PRIVATE e-zine

Strategies for building a private cloud

In this issue:

q TRENDS IN 1 1 0

2 By SearchCloudComputing.com Staff

R E B M E

V q OPEN SOURCE IN THE CLOUD: BOON OR BUST? O N |

By Bill Claybrook 4

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NO DEMOCRACY FOR APPS IN THE CLOUD? 1 q

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V By Mike Laverick 1E EDITOR’S LETTER

OPEN SOURCE MEETS CLOUD COMPUTING

HOME AS CLOUD COMPUTING continues to for evaluating your ’s mature, IT managers want more. application portfolio and associated They are clamoring for better inte - concerns, including poor application EDITOR’S LETTER gration of cloud platforms with performance and latency, data leak - existing tools, greater control and age, and issues with compliance or

TRENDS management, improved self-service, other regulations. and greater portability among cloud But first, in our Cloud One on One environments . interview, we catch up with Altaf

OPEN SOURCE Enter open source , Rupani, the VP of global strategic IN THE CLOUD: which has become the architectural planning and architecture at Dow BOON OR BUST? foundation for many cloud projects . Jones, to explore the company’s Open source software is often lower private cloud rollout and some of cost than proprietary alternatives, its challenges in working with public NO DEMOCRACY FOR APPS IN and its open code base can prevent cloud providers to get the project THE CLOUD? the vendor lock-in common with up and running. The company’s proprietary technologies. Open ongoing efforts may provide a source comes with its challenges, guide for your own initiative. I though, including spotty support and a substantial skill requirement. LAUREN HORWITZ Open source and cloud expert Bill Senior Managing Editor, Claybrook examines how open Data Center and source fits into the cloud as well as Media Group, TechTarget Inc. some technologies that have begun to define this maturing “second wave” of cloud computing. Interoperability and data portabil - ity are just two vexing issues. So, next, we delve into another core problem on many IT managers’ minds: migrating applications to the cloud. Virtualization expert Mike Laverick takes you through the steps

PRIVATE CLOUD E-ZINE • VOL. 1, NO. 4 2 1T TRENDS IN CLOUD COMPUTING TRENDS HOME in cloud computing EDITOR’S LETTER

TRENDS Cloud One on One Cloud] for business-critical apps; the public cloud isn’t ready for the INCHING TOWARD enterprise. There needs to be more OPEN SOURCE HYBRID CLOUD governance controls that cater to IN THE CLOUD: the enterprise. BOON OR BUST? Altaf Rupani , the vice president of global strategic planning and architec - Aren’t these kinds of controls ture at Dow Jones, is on a mission to tough to build in a private cloud NO DEMOCRACY FOR APPS IN get the best out of new cloud comput - environment, too? Or can anybody THE CLOUD? ing architectures for all the usual rea - at your company jump on your pri - sons: reducing time to market on new vate cloud and provision services? apps and avoiding the capital cost of Yes, you need to establish gover - new hardware. In this interview, Ru- nance and rules and introduce rigor pani discusses his company’s private so that you are following role-based cloud rollout and the challenges of access controls, but this is easier to working with service providers to get a hybrid cloud system up and running.

“You need How long did it take to build to establish your private cloud? governance About a year and half. and rules and introduce rigor.” Why did you go this route versus tapping into readily available public cloud resources like Amazon Web

Services? Altaf Rupani, We don’t use EC2 [Elastic Compute VP of global strategic planning at Dow Jones

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do today inside your own four walls. Dell for example, give you any advantage in your private cloud Is there training involved? How do architecture? you get employees up and running? No. We use off-the-shelf hardware. We have an on-boarding process; Dell, HP, IBM—it doesn’t matter, we we enlighten and educate people on just need a service-level agreement the portal. Otherwise you could (SLA) for response time, a de-dupe shoot yourself in the foot if you let rate for storage, etc. We created the HOME people on who don’t know what framework for a resilient cloud first, they are doing. We leave it to the then we picked vendors that met tech leads to spread the word. Oth - that criteria. EDITOR’S LETTER erwise you could have 400 virtual machines or 4,000 provisioned for What software do you use for

TRENDS 10 minutes of use. virtualization and automation? VMware and DynamicOps. What systems did you put

OPEN SOURCE in place to guard against that? Which applications run in produc - IN THE CLOUD: You need to create an auto-approval tion on your private cloud today? BOON OR BUST? process for certain groups of users. Corporate applications, including For example, developers can provi - back-office stuff like SharePoint sion assets without as many hoops 2010, have been consolidated from NO DEMOCRACY FOR APPS IN to jump through as other employees five separate instances to one in- THE CLOUD? less familiar with the system. Our stance running on the private cloud. mobile development team can pro - Business-to-business apps on the vision as many instances at a time cloud include DowJonesNews.com as they need, as this is a high- and our archive. Business-to-con - priority job. sumer apps include WSJ.com, Mar ketWatch.com and Barron’s. How large is your private cloud? All have some presence on the pri - All new instances are provisioned vate cloud and are using it more through our private cloud and we and more. have 350 active instances, but this spikes up or down depending on What advantages have you workloads. seen so far? [Rupani declined to say what per - One of the biggest advantages is centage of Dow Jones’ total server that we no longer need to spend so environment the private cloud repre - much money on transitional tech - sents, but it is likely less than 10% nology setups for new projects. It’s a today.] cost-avoidance strategy, as we don’t Do hardware choices, HP versus need net new assets. There’s also a

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cost-efficiency advantage as we are that would be useful. getting better usage out of our exist - Let’s say there’s an employee in ing servers. We tripled our average Europe working on a big marketing utilization to 35% to 40% per physi - launch, but there’s no Dow Jones cal machine. capacity there. The system will say, “Here are the templates available That still seems low. for services,” and it’s the same Why not 60% to 70% utilization? workflow and policies as internal HOME We leave headroom to account for services, but it launches on the pub - peaks. lic cloud. It federates with the enter - prise. EDITOR’S LETTER What about labor? Do you save costs there? What challenges have you faced

TRENDS Yes. Cloud instances are half the in getting this hybrid model to cos t of physical instances, including work? labor. When the provider is a black ,

