Tag: cloudconnect

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Cloud Developer Tips The Business of IT

Do you have what it takes to build and run your own private cloud?

Building and operating a private cloud ourselves is simple, right? Give our experienced IT folks a budget for hardware and software, a clear mandate, and deadlines, and we’re likely to succeed. That’s what we’ve always done, and it’s worked out tolerably well. Private cloud isn’t so different from running our own virtual machine environment, and we do that already, so why wouldn’t we succeed? I hear this sentiment expressed often so it seems to be a widely held belief. But it’s wrong precisely 97.73 percent of the time – I measured. Unfortunately, too many organizations act on this mistaken belief and experience unnecessary hurt as a result.

My good friend Keith Hudgins made this point cogently in his presentation at the CloudConnect conference in Chicago. Keith is one of the few people who really knows what it takes to build and run a cloud: he was part of the core team with me building KT’s public cloud service in South Korea, and he is currently Senior Cloud Engineer at enStratus where he helps enterprises get their private clouds to work properly. Keith’s presentation was sobering for the audience members, several of whom said they plan to reevaluate their private cloud initiatives as a result.

If you want to succeed at your own private cloud you need to consider these four critical aspects: your users, your competition, your skills, and your technology. Know these four and you have a fighting chance to make it. If not, get help – or prepare for disappointment.

Know your users

Different users need different applications, and your cloud must be designed to support the required applications. Private clouds might have three different types of users:

  • Regular desktop users, the kind of user most likely found in your Finance, HR, Sales, and Marketing organizations, will need your cloud to support the applications your IT department currently supports already: CRM, accounting, ERP, and business applications your IT department is already familiar with.
  • Software R&D staff will need your cloud to support the development environment, tools, and deployment processes they’re already using. This group will also likely need training to properly architect and operate reliable applications in a distributed environment.
  • IT staff will need your cloud to support core capabilities such as backup, directory management, and file sharing.
Ask your users what applications they are using and what they need the cloud to support.

Know your competition

Odds are your users already use public cloud services, and – like it or not – your own private cloud will be competing against those public alternatives. How well do public cloud services meet your users’ needs?

  • How reliable is their service? How does this compare to your own historical reliability?
  • How easy are they to use? Do public cloud service customers need multiple levels of corporate approval to acquire resources, or is the ordering and fulfillment process seamless and extremely short – a few minutes at most from order to delivery? Can you deliver the same or better usability?
  • How good is their support? Are there multiple sources for expertise and communities where users can share solutions and experience?
  • How rich is their ecosystem? How easy is it to employ a vast variety of tools and seamlessly integrated value-added services?
Determining how well your users’ needs are met by existing public cloud alternatives will give you a good idea of what you need to provide in order to achieve successful adoption of your private cloud.

Know your skills

The skills required to build and operate a cloud are not taught in classes, they’re learned by experience. These include:

  • System administration. Okay, this one is taught in classes, but the issues you’ll experience in a cloud environment are much more complicated and at a larger scale than you will normally encounter elsewhere. Keith suggested that OpenStack and Eucalyptus will be a challenge for your team if they lack linux administration skills.
  • Storage management skills are critical because storage is the most complicated technical aspect of a cloud. Keith emphasized the importance of NAS and iSCSI setup and management experience.
  • Networking is a key element of the cloud and networking expertise must be a part of your core cloud engineering team.
  • Automation will dictate how quickly you can recover from problems, so you must be experienced in its use and integrating automation tools into your workflow. Identical inputs (that is, identical hardware revisions) must always yield identical outputs, and that is only possible at a large scale with automation. Keith pointed out that automation takes time to produce. Make sure your team is proficient with the automation tools that work best with your technology choices.

Get these skills if you don’t have them. They will influence your choice of hardware and software.

Know your technology

Cloud is powered by technology, so you’ll need expertise in at least the following four technical areas to build and run it yourself.

