If you’ve ever looked at building your own private cloud in the past, the “days, weeks or months” timeline isn’t very surprising — you have to get the hardware provisioned, the software installed and the network configured … and it all has to work together. Hearing that SoftLayer Private Clouds can be provisioned in “hours” probably seems too good to be true to administrators who have tried building a private cloud in the past, so I thought I’d put it to the test by ordering a private cloud and documenting the experience.

At 9:30am, I walked over to Phil Jackson‘s desk and asked him if he would be interested in helping me out with the project. By 9:35am, I had him convinced (proof), and the clock was started.

When we started the order process, part of our work is already done for us:

To guarantee peak performance of the CloudPlatform management server, SoftLayer selected the hardware for us: A single processor quad core Xeon 5620 server with 6GB RAM, GigE, and two 2.0TB SATA II HDDs in RAID1. With the management server selected, our only task was choosing our host server and where we wanted the first zone (host server and management server) to be installed:

For our host server, we opted for a dual processor quad core Xeon 5504 with the default specs, and we decided to spin it up in DAL05. We added (and justified) a block of 16 secondary IP addresses for our first zone, and we submitted the order. The time: 9:38am.

At this point, it would be easy for us to game the system to shave off a few minutes from the provisioning process by manually approving the order we just placed (since we have access to the order queue), but we stayed true to the experiment and let it be approved as it normally would be. We didn’t have to wait long:

At 9:42am, our order was approved, and the pressure was on. How long would it take before we were able to log into the CloudStack portal to create a virtual machine? I’d walked over to Phil’s desk 12 minutes ago, and we still had to get two physical servers online and configured to work with each other on CloudPlatform. Luckily, the automated provisioning process took on a the brunt of that pressure.

Both server orders were sent to the data center, and the provisioning system selected two pieces of hardware that best matched what we needed. Our exact configurations weren’t available, so a SBT in the data center was dispatched to make the appropriate hardware changes to meet our needs, and the automated system kicked into high gear. IP addresses were assigned to the management and host servers, and we were able to monitor each server’s progress in the customer portal. The hardware was tested and prepared for OS install, and when it was ready, the base operating systems were loaded — CentOS 6 on the management server and Citrix XenServer 6 on the host server. After CentOS 6 finished provisioning on the management server, CloudStack was installed. Then we got an email:

At 11:24am, less than two hours from when I walked over to Phil’s desk, we had two servers online and configured with CloudStack, and we were ready to provision our first virtual machines in our private cloud environment.

We log into CloudStack and added our first instance:

We configured our new instance in a few clicks, and we clicked “Launch VM” at 11:38am. It came online in just over 3 minutes (11:42am):

I got from “walking to Phil’s desk” to having a multi-server private cloud infrastructure running a VM in exactly two hours and twelve minutes. For fun, I created a second VM on the host server, and it was provisioned in 31.7 seconds. It’s safe to say that the claim that SoftLayer takes “hours” to provision a private cloud has officially been confirmed, but we thought it would be fun to add one more wrinkle to the system: What if we wanted to add another host server in a different data center?

From the “Hardware” tab in the SoftLayer portal, we selected “Add Zone” to from the “Actions” in the “Private Clouds” section, and we chose a host server with four portable IP addresses in WDC01. The zone was created, and the host server went through the same hardware provisioning process that our initial deployment went through, and our new host server was online in < 2 hours. We jumped into CloudStack, and the new zone was created with our host server ready to provision VMs in Washington, D.C.

Given how quick the instances were spinning up in the first zone, we timed a few in the second zone … The first instance was online in about 4 minutes, and the second was running in 26.8 seconds.

By the time I went out for a late lunch at 1:30pm, we’d spun up a new private cloud infrastructure with geographically dispersed zones that launched new cloud instances in under 30 seconds. Not bad.

Don’t take my word for it, though … Order a SoftLayer Private Cloud and see for yourself.

-@khazard

The Platform: Citrix CloudPlatform

There are several cloud infrastructure frameworks to choose from these days. We have surveyed a number of them and actively work with several of them. We are active members of the happenings around OpenStack and we have working implementations of vSphere, Nimula, Eucalyptus and other stacks in our data centers. So why CloudPlatform by Citrix?