OPEN SOURCE it’s not good; single sign-on and IN THE CLOUD: How many administrators identity and access control is not BOON OR BUST? maintain your private cloud? easy. It’s less than five. Are there other challenges NO DEMOCRACY FOR APPS IN What about hybrid cloud? with the hybrid model? THE CLOUD? Does that make sense for Service providers had not envisaged your company? the workflow we needed, so we are We’d like to extend our internal really pioneering this path; it takes a private cloud to public cloud in a lot of trial and error. hybrid model, but we’re still working on the SLAs and data residency How have your users responded mandates with public cloud to the private cloud? providers to make that viable. People are lining up to use it. The time to market for new apps is so When will that happen? much faster. Users are willing to pay Before the end of the calendar year, more [for it], as they get their server we’ll be able to use hybrid; through before they come back from lunch application programming interfaces instead of in three weeks. [That] is we will be able to plumb providers’ awesome from an application deliv - capacity behind our portal. ery standpoint. —BY JO MAITLAND Give us an example of why

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For more information, please contact [email protected]. www.eplus.com/cloud 1 OPEN SOURCE IN THE CLOUD: BOON OR BUST? OPEN SOURCE IN THE CLOUD: BOON OR BUST? Open source may address some of the vexing problems that have kept IT managers out of the cloud. But these HOME technologies aren’t for the fainthearted. BY BILL CLAYBROOK

EDITOR’S LETTER

AS COMPANIES cautiously explore source and proprietary code. Ven -

TRENDS cloud computing, open source tech - dors may continue to nurture their nologies could prompt a tipping own proprietary technologies in the point in cloud adoption. marketplace rather than join forces

OPEN SOURCE Free and open source software is to create common standards. With - IN THE CLOUD: liberally licensed and allows users to out greater cloud interoperability, IT BOON OR BUST? change and improve software design shops may continue to reject cloud by allowing access to its source code. technologies as too risky. Its community-driven approach to So, for users, the question NO DEMOCRACY FOR APPS IN software development—as well as becomes whether open source is THE CLOUD? flexibility and the potential lower “good” for the cloud or creates cost of open source technologies— problems of its own. In this article, is well suited to the cloud. By con - we’ll examine when open source trast, often software can benefit a cloud project locks in users to a given provider and when it’s best to rely on propri - and can come with a high price tag. etary technologies instead. So open source may also help un- tangle some of the vexing problems that have been roadblocks to cloud OPEN SOURCE AND adoption, including data portability THE CLOUD GAIN STEAM and cloud interoperability . By several indications, cloud com - But building private and hybrid puting adoption is poised to grow. clouds with open source technolo - By 2020 the global cloud market is gies poses problems as well, includ - predicted to reach $241 billion, com - ing spotty support, lack of company pared with $40.7 billion in 2010, development know-how and a lack according to a Forrester Research of common standards. Moreover, Inc. report. Open source platforms many cloud platforms mix open and projects in the cloud are also

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growing. According to a May 2011 principles to build something that report of 450 respondents by North looks like a cloud,” he said. “As a Bridge Venture Partners and the 451 result, we believe that our thing is Group, mobile and cloud develop - more malleable. We can modify it, ment experienced growth in open we can see inside it, we can install source projects. A December 2010 it and maintain it in a cloud environ - ment in a more natural way.” So, for companies that want HOME FOR COMPANIES lower-cost and more flexible and THAT WANT LOWER- elastic on-demand IT infrastructure, open source cloud computing can EDITOR’S LETTER COST AND MORE FLEX- IBLE AND ELASTIC make sense. Now let’s consider ON-DEMAND IT INFRA - some of the characteristics and ben - TRENDS efits of open source cloud technolo - STRUCTURE, OPEN gies. (For more on and SOURCE CLOUD other key cloud initiatives, see “Key OPEN SOURCE COMPUTING CAN Open Source Projects” on page 8.) IN THE CLOUD: MAKE SENSE. BOON OR BUST? Reduced cost. Low cost is a key driver in open source cloud tech - report by the 1105 Government nologies. According to the North NO DEMOCRACY FOR APPS IN Information Group, 60% of 460 Bridge Venture Partners survey, THE CLOUD? respondents have considered cloud respondents said that low cost is computing because of its potential the second-most attractive aspect to reduce IT and operational costs of open source technology, behind and provide rapid on-demand only freedom from vendor lock-in. access to IT resources. Lower-cost or free licensing comple - Open source cloud platforms aim ments cloud computing by reducing to build flexibility and open IT archi - infrastructure costs. But lower licens - tecture from the ground up. Rich ing fees should be balanced against Wolski—the CTO of the open source support costs and developer time Infrastructure provider and costs to customize code, which Eucalyptus Systems Inc. and a pro - can quickly boost the total cost of fessor of computer science at the ownership of open source software. University of California, Santa Bar - bara—said that his company want - Rapid innovation, accelerated ed to develop a platform that is easy development. Technology resources to use, maintain and modify, partly are no longer fixed but abundantly because of its open source founda - and flexibly available, so businesses tions. “We actually started from first can roll out new ventures with less

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risk and delay and without prohibi - rather than replaced. According to tive costs. The ability to switch re- the “2011 Cloud Computing Adop - sources on or off in seconds paves tion Survey,” rapid business innova - the way for real experimentation and tion is a critical cloud driver: 51% of more rapid business development. 344 responding companies see Firms that use open source soft - opportunities to roll out new prod - ware can add new features critical ucts via the cloud. to their business needs, which But companies can garner these HOME allows programs to be extended (Continued on page 11)

EDITOR’S LETTER KEY OPEN SOURCE PROJECTS TRENDS Almost immediately, open source technologies such as and began to have an impact on cloud computing. But several new open source offerings have