  • Cloud Management Software is the layer that provisions cloud guests and sits between the API and the hypervisor. If you can’t explain the differences between the four major cloud management software options – CloudStack, OpenStack, Eucalyptus, and OpenNebula, then you do not have the expertise to choose the right one for your needs.
  • Storage, Keith pointed out, is by far the most complicated technical aspect to get right in a cloud. Local guest storage is the simplest to build and operate, but limits the range of applications that can be easily supported on the cloud. Attached storage increases flexibility at the cost of complexity. And object storage requires lots and lots of disks. Your options will be influenced by your choice of cloud management software, and any change to the default configurations will require serious development and testing to get it right.
  • Hardware and the way you manage it is the most important choice you can make. Of all the components in a cloud the hardware is what is going to break, so the ease with which you can replace hardware will dictate the maintenance headache. Keith provided some hard-won tips: make sure your hardware vendor can supply identical hardware down to the BIOS revision, create (automated) procedures to verify or reject hardware as it is delivered, and diligently avoid hardware inconsistencies since they greatly increase the complexity of the endeavor.
Your choices in the above three technology categories should be guided by your needs, but remember: you can only choose wisely if you have appropriate expertise in these technologies.

Do you have what it takes?

The above four aspects are critical to successfully building and operating your own private cloud. There are other success factors – know your strategy, know your business model, and use effective project management – that are part of any successful technological change. But the above four are critical in any private cloud initiative. So, how do you rate on these aspects?

Odds are, you don’t have the expertise required to do it yourself.

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Cloud Developer Tips The Business of IT

Roundup: CloudConnect 2011 Platforms and Ecosystems BOF

The need for cloud provider price transparency. What is a workload and how to move it. “Open”ness and what it means for a cloud service. Various libraries, APIs, and SLAs. These are some of the engaging discussions that developed at the Platforms and Ecosystems “Birds of a Feather”/”Unconference”, held on Tuesday evening March 8th during the CloudConnect 2011 conference. What about the BOF worked? What didn’t? What should be done differently in the future? Below are some observations gathered from early feedback; please leave your comments, too.

Roundup

In true unconference form, the discussions reflected what was on the mind of the audience. Some were more focused than others, and some were more contentious than others. Each turn of the wheel brought a new combination of experts, topics, themes, and participants.

Provider transparency was a hot subject, both for IaaS services and for PaaS services. When you consume a utility, such as water, you have a means to independently verify your usage: you can look at the water meter. Or, if you don’t trust the supplier’s meter, you can install your own meter on your main intake line. But with cloud services there is no way to measure many kinds of usage that you pay for – you must trust the provider to bill you correctly. How many Machine Hours did it take to process my SimpleDB query, or CPU Usage for my Google App Engine request? Is that internal IP address I’m communicating with in my own availability zone (and therefore free to communicate with) or in a different zone (and therefore costs money)? Today, the user’s only option is to trust the provider. Furthermore, it would be useful if we had tools to help estimate the cost of a particular workload. We look forward to more transparency in the future.

As they rotated through the topics, two of the themes generated similar discussions: Workload Portability and Avoiding Vendor Lock-in. The themes are closely related, so this is not surprising. Lesson learned: next time use themes that are more orthogonal, to explore the ecosystem more thoroughly.

In total nine planned discussions took place over the 90 minutes. A few interesting breakaway conversations spun off as well, as people opted to explore other aspects separately from the main discussions. I think that’s great: it means we got people thinking and engaged, which was the goal.

Some points for improvement: The room was definitely too small and the acoustics lacking. We had a great turnout – over 130 people, despite competing with the OpenStack party – but the undersized room was very noisy and some of the conversations were difficult to follow. Next time: a bigger room. And more pizza: the pizza ran out during the first round of discussions.

Participants who joined after the BOF had kicked off told me they were confused about the format. It is not easy to join in the middle of this kind of format and know what’s going on. In fact, I spent most of the time orienting newcomers as they arrived. Lesson learned: next time show a slide explaining the format, and have it displayed prominently throughout the entire event for easy reference.

Overall the BOF was very successful: lots of smart people having interesting discussions in every corner of the room. Would you participate in another event of this type? Please leave a comment with your feedback.

