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Jackson He
3

Open Cloud – Where it Makes Most Sense

 

Openness and standardization have been an eternity topic for computer industry. Since the early 80’s when the PC revolution led by Intel processors, open hardware standards have revolutionized the computer industry with standardized hardware components and building blocks. HW stadnards, USB, PCI-E, SATA, SAS, etc. are common to servers and PCs alike. At the same time many software standard emerged DLL, CORBA, Web Services, etc. to ensure software interoperability. Open standards have become the gene pool of today’s computing infrastructure.

How will open standards and open source solutions play in the cloud computing era? As we look at the most popular cloud service providers today, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc. None of them have open standards, at most they have open interfaces for others to interact with, but the cloud solution stack is mostly proprietary. If past history is a mirror of the future, we can foresee that as cloud services become more popular, open standards will play more and more important roles. A natural question to ask is how much open standards can play in the context of cloud computing? That is a question interesting to many of us. Let me try to share my opinion on this.

As indicated in the chart below, the level of open standards decrease as we go higher up to the cloud services stack. At the very bottom, the hardware building blocks, we need strong interoperability and inter-changeable (disposable?) components. They should be general independent of cloud middleware and application services. At the infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform services (Platform as a service – PaaS) layers, cloud operators are more likely to use open standard and generic building blocks to build their infrastructure services, even though they have to be optimized and work well with the cloud environment (cloud middleware or cloud OS) of their choice. While in the upper layers of cloud solution stack, where and application services (SaaS) are defined, there are a greater needs for cloud operators to offer differentiated services. That is where they will put their “secrete source” for competitiveness. It will be much more difficult to drive open standard building blocks/ components, other than focusing on interoperable interfaces, such as web services standards.

Based on the analysis above, it is safe to assume that open standard and open source opportunities are most promising at HW building blocks, IaaS, and PaaS layers. That should be where the industry is more likely to build consensus. While for the upper layers, especially SaaS, we should focus on interface standards, not as much on standard building blocks and open source solutions.

Intel has been a leader for HW standard building block for the last 30 years and has changed the industry. It is natural to assume that Intel should focus IaaS and PaaS building blocksas well as how these open standards could be applied at open datacenters (ODC) as“adjacent” growth opportunities to embrace the booming cloud computing. Some conventional wisdom says that Intel is not relevant to cloud, as cloud computing be definition abstracts HW. I would say just the opposite – Intel will continue to play a critical role to define and promote open standards and open source solutions for IaaS and PaaS, so that the cloud can actually mushroom. There is a strong correlation between how fast cloud computing can proliferate and how well Intel plays its role to lead the open cloud solutions at IaaS and PaaS layers. What do you think?

 

 

 

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Definition of taxonomy:

•      ODC– (Open Data Center) Currently stands for a set of interoperable technologies optimized for IaaS, PaaS and SaaS datacenters.  At the most basic levels, these optimizations will also apply to traditional enterprise as well in areas such as power management but higher level management will be tailored for IaaS and SaaS high density datacenters.

•      SaaS – Software as a Service:  is a model of software deployment whereby a provider licenses an application to customers for use as a service on demand.  Examples include Google apps, Salesforce.com, etc.

•      PaaS – Platform as a Service:  It facilitates deployment of applications without the cost and complexity of buying and managing the underlying hardware and software layers, providing all of the facilities required to support the complete life cycle of building and delivering web applications and services entirely available from the Internet—with no software downloads or installation for developers, IT managers or end-users

•      IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service:  Rather than purchasing servers, software, data center space or network equipment, clients instead buy those resources as a fully outsourced service. The service is typically billed on a utility computing basis and amount of resources consumed (and therefore the cost) will typically reflect the level of activity.

3 Comments Permalink Tags: standards, source, solutions, computing, open, cloud
Kevin Huiskes
3

Yesterday – Intel officially launched the Intel® Xeon® 5500 processor (formerly codenamed “Nehalem”) for servers and workstations. One of the most exciting uses of this new platform will be as a key building block in cloud computing infrastructure. Whether you’ve bought into the hype of cloud computing or are a jaded IT realist – you can’t afford to pass up this list of 10 reasons the Intel Xeon 5500 processor is perfect for the cloud.