First off, it’s one of the most mature of these options. It’s been around for several years and now has the substantial backing of Citrix. That backing includes investment, support organizations and the multitude of other products managed by Citrix. There are also some futuristic ideas we have regarding how to leverage products like CloudBridge and Netscaler with Private Clouds. Second, CloudPlatform operates in accordance with how we believe a private cloud should work: It’s simple, it doesn’t have a huge management infrastructure and we can charge for it by the CPU per month, just like all of our other products. Finally, CloudPlatform has made good inroads with enterprise customers. We love the idea that an enterprise ops team could leverage CloudPlatform as the management platform for both their on-premise and their off-premise private cloud.

So, we selected CloudPlatform for a multitude of reasons; not just one.

Another huge key was our ability to integrate CloudPlatform into the SoftLayer portals/mobile apps/API. Because many SoftLayer customers manage their environments exclusively through the SoftLayer API, we knew that a seamless integration there was an absolute necessity. With the help of the SoftLayer dev team and the CloudStack folks, we’ve been able to automate private clouds the same way we did for public cloud instances and dedicated servers.

The Hardware

When it came to choosing what hardware the private clouds would use, the decision was pretty simple. Given our need for automation, SoftLayer Private Clouds would need to be indistinguishable from a standard dedicated server or CloudLayer environment. We use the latest and greatest server hardware available on the market, and every month, you can see thousands of new SuperMicro boxes being delivered to our data centers around the world. Because we know we have a reliable, powerful and consistent hardware foundation on which we can build the private clouds product, it makes the integration of the system even easier.

When it comes to the specs of the hardware provided for a private cloud environment, we provide as much transparency and flexibility as we can for a customer to build exactly what he or she needs. Let’s look into what that means…

The Hardware Configurations

A CloudPlatform environment can be broken down into these components:

• A single management server (that can manage multiple zones across layer 2 networks)
• One or more zones
• One or more clusters in a zone
• One or more hosts in a cluster
• Storage shared by a cluster (which can be a single server)

A simple diagram of a two-zone private cloud might look like this:

We’ve set a standard “management server” configuration that we know will be able to accommodate all of your needs when it comes to running CloudPlatform, and how you build and configure the rest of your private cloud infrastructure is up to you. Whether you want simple dual proc, quad core Nehalem box with a lot of local disk space for a dev cloud or an environment made up of quad proc 10-core Westmeres with SSDs, you have the freedom to choose exactly what you want.

Oh, and everything can be online in two to four hours, and it’s offered on a month-to-month contract.

The Network Configuration

When it comes to where the hardware is provisioned, you have the ability to deploy zones in multiple geographies and manage them all through a single CloudPlatform management node. Given the way the SoftLayer three-tier network is built, the management node and host nodes do not even need to be accessible by our public network. You can choose to make accessible only the IPs used by the VMs you create. If your initial private cloud infrastructure is in Dallas and you want a node online in Singapore, you can just click a few buttons, and the new node will be provisioned and configured securely by CloudPlatform in a couple of hours.

Imagine how long it would have taken you to build this kind of infrastructure in the past:

It doesn’t take days or weeks now. It takes hours.

As you can see, when we approached the challenge of bringing private clouds to the SoftLayer platform, we had to innovate. In Texas, that would be roughly translated as “Go big or go home.” Given the response we’ve seen from customers and partners since the announcement of SoftLayer Private Clouds, we know the industry has taken notice.

Will all of our customers need their own private cloud infrastructure? Probably not. But will the customers who’ve been looking for this kind of functionality be ecstatic with the CloudPlatform environment on SoftLayer’s network? Absolutely.

-Duke

To make sure we’re all on the same page, as we continue to talk about “cloud,” our definition is pretty straightforward:

• It’s an operations model.
• It provides capacity on demand.
• It offers consumption-based pricing.
• It features self-service provisioning.
• It can be accessed and managed via an API.