Thanks

Many thanks to the moderators who conducted each discussion, and the experts who contributed their experience and ideas. These people are: Dan Koffler, Ian Rae, Steve Wylie, David Bernstein, Adrian Cole, Ryan Dunn, Bernard Golden, Alex Heneveld, Sam Johnston, David Kavanagh, Ben Kepes, Tony Lucas, David Pallman, Jason Read, Steve Riley, Andrew Shafer, Jeroen Tjepkema, and James Urquhart. Thanks also to Alistair Croll not only for chairing a great CloudConnect conference overall, but also for inspiring the format of this BOF.

And thanks to all the participants – we couldn’t have done it without you.

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Cloud Developer Tips The Business of IT

CloudConnect 2011 Platforms and Ecosystems BOF

This March 7-10 2011 I will be in Santa Clara for the CloudConnect conference. There are many reasons you should go too, and I’d like to highlight one session that you should not miss: the Platforms and Ecosystems BOF, on Tuesday March 8 at 6:00 – 7:30 PM. Read on for a detailed description of this BOF session and why it promises to be worthwhile.

[Full disclosure: I’m the track chair for the Design Patterns track and I’m running the Platforms and Ecosystems BOF. The event organizers are sponsoring my hotel for the conference, and like all conference speakers my admission to the event is covered.]

CloudConnect 2011 promises to be a high-quality conference, as last year’s was. This year you will be able to learn all about design patterns for cloud applications in the Design Patterns track I’m leading. You’ll also be able to hear from an all-star lineup about many aspects of using cloud: cloud economics, cloud security, culture, risks, and governance, data and storage, devops and automation, performance and monitoring, and private clouds.

But I’m most looking forward to the Platforms and Ecosystems BOF because the format of the event promises to foster great discussions.

The BOF Format

The BOF will be conducted as a… well, it’s hard to describe in words only, so here is a picture:

BOF Overview

At three fixed points around the outside of the room will be three topics: Public IaaS, Public PaaS, and Private Cloud Stacks. There will also be three themes which rotate around the room at each interval; these themes are: Workload Portability, Monitoring & Control, and Avoiding Vendor Lock-in. At any one time there will be three discussions taking place, one in each corner, focusing on the particular combination of that theme and topic.

Here is an example of the first set of discussions:

BOF Session 1

And here is the second set of discussions, which will take place after one “turn” of the inner “wheel”:

BOF Session 2

And here is the final set of discussions, after the second turn of the inner wheel:

BOF Session 3

In all, nine discussions are conducted. Here is a single matrix to summarize:

BOF Summary Matrix

Anatomy of a Discussion

What makes a discussion worthwhile? Interesting questions, focus, and varied opinions. The discussions in the BOF will have all of these elements.

Interesting Questions

The questions above are just “seeder” questions. They are representative questions related to the intersection of each topic and theme, but they are by no means the only questions. Do you have questions you’d like to see discussed? Please, leave a comment below. Better yet, attend the BOF and raise them there, in the appropriate discussion.

Focus

Nothing sucks more than a pointless tangent or a a single person monopolizing the floor. Each discussion will be shepherded by a capable moderator, who will keep things focused on the subject area and encourage everyone’s participation.

Varied Opinions

Topic experts and theme experts will participate in every discussion.

Vendors will be present as well – but the moderators will make sure they do not abuse the forum.

And interested parties – such as you! – will be there too. In unconference style, the audience will drive the discussion.

These three elements all together provide the necessary ingredients to make sure things stay interesting.

At the Center

What, you may ask, is at the center of the room? I’m glad you asked. There’ll be beer and refreshments at the center. This is also where you can conduct spin-off discussions if you like.

The Platforms and Ecosystems BOF at CloudConnect is the perfect place to bring your cloud insights, case studies, anecdotes, and questions. It’s a great forum to discuss the ideas you’ve picked up during the day at the conference, in a less formal atmosphere where deep discussion is on the agenda.

Here’s a discount code for 25% off registration: CNXFCC03. I hope to see you there.