 

  1. Efficiency. To get the greatest efficiency – the leaders of large-scale Internet providers place their datacenters next to hydroelectric power or other low-cost energy sources. Each watt saved flows straight to the bottom line. Similarly – cloud computing companies intensely scrutinize their server purchases – weighing some variation of this question: how much performance (and by extension, revenue) can I squeeze out of the equipment – versus the cost of procurement and operations. This is the essence of “efficiency”. And now – with Intel’s new Xeon 5500 processor – there’s great news for anyone building efficient cloud infrastructure. The Xeon 5500 can deliver up to 2.25X the computing performance at a similar system power envelope compared to Intel’s previous generation Xeon 5400 series1. (By the way – the Xeon 5400 is no efficiency slouch – as it’s been leading the industry-standard SpecPower results for two socket systems since the benchmark was created.2) Need more evidence of Xeon 5500 efficiency? Look no further than the amazing results announced by IBM – a score of 1860, which is a 64% leap over the previous high score for a two socket system.3 Results like this clearly demonstrate that the Xeon 5500 has the extremely efficient performance that cloud operators are seeking.
  2. Virtualization performance. If a cloud service provider has leveraged a virtualization layer in its architecture - the performance of virtual machines and the ratio of VMs to servers are key concerns. Enter the Xeon 5500 which boasts a stellar jump in virtualization performance, up to 2 times the previous generation Xeon 5400 series4 allowing virtualized clouds to squeeze even more capability out of their infrastructure.
  3. Adaptable. Cloud computing environments tend to be highly dynamic as usage ebbs and flows during the day, some applications scale rapidly while some shut down, and so on. To meet such shifting demand – it’s critical to have adaptable cloud building blocks. And here Intel’s Xeon 5500 shines: this processor has unique new intelligence to increase performance when needed (Intel Turbo Boost) and to reduce power consumption when demand falls (Intel Intelligent Power Management Technology).
  4. Designed for higher operating temperatures. Across the datacenter industry – there’s growing interest in the notion of running datacenters at warmer temperatures to conserve energy. For cloud computing mega-datacenters, this concept has been in practice for several years. But it’s not just the datacenter staff that needs to handle warmer climates - the equipment must tolerate the conditions as well. Intel’s Xeon 5500 has been designed to run at higher temperatures providing one more piece of the puzzle to enable more efficient cloud infrastructure environments5.
  5. 50% lower idle power. Cloud computing providers – like airlines and phone companies – need to run at the highest utilization possible to maintain a healthy P&L. Yet there are times when usage – and thus server utilization – drops and at these times, cloud service providers desire processors with low power consumption. The Xeon 5500 processor now boasts an idle power that’s up to 50% lower than the prior generation systems, reducing energy costs6.
  6. Advanced power management. Intel has incorporated special platform level power technologies into the Xeon 5500 platform – which open new avenues to managing server energy consumption beyond what’s already built into the processor. Intel Intelligent Power Node Manager is a power control policy engine that dynamically adjusts platform power to achieve the optimum performance-power ratio for each server. By setting user-defined platform energy policies – Node Manager can enable datacenter operators to increase server rack density while staying within a given power threshold. While results vary based on the type of application and server – Intel demonstrated up to 20% improvement in rack density by using Node Manager in a recent proof-of-concept with Baidu, a leading search engine7.
  7. High Performance Memory Architecture. Cloud computing and other highly scalable Internet services are often relying on workloads where it makes more sense to keep large volumes of memory in DRAM, close to the CPU, rather than on slower, more distant hard drives. “Memcached” – a distributed caching system used by many leading Internet companies – is but one example. The Intel Xeon 5500 offers several exciting memory architecture benefits over the previous generation: (1) Up to 3.5X the memory bandwidth8 by leveraging an integrated memory controller and Intel Quick Path Interconnect (QPI), (2) supports a larger memory footprint (144GB versus 128GB), and (3) DIMMs and QPI links automatically move to lower power states when not active. In these new caching and distributed workloads, where large memory architectures are crucial, the Intel Xeon 5500 offers real advantages.
  8. Perfect when paired with SSDs. Few technologies get datacenter gurus more excited than solid state drives – which can offer impressive performance gains over their rotating hard drive cousins at far lower energy consumption. But with SSDs that can read 1000 times more data into the CPU versus a HDD – you want a ravenous processing beast to handle the traffic. And – you’re catching on to the blog theme – the Xeon 5500 can provide up to 72% better performance using SSDs than even the previous generation Xeon systems9. Intel Xeon 5500 is truly a perfect engine to complement SSDs.
  9. Ideal for optimized server boards. For cloud infrastructure – where every watt is a pernicious tax – you need more than just an extremely efficient processor such as the Xeon 5500. You also need an optimized server platform that has been stripped of every unneeded feature, configured with world-class energy efficient components, and designed for reduced airflow that minimizes the use of fans. One such product is an Intel server motherboard – codenamed “Willowbrook” which has an impressively low idle power below 70W, considering it’s a dual Xeon 5500 performance rocket10.
  10. A competitive lever for cloud operators. Lastly, for a service provider scaling out its infrastructure – systems based on Intel Xeon 5500 processors could offer a competitive advantage versus service providers whose servers are 2 to 3 years old. Because of the performance leaps in Intel server processors in the past few generations – Intel Xeon 5500 based servers can handle the same performance load as up to three times the number of 3-year old dual core servers11. The benefit is clear: providing the same performance level but with far fewer servers means a leg-up on those service providers with more antiquated, less efficient infrastructure.