Understanding those characteristics, when you hear about cloud in the hosting industry, you’re usually hearing about cloud computing instances in a public cloud environment. An instance in a public cloud is one of many instances operating on a shared cloud infrastructure alongside other similar instances that aren’t managed by you. Your data is still secure, and you can still get good performance in a public cloud environment, but you’re not managing the cloud infrastructure on which your instance resides … You’re using a piece of a cloud.

What we announced at Cloud Expo East is the next step in the evolution of technology in our industry … We’re providing a turnkey, on-demand way for our customers to provision their own Private Clouds with Citrix CloudPlatform, powered by Apache CloudStack.

You don’t get a piece of the cloud. You have your own cloud, provisioned in a matter of hours on a month-to-month contract.

For those who have looked into building a private cloud for their business in the past, it’s probably worth reiterating: With SoftLayer and CloudStack, you can have a geographically distributed, secure, private cloud environment provisioned in a matter of hours (not months). Given the complexity of a private cloud environment — involving a management server, private cloud zones, host servers and object storage — this is no small feat.

Those unbelievable provisioning times are only part of the story … When that cloud infrastructure is deployed quickly, it’s fully integrated into the SoftLayer platform, so it leverages our global private network alongside your existing bare metal, dedicated and virtual servers. Want to add public cloud instances to your private cloud as web heads? You’ll log into one portal or use a singular API to have that done in an instant.

Your own cloud infrastructure, fully integrated into SoftLayer’s global infrastructure. If you’re chomping at the bit to try it out for yourself, email us at privateclouds@softlayer.com, and we’ll get you on the “early access” list.

Before I sign off, I want to be sure to thank everyone at SoftLayer and Citrix who worked so hard to make SoftLayer Private Clouds such an amazing new addition to our platform.

-@nday91

Before I get too far, I should probably back up give you a little context for what the show is all about if you aren’t familiar with it. In his opening keynote, Citrix CEO Mark Templeton explained:

“We call it ‘Citrix Synergy,’ but really it’s ‘Synergy’ because this is an event that’s coordinated by us across a hundred sponsors, our ecosystem partners, companies in the industry that we work together with to bring you an amazing set of solutions around cloud, virtualization, networking and mobility.”

Given how broad of a spectrum those areas of technology represent, the short four-day agenda was jam-packed with informational sessions, workshops, demos and conversations. It goes without saying that SoftLayer had to be in the mix in a BIG WAY. We had a booth on the expo hall floor, I was lined up to lead a breakout session about how business can “learn how to build private clouds in the cloud,” and we were the proud presenting sponsor of the huge Synergy Party on Thursday night.

Our partnership with Citrix is unique. We incorporate Citrix NetScaler and Citrix XenServer as part of our service offerings. Plus, Citrix is also a SoftLayer customer, using SoftLayer infrastructure to offer a hosted desktop solution. Designed and architected from the ground up to run in the cloud, the Citrix Virtual Demo Center provides a dashboard interface for managing Citrix XenDesktop demo environments that are provisioned on-demand using SoftLayer’s infrastructure.

My biggest thrill at the conference came when I was asked to speak and share a little of our expertise in a keynote address on simplifying cloud networking. I like to tell people I have a great face for radio, but that didn’t keep me off the stage. The hall was packed to capacity and after defeating a few “demo gremlins,” I got to show off how easy SoftLayer makes it for our customers to take advantage of amazing products like Citrix Netscaler VPX:

In my “Learn How to Build Private Clouds in the Cloud” breakout session, I had a little more time to speak to the larger question of how SoftLayer is approaching the shift to cloud-specific architectures and share some best practices in moving to a private cloud. Private clouds are a great way to provide real-time service delivery of IT resources with a single-tenant, customized, secure environment. However, the challenge of scaling and managing physical resources still exists, so I tried to explain how businesses can leverage an Infrastructure-as-a-Service provider to add scalability to a private cloud environment.

Thanks to SynergyTV, that presentation has been made available for all to see:

As I joked at the beginning of the breakout session, an attendee at Citrix Synergy was probably bombarded by “the cloud” in presentations and conversations at the show. While it’s important to demystify the key terms we use on a daily basis, a few straight days of keynotes and breakout sessions about the cloud can get you thinking, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” Beyond our capabilities as a cloud infrastructure provider, SoftLayer knows how to have a good time, so after we took care of the “work” stuff in the sessions above, we did our best to help provide a little “play” as well. This year, we were the proud sponsor of the Synergy Party, featuring Lifehouse!

