The Server Room Blog

Intel Cloud Builder

billy.cox@intel.com — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:50:58 GMT

For those of you implementing the infrastructure of a cloud, often called IaaS or Infrastructure as a Service, one of the challenges can be “where to start?”. With the myriad of hw options and variety of software solutions finding a starting point can be daunting.

For example:

· What server configurations are optimal?

· How to structure the network?

· What is the optimal storage configuration?

· I really don't want to write this software , therefore, what is the cloud management stack that best suits my needs?

Assuming that cost reduction and/or agility are the reasons you are building a cloud (true for the vast majority of customers), then there is huge benefit from using a largely homogenous architecture: identical server, network, storage, and management configurations across the cloud implementation. This architecture addresses the maintenance aspects of the infrastructure (remove from service if it fails, replace when enough are out of service to justify a visit to the data center) as well as the operational aspect (no special cases). Getting to the point where workloads can be hosted in this environment requires effort but has a fairly quick payback once you complete the transition.

Even with this in mind, you still have to design the hardware infrastructure and then select a set of management tools.

Intel recognizes this need and has formed the Intel Cloud Builder program to help in this ‘getting started’ phase. If you are already well down the road to building a cloud, you will likely find the output from this program useful to understand the options available in the market.

Intel(r) Cloud Builder is a fairly simple program with a powerful output:

* using a defined hardware blueprint,

* using a cloud management software stack,

* run the combination on a Intel hosted cloud test bed,

* and document the results.

For more information, please go to Intel Cloud Builder Program.

Billy Cox

Director, Cloud Strategy

Intel Software and Services

The Similarities Between a Cloud Forest and Cloud Computing

christopher.p.peters@intel.com — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 16:49:04 GMT

I had never heard of a cloud forest before I went on vacation this past June to Costa Rica where I spent time at the Villa Blanca Resort. Even when we arrived at Villa Blanca, I have to admit I was a little confused. I had expected to see a forest in the clouds, however, I saw a beautiful hill side scattered with a few trees.

However, when we went on our walking tour the next morning, our tour guide walked up to one of the larger trees and says “Welcome to the Cloud Forest. This tree is a perfect example of a cloud forest”. As I looked more closely at the tree, I was amazed at what I saw - this single tree was host to thousands of species of both plants and animals.

Nature is extremely efficient in it’s use of a cloud forest. Likewise, Cloud Computing is an extremely efficient use of computing resources. It is for this reason that Intel IT has developed an enterprise cloud computing strategy focused on building an internal cloud to boost efficiency and flexibility inside of our IT infrastructure. This internal cloud strategy is closely linked to our current use and accelerated plans for virtualization. In addition Intel IT uses the external cloud services selectively for certain applications.

Additionally, we are exploring using rich mobile clients with cloud computing models moving forward to better meet the needs of an ever changing user base, consumerization trends and the need to maintain highly efficient, secure information and application delivery to employees.

To find more discussion, blogs and content relating to cloud computing – in the enterprise or corporate client solution areas – take advantage of these resources.

And .. if you ever have the chance to visit Costa Rica .. visit the cloud forest. It was worth the trip.

Chris Peters, Intel IT

Twitter

VMWorld and IDF - Virtualization's September Spotlight

jake.smith@intel.com — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 15:24:04 GMT

Each of the last 3 years, Rich Uhlig, myself and the rest of our colleagues at Intel focused on virtualization technologies, have had the enviable task of participating in two of the technology industry's biggest events. It is always a pleasure to stretch one abilities, work longer hours than you ever thought capable, work on great product introductions, develop new business models and help to redefine an industry while using these events to make your announcements. This week VMWare's VMworld was held in San Francisco with over 11,000 participants focused on virtualization technology. Intel VP and GM Doug Fisher delivered a keynote on "Transforming Flexible Computing", which nicely communicated the message that Rich delivers in the attached video on the Intel Channel on YouTube. We also announced the support of VMWare View and Intel vPro technology with VMWare's Jocelyn Goldfein. This culminates over 2 years worth of work for our engineering and development teams on bringing together 2 of the virtualization industry's leading platforms.