 

If you have made it through this lengthy top 10 list – you should have a better sense for the advantages of Intel’s latest processor for cloud computing environments. Of course, the best way to really see the benefits is to get an Intel Xeon 5500 based system from your preferred vendor and test with your own code.

 

1 - 11For Footnotes, Performance Background, and Legal information, please refer to the attached document.

3 Comments Permalink Tags: cloud, power, nehalem, efficiency, xeon, datacenter_efficiency, computing, power_policy, datacenter, performance, 5500, virtualization
Jake Smith
0

Each year for the last 10 years, the innovators of VMWare, have hosted a users and partner conference to discuss virtualization technologies, ideas and services for the IT industry. This years event, in Las Vegas, brought together over 14,000 of the world's foremost thought leaders, developers and users from around the world. As the "Virtualization World" converged on Las Vegas their was a prevailing forecast that has begun to permeate our virtualization landscape: Cloud Computing. Paul Maritz, in his initial keynote address as CEO of VMWare, outlined the importance Cloud computing and the role that VMWare and their customers will play in defining the Enterprise Computing "forecast" over the next several years. It was a thoughtful direction for the world's leading innovator in virtualization software technology. I personally found it rather gratifying to see Mr. Maritz thoughtful demeanor and acknowledgement of the VMWare Co-Founders Diane Greene and Mendel Rosenblum, role in shaping this new direction. His understated prose also failed to acknowledge the role he himself has played over the years in establishing this direction.....it also clearly placed in my mind why he may be the ideal leader to help us realize the forecast for cloud-based compute models.

 

So what does it all mean? Cloudy forecasts are always difficult to predict and predictions can become self-fulfilling prophecies or embarassing missteps. What is clear, in my opinion, is that Cloud computing will drive meaningful change across a wide range of industries in rapid succession.

 

Let me explain the logic: Organizing and managing compute, network and application usage models has been a very elusive endeavor for many years. IT departments cannot always predict application load, network requirements and storage availability. If you provision for the worst (or highest use) case scenario you often over build. In other cases, application popularity or changing business conditions create under capacity and infrastructure failure. Those of us who have launched Application Service Provisioning infrastructures bear the scars of failures, excitement of success and hope for the future. VMWare, Microsoft, EMC, Google, Amazon and many others have made a concerted effort to "get it right" this time. Cloud infrastructures using virtualization technologies are providing a opportunistic ways for developers and end users to test scalability theories of traditional client/server compute models. These same "Clouds" are providing internal cost reduced resource infrastructures to make available vast computing, network and application resources for everyday usage with relatively low entry points (a la Amazon's EC2). However, determining which part of the "Cloud" to make available for public vs. internal consumption will be defined by innovative new technologies that have yet to be announced. Interoperability, compatibility, performance and scalability are all design points which the industry must consider.

 

Visionaries in this space abound: Vin Cerf (deserves more credit than he is given), Ray Ozzie, Reuven Cohen (you may not of heard of him yet), Alan Gin, Marc Benioff, Ed Bugnion, K.B. Chandrasekhar, Pete Manca and many others have been working diligently for years behind the scenes to make the promise of Cloud computing real. Industries such as Big Pharma, Telecom, Financial Services and Oil & Gas will reap tremendous benefit from well defined industry "clouds". The role of ethernet will be a critical design point for these next generation infrastructures as 10Gbe+ reduces latency, response times and delivers application QoS. At Intel, we are very proud of our engineering and process manufacturing prowess for the development of multi-core compute technologies, rightfully so in my opinion, but the future of the "Cloud" will challenge us to re-examine our design methodology, increase our price-performance-per watt cadence and deliver exciting new innovations throughout our server/client platforms.