OPEN SOURCE cropped up, including , Eucalyptus, Openstack and OpenNebula. We’ll IN THE CLOUD: profile some of these offerings below (and see the table “Open Source Cloud Plat - BOON OR BUST? forms” on page 9). Today, OpenStack is the “hottest” open source cloud software project. Rack - space, a proprietary company, and NASA support OpenStack and are working to NO DEMOCRACY FOR APPS IN establish a nonproprietary cloud infrastructure that can be broadly adopted. In mid- THE CLOUD? 2011, OpenStack received a boost in support from heavyweights such as Dell and Hewlett-Packard. Now, a growing number of technology providers—including Citrix Systems, Cisco Systems, AT&T, Intel and rPath—have coalesced around the OpenStack platform for public cloud providers and for enterprise private clouds. Use of OpenStack for pub - lic and private clouds would enable cloud interoperability, allowing users to migrate applications from one cloud to another. VMware has been trying to do the same with its vCloud API and vCloud Express. Eucalyptus is OpenStack’s primary competitor, but it has nowhere near the mo - mentum of OpenStack now that Dell and Hewlett-Packard have begun to support it. Still, OpenStack lacks the systems support that enterprise users require. Citrix and Rackspace have created commercial support projects for OpenStack. Citrix re - cently announced Project Olympus , and Rackspace has launched Builders . Because OpenStack has broadened its support and now has major companies contributing code to OpenStack, its application programming interfaces have a good chance of becoming an open standard for cloud computing. Its main competi - tion comes from VMware’s vCloud API. I

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CLOUD OPEN SOURCE PLATFORMS

TIME ON NOTABLE POTENTIAL PRODUCT WHAT IT DOES MARKET PRICING FEATURES ISSUES

Abiquo Creates public Released Community Edition Offers broad hypervi - Abiquo claims to run Cloud and private Infra - April 2009; is free; Enterprise sor support, including on diverse hardware; Manage- structure as a Abiquo 1.8 Edition is licensed VMware, , but doing so could ment Service (IaaS) clouds released on an annual basis Citrix and Kernel- have unintended based on heteroge - July 2011 (from $211 for one based Virtual Ma - consequences for neous environments. to 49 physical cores chine (KVM) hyper- scaling and trouble- Users can provision to $432 for 1,000 visors; enables IT to shooting an environ - servers, storage, net - or more cores) and delegate permissions ment. works and applica - includes support at to authorized users. tions automatically. one of three levels.

Citrix Enables enter- Released Standard is $500 per Supports a range of Prior to Citrix’s ac - Systems prises and service May 2010; month with an initial , includ- quisition of Cloud. Inc.’s Cloud - providers to build CloudStack fee of $2,500; Pre - ing VMware, Oracle com’s CloudStack in Stack and IaaS clouds. Tools on 2.2.8 mium is $1,000 per VM, and Hyper-V July 2011, installation OpenCloud the back end manage, released month, with an initial support is expected and interface secure and bill for July 2011; fee of $4,000; Cor - by the end of the year. weren’t intuitive, resources used. OpenCloud porate and Enterprise CloudStack also in - and Cloud Stack had version 1.0 levels are also avail - cludes CloudBridge, few proven, enter - released able. Pricing may which enables appli - prise-scale deploy - March 2011 change given the cations to work with ments. Now that recent acquisition, public cloud applica - Citrix has integrated however. tion programming in - OpenCloud with terfaces (). CloudStack, things could change.

Eucalyptus Implements IaaS– Released Licensing based on AWS is compatible Historically, the Enterprise style cloud comput - September number of processor with Elastic Compute partially closed ele - Edition ing with Linux-based 2009; cores on physical Cloud (EC2) APIs, so ments of Eucalyptus infrastructure. With Eucalyptus host. working with Eucalyp - have posed scalabil - its Amazon Web 3.0 due out tus is like working ity problems. The Services-compatible mid-2011 with VMs in Amazon technology requires interface, Eucalyptus EC2. It is also one of technical compe - can move workloads the most mature tence. between AWS and an cloud platform internal data center software kits. without modifying code.

Novell Cloud Allows IT staff to Released N/A, though base Designed for mixed IT Novell continues to Manager manage virtualized September configuration will environments, Novell lag Red Hat in Linux resources based on 2010; come with the pres - Cloud Manager runs market share. Cloud different hypervisors, version 1.1 entation and man - on all major hypervi - Manager does not including VMware, released agement server and sors, including replace existing Hyper-V and Xen vir - December licenses to manage VMware, Hyper-V manage - tual servers, all from 2010 25 workloads. and Xen. ment tools, so pric - a single management ing is dictated by tool. the console.

(Table continues on page 10.)

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TIME ON NOTABLE POTENTIAL PRODUCT WHAT IT DOES MARKET PRICING FEATURES ISSUES

OpenNebula A completely open Released In fall 2011, C12G Offers an authentica - The project uses the 2.2 source toolkit to build in 2008; Labs announced sup - tion framework; ad - Open Cloud Com - IaaS clouds, including OpenNeb - port pricing, which ministrator roles; and puting interface and public, private, virtual ula 2.2 begins at €150 per secure multi-tenancy is funded and private and hybrid physical server, with as well as an image staffed by academic clouds. Originally higher levels that repository with cata - institutions and vol - launched to establish offer support for un - log and image man - unteers. Only re - a cloud standard, limited servers within agement. cently, in late 2010, OpenStack is a free, a single zone (start - C12G Labs began community-sup - ing at €9,000) and managing Open - ported cloud platform per-site support for Nebula.pro, a sup - developed by NASA unlimited zones. port portal. and Rackspace and sponsored by several vendors, including Dell and HP.

OpenStack Originally launched Released N/A The OpenStack com - Long-term business project to establish a cloud October munity has grown to prospects for the (Rackspace standard, OpenStack 2010; 40-plus companies. company could be and NASA) provides open source OpenStack Open standards make a question mark. standards for large- Compute it relatively easy to Persistent support scale deployments of API version migrate data and ap - issues may be re - automatically provi - 1.0 avail - plications to public solved now that sioned virtual com - able and clouds. It’s also easy Citrix and Rack - pute instances. OpenStack to benefit from oth - space will support Compute ers’ bug fixes. OpenStack through API version Project Olympus 1.1 now “ex - and Cloud Builders. perimental” for Cactus

Red Hat CloudForms is an Released Combines applica - N/A The offering is rela - Inc.’s IaaS cloud platform May 2011; tion lifecycle man - tively new and Red CloudForms for enterprises and at the time agement with IaaS. Hat has had long- service providers. of this writ - Offers configuration standing issues in CloudForms uses ing, in beta, and management of delivering enterprise JBoss Enterprise Mid - but due to multi-tier applica - support. dleware for applica - be gener - tions and gives users tion and service pro - ally avail - the option to move visioning. able in fall and manage applica - 2011. tions between clouds, virtualized environ - ments and servers.