This announcement is the beginning of an era of Virtualization Flexibility. Each day we are seeing new usage models emerging, virtualization finding new ways to allow users more flexibility in the Data Center, on the handheld and with their desktop form factors. As we approach IDF 2009, both Rich and I, will be hosting courses on these emerging models and architectural directions. Rich will be hosting a course on architecture, while I have the pleasure of hosting a panel with Simon Crosby, Mike Neil, Ed Bugnion, Lew Tucker and Orran Krieger. It is quite a line up. In addition, one of our colleagues, Charlton Barreto has some breakthrough new usage models to demonstrate that we believe are outstanding. All of these will be available in the IDF Virtualization community for the 3rd year in row. I personally feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to work with such interesting and talented individuals everyday. The conferences provide an opportunity for us to share our enthusiasm for technology, our enthusiasm for innovation and our commitment to excellence with the rest of the world. The feedback has been great and required for us to continue to innovate.

Come see us, tell us and push us to build technology that delivers value in the way you work, live and play. It is a challenge we embrace and we are thankful we have the opportunity to take action.

See you at IDF!

Using Instrumentation To Drive Data Center Efficiency In The Cloud

david.e.jenkins@intel.com — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 15:52:41 GMT

I am consistently amazed by the stories I hear from customers and in industry publications about the power issues that data centers are facing these days. Given the increased compute demand, decreasing budgets and power & cooling resource constraints, data centers simply cannot continue to operate as they have in the past. These challenges are especially true for Cloud deployments, where the sheer scale of the installations magnifies any resource utilization inefficiencies – especially power – and reduces the TCO benefits promised. Data Center Managers need new levels of understanding and control of their power resources in order to allocate capacity to seamlessly meet the needs of their customers, and instrumentation is evolving to provide those new capabilities that are required.

At its core, instrumentation is all about sources of data and points on control, and can be at the individual component level, coordinated server level, aggregated group level or even integrated into the facility and building management system level. At IDF in SFO, you will see a wealth of demos and sessions that will highlight how OEMs and ISVs can use a wealth of instrumentation points - starting with Intel Xeon Processor 5500 features - to develop and deliver innovative management and power management capabilities that can be used to run a Cloud environment is a more efficient manner. If you are at IDF, stop by one of the following sessions to learn more about instrumentation.

ECTS0004 - Improving Data Center Efficiency With Intel® Xeon® Processor Based Instrumentation
PDCS002 - Cloud Power Management with Intel® Microarchitecture (Nehalem) Processor-based Platforms
Meet The Experts – informal session in the Server Zone during the Tuesday evening Technology Showcase hours
Server Zone in the Technology Showcase to see the power monitoring and capping demos, including Intel Intelligent Power Node Manager.

I will be staffing the Meet The Experts event – stop by with your questions and thoughts on instrumentation! See you at IDF Sept 22-24

Dave

Everyone needs someone to talk to...someone they can trust

adarsh.sogal@intel.com — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 19:13:09 GMT

I’ll not debate whether Cloud Computing is a passing fad, marketing hype, a revolution in computing, etc.; what I do know for a fact is that the interest in this model, from equipment vendors, service providers and end users is staying strong. As much as Intel is reaching out into the industry to learn how people are hoping to take advantage of this phenomenon, what’s exciting to someone like me is that more and more service providers are approaching us on this is topic and seeking our input and guidance. Service providers of various kinds are asking for Intel’s opinion and advice on how to prepare and evolve their data center architecture and practices to align with the expectations their customers have for cloud computing. I’m not trying to brag, especially since it is obvious that there’s a ton of things “we” still need to figure out in this area; but when I see some of the giants in this community express appreciation of the contribution Intel is making, I can’t help but feel glad that we have done at least some of our homework right!

So what’s a chip company doing that could be remotely interesting to service provides? Aren’t these the guys whose job it is to abstract all the hardware? Absolutely! But service providers are realizing that their solutions are better delivered and their business models are more competitive when they have a deeper understanding of what the underlying hardware is capable of. For example, many of the customers I work with tell me that they were unaware of the technologies enabled by our platforms to intelligently manage server power consumption, not just at the individual node level, but for the whole of the data center. My colleagues at our customers are pleasantly surprised to learn how Intel is pushing the boundaries for virtualization deployment and in collaboration with the leading vendors of virtualization software is making the use of this foundational technology more efficient for cloud computing.