 

 

Virtualization innovation has provided a "sliver lining" for today's Cloud infrastructures. Where there is transitions or inflection points in the technology industry, there is opportunity. At VMWorld 2008, the virtualization industry has begun the process of delivering technologies in a world beyond the hypervisor. Virtualization 2.0 as outlined by Doug Fisher, Intel VP of Software and Solutions Group and Steve Herrod, CTO of VMWare is a step towards providing the innovation required to make Cloud infrastructures real. The next steps, the new pioneers ( a la Simon Crosby of Citrix) are building tools which provide increased ROI in decreased cycle times for IT managers. The future of the IT cloud is in their capable hands and in the hands of the IT innovators within each company focused on providing compute infrastructures designed to scale (and shrink) with the businesses we serve. VMWorld has yet to disappoint, in 2008, VMWorld reminds us that even on a "Cloudy" day there is a chance for change.

 

Here's a short video talking to Dave Martin of VMware around VT Flex Migration....

 

 

 

 

0 Comments Permalink Tags: flexmigration, vmotion, xeon, nehalem, virtualization, cloud, computing, vmware, innovation, dunnington
kamalanathan Natesan
2

Here are seven of the specific security issues Gartner says customers should raise with vendors before selecting a cloud vendor:

 

 

 

 

1. Privileged user access. Sensitive data processed outside the enterprise brings with it an inherent level of risk, because outsourced services bypass the "physical, logical and personnel controls" IT shops exert over in-house programs. Get as much information as you can about the people who manage your data. "Ask providers to supply specific information on the hiring and oversight of privileged administrators, and the controls over their access," Gartner says.

 

 

 

 

 

2. Regulatory compliance. Customers are ultimately responsible for the security and integrity of their own data, even when it is held by a service provider. Traditional service providers are subjected to external audits and security certifications. Cloud computing providers who refuse to undergo this scrutiny are "signaling that customers can only use them for the most trivial functions," according to Gartner.

 

 

 

 

 

3. Data location. When you use the cloud, you probably won't know exactly where your data is hosted. In fact, you might not even know what country it will be stored in. Ask providers if they will commit to storing and processing data in specific jurisdictions, and whether they will make a contractual commitment to obey local privacy requirements on behalf of their customers, Gartner advises.

 

 

 

 

 

4. Data segregation. Data in the cloud is typically in a shared environment alongside data from other customers. Encryption is effective but isn't a cure-all. "Find out what is done to segregate data at rest," Gartner advises. The cloud provider should provide evidence that encryption schemes were designed and tested by experienced specialists. "Encryption accidents can make data totally unusable, and even normal encryption can complicate availability," Gartner says.

 

 

 

 

 

5. Recovery. Even if you don't know where your data is, a cloud provider should tell you what will happen to your data and service in case of a disaster. "Any offering that does not replicate the data and application infrastructure across multiple sites is vulnerable to a total failure," Gartner says. Ask your provider if it has "the ability to do a complete restoration, and how long it will take."

 

 

 

 

 

6. Investigative support. Investigating inappropriate or illegal activity may be impossible in cloud computing, Gartner warns. "Cloud services are especially difficult to investigate, because logging and data for multiple customers may be co-located and may also be spread across an ever-changing set of hosts and data centers. If you cannot get a contractual commitment to support specific forms of investigation, along with evidence that the vendor has already successfully supported such activities, then your only safe assumption is that investigation and discovery requests will be impossible."

 

 

 

 

 

7. Long-term viability. Ideally, your cloud computing provider will never go broke or get acquired and swallowed up by a larger company. But you must be sure your data will remain available even after such an event. "Ask potential providers how you would get your data back and if it would be in a format that you could import into a replacement application," Gartner says.

 

 

 

 

 

Source : http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/07/02/Gartner_Seven_cloudcomputing_security_risks_1.html?source=NLC-DAILY&cgd=2008-07-03

 

 

2 Comments Permalink Tags: cloud, computing
Radhakrishna Hiremane Shridhar
0

A common question that most IT managers are faced with while they mull on virtualization is what kind of a system should I use? Do I need a 2 socket system? a 4 socket system?

 

Reality in my view, it is more like designer wear and there is no ‘one size fits all' generic answer for such question. There are few things (not exhaustive by any means) IT managers that are planning virtualization need to understand to come to that conclusion are

 

  • How many servers are being consolidated?

  • Workload and compute horsepower: What are the workloads being consolidated? What is the average utilization of the workload? What is the maximum utilization expected from the workload (so that you anticipate for the max and the datacenter capability does not fall apart if the workload utilization increase)? An overall look at the compute horsepower requirement to run the VM with the workload.