Citrix Synergy 2012 was a blast. As a former rocket scientist, I can say that authoritatively.

-@nday91

Accessing Desktop Apps Anytime, Anywhere, from Any Device

The computing world is changing rapidly – driven by the consumerization of applications, the demands for employees to be in an “always on” mode, and the revolution of mobile computing. End users have become App savvy and with the advent of the “there’s an app for that” generation applications that have become very easy for end users to install and run on their own. The computing platforms they use have become self-service in nature and new applications are now easy to find and no longer require IT to research, purchase, install, and manage. In fact, IT departments have lost control over what applications run on these devices posing a huge support problem and security threat.

In today’s economy organizations demand their employees to do more with smaller staffs forcing employees to be “always on” with e-mail and other work data now delivered to their desktops, smart phones, tablets, and home computers. People on average now access work data and applications from three devices with new choices of mobile devices available almost daily.

VDI Sticker Shock – With all of these changes many IT departments have considered virtual desktops as a solution to provide access to multiple platforms, remote access, and secured network stored data. Consultants and vendors have been trying to sell organizations virtual desktops as VDI, but most organizations suffer from sticker shock facing huge start-up costs and little or no economies of scale. Most organizations fail to see any potential ROI with VDI solutions and end up tabling the decision for next year’s budget.

Hosted Virtual Desktops – Hosted virtual desktops are cloud desktop services provided in the cloud by a service provider. Unlike typical VDI deployments, with these cloud desktop services, all of the infrastructure is provided by the service provider, and the client organization can purchase virtual desktops as they need them and are not subject to uncontrolled costs or continually expanding infrastructure.

Hosted virtual desktops are purchased from the service provider as a simple operations expense that can be budgeted as a per user per month cost and can even reduce their overall costs of Microsoft licensing and data storage compared to more expensive VDI solutions. Beyond the infrastructure cost benefits, the cloud desktop services provider centrally manages these virtual desktops – including mundane tasks like Windows and anti-virus updates. With the expertise of managing thousands of virtual desktops for many clients, a cloud desktop service provider delivers a consistent end user experience and a very high quality of service. These cloud desktop services are then accessed anytime, anywhere, and from any device. Outsourced desktop management is also a considerable cost savings to organizations that varies based on their internal support structure.

Bring your Own Device, BYOD/BYOC – Many organizations have considered “bring your own device/computer” programs as an employee benefit. BYO programs allow employees to select their own computing device or bring their own computer to work while accessing their employer’s supported desktop environment, applications and data through use of a virtual desktop.

Some of these programs have been driven from the top by executives who want to access corporate resources from their iPad or other personal device. Other BYO programs have been developed to attract and retain technically astute employees by giving these employees a choice of computing platforms as an employee benefit for hiring the brightest and most qualified and sought after job candidates. And some BYO programs exist to essentially create a controlled, secured, and legitimate way to allow employees to connect to their corporate resources without having employees’ rogue devices accessing the network.

Just as with any virtual desktop solution, hosted virtual desktops are often a better approach than VDI. ICC Global Hosting has worked with Citrix to provide a Hosted BYO program which specifically provides a service for quick BYOD proof of concepts or smaller scale BYOD deployments. These cloud desktop services are then delivered to virtually any device including PCs, Macs, thin clients, iPads, iPhones, Android tablets and phones, and other mobile devices.

Virtual Desktops on SoftLayer’s CloudLayer Platform – SoftLayer recently announced the availability of cloud desktop services managed by ICC Global Hosting. This partnership combines the scalability and security of SoftLayer’s CloudLayer Platform with ICC Global Hosting’s hosted virtual desktop expertise.

SoftLayer clients benefit from the enhanced performance and security of applications running along with hosted virtual desktops on the CloudLayer Platform. This solution lets clients obtain the all the features and benefits of VDI without the overhead and headaches of VDI. Organizations may now access cloud desktop services Anytime, Anywhere, and from Any Device with ICC and SoftLayer.