There are many more topics I can add to this list, and service providers have a lot of places to go besides Intel for information. But what I hear often from the customers I work with is that Intel’s ability to be an impartial (vendor neutral) technology advisor is most appreciated. Of course not everyone is in a position to take advantage of the latest technology, nor does every new technology we enable serve everyone’s purpose. But if you are a service provider interested in topics on data center optimization whether that be at: the cpu or chipset, the server, the software or the facilities, I’d encourage you to read up on our products and technologies found in this forum, and in other places on our intel.com sites. And if there is something you need but can’t find, or need more information feel free to drop me note.

Intel Building Blocks-Foundation of Cloud Computing

mark.a.wright@intel.com — Sat, 23 May 2009 01:31:49 GMT

There is quite a buzz around “cloud computing” architectures these days. This general term for what Gartner defines as, “a style of computing in which massively scalable IT-related capabilities are provided ‘as a service’ using Internet technologies to multiple external customers”, has become a little convoluted. It started out simple enough, but then the term got subdivided into “private” vs. “public” clouds, those architectures which are hosted internally and those which are hosted externally. Internally we can build virtualized resource pools to run our applications or externally push them outside our data center to be hosting by the likes of Amazon, Google., Microsoft, or AT&T. Then Cisco thought they should add some additional “clarity” into the mix introducing “virtual private” clouds and “open” clouds, as opposed to “closed”? And then there’s the term “inter-cloud”, and last but not least the “federating trusted private cloud”. Clearly, these are brilliant minds at work, but if you are getting a little confused, not to worry, so is everyone else. Maybe another good blog between David Smith from Gartner, and James Urquhart from Cisco can help sort it all out for us (http://blogs.gartner.com/david_m_smith/2009/04/10/life-on-the-inter-cloud/)

Whether you are looking at cloud computing as a new compute architecture or simply trying to improve your areas of strategic advantage internally. Intel technologies continue to be the building blocks that form the foundation of any high performance compute architecture.

I’m not just talking about Intel Xeon 5500 Series processor, which in its own right, is the most efficient, powerful processing architecture that Intel has developed yet, by far. I’m talking about all the other Virtualization Technologies (VT) that Intel has developed around the Xeon 5500. The Power Management components built in with Node Manager, the different P-States of the processor to not only reduce frequencies and power use, but to even go into an over clocked mode for very high utilization requirements.

Intel’s newest 10Gig NIC (http://www.intel.com/Assets/pdf/whitepaper/10GbE_WP_v5.pdf) supports Virtual Machine Device Queues (VMDq) and FibreChannel over Ethernet (FCoE) technology. FCoE allows you to consolidate your SAN fabric and network infrastructure, thus improving efficiencies and reducing complexity and costs. Intel's IT organization, which keeps our company running also doubles as a test lab and has tested FCoE in-house. Diane Bryant, Intel’s CIO talks about how they are delivering strategic value by providing these types of solutions that enable Intel's growth and transformation. Check out the video link where she talks about how (2) 10 Gig NIC’s are replacing (7) 1 Gig NIC’s, and (2) HBA’s per server without reducing quality of service or performance. Intel is seeing reduced costs by as much as 25% through the subsequent reductions in cabling, ports, switches, HBA’s etc. (http://blogs.cisco.com/datacenter/comments/intel_cio_supports_unified_fabric_and_fcoe/

So, things might be a little “nebulous” (pun intended) about which “cloud” we’re in, but we shouldn’t be about which technology to use to support it.

Mark

Living Life in the Clouds - lessons from the Airlines

alan.priestley@intel.com — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 12:19:18 GMT

During a keynote at the recent VMWorld EMEA event, in Cannes, Dr. Wolfgang Krips, VP, SAP Managed Services postulated that the Cloud Computing industry could become like the airline industry - not in terms of its energy consumption as has been speculated by various environmental groups and analysts but in terms of the way IT managers buy Cloud Computing services.