Ubuntu Formerly powered by Cost for entry-level Ubuntu’s cloud is now The best user candi - Enterprise Eucalyptus and now 9.04 was coverage for turnkey integrated with Open - dates for this tech - Cloud by OpenStack, Ubun - released in boxes: physical ma - Stack (though it con - nology must roll up tu Enterprise Cloud is April 2009 chines running during tinues to support their sleeves and a platform to create with cloud the business hours Eucalyptus), a non - contribute to the Linux-based private capabili - of 9 to 5: $4,750 per proprietary cloud in - community. So users and hybrid clouds. ties; ver - year; running 24/7 frastructure, which is should consider a sion 11.04 is $17,500 per year. swiftly becoming a support relationship released Cost for additional front-runner. with Rackspace, April 2011 packs for turnkey Canonical or both. boxes: One physical machine with 9-to-5 support is $1,250 per year or 24/7 support at $3,000 per year.

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(Continued from page 8) want to maintain responsibility for benefits only if they have in-house the care and feeding of their clouds expertise or ongoing development rather than relinquish control to contracts with outside help to devel - providers. op the code and address support issues. OPEN SOURCE Cloud-friendly licensing and PROBLEMATIC FOR CLOUDS? HOME user control. Open source licens - Still, open source software is no ing is often less problematic for panacea and presents challenges for clouds than proprietary software the unprepared, particularly compa - EDITOR’S LETTER licensing. Traditionally, commercial nies without the necessary in-house software was designed and licensed coding expertise to support open

TRENDS for static environments in which source technologies. According to software was installed and run on a the North Bridge Partners survey, physical server. Today these kinds of respondents cited lack of technical

OPEN SOURCE static environments are becoming skill, lack of familiarity with open IN THE CLOUD: the exception, with elastic applica - source technologies and a lack of BOON OR BUST? tions becoming the norm. support as the top three barriers in And with proprietary software, it selecting an open source technolo gy. can be a major headache to figure NO DEMOCRACY FOR APPS IN out how to license these dynamic IT Coding expertise and support. THE CLOUD? resources as applications and data Large companies such as Amazon, move from cloud to cloud. Unlike and Yahoo often have sub - proprietary licensing models, such stantial developer expertise in- as Microsoft’s, open source soft - house, so they are the most likely to ware licenses do not have to be ad- take open source technologies and justed to allow for “license mobility.” build on top of them. They have the Finally, users gravitate toward resources required to customize the open source because it provides code for particular business needs, greater control over testing and which many smaller companies evaluating cloud technologies, often lack. noted Eucalyptus CEO Marten Some of the more popular open Mickos. Companies want to test source projects also provide ade - products themselves and have con - quate Web-based support for bugs, trol over the technology evaluation patches and so forth. In the case of process. This also supports findings less-popular open source software, from the “2011 Cloud Computing Web-based support isn’t enough. If Adoption Survey,” where 43% of a company lacks expertise in cus - 344 respondents said that they tomizing open source cloud soft -

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ware, it may end up paying more providers. All these parties have a than it would by just paying for pro - stake in product differentiation and prietary software. in preventing commoditization. As a For open source cloud technolo - result, vendors’ motivation to create gies to be successful for a given organization, a company needs to ONE POTENTIAL ask, “Do we have the development capacity for this project? Should we PROBLEM IS GET- HOME invest staff resources this way?” If TING OPEN SOURCE the answer is no, choose a commer - CLOUD APPLICATION cial product to get paid support EDITOR’S LETTER PROGRAMMING instead. If the answer is yes, consid - INTERFACES RATIFIED er whether you have sufficient in- BY STANDARDS TRENDS house developer expertise to sup - port ongoing projects or whether ORGANIZATIONS. you need additional resources.

OPEN SOURCE truly open standards could suffer IN THE CLOUD: Open standards. Another potential from self-interested vendors con - BOON OR BUST? problem for open source cloud soft - trolling the roadmap of a project. ware is getting open source cloud So while open standards are a APIs ratified by standards organiza - good thing, it does not necessarily NO DEMOCRACY FOR APPS IN tions (and for the distinction between follow that users will reap the bene - THE CLOUD? open source and open standards, fits. Because some cloud service see “Open Source vs. Open Stan - providers don’t want to compete on dards” on page 13). While a good cost or selling price alone, they may deal of hype surrounds OpenStack as have little interest in developing or a potential standard for cloud com - supporting common cloud standards . puting, it has yet to demonstrate that If OpenStack or VMware APIs be- it can attract a large number of users. come open standards, for example, APIs, such as TCP/IP, become open expect cloud service providers to standards because they attract sub - deliver these APIs with their own stantial interest and use. It may take modifications. These changes, of OpenStack a few more years to gar - course, may render open standards ner enough broad-based use to quali - less open or broadly usable. fy for open standards ratification. While initiatives like OpenStack are moving toward greater openness TAKEAWAYS in the cloud, these projects are driv - Open source and cloud computing en in part by cloud technology ven - technologies can enhance one an- dors and, to some extent, by cloud other. For companies on tight budg -

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ets that want to make an initial foray ties in automation, management into the cloud, open source can offer and monitoring tools for cloud- flexibility and lower-cost cloud proj - based and virtualized environments ects. It also offers the opportunity have been generated by open source for the rapid innovation and deploy - projects and startups such as Open - ment that is so central to the cloud. Nebula, Cloud.com and Abiquo. Fur - These technologies permit innova - ther, an open source implementa - tion at a much faster rate than pro - tion can become a working reference HOME prietary software, which often has model that demonstrates what the long development and testing cycles. specification means and how to Moreover, some of the key capabili - implement it. This may be difficult, EDITOR’S LETTER

