E-guide Cloud Computing Infrastructure Services Buyer’s Guide Your expert guide to cloud computing infrastructure services E-guide In this e-guide A primer on public cloud benefits A primer on public cloud Brien Posey benefits When used to extend existing data center footprints, public cloud Criteria for choosing a public can deliver big benefits for data backup and scalability. cloud provider With companies such as Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft and Compare public cloud providers Rackspace offering the ability to create virtual machines in the cloud to support and replace physical servers, cloud virtualization services are being integrated Virtustream into data center infrastructures. But knowing which features to consider and which vendors to compare can be a daunting task. Microsoft Azure This article is the first in a series that walks through the buying process for Amazon Web Services public cloud virtual server services. Here we cover the major benefits of using SoftLayer public cloud services as an extension of your data center infrastructure. Verizon Cloud The second article discusses the risks and costs associated with moving virtual machines (VMs) to the public cloud. The third article focuses on purchasing Rackspace criteria and preparing a vendor request for proposal (RFP). Finally, the series Google Cloud Platform will compare market-leading services against established criteria and against each other to help you select the best public cloud service for your environment. Page 1 of 57 E-guide In most cases, established organizations with IT resources on-premises should In this e-guide not dispose of existing servers and move everything to the cloud. It would be a waste of money, unless the local resources were scheduled to be retired. Even A primer on public cloud then, there may be some workloads, such as latency-sensitive ones, that should benefits run locally. Similarly, you might not want to put all of your domain controllers on a public cloud. Criteria for choosing a public cloud provider Of course, this does not mean companies with established IT infrastructures cannot benefit from the cloud. The best approach is often to treat the cloud as Compare public cloud providers an extension to the organization's existing IT footprint. In this feature, we look at the benefits of using public cloud versus an on-premises data center. In the Virtustream second part of this feature, we'll cover the disadvantages of public cloud. Microsoft Azure Workload scaling Amazon Web Services There are multiple ways a data center benefits from being extended to the SoftLayer cloud, and one involves workload scaling. There may be times your organization Verizon Cloud needs to ramp up a production workload beyond what the local data center can comfortably handle. Rackspace For example, consider the way insurance companies operate. For most of the Google Cloud Platform year, insurance companies typically consume a predictable level of IT resources. However, there may be open enrollment periods that occur throughout the year. Page 2 of 57 E-guide These enrollment periods are especially busy for insurance companies. As a In this e-guide result, existing servers may not be able to handle open enrollment workloads. Rather than buy new servers to accommodate temporary spikes in demand, the A primer on public cloud companies could use public cloud. benefits If the company's enrollment applications are Web-based, it would be relatively Criteria for choosing a public easy for cloud-based Web servers to accommodate the seasonal demand. cloud provider Once open enrollment is over, the cloud-based Web servers can be decommissioned. Compare public cloud providers Virtustream Business continuity Microsoft Azure Another advantage of cloud-based VMs is protecting businesses in case of equipment failures or physical disasters. Amazon Web Services To protect against data center failures, some organizations build geographic SoftLayer clusters that span multiple data centers. Then, if a natural disaster destroys an Verizon Cloud organization's primary data centers, mission-critical workloads fail over to secondary data centers. Rackspace Building geoclusters, however, is expensive and complicated. Alternatively, Google Cloud Platform organizations can use public cloud to protect mission-critical workloads using guest clusters and VM replication. Page 3 of 57 E-guide Guest clusters are clustered application servers that run on virtual hardware. In this e-guide Since all of the guest cluster nodes are VMs, it's possible to place some of the cluster nodes in the public cloud. That way, critical workloads can continue to A primer on public cloud function even if primary data centers go offline. benefits However, you probably can't include public cloud servers in existing hypervisor Criteria for choosing a public clusters. Public cloud providers typically don't give customers low-level access cloud provider to physical servers, which makes stretching an existing hypervisor cluster to the public cloud nearly