Today there are full service airlines ( seat reservation, in-flight meals, luggage handling - the works ) and low cost airlines ( open seating, bring-your-own food & pay extra for hold baggage ) - you pay your money and take your choice as to the type of service you want.
Ticket prices vary enormously depending on routing and day/time
Over-booking is an accepted practice and having a ticket does not always guarantee a seat
Departure/Arrival times are variable - weather, air-traffic delays etc
You can but your tickets from the airline directly , via a portal ( www.expedia.com, www.opodo.com etc ), as part of a complete package - flight, hotel, car etc, last minute or discounted from a bucket shop .

When you think forward as to where the Cloud Computing industry is going it quite easy to imagine that all of these elements could be applied to future cloud offerings

Prices will depend on the SLA offered - guaranteed uptime, data integrity or just take lowest cost compute resource available.
Portal sites will act as brokers for the various services available and sell capacity - we are already seeing this from companies like Zimory ( www.zimory.com )
Underutilised data centres may sell off excess capacity at discounted rates just to fill their facilities or the popular services may raise price to limit demand
response time/completion time of a job run in the cloud will be non-deterministic - dependant on network traffic and system loading

So, definitely food for thought as to what the future of Cloud Computing will bring and how IT might interact with the various providers on the market place.

Are there other business models being proposed for Cloud services - I would be interested in hearing your opinions.

Living Life in the Clouds

alan.priestley@intel.com — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 10:51:12 GMT

The promise that Cloud Computing brings is that of a ubiquitous compute infrastructure that provides services accessible over the internet from anywhere, by any device, and as such Cloud Computing is currently getting lots of air-time on the web news services.

The challenge at present is much like in real life every cloud is different offering different services, different tools to manage, different SLA's different charging models etc - basically all clouds are unique.

Before embarking into the great unknown of Could Computing enterprise IT managers need to fully understand what they are being offered and to look closely at their current infrastructure to determine how best to utilise Cloud Computing. Its key to understand what apps and/or workload may be suitable for placing into the cloud, for many IT departments today this starts with assessing non-mission/business critical workloads - initail targets for deploying in the cloud could be travel expenses, job search, benefits packages etc.

Another consideration is whether to move directly to using an external cloud service or to utilise resources within ones own data centres to setup 'internal clouds'. For many IT departments this is a logical extension of the ongoing work to virtualize their existing infrastructure and provides a valuable learning platform before setting out into the great unknown of the external 'public' cloud infrastructure.

Some questions IT managers need to ask when evaluating Cloud Computing offerings

What's the SLA being offered - how reliable is the service, what's the guaranteed uptime, what's the response time to fix failures ( nearly every week there are reports of cloud failures ), whats the financial impact of loss of cloud services and how would this be recompensed.
What's the application latency/response time
How secure is the service - backup policy for data, how secure is my data, what's the isolation between my app/data and other customers in a multi-tenanted cloud.
Where is my app/data located - what's the impact on local data protection laws,

& the list goes on . . .

Something else that needs to be thought about when looking at utilizing Cloud computing is the interoperability between cloud vendors?

Today most vendors offering 'Platform as a Service'* have developed their own cloud platforms based around open source or commercially available hypervisors and these require specific tools and stack formatting to utilise the virtualised compute resources. Cloud vendors are also offering higher level application/web frameworks enabling the use of higher levels of abstraction e.g. Python, Ruby or .Net . All of this further drives the uniqueness of every cloud offering. This will no doubt change over time as the major virtualisation vendors make inroads into this space and standards get developed for packaging virtual machines to be loaded into the cloud and services interfaces.

But today there is little/limited interoperability between Cloud providers and this can limit the flexibility and usability of the Cloud.

Theres a good white paper here from Intel's IT folks on developing a Cloud Computing startegy with the enterprise.

So great promises, and lots of challenges, but as the saying goes 'every cloud has a silver lining' - IT just needs to work out how to extract the benefit before the sun comes out and the clouds float away.

* Platform as a Service - rent a 'hardware platform' in the cloud and load on to this hardware your own software stack, usually paid for by the hour for specific amount of CPU/memory/IO capacity as opposed to 'Software as a Service' - some element of software, either a building block to utilise within your own application ( e.g. credit card checking ) or a fully blown application, such as a CRM app, accessible via the web .