TRENDS OPEN SOURCE VS. OPEN STANDARDS

WHILE PEOPLE OFTEN OPEN SOURCE confuse open source with open standards, they are distinct IN THE CLOUD: entities. BOON OR BUST? Open standards are specifications that are publicly defined, that anyone can im - plement and that outline agreed-upon conventions to enable different programs to work together, along with some mechanism to ensure that they actually do (such as NO DEMOCRACY FOR APPS IN a series of tests). They create an open market where users can switch between THE CLOUD? competing implementations. With open standards, your company can choose among competing vendors without becoming locked into any one. Examples include TCP/IP and HTML. Free open source software licenses give users the freedom to run an open source program and to redistribute copies of the original or modified program without pay - ing royalties to developers. Examples include the Linux Kernel, Apache Web Server and Firefox. Open source implementations can also rapidly increase the use of open standards because they can be downloaded and tried out, which encourages experi - mentation and broader use. While some mistakenly believe that open source software offers the same bene - fits as open standards, open source just means that the underlying software code is available for free and can be modified and redistributed. Making the source code open and available is a good thing, but that doesn’t mean that every cloud-related technology that the open source community produces will be compatible. The Euca - lyptus cloud and OpenStack cloud APIs, for example, are not entirely compatible. This is why open standards are key to the cloud and not equivalent to open source. Standards ensure compatibility and choices; open source does not necessarily do so. I

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if not impossible, with proprietary cloud projects are the best candi - implementations. dates to reap the benefits of lower But at the end of the day, whether costs and more rapid product time a cloud technology is open source to market. As they draw a roadmap isn’t the key factor for users. They to the cloud or make purchasing don’t care as much about what’s plans, companies should start by under the hood as they do about assessing their in-house skills. I performance, availability, security HOME and overall results. Still, users do care about flexibility and portability, Bill Claybrook is an analyst with more than 30 years of experience in the computer industry. which could prompt them to sup - EDITOR’S LETTER He has spent the past 10 years focusing on Linux port open standards and, in turn, and open source. Claybrook was the research open source cloud technologies. director for Linux and Open Source at the Aberdeen Group and a competitive analyst at TRENDS All in all, companies with in-house Novell Inc. He is now president of New River expertise to support open source Marketing Research in Concord, Mass.

OPEN SOURCE IN THE CLOUD: BOON OR BUST? ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

NO DEMOCRACY Cloud Computing Licensing: Buyer Beware FOR APPS IN THE CLOUD? Managing the number of licenses you need for a cloud deployment of a custom application is no mean feat.

The Role of Open Source in Cloud Computing The open source market for cloud computing already features a well-formed batch of tools and services.

Comparing Open Source Cloud Platforms: OpenStack vs. Eucalyptus OpenStack has garnered significant praise. How does it stack up to open source stalwart Eucalyptus?

Deciphering Red Hat’s Cloud Strategy Red Hat’s cloud strategy seems aimed at providing consistent open source cloud service for data centers and public clouds using tools like Deltacloud and Linux— an approach our expert thoroughly examines.

Five Open Source Tools for Building and Managing Clouds Here we explore five open source tools for building and managing clouds. I

PRIVATE CLOUD E-ZINE • VOL. 1, NO. 4 15 2 NO DEMOCRACY FOR APPS IN THE CLOUD?

NO DEMOCRACY FOR APPS IN THE CLOUD? In the cloud, not all applications are created equal, and moving

HOME some applications there could spell disaster. Here are seven steps to create a rock-solid strategy for porting apps to the cloud. BY MIKE LAVERICK EDITOR’S LETTER

TRENDS JUST BECAUSE YOU want to move an Here’s how to develop a foolproof application to the cloud doesn’t strategy for moving the right appli -

OPEN SOURCE mean that you should. In the cloud, cations to the cloud, which starts by IN THE CLOUD: not all applications are created outlining clear objectives, then BOON OR BUST? equal, and some are downright focuses on your application portfo - wrong for the infrastructure model. lio’s characteristics and business To make the right decision about requirements to determine best fit. NO DEMOCRACY FOR APPS IN which apps to move, you need a THE CLOUD? solid migration strategy. You need to consider your application portfolio DEFINE YOUR and your business requirements to CLOUD OBJECTIVES 1 ...... prevent problems such as poor application performance and laten - The first task is to identify why you cy, data leakage, or issues with com - want to move a given application to pliance or other regulations. Appli - the cloud. Is your goal to save costs cations subject to regulation or or to scale an application quickly to those that are business-critical, for meet new business demand? Some - example, are often poor candidates times your goals clearly align with for cloud migration. And legacy the applications you want to move applications may not stand up to the to the cloud, enabling you to save customization required for a move money and become more respon - to the cloud. sive to business needs—and avoid But when it comes to these deci - costly infrastructure investments to sions, you don’t have to fend for expand capacity. yourself. You can rely on established But other use cases won’t fulfill best practices to prevent disaster. these goals, particularly applications

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that are mission-critical, resource- VMs can be deployed rapidly with - intensive, or those that house sensi - out the application owner needing tive data. If you have to retool a to go through a convoluted postcon - legacy application to move it to the figuration process. These additional cloud, for example, it may drain staff VMs can be spawned on demand, time and, ultimately, money. Does then destroyed when no longer the resource cost justify the move? needed—or left in standby mode If not, consider hosting or another ready for the next spike in demand. HOME alternative. The same applies to workload- intensive applications that require CLOUD COMPUTING IS EDITOR’S LETTER extremely low latency and have ALL ABOUT SCALE AND steep disk I/O requirements or may THE ABILITY TO RAMP pose performance tradeoffs that are TRENDS UP ADDITIONAL RE - unacceptable for business users. In SOURCES ON DEMAND. such use cases, revisit your model SO THE EASIEST APPLI - OPEN SOURCE for managing applications in- IN THE CLOUD: house. CATIONS TO MOVE TO BOON OR BUST? THE CLOUD ARE THOSE WITH BUILT-IN SCALE- UNDERSTANDING SCALA- NO DEMOCRACY OUT CAPABILITIES. FOR APPS IN BILITY AND REDUNDANCY THE CLOUD? 2 ...... Scalability. Cloud computing is all Scale-out architectures suit the about scale and the ability to ramp cloud, which requires immediate, up additional resources on demand on-demand access to these scalable as workloads change. So the easiest resources. It’s much more difficult to applications to move to the cloud add resources in the form of CPU or are those with built-in scale-out memory on the fly. Not every guest capabilities and redundancy. supports this Historically, IT departments have functionality, and, depending on the used the scale-up approach and features of the OS and the function - have added more memory and CPU ality of your hypervisor, you may to servers to improve performance. find that that an OS needs a reboot But with cloud computing, the far for the change to be applied. simpler method is to scale out—that is, to add more nodes to a single Resiliency and redundancy. If an system, often by spinning up a new application lacks built-in resiliency virtual machine (VM) when peak and poses a potential single point of demand occurs. Ideally, these new failure, an organization has to spend

