www.scalematrix.com.
Contact:
James Heller
Director of Marketing, ScaleMatrix
858.633.4306
james@scalematrix.com
Building a Private Cloud with Intel Xeon processors and VMware vCloud Director
This is a good video from Intel and VMware on how to setup your own Private Cloud with Intel Xeon hardware and the VMware product stack. Long gone are the days where provisioning servers for a new project take weeks or months. Now you can automate many of the mundane tasks of deployment and offer higher levels of service to your internal 'customers.' IT as a Service is big in todays largest businesses and VMware is enabling large enterprise, small and medium businesses to offer the same service stacks to their users. Check out the video below and leave some comments on what you think about the combination of these two products.
My Twitter Stream
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