The Curious Case of Virtualized Power, Part 2

enrique.g.castro-leon@intel.com — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 23:21:08 GMT

In our previous post we noted that the state of the art power montoring in virtualized environments is much less advanced than power monitoring applied to physical systems. There is a larger historical context, and economic implications in the planning and operation of data centers that make this problem worth exploring.

Let's look at a similar dynamic in a different context: In the region of the globe where I grew up, water used to be so inexpensive that residential use was not metered. The water company would charge a fixed amount every month and that was it. Hence, tenants in an apartment would never see a water bill. The water bill was a predictable cost component in the total cost of the building and included in the rent. Water was essentially an infinite resource and reflecting this fact, there were absolutely no incentives in the system for residents to reign in water use.

As the population increased, water became increasingly a more precious and expensive resource. The water company started installing residential water meters, but bowing to tradition, landlords continued to pay the bills, which was still a very small portion of the overal operating costs. Tenants still had no incentive to save water because they did not see the water bill.

Today there are very few regions in the world where water can be treated as an infinite resources. The cost of water increased so much faster than other cost components to the point that landlords decided to expose this cost to tenants. Hence the practice of tenants paying the specific consumption for the unit they occupy is common today. Also, because this consumption is exposed at the individual unit level, the historical data can be used as the basis for the implementation of water conservation policies, for instance charging penalty rates for use beyond a certain threshold.

The use of power in the data center has been following a similar trajectory. For many years the cost of power had been a noise level item in the cost of operating a data center. It was practical to include the cost of electricity in the bill of the cost of the facilities. Hence IT managers would never see the energy costs. This situation is changing as we speak. See for instance this recent article in Computerworld.

Recent Intel-based server platforms, such as the existing Bensley platform, and more recently, the Nehalem-EP platform to be introduced in March come with instrumented power supplies that allow the monitoring and control of power use at the individual server level. This information allows compiling a historical record of actual power use that is much more accurate than the more traditional method of using derated nameplate power.

The historical information is useful for data center planning purposes by delivering a much tighter forecast, beneficial in two ways: by reducing the need to over-specify the power designed into the facility or by maximizing the amount of equipment that can be deployed for a fixed amount of power available.

From an operational perspective we can expect ever more aggressive implementations of power proportional computing in servers where we see large variations between power consumed at idle vs. power consumed at full load. Ten years ago this variation used to be less than 10 percent. Today 50 percent is not unusual. Data center operators can expect wider swings in data center power demand. Server power management technology provides the means to manage these swings, stay within a data center's power envelope, yet maintain existing service level agreements with customers.

There is still one more complication: with the steep adoption of virtualization in the data center in the past two years starting with consolidation exercises, an increasing portion of business is being transacted using virtualized resources. Under this new environment, using a physical host as the locus for billing power may not be sufficient anymore, especially in multi-tenant environments, where the cost centers for virtual machines running in a host may reside in different departments or even in different companies.

It is reasonable to expect that this mode of fine grained power management at the virtual machine level will take root in cloud computing and hosted environment where resources are typically deployed as virtualized resources. Fine grained power monitoring and management makes sense in an environment where energy and carbon footpring is a major TCO component. To the extent that energy costs are exposed to users along as the MIPS consumed, this information provides the checks and balances and the data to implement rational policies to manage energy consumption.

Based on the considerations above, we see a maturation process for power management practices in a given facility happening in three stages.

Stage 1: Undifferentiated, one bill for the whole facility. Power hogs and energy efficient equipment are thrown in the same pile. Metrics to weed out inefficient equipment are hard to come by.
Stage 2: Power monitoring at the physical host level implemented. Exposes inefficient equipment. Many installations are feeling the pain of increasing energy cost, but organizational inertia prevents passing costs to IT operations. Power monitoring at this level may be too coarse grained, too little, too late for environments that are rapidly transitioning to virtualization with inadequate support for multi-tenancy.
Stage 3: Power monitoring encompasses virtualized environments. This capability would align power monitoring with the unit of delivery of value to customers.

VMworld EMEA - up into the Cloud

alan.priestley@intel.com — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 09:08:39 GMT

I am writing this sat in the departure lounge at Nice Airport, awaiting my flight home after having spent the week in Cannes at VMworld EMEA '09, which has just finished. Focus of this years event was somewhat different from last year, last year everything was 'Green' this year we were all living in the Cloud, or at least that ís the way the keynotes painted the picture. Most of exhibitors and attendees however still seemed to have their feet firmly planted on the ground in the reality of using todayís technology.