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time and money retrofitting the mine whether they can achieve the application to build in this function - scalability and redundancy that the ality. This may require you to shoe - environment requires. Here is a horn availability technology into the sample checklist of attributes to guest OS to protect services that consider, though it may not encom - previously had none or, alternatively, pass every consideration in your enable a virtualization provider’s own environment. VM availability, such as Microsoft HOME Hyper-V’s Failover Clustering or I Business criticality. How central VMware’s High Availability. is this application to the business? Whatever your decision—and What are the potential costs if the EDITOR’S LETTER it may very well be a combination application were to go down? Mis - of both virtualization-enabled and sion-critical applications are rarely

TRENDS added-on availability—it will good candidates for a move to the undoubtedly increase the cost of cloud. moving an application to the cloud.

OPEN SOURCE Even if your data center has these I Resource use. Does this applica - IN THE CLOUD: technologies on board, they still tion consume a lot of compute BOON OR BUST? have to be managed and main - resources? If so, it isn’t likely to tained, which only increases com - be a good candidate for the cloud. plexity when compared with appli - NO DEMOCRACY FOR APPS IN cations that have built-in I Availability. How many nines of THE CLOUD? “self-healing” capabilities. uptime are expected of this appli - But the reality is that, today, appli - cation? Will moving it to the cloud cations with this built-in design for change that degree of uptime? If scale-out and availability are few the application requires four or five and far between. Despite occasional nines of uptime, it probably isn’t sightings of this rare creature in the a good candidate for the cloud. wild, they remain largely an endan - Moreover, be wary of providers gered species compared with their that claim to guarantee this level natural predator: legacy applications of reliability; companies like Google that don’t scale, and don’t have and Microsoft claim only three. built-in resiliency. I Resilience. Does an application lack built-in resiliency and pose IDENTIFY CLOUD- a potential single point of failure? FRIENDLY APPLICATIONS If so, an organization has to spend 3 ...... time and money retrofitting the Now evaluate applications that you software to build in this function - consider cloud candidates to deter - ality.

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I Portability. Is the application easy The greater the dependencies, the to move to the cloud? Is it based less likely it’s a fit for migration to on Java, .NET or another lan - the cloud. guage? Cloud providers such as Google and Amazon use different I Data security. Does the applica - underlying architectures, which tion house data that is subject to quickly becomes problematic if strict security requirements or you’re considering moving appli - compliance regulations? Applica - HOME cations between one provider and tions that contain sensitive data or another. This becomes especially that are subject to regulation are apparent if you use a Platform as poor candidates for the cloud. EDITOR’S LETTER a Service that is based on a specif - ic programming language. Now you can consider these

TRENDS attributes in light of the applications I Scalability. Can this application in your infrastructure. If your appli - scale, and do you need it to scale cation is a resource hog, for exam -

OPEN SOURCE for peak demand times? ple, placing it in the cloud will likely IN THE CLOUD: only introduce or augment perform - BOON OR BUST? I Application dependencies. Does ance problems. Similarly, if your app the application rely on other soft - relies on others, such as a database, ware, such as a database, to run? to run, or is subject to data privacy NO DEMOCRACY FOR APPS IN THE CLOUD?

LOW-RISK APPS IN THE CLOUD When asked which applications they would be most likely to move to the cloud, respondents targeted nonmission-critical and low-risk programs.

40% 36% 33% 28%

NWeb application NDisaster recovery NEmail NTest and hosting development

SOURCE: "CLOUD COMPUTING 2011 ADOPTION SURVEY," TECHTARGET INC., MARCH 2011; N=344 I.T. MANAGERS

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concerns, it probably isn’t a good cluster, which controls the resource candidate for cloud migration. pools and per-VM defaults. Critical - For these reasons, many organiza - ly, only a certain percentage of tions have begun the process of those resources are guaranteed or porting applications to the cloud by reserved. So if you set your alloca - targeting email programs, disaster tion policy at 75%, you have 25% recovery, and test and development environments. Such applications are HOME often natural fits for the cloud: They MANY ORGANIZATIONS may need elastic resources for peak HAVE BEGUN THE volumes, they aren’t mission-criti - PROCESS OF PORTING EDITOR’S LETTER cal, and they don’t house sensitive APPLICATIONS TO THE company or customer data. You can CLOUD BY TARGETING start with these production-level TRENDS EMAIL PROGRAMS, applications while minimizing the risks. DISASTER RECOVERY,

OPEN SOURCE Another key aspect of this step is AND TEST AND DEVEL - IN THE CLOUD: consulting with stakeholders to real - OPMENT ENVIRON - BOON OR BUST? ity-check your findings. You may MENTS. SUCH APPLI- discover that an application’s own - CATIONS ARE OFTEN ers have solid automation routines NO DEMOCRACY NATURAL FITS FOR FOR APPS IN in place for installation and configu - THE CLOUD? ration that can be seamlessly inte - THE CLOUD. grated into the cloud deployment process. Alternatively, you may dis - unreserved resources. If you exceed cover that an application is resistant the 75% value, it’s anyone’s guess to being ported to a cloud environ - whether those CPU/memory ment because of security or auditing resources would be available. processes. With the reservation model, these percentages are set to 100%, and you are guaranteed 100% of the SELECT A RESOURCE megahertz or gigabytes you reserve. CONSUMPTION MODEL This can be costly; if you set too 4 ...... high a reservation, you pay for Generally, you can consume a pri - resources you may never use. vate or public cloud in three for - Finally, the pay-as-you-go model mats: allocation, reservation and —often the most attractive—is pay as you go. With the allocation based on variable consumption of model, you assign a percentage of compute resources, and the cost CPU/memory from a virtualization varies according to what you con -

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sume. But as with all pay-as-you-go Open Cloud Initiative and others models—such as cell phones—there have also pushed for common stan - is a risk of receiving a larger-than- dards throughout the market. But expected bill if applications’ these efforts are still nascent, and resource demands vary. new methods of abstracting resources are necessary to improve application portability. IDENTIFY HOME ROADBLOCKS Security. Another primary road - 5 ...... block is the objection that public Of course, you may still encounter and hybrid clouds pose security EDITOR’S LETTER objections to migrating applications risks . IT managers are concerned to the cloud, and it’s critical to about the risks of data leakage in a

TRENDS address these challenges head-on. multi-tenant environment—not to Some challenges are technical and mention the lack of control over architectural, but some involve their data.