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Cloud Developer Tips

Top Ten Reasons Why You, a Developer, Should Come to CloudConnect

You’re a developer – or you want to be – writing software that uses cloud computing. Why should you care about the CloudConnect Conference? Here are the top ten reasons why it’s worth your while. Full disclosure: Nothing to disclose. I have no commercial connection to CloudConnect or its producers.

#10: Snacks

Enjoy short, sweet, thought-provoking keynotes about applications, metrics, SaaS, and more. I happen to know of three keynote presenters who will be particularly interesting: William Louth, William Vambenepe, and Guy Rosen. Come hear them challenge the way you think about cloud applications, environments, and infrastructure.

#9: Get Into It

You can attend crash courses on building cloud applications using popular cloud platforms, including Amazon Web Services, Google App Engine, Force.com, and more. I’ll be assisting Jinesh Varia, AWS Technology Evangelist, to deliver the Develop Your First Amazon Web Services Application workshop. If you want to develop for the cloud but don’t know where or how to start, the Developer Workshops are the place.

#8: Big Data

You can discover techniques for dealing with big data. When you have problems with big data. you have big data problems: how to store it, how to process it, and how to get the analytics you need from it. Brad Cross, co-founder and head of research at everyone’s favorite frustration-saving service for travelers FlightCaster, is leading the Dealing with Big Data track, which will address these challenges.

#7: Enterprise

You can hear how to develop a strategy for migrating enterprise applications into the cloud. Randy Bias, founder of Cloudscaling, will help you make sense of what to move into the cloud, what to leave behind, and how to do it in a way that makes sense for your organization and budget. If you’re interested in the enterprise perspective on cloud computing adoption, the Migration Strategies track is for you.

#6: Standards

You can get up to speed on the many standardization efforts underway in the cloud ecosystem. Bob Marcus, who has been working to ensure all these efforts act in concert, is leading the Standards, Government, and Industry track. This is where you can hear about the current status and future plans of the standards, and you can let the representatives of various efforts know what’s important to you. Be heard, make a difference.

#5: APIs

You can learn about the myriad of cloud APIs out there: How can you write code that works on all these APIs? Why are there so many different ones? What were the API designers thinking when they architected them? What directions are planned for the future of these APIs? Come hear architects, implementers, and power users of the AWS, Rackspace, GoGrid, and other cloud APIs. Ask the architects tough questions. Hear how users overcome some of the issues. Let them all know what you think in the Writing Code for Many Clouds session.

#4: Design Patterns

You can learn how to think about cloud application architecture. The author of the seminal whitepaper Architecting for the Cloud: Best Practices (the same Jinesh Varia who’s giving the AWS workshop) will present Design Patterns for Cloud Computing Applications. If you want to learn the major architectural patterns that software designers use for cloud applications, this is the session for you.

#3: Deployment

You can hear all about some of the leading platform providers’ solutions (RightScale, EngineYard, GigaSpaces) and how they can help you deploy your applications in the cloud more easily. Plus, hear what actual customers of these platforms are doing, and what they wish these platforms could do. If you ever wondered how you’d get your application to live a healthy life in the cloud, the Deploying to the Cloud: The Care and Feeding of a Cloud Application session is the place to be.

#2: Orchestration

You can discover what many other cloud developers are realizing: that you need to know about orchestration. It’s the practice (art?) of keeping a composed set of machines and services working together dynamically to achieve certain goals (an SLA, perhaps). Hear the history of orchestration, learn the different layers into which orchestration must be integrated, and see examples of how you can do this in your applications – presented by the leading practitioners in the field. All this, plus ask your own questions at the Orchestration: The Next Frontier for Cloud Applications session.

#1: Me

You can meet me. I’m leading the Developing for the Cloud track, which includes the four sessions mentioned above. I’ll be happy to autograph your AWS Multifactor Authentication fob or your Secret Access Key.

An additional reason, for those of you who have read this far: You now have a discount code CNJRCC05 good for a free Expo pass or 40% off the conference sessions. Enjoy, and come introduce yourself.