Sticking with the keynotes, last year they were very product and feature centric whilst this year one got the impression that VMware were providing more of a vision of where they see their software taking the industry - and this was most definitely into the cloud !

Another shift was in the client space where last year VDI was the buzz word and thin clients would solve all our business needs, this year there seemed to be an acknowledgement that the rich client has a place ( even if it might be virtualised ) so for those PowerPoint junkies amongst us who want all the cpu power they can get at their fingertips whenever and wherever they are this is good news. In terms of virtualising clients one bit of news from the conference was that VMware plan to develop a bare metal ( type 1 ) hypervisor for clients that takes advantage of Intel's VPro Technology to provide amongst other things out-of-band management and authentication of the hypervisor.

Back into the clouds, 'IT as a Service' was one of the keynote themes with VDC-OS and Vcloud enabling this. For those that didn't attend the event the keynote videos are here. To support the 'IT as a Service' story SAP presented on their IT infrastructure, of particular interest was the proposition that in the future Cloud computing would become much like the airline industry with low cost providers competing with full-service providers, pricing varying by time and demand, aggregators ( a.k.a bucket shops ) selling off excess capacity and resource over-commit becoming a feature of using the cloud.

Walking the show floor it was clear that if VMware were in the clouds most of the rest of the folks in Cannes were clearly facing up to today's reality of deploying technology to enable their business's. Much of the focus this year seemed to be on storage and back solutions, with management and networking also be key topics. It also felt like there was a more technical bias amongst the attendees than last year - maybe due to the current economic climate.

One parting thought is that what ever else is happening in the IT industry the momentum behind the virtualisation train continues to grow and its something we all need to be taking into consideration when planning our IT strategy.

Cloud Computing -- New or Recycled Idea?

kevin.j.huiskes@intel.com — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 21:18:08 GMT

If you follow the IT industry – you can’t escape the “cloud”. Whether online articles, industry seminars, and blogs – the hype over cloud computing is everywhere. And don’t expect it to die down in 2009.

Yet amidst all the hype – there are still a lot of questions and confusion about the “cloud”. At Intel – we get asked a lot about cloud computing, and one of the top questions is: “Is cloud computing really new?”

The answer is not as clear-cut as it may seem.

First – what is “cloud computing” anyway? There are many industry definitions, many very useful and some not as good. Some pundits want to label everything the cloud, while others have intricate and nuanced definitions where very little could be considered cloud computing.

Intel has it own view of the cloud – centered, not surprisingly, on the architecture providing the cloud processing, storage, and networking. This “cloud architecture” is characterized by services and data residing in shared, dynamically scalable resource pools. Since so much of the cloud’s capabilities – and its operational success – depend on the cloud’s architecture – it makes sense to begin the definition there.

A cloud architecture can be used in essentially two different ways. A “cloud service” is a commercial offering that delivers applications (e.g., Salesforce CRM) or virtual infrastructure for a fee (e.g., Amazon’s EC2). The second usage model is an “enterprise private cloud” -- a cloud architecture that’s for internal use behind corporate firewall, designed to deliver “IT as a service”.

Cloud computing – both internal and external – offers the potential for highly flexible computing and storage resources, provisioned on demand, at theoretically lower cost than buying, provisioning, and maintaining more fixed equivalent capacity.

So now that we’re grounded on our terminology… we return to this question of the cloud being new or just repackaged concepts from an earlier era of computing.

Turns out that it’s both: cloud architectures do represent something new – but they build on so many critical foundations of technology and service models that you can’t argue the cloud is an earth-shattering revolution. It’s an exciting, new but evolutionary shift in information technology.

The rich heritage of cloud computing starts with centralized, shared resource pooling – a concept that dates back to mainframes and the beginning of modern computing. A key benefit of the mainframe is that significant processing power becomes available to many users of less powerful client systems. In some ways, datacenters in the cloud could offer similar benefits, by providing computing or applications on demand to many thousands of devices. The difference is that today’s connected cloud clients are more likely to be versatile, powerful devices based on platforms such as Intel’s Centrino, which give users a choice: run software from the cloud when it makes sense, but have the horsepower to run a range of applications (such as video or games) that might not perform well when delivered by the “mainframe in the cloud”.