OPEN SOURCE human obstacles. Given the immaturity of many IN THE CLOUD: cloud management products and BOON OR BUST? Application portability. Users vendors’ slow moves to develop want assurance that they can bring cloud security standards, IT man - cloud-based workloads back into agers are rightly concerned with NO DEMOCRACY FOR APPS IN their data center if circumstances data insecurity. As recently as July THE CLOUD? change. But clouds like Amazon 2011, Gartner Inc. analyst Neil Mac - Web Services use virtual machine Donald characterized cloud com - images, which are proprietary and puting standards as “nascent” and difficult to map to enterprise net - insufficient. works. While the industry has begun One reason that data security in to move toward standard applica - the cloud is slowgoing is that the tion programming interfaces and market has placed greater focus on other common standards for clouds, network security by creating tech - vendors haven’t coalesced around nologies that allow for secure multi- common practices , and providers tenancy, such as VMware’s vShield want to preserve product differenti - technologies. But vendors have ation and stave off commoditiza - placed less emphasis on securing tion. Still, the industry has made the data itself, as opposed to secur - some strides in making workloads ing network packets. Many analysts independent of the hypervisor, believe that the public cloud will enabling interoperability with multi - inevitably require levels of data ple virtualization platforms. Organi - encryption to address concerns zations including DTMF, IEEE, the about data interception. (Though

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what hasn’t been discussed is the ance, but as the Sony PlayStation additional payload that such a sys - Network breach in April 2011 shows, tem places on a cloud platform as there’s no guarantee that an insur - each bit and byte is encrypted.) ance company will accept liability But IT managers can deal with and pay out on the policy. Compa - some of these objections directly by nies must be prepared to accept reminding application owners that responsibility for security breaches security starts at home, not with a as well. That’s why many industry HOME cloud provider. They should check watchers predict that hybrid clouds whether the current application set are the inevitable outcome to com - is up to date with all known security bat this compliance anxiety. Organi - EDITOR’S LETTER patches and configured with fea - zations will opt to hold data and tures turned off to protect potential compliance-sensitive applications

TRENDS gateways from hackers. Second, in-house on a private cloud for the make application configuration the moment and restrict their use of focus of security, compliance and public cloud to applications that

OPEN SOURCE performance concerns. This focus aren’t politically sensitive. IN THE CLOUD: forces application owners to own BOON OR BUST? the “problem” rather than object to cloud-based applications based on TEST A DEPLOYMENT amorphous security paranoia. STRATEGY NO DEMOCRACY 6 ...... FOR APPS IN THE CLOUD? Compliance. Nearly every major One of the key components of cloud industry has government-imposed computing is the ability to rapidly regulations to meet, and in some spin up new applications from an cases, independent bodies impose existing catalog. If your infrastruc - additional regulations to be part of ture doesn’t have this automation the club. Additionally, many cloud built in, however, it takes time to compliance requirements deal develop and test. Rigorous testing directly with local or central govern - with beta users helps to confirm ment and these requirements are that the service runs acceptably and precisely the ones that public cloud reliably. vendors are inexperienced at deliv - Beta testers should encompass a ering. Failure to meet compliance is broad swath of users: Give business the responsibility of the business, users, administrators and develop - not the cloud provider, so simply ers a chance to evaluate the benefits blaming someone else is not a solu - and the limitations of the cloud from tion. Many think that businesses will their perspective. Application want to buy insurance to cover them- experts can use the sandbox to run selves for breaches and noncompli - functionality and performance test -

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ing on the application in the cloud to VLANs. VMware Inc.’s vShield Edge see how it behaves compared with appliance, for example, can create the traditional environment and to “network isolation-backed” network see whether any differences are pools. These pools use a MAC-in- acceptable. MAC encapsulation process to add additional bytes to the standard Eth - ernet packet, which creates multiple SELECT A network IDs within a single VLAN. HOME NETWORK MODEL The process is analogous to the 7 ...... 802.3 Q VLAN tagging standard For the cloud model to work, you that many VMware admins have EDITOR’S LETTER need a networking design that can enabled on their physical and virtual accommodate virtualized, multi- environments, which allows many

TRENDS tenant resources. VLANs to be accessed through a At a simple level, resource sharing network interface card team. (In a can take place by creating pools of team, one or more physical NICs are

OPEN SOURCE virtual LANs (VLANs)—which bonded together logically to create IN THE CLOUD: enable information and resource the impression of a single pipe. A BOON OR BUST? sharing across locations as if they NIC team guarantees bandwidth were all under one roof—at the and offers redundancy should a NIC physical switch that are then in the team fail.) With this MAC-in- NO DEMOCRACY FOR APPS IN addressed by hypervisors’ virtual MAC method, the same number of THE CLOUD? switch configuration. Virtual switch - networks can be supported with es are then presented automatically fewer VLANs, and network adminis - to the cloud automation layer to be trators can receive fewer requests. consumed by tenants. Fundamentally, it allows for a more But VLANs have their drawbacks; dynamic and automated approach these models require a significant to creating new networks that cloud number of VLANs to be created up computing requires. front as a pool of resources on a This networking design approach physical switch. Network adminis - comes with caveats as well. The trators are often hesitant to create MAC-in-MAC process adds 24 numerous VLANs in bulk that aren’t bytes to the overall Ethernet packet, designated for immediate use so you may need to adjust the maxi - because they view VLANs as the mum transmission unit (MTU) main avenue to control traffic and value on your physical and virtual ensure network security. switches to prevent fragmentation New alternatives allow cloud of packets through devices that are administrators to segment a net - currently configured to the default work without excessive use of of 1,500. They need to be reconfig -