  • Memory: How much memory is required per VM to run at the acceptable or required quality of service guarantees of performance?

  • Manageability comfort and VM variation/headroom: The number of VMs the IT manager is comfortable putting on a same system either for ease of manageability, downtime managements, resource scaling if VMs get over utilized or over subscribed at peak demand, and/or also any intuitive comfort level of mixing different workloads or OS environments.

 

In my opinion, for high level of server consolidation with memory and I/O intensive workloads or VMs, less predictive workloads, and workloads that demand more headroom for peak demands, a 4 (or higher) socket system could be more beneficial. For consolidation to raise server utilization with very predictable and stable workload that may be smaller applications, a 2 socket system could be beneficial.

 

 

Feel free to write your opinion, or experience.

 

 

Some resources: http://www.intel.com/it/pdf/memory-sizing-for-server-virtualization.pdf

 

 

0 Comments Permalink Tags: datacenter, virtualization, computing
Chris P_Intel
0

 

Watt do you care about more?

the Power Consumption of your servers (watts) or the Power Efficiency of your servers (performance / watt)

... or maybe you prefer the Performance per Watt per SqFt argument

 

 

 

I have spent a lot of my time the last several years discussing this topic with IT professionals around the world - and there are a lot of varying opinions.

 

 

I believe that Performance per Watt is a better measure of overall value for the data center and server room.

The power consumed by a server is an important measure, but power only comparisons can be misleading.

 

 

Example: If server ‘A' consumes 50W less power than server ‘B', then it can save IT $79 per year per server in power and cooling costs (assumes $0.08 kW/hr power costs and cooling costs equal to power costs). Scale that $79 savings per server across a data center with thousands of servers and it can be a pretty impressive number.

 

 

However, if a server with 50W lower power delivers lower application performance ... is the power savings worth it? The answer of course depends ... but generally in my experience the answer is a resounding No.

 

 

Example: What if server A (the 50W lower power server) underperforms server B by 33% in performance. This means that you need to deploy more ‘A' Servers to get the same performance as ‘B' Servers. In fact, with a 33% performance advantage, you need only 3 ‘B' servers for every 4 ‘A' servers. The higher performance per Watt delivered by server B reduces acquisition costs, reduces power consumption (less servers) and minimizes space and eases manageability. This example is shown graphically above

 

 

What do you think? What power and performance metrics do you look at before purchasing servers

... Lower Power or Higher Performance per Watt?

 

 

 

0 Comments Permalink Tags: benchmark, computing, datacenter, performance, energy_efficiency, servers, xeon, power, roi, tco
Vishal Sanghvi
1

Before, there were few things and they were simple. There were few roads to take, few choices at hand, few decisions to make - so most of the time we could find a solution that would fit easily with our needs. Now, there are a lot of things and they are complex. I am not sure but did Lorie or Shannon ever imagine that we would need a search engine to search through the Internet 20 years ago?

 

How did we get here? - I think as humans, we love new ideas, new experiences, and new perspectives. So we build new things, we innovate, we create, we add value. As technologists, we know that innovations get complex.

 

But the real question is where do we go from here?

 

It sounds to me like we need to re-learn the concept of "fit" and "choice" all over again. Because simply put, to find the right fit from the myriad of choices is a lot of work these days. Our tech background makes us great pattern matchers. We think we know what fits perfectly for our needs. But do we really?

 

 

At Intel, my job is to figure out what matters to enterprise applications and its relationship to platform performance. Some applications "fit" perfectly with the architecture. Some applications do not "fit" with our architecture. I work closely with the software teams within Intel as well as software vendors that run enterprise applications. I have learnt that evaluating systems is not as simple as it might seem. Because computer performance depends on the workload, it is necessary to understand just what your needs are so that you can make correct trade-offs.

 

 

There are a lot of performance numbers out there. Just because one set of numbers might not make sense it does not mean that you cannot find out what is right for you. See all the numbers; make your own calculations. Find your "fit". Understand your trade-offs and choose well

 

 

By the way, I am piling up a stack of enterprise application "must haves" - scalability, reliability, performance per watt. When the server room came to life I said wow, here is an opportunity to share and learn from our customers their needs better.

 

 

Stay tuned for what I think matters in world of performance analysis, benchmarking, enterprise applications and some case studies.

 

 

1 Comments Permalink Tags: application, benchmark, performance, vishal_sanghvi, computing

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