Another contributing technology for the cloud is virtualization. The ability to abstract hardware and run applications in virtual machines isn’t particularly new – but abstracting entire sets of servers, hard drives, routers and switches into shared pools is a relatively recent, emerging concept. And the vision of cloud computing takes this abstraction a few steps further – adding concepts of autonomic, policy driven resource provisioning and dynamic scalability of applications. A cloud need not leverage a traditional hypervisor / virtual machine architecture to create its abstracted resource pool; a cloud environment may also be deployed with technologies such Hadoop – enabling applications to run across thousands of compute nodes. (Side note: if you’re interested in open source cloud environments, you might check out the OpenCirrus project at www.opencirrus.org – formed by collaboration between Intel, HP, and Yahoo.)

The key point here is that just because it’s an abstracted, shared resource – doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a cloud. Otherwise a single server, running VMWare and a handful of IT applications, might be considered a cloud. What makes the difference? It’s primarily the ability to dynamically and automatically provision resources based on real-time demand.

What about grid computing? Indeed – if you squint – a grid environment looks considerably like what we’ve defined as a cloud. It’s not worth getting into a religious argument over grid versus cloud – as that’s already been done elsewhere in the blogosphere. Grids enable distributed computing across large numbers of systems – and so the defining line of what constitutes grid and cloud is blurry. In general cloud architectures may have an increased level of multi-tenancy, usage based billing, and support for a greater variety of application models.

Finally – one of the key foundations of cloud computing isn’t really a technology at all, but rather the “on demand” service model. During the dot-com boom, the “application service provider” sprung up as a novel way to host and deliver applications – and they are the direct forefathers of today’s Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings. One of the ways “on demand” continues to evolve is in the granularity of the service and related pricing. You can now buy virtual machines – essentially fractions of servers – by the hour. As metering, provisioning, and billing capabilities continue to get smarter, we’ll be able to access cloud computing in even smaller bites… buying only precisely what we need at any given moment.

So to wrap up – the cloud is truly a new way of delivering business and IT services via the Internet, as it offers the ability to scale dynamically across shared resources in new and easier ways. At the same time - cloud computing builds on many well-known foundations of modern information technology, only a few of which were mentioned here. Perhaps the most interesting part of the cloud’s evolution is how early we are in its development.

Making sense of hypes "du Jour" - Virtualization, Grid and Cloud Computing - +Part 2 of 3+

ravi.subramaniam@intel.com — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 17:39:25 GMT

This is the 2nd in a 3 part series of video blogs that looks at Virtualization, Grids and Cloud computing. Follow this link for the first part: Part 1

The videos explore these concepts first individually and then try to show that taken together the combination is greater than the sum of individual deployments of the techologies. In reality, all three are required to begin to realize the vision of the dynamic, efficient datacenter but I would caution that these are necessary but not sufficient to realize this full vision ... well ... is a topic (set of topics?) for another day.

As you view the video please bear in mind that there are a couple of underlying assumptions in the statements I make in the video - unfortunately these got eliminated in the editing in trying to meet video duaration constraints. A quick recap of the assumptions:

a) the target environment is the enterprise (both enterprise IT and enterprise data centers) - some of the thoughts apply to SMBs but may not always.

b) the discussion on clouds is really focussing, primarily, on "Internet" clouds and not "Private" clouds (there is a reference to and a motivation for "Private clouds" when the technologies are brought together but in this discussion on clouds the focus is on Internet clouds unless mentioned otherwise).

c) The perspective on Grids in the video is broad - Most folks are used to associating Grids with HPC - it would be very helpful in this video to suspend this association (at least while watching the video and if I can get you to, maybe, into the future as well). This association with HPC is very limiting and represents a use of Grids and does not illuminate what Grids really are or, more importantly, their potential.

This and the previous video introduces the concepts as I see them. Some tangible examples in how they may come together is presented in the next video ... promise ...

So here is the video:

Now that you have heard and seen the video .... a few more observations not discussed in the video ...