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ured to an MTU of 1,524 bytes or Ensuring that all devices in the greater. If they aren’t, every time a path of communication are config - 1,524 (or larger) packet traverses a ured for the correct MTU can be a network device configured for 1,500 management headache, and it’s dif - bytes, it gets split up into smaller ficult to diagnose which device has units. This fragmentation can caused the fragmentation. So while degrade performance and affect the changing the MTU value is a rela - reliability of secure protocols such tively trivial task, it must be done HOME as SSL. consistently across the affected net -

EDITOR’S LETTER ADDITIONAL RESOURCES TRENDS

Data Security in the Cloud

OPEN SOURCE Multi-tenancy in the cloud and questions about the physical location of cloud data IN THE CLOUD: are security risks that organizations looking at using cloud services need to be BOON OR BUST? aware of.

Compatibility Concerns in the Evolution of Cloud Computing APIs NO DEMOCRACY FOR APPS IN To truly exploit the new cloud computing paradigm, revisions are required to capi - THE CLOUD? talize on special application programming interfaces associated with individual cloud architectures.

Cloud Computing Skepticism: IT Security and Compliance How can enterprises ensure that cloud providers—especially external providers— stay up to par with patches, updates and access restrictions?

Cloud Computing and Application Security: Issues and Risks Regardless of where the computing takes place, you’re going to have security issues in the same old areas: technology, people, business processes.

Resolving Cloud Application Migration Issues Most of today's large, old monolithic applications must be rebuilt to fit the target environment.

How Providers Affect Cloud Application Migration Unfortunately, there’s more to application migration than simply moving an applica - tion into a new cloud. I

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work, and that can introduce an ini - cations whose internal characteris - tial administrative burden to the tics are receptive to a cloud, such network team that makes the as those that offer an easy way to change depending on the number of deploy new VMs as part of a scale- network devices that need the out approach and that—ideally—are update. In contrast to these methods, JUST AS THE MIGRA - , a cloud automation start - HOME up based in Palo Alto, Calif., uses a TION TO SERVER “security list” method that acts as VIRTUALIZATION an access-control method. Currently REQUIRED A FLEXIBLE EDITOR’S LETTER built on Kernel-based Virtual APPROACH TO ARRIVE Machine (KVM), Nimbula use the AT THE END GAME, TRENDS DOM0 partition to store the map - ping data and then control access THE JOURNEY TO THE from one VM to another. While CLOUD WILL REQUIRE

OPEN SOURCE these new methods of network iso - NEW TECHNICAL, IN THE CLOUD: lation are innovative, they are also BUSINESS AND BOON OR BUST? exceedingly new. Cloud service PROJECT MANAGE - providers may not be ready to sup - MENT SKILLS. port these methods. NO DEMOCRACY FOR APPS IN THE CLOUD? designed with built-in redundancy. CONCLUSION Companies have already had suc - By necessity, the process of deploy - cess with targeted application ing an application to the cloud migration. Retail platforms that varies based on organizations’ envi - need quick scale-out to accommo - ronments, business requirements date peaks in customer demand are and application portfolios. Just as a good example. the migration to server virtualization Next stakeholders need to agree required a flexible approach to on a resource consumption model arrive at the end game, the journey for network, memory, CPU and disk to the cloud will require new techni - resources that allows for easy adop - cal, business and project manage - tion and acceptance among the vari - ment skills. ous parties—while also fitting into As with other initiatives, planning potential budget constraints. and developing a migration road- As you map out the various tech - map is critical. Start by clearly defin - nical considerations and your cloud ing the goals of migrating a given service-level agreement model, application and then identify appli - however, you also need to identify

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your company’s internal roadblocks to the cloud, such as the security and compliance requirements that often make the prospect of cloud migration a political hot potato. And applications and data subject to regulation should be kept in- house. Also carefully consider the HOME departments most affected by the Jo Maitland move and how to broker their Executive Editor investment in a cloud strategy. EDITOR’S LETTER Testing your cloud deployment is Michelle Boisvert also critical. Identify beta users who Senior Site Editor

TRENDS can give you a taste of the produc - tion requirements and the snafus Lauren Horwitz you’ll likely encounter. Senior Managing Editor

OPEN SOURCE Finally, remember that users are IN THE CLOUD: at the center of the cloud model. Christine Casatelli BOON OR BUST? Managing Editor Guaranteeing system and applica - tion uptime and performance are critical objectives in the success of Jeannette Beltran NO DEMOCRACY Eugene Demaitre FOR APPS IN a cloud migration strategy. I Martha Moore THE CLOUD? Associate Managing Editors

Mike Laverick is a former VMware instructor Linda Koury with 17 years of experience in technologies such Director of Online Design as Novell, Windows, Citrix and VMware. He has also been involved with the VMware community since 2003. Laverick is a VMware forum moder - Cathleen Gagne ator and member of the London VMware User Editorial Director Group. Laverick is also the man behind the virtu - alization website and blog RTFM Education , where he publishes free guides and utilities for Marc Laplante VMware customers. Laverick received the Publisher VMware vExpert award in 2009, 2010 and 2011. Since joining TechTarget as a contributor, Laver - ick has also found time to run the weekly pod - TechTarget Inc. casts “The Chinwag” and “The Vendorwag.” 275 Grove Street Laverick helped found the Irish and Scottish Newton, MA 02466 VMware user groups and now regularly speaks www.techtarget.com at larger regional events organized by the Global VMUG in North America, EMEA and APAC. Lav - ©2011 TechTarget Inc. No part of this publication may erick has published several books on VMware be transmitted or reproduced in any form or by any means without written permission from the publisher. For permis - Virtual Infrastructure 3, vSphere4, Site Recovery sions or reprint information, please contact Scott Kelly , Manager and View. Associate Publisher, Data Center Media, TechTarget ( [email protected] ).

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