-Mark Moeller, ICC Global Hosting

My presentation at the All About the Cloud event is going to focus on the cloud question by trying to understand what each tool does well and so you can deploy accordingly to ensure needs are met. I’ll provide a backdrop market growth and then dive into dedicated, virtual and hybrid (cloud + dedicated) solutions with an eye to understanding each solution in broad terms … As an aside, I wanted to show up with a drill, a nail and a chunk of 2×4 to demonstrate this: I was going to pound the nail into the board with the drill, and then I was told this would be a bad idea. I may yet show up with some tools – all I need is a Home Depot close to the Palace Hotel!

The Citrix presentation is not quite so bold – well, it did not involve props in its initial incarnation. For the Synergy crowd, I’ll speak to a few case studies that leverage hybrid solutions to best meet their needs. Specifically, I will discuss companies that have deployed cloud + dedicated, SoftLayer dedicated + someone else’s cloud (the horror!) and an enterprise example with a mix of internal data center assets and SoftLayer assets.

The enterprise example is an interesting one and it is timely given what Citrix is up to. Part of the challenge with most enterprise customers is the fact that many have invested significant capital (both dollars and the human variety) in their own infrastructure. This often means that an additional level of complexity is introduced as the enterprise must consider how to bridge the gap between their own infrastructure and another, external (hopefully a SoftLayer) environment.

Citrix is about to launch Cloud Bridge which will help to manage through some of this – the offering enables customers to transparently connect their own data centers with an off premise cloud environment. SoftLayer can make this happen in two ways. Cloud Bridge will sit within Netscaler Platinum offering that we support and customers will have the ability to deploy themselves should they choose to.

I will follow up on this blog with some depth that covers both presentations, as I think this is a conversation worth continuing. In the meantime, I am off to find a Home Depot …

-@nday91

If you are familiar with SoftLayer, then you know our value proposition: we can provide network and compute infrastructure to our customers faster, better, and with a less financial burden than doing it on your own. I’ll be making a presentation on Wednesday May 12th highlighting the advantages of IaaS and examples of business getting more done more quickly for less by using a service provider like SoftLayer.

In addition, on Thursday the 13th, I’ll be discussing the managed vs. automated self-managed models of IaaS with Jon Greaves of Carpathia (http://www.carpathiahosting.com/blogs/carpathia-blog). It ought to be an interesting discussion that helps customers decide which model is right for them.

SoftLayer is a Gold Sponsor at the event and we will have some other management on site as well as members of the sales team discussing our service at our booth in the Solutions Expo.

I didn’t make up the phrase “Adjacent Synergies” but I think it counts as a double in buzzword bingo. I would have used “Synergistic Adjacencies” instead.

-@nday91

A bit about me; I am an old guy (shh don’t tell the guys I play Racquetball with) and I have been in LOTS of different companies of various sizes and types of business. Back when the internet was young and dial-up was the name of the game, I played in that field. In fact, I see a lot of familiar faces here every day. They all stayed in that field and honed their skills and are the guts behind SoftLayer today.

I went out into the world to see what it was all about. I decided I wanted to be technical and since I was a Windows guy it would have to be Microsoft. So I took the tests and got my MCSE and then worked for Alliance Data Systems, a Cargo Airline, A college in Dallas, Cement Company, and a small Outsourced IT company, then I met back up with these guys and here I sit.

So I used some of my experiences with all of those places to write the last blog. Here are a few of those experiences so you can see where it came from.

Alliance Data Systems had great DC’s and lots of cash, they didn’t need to outsource because they spent the money to do things correctly and had their own raised floor DC’s and connectivity, etc. It was a cool place to work and I learned quite a bit. They did things right.

Cargo Airline – Well they tried. We built out a new office building at the airport and we had an office with no carpet, and extra cooling for our server “room”. We had some old boat anchor HP equipment and a single IBM server for the JD Edwards accounting box and boy was it slow. We were using Windows 2000 with AD and DHCP to hand out IP’s. Funny story, we merged with a really “smart” software company and part of the merger was that the powers from that company got the reigns and could run our IS department. Maybe they are reading this… (evil grin) – So the first thing they did was pulled DHCP out of the mix and went all static IP’s because they were easier to track. “You can just enter them in a spreadsheet!” I was told. “Then you know that a 10.x.1.x is accounting, and a 10.x.2.x is sales, etc, etc.” I still laugh about that decision today. Ok, back to the real subject. This company didn’t spend the kind of money needed to have a good core of systems, and network and therefore the applications suffered. Most of the apps they wrote or used were Web apps and could have been housed in an outsourced facility.