Grids represent an infrastructure management paradigm - actually once you step beyond the base machine virtualization (where the opportunities for real differentiation are fast dimnishing) you will find that solutions that most vendors have or are developing to manage these VMs borrow heavily and, in some cases, almost entirely from Grid technologies - but they won't tell you that. (Once you take the "broader view" it becomes apparent that many Intel platform technolgies become very relevant to Grids and so Intel platforms can be deployed as more than just the "simple and commodity" hardware that they are currently viewed and deployed as)

Another point to note is that Clouds and Grids are closer than one may think. In many cases a cloud is realized by a simplification of a Grid that is made possible by application to a defined context determined by the cloud service offered. Furthermore some of the complexities of Grid computing (under the covers) have been masked by the introduction of a portal or some other simplifying assumptions and implementations. Many of the well known clouds are implemented using Grids. Nonetheless it is very important to keep Clouds and Grids distinct so that one can understand these paradigms and extract maximum value. The moniker cloud represents a use paradigm (against an highly elastic service) whereas Grids represent an infrastructure paradigm.

On a larger note: One way to bring these topics together conceptually is to see virtualization as the paradigm to substantiate the entities (resources or otherwise) that can be/are visualized in a context, Grids as the paradigm to manage these virtualizations and Clouds as the paradigm for use of these managed virtualizations.

I will build on these assertions in my next video ... In the meanwhile am looking for discussion on these topics -

What do Grids and Clouds mean to you?
Do the views represented here make sense or are there other ways in which one may approach these topics?
What are some interesting ways you have used these technologies in your line of work? What are some problems that were solved or new usages created?
Are Grids as a topics of discussion dead/passe or are they as relevant today as they were a few years ago - why?

Making sense of hypes "du Jour" - Virtualization, Grid and Cloud Computing

william.h.lea@intel.com — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 22:04:30 GMT

Admin Note: This is a repost on behalf of Ravi Subramaniam.

This is the first video in a 3 part series - In this video series, I touch upon the topics that are in the news - Virtualization, Grid computing and cloud computing - each have had their day as or are the current hot/hyped topic. In this first video, I focus on virtualization.

I am looking forward to an interesting dialogue on these videos and the topics and to learn from your insights as I hope you will from mine. I would really like to get your feedback/thoughts and other topics/considerations that would be relevant and important here.

The intent here is to try and demonstrate these topics are in some way inter-related though the implementations/embodiments are distinct and relevant to solving the problems in their respective topic/domain. By understanding the connections, my hope is that, one can visualize new solutions/products (to solve new or higher order problems) that may be created through some appropriate compositions or by novel (re)organizations of the implementations and technologies in these respective topics. Well... I am getting ahead of myself here ...

To stimulate discussion for this blog I would like to add/highlight a few points/questions ...

Virtualization (at least for me) is a broad concept and as, highlighted in the video, has many modes, facets or aspects - many of the topics of current interest are sort of related by the application of some aspect of virtualization. For the sake of time/brevity, I choose to briefly mention the broader aspects and relate quickly to the notion of virtualization that most accept i.e. what I would call 'machine virtualization'. Do you agree with the broad view of virtualization? An elaboration on your response (for or against) will be much appreciated.

Virtualization implies a relationship to the entity (physical or virtual) that the virtualization virtualizes - the ability to bind, manipulate and manage these relationships is what helps realize virtualization benefits like agility, consolidation, right sizing etc. The foil in the video "How to create virtualization?" describes some of the relationships (i.e. creating a virtualization establish the relationship describing the mode of creation). Do the ideas in "How to create virtualization?" section of the video make sense - do you agree - thoughts? Are there additional relationships (modes of construction) one may need to consider in the context of virtualization? Are there any product/product area that Intel could enhance by adding one of these virtualization modes/relationships i.e. that would solve (or improve solution of) a problem that you have (say emulation for example)?

Machine virtualization - is currently SW based with HW assists for performance and security. What do you see as the next inflection for machine virtualizations? Is there an increased role for HW (as different from the current role of enhancing SW solutions)? Are there any models for virtualization that you see that are better suited for implementation in silicon rather than SW?

Finally also looking forward to any other feedback/discussion on the video and video content ...

Thanks for your interest!