Innovating Private Clouds for Optimal Service Delivery
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Convergence to cloud Innovating private clouds for optimal service delivery By Shelley Palmer, Wendy Williams, Paul Koteras and Art Fewell After priming data centers with virtualized IT resources, many government agencies are ready to progress toward a converged infrastructure that leverages private clouds to meet rigorous service delivery demands quickly, securely and cost-effectively. overnment organizations are resources. For example, cloud-based functions seeking ways to effectively that facilitate automatic orchestration of transition IT infrastructure and approval requests with associated governance Gservices to a cloud-based model tasks and self-service deployment of desktop for many reasons, including key directives applications are highly desirable for many such as the 25-Point Implementation Plan agencies. In addition, organizations are looking to Reform Federal IT Management and to deploy consolidated community clouds the Federal IT Shared Services Strategy — that support both local and geographically commonly referred to as Shared First. The dispersed locations, even if a shared cloud federal chief information officer (CIO) has strategy involves working through interagency established these mandates along with the differences in IT process design. Because Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative the same cloud model does not fit every (FDCCI) to heighten efficiency in financial, deployment scenario, careful infrastructure technical, environmental and workforce design that is tailored to meet specific areas. By adopting a similar mind-set, state service delivery requirements for individual Now, recent innovations in virtualization and local organizations may also benefit from agencies is crucial to success. and convergence, ever-expanding network significant cost-efficiencies. At the outset, many public sector agencies bandwidth and emerging open standard Notably, cloud computing allows face a challenging transition from existing architectures help simplify data center government at all levels to move business IT infrastructures that are characterized by consolidation. In some cases, budget services such as IT and telephony into the duplicative systems, low asset utilization and constraints and government directives may service management realm. This strategy fragmented demand for resources. Such even serve as a catalyst for change, pushing transcends interrupt-driven IT models by environments are commonly saddled with organizations to consolidate systems and transforming IT into a consumable service management silos rooted in project-based share resources in ways they had not that expands and contracts as government procurement and proprietary technology considered previously. needs change. domains. In turn, lack of a unified infrastructure Moreover, government entities are and strong process automation typically results Traversing the stepping-stones focusing on how to save costs by gaining in excessive manual implementations and to cloud computing efficiencies such as removing manual repetitive management tasks that impede The migration to a cloud infrastructure begins tasks from daily routines and consolidating the progress of cloud initiatives. by evaluating the existing environment, with 6 2013 Government special edition | Dell.com/fed • Dell.com/slg Reprinted from the 2013 Government special edition of Dell Power Solutions. Reprinted from the 2013 Government special edition of Dell Power Solutions. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Convergence to cloud an eye toward standardization, simplification and standardization, simplification, virtualization and virtualization. Standardizing on open standards– convergence (see figure). Following these steps based platforms such as the x86 architecture helps enables government organizations to reframe simplify IT infrastructure by removing unnecessary IT as a service provider with the mission of variability from existing mainframe environments, optimizing productivity, functionality and growth. which can be a huge financial drain. (See the Dell Services provides a broad range of sidebar, “New life for existing applications.”) offerings to enhance virtualization, heighten data Standardizing on just a few, well-engineered center efficiencies or help build a private cloud — configurations for all data center and endpoint including federal-specific consultants who focus devices, and ensuring that these components on building security into the process. To help have built-in security and management, helps decision makers envision ways to align IT more organizations create a strong, predictable closely with business objectives, Dell offers a foundation for IT infrastructure and services. Also, complimentary Cloud Strategy Workshop geared adopting a “virtual first” policy with strong process for organizations running large data centers or controls facilitates tremendous enhancements in considering consolidation of several data centers. efficiency, agility and utilization. As new resources This workshop is designed to provide a road are adopted in the data center, the focus should map to achieve specific agency goals, including be on pooling resources that can host transient, an executive summary recapping actionable elastic workloads and utilizing technology that information and direction for IT departments, can easily integrate with existing infrastructure. which also serves as a useful communication tool Simplification of the application environment — for building consensus among key stakeholders. identifying and removing duplicative and unused applications, for example — helps reduce Deploying highly scalable building blocks management overhead and streamline operations. As virtualization accelerates the consolidation of After the application rationalization process, the data center components, Dell continues to help next step is to create or update an IT service catalog. organizations resolve problems with functional All requests for new services are then directed to the convergence from the component level all the IT service catalog to determine whether resources way to pre-configured, racked solutions. A cloud are already available to meet requirements. strategy based on converged infrastructure helps Progressive steps lay the foundation for an organizations provide reliable performance and evolutionary approach to cloud computing rapid responsiveness to keep up with changing that builds on the efficiencies gained from constituent needs nimbly and efficiently. Hybrid Utilize on-demand, anytime, anywhere services Cloud Enable elastic, automated self-service capability Convergence Optimize infrastructure operations Virtualization Agility and eciency Increase flexibility and utilization Standardization Remove unnecessary variability Adoption maturity Progressive steps toward cloud computing: laying the foundation for converged, cloud-based environments Reprinted from the 2013 Government special edition of Dell Power Solutions. Reprinted from the 2013 Government special edition of Dell Power Solutions. Dell.com/fed • Dell.com/slg | 2013 Government special edition 7 Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2013 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Convergence to cloud Blade servers maintenance. The Integrated Dell Remote administrators to manage software and With outstanding processing power, Access Controller (iDRAC) with Lifecycle hardware from a single console. efficiency and scalability built into a small, Controller enables administrators to deploy, modular form factor, Dell™ PowerEdge™ manage, update and monitor multiple Virtualized storage blade servers provide an excellent foundation PowerEdge servers remotely using a single Dell virtualized storage technology extends the for virtualized, converged private cloud tool, even if the servers are running different advantages of server virtualization across infrastructure. For example, PowerEdge operating systems. The Lifecycle Controller the data center — including within blade M420 quarter-height blade servers equipped also takes advantage of Intel® Node Manager chassis, thanks to advanced storage with dual Intel® Xeon® E5-2400 processors embedded power management technology blade designs. To facilitate deployment in are designed to deliver extremely high to provide visibility, management and converged, cloud-based environments, Dell computing density. This form factor enables reporting of power usage. offers cost-effective, scalable virtualized leading-edge support of 32 PowerEdge Moreover, PowerEdge management storage designed to provide the same self- M420 blade server nodes in a 10U rack, and capabilities are integrated into a range of optimization, automation, ease-of-use and allows for 64 processors per chassis. third-party management tools such as data protection features that are available Embedded, agent-free management VMware® vCenter™ server and Microsoft® in traditional, rack-mounted storage area helps to greatly simplify PowerEdge server System Center software, enabling network (SAN) arrays. New life for existing applications Many administrators feel like they are methodologies with innovative Dell with platform modernization. The being held hostage by mainframe intellectual property to perform re-architecting service is designed to applications that have been supporting application modernization rapidly and help agencies realize new initiatives and their organization for years. All too with minimal disruption. enhanced agility.