impossible. Compare public cloud providers Another way to use public cloud for business continuity is through VM replication. Not every provider or server virtualization platform supports Virtustream replication, but some cloud and hypervisor combinations allow duplicate VMs to Microsoft Azure be created in the cloud and kept in sync with on-premises VMs. Amazon Web Services Similarly, there are solutions that allow public clouds to act as relays between private data centers for VM replication. If any primary data centers go down, VM SoftLayer replicas can be used. Verizon Cloud Public cloud VM deployment can be simpler than on-premises deployment Rackspace because public cloud providers typically offer templates to generate new VMs. Templates are used to automate VM creation. And, because they don't require Google Cloud Platform manual installation of guest operating systems, templates cut down on administrators' work. Some templates even include pre-installed applications. Page 4 of 57 E-guide Public cloud VM deployments are especially attractive for startups. Any new In this e-guide business incurs startup costs, but operating virtual servers in the cloud eliminates the capital expenditures associated with server hardware and A primer on public cloud software. benefits Cloud-hosted VMs are usually billed on a monthly basis. For a startup, this Criteria for choosing a public monthly charge is likely far less than the hardware and software costs required cloud provider to run the workload locally. A startup organization can first run a workload in the cloud, and then later bring network load on-premises. Compare public cloud providers Next article Virtustream Microsoft Azure Amazon Web Services SoftLayer Verizon Cloud Rackspace Google Cloud Platform Page 5 of 57 E-guide In this e-guide Criteria for choosing a public cloud A primer on public cloud provider benefits Brien Posey Criteria for choosing a public cloud provider When it comes to choosing a public cloud provider, cost is often top of mind. But other factors, such as VM migration, storage and Compare public cloud providers autoscaling, should also be considered. As organizations transition to public or hybrid cloud, they inevitably have to Virtustream choose a public cloud provider to host their cloud-based virtual machines. And Microsoft Azure while there are many infrastructure as a service (IaaS) providers, each has its own strengths and weaknesses. Furthermore, each public cloud provider has its Amazon Web Services own pricing structure, so the cost of running a VM in the cloud could differ SoftLayer substantially from one provider to the next. Verizon Cloud This article is the third in a series that walks through the buying process for public cloud virtual server services. The first article described the benefits of Rackspace hosting virtual servers in the cloud, while the second detailed public cloud costs Google Cloud Platform and risks. This article outlines the purchasing criteria to include in a vendor request for proposal (RFP) to ensure you get the right services for your environment. Page 6 of 57 E-guide The fourth article will compare market-leading public cloud virtual server In this e-guide services against established purchasing criteria and against each other to help you determine which service offers the best features and price for your needs. A primer on public cloud benefits Determining public cloud costs Criteria for choosing a public cloud provider New public cloud users are often surprised to learn that IaaS has a complicated pricing structure. You will rarely, if ever, find flat rate pricing for running a virtual Compare public cloud providers machine (VM) in the cloud. And although cloud providers disclose their pricing formulas, they tend to be extremely complex, making it difficult to estimate the cost of running a public cloud VM. Virtustream Microsoft Azure These formulas are complex because they're based on the resources VMs consume. Some of the factors included in public cloud pricing structures are Amazon Web Services CPU consumption, the type of CPU activity being performed, network bandwidth consumption, storage I/O consumption, operating system (OS) selection, SoftLayer storage type and storage consumption on a per GB basis. Verizon Cloud Before running a VM in the cloud, set up trial accounts with different cloud Rackspace providers. This will create identical VMs on each cloud, and track costs. You can then compare how pricing differs from one provider to another. Google Cloud Platform For this method to work, however, the VMs must be somewhat representational of what you will run in your production environment. Page 7 of 57 E-guide In this e-guide VM migration to public cloud A primer on public cloud Another important consideration is VM migration support. Most organizations benefits have on-premises VMs they will migrate to public cloud. Most of the major public cloud providers offer a mechanism for importing existing VMs into the Criteria for choosing a public cloud, but some are easier to use than others.