College in Dallas – Believe it or not, the college had some pretty cool DC’s on the Campus. They were secure and if I forgot my jacket I froze my butt off. They used Compaq 1u’s like sliced bread. Server after server for student access, student records and it was all Citrix apps that students and faculty could connect to. To me it SCREAMED outsource. Think of the electric bills they paid to freeze my butt off, think of the purchasing department that had to buy all those machines. Think of how much they paid me to un-box those servers and rack them, and cable them, and install the OS from CD, and install Citrix and the apps. Then the accounting department had to track them and make sure they were paid for and depreciate them. Granted, even if they outsourced them the purchasing group still has to order them online and the accounting department has to give us a Visa but that is the extent of it. We have Truck days of joy and do all the manual labor for you and we automate the OS install. Then it is just down to the Tech installing Citrix and the apps from the comfort of his desk remotely.

Cement Company, one of my favorite places to work. I was in charge of the Citrix farm, Exchange and RightFax. Oh what fun. They had over 40 home built apps that ran on Citrix. We had 3 DC’s, Dallas, Midlothian, and Virginia. They were Top of the line! If you were a rat and liked chewing through cables and you are into Liebert cooling systems from the early 60′s! Ok, it might not have been the 60′s but they were old. The DC in Midlothian was the best. We finally boarded up the windows facing west because we figured a lot of the extra heat was due to the Texas sun baking them. Ok, funny story #2. While un-boxing and racking a few Dell 1U servers (again they paid me a pretty good salary for my Citrix and Exchange skills, and here I am un-boxing and racking again) my helper decided that it was time to drop test a Dell. I was behind the rack and there was really nothing I could do except watch this brand new Dell server go crashing to the floor from above his head. After reseeding all the cards, CPU, and memory, we crossed our fingers and it fired up. It was a bit warped and bent but we strategically jammed it in between 2 straight servers and it took some of the flex out of the bent box and it worked great, might even still be working today. As you can tell some outsourcing by them would be good as well; Even if it is just the Development and test systems. We lined up like ants at a sugar sack begging for servers for Dev and Test but they were NEVER in the budget. Another great point I think, Capital Expense vs Monthly Expense. For a huge company it is MUCH easier to get them to sign off on a monthly expense.

Outsourced IT – Here is the one that wins it all. My job was to go around Dallas to small and medium sized businesses and be their IT guy. My main focus of course was Citrix and Exchange but you just never knew what you were going to walk in on. One plumbing company had their servers in a barn. An auto parts supplier had theirs in the back of a storage building behind the restroom. Use your imagination. But the ones that got me the most were Doctors offices. Broom Closets, Office Managers offices, just in the hall out in the open, you name it and I saw servers there. Most of the offices already had a T1 in place so connectivity wasn’t the real issue. An interesting point is that I always had to sign a Hipaa form to be legal to work on the systems. It amazed me that these systems were so accessible to anyone that might have had access to the office. I wonder if the maid service had to sign Hipaa forms since the servers were right in the open. Sometimes right behind the trash cans. 90% of the medical software I came in contact with was WEB software which is easily outsourceable. And the number 1 complaint I heard from office managers and Doctors was, “I want to connect from home. Can you help me?” So of course we would setup remote access. But it never failed. During Storms they would lose power or connectivity. Or the building power would drop for construction, or a car would hit a pole. There were always issues. I swayed a few high tech Docs to finally consider and try outsourcing and they loved it. A few even use thin clients in the office now and everything happens in a DC. They love it.

I still say that no matter what size business you have OUTSOURCE IT! Maybe not all of it, but for DEV and Test, a hot site AD controller, Web App Servers, Giant DB Servers that live behind those web app servers, Web Farms…etc be the ball and give it a try. We won’t argue!

-Skinman