Lessons Learned from Real-World Private Cloud Deployments

Interest in (and adoption of) private clouds is on the rise, fueled by the need for more elastic and agile IT resources, improved ROI, and a demand for keeping business-critical applications and data under the control of in-house IT staff.

Recent research by International Data Corp. (IDC) bears that trend out, with IDC estimating that global revenue for server purchased for deployment in public and private cloud expected to reach a whopping $9.4 billion by 2015.  IDC researcher Katherine Broderick breaks down the data along public and private lines, with public cloud server revenue pegged at $3.6 billion and private cloud weighing in at $5.8 million by 2015. Those are impressive numbers, and prove that a one-size-fits-all approach to cloud computing won’t work.

The private cloud can be an option for many businesses, but companies that are the best candidates for the private cloud generally meet some of the following characteristics, based on real-world deployments of private cloud infrastructures.

1. Business size matters: Crafting a business case for building a private cloud for a smaller organization (perhaps one less than 200 seats) is a difficult argument, since building the in-house infrastructure for the private cloud – in-house servers, storage, virtualization, and management software – doesn’t provide as much of a return on investment as larger cloud deployments do. The public cloud provides impressive benefits related to economies of scale, and smaller organizations will find it difficult to build a private cloud solution that can match that. That said, data location, security and regulatory concerns (see below) could make a private cloud a more attractive option for smaller businesses that may not be able to achieve the same size and scope of public cloud providers.

2. Data location concerns: If you have to abide by government regulations about where your data (and your customer data) can be kept, the private cloud becomes a much more attractive option, since you get to decide where, when, and how that data is created, managed, moved, stored and deleted. That’s a must for many businesses in the health care and financial services industries.

3. More than virtualization: The private cloud is much more than simply adopting virtualization throughout your business. The private cloud needs to offer shared resources, provide metered consumption, allow self-provision by end users and have the elasticity to meet those demands. If your private cloud deployment doesn’t meet those requirements, it isn’t a private cloud. For another take (and some in-depth analysis) of what the private cloud is and isn’t, read my colleague Michael Otey’s The Private Cloud Explained article. (http://www.windowsitpro.com/sponsoredblog/emc-sponsored-blog-47/private-cloud/private-cloud-explained-139836)

4. Training is key: Cloud computing of all types requires a mindset change by everyone who uses it, and that applies doubly for the private cloud. Keeping your users informed and knowledgeable about your move to a more efficient computing model will have wide-ranging benefits.
 

EMC’s Window to the Private Cloud Partner Post:

Considerations for Customers Deploying Hyper-V

By Adrian Simays

I recently visited a mid-size customer who is running Hyper-V for test and dev and they are interested in expanding Microsoft virtualization into their production environment with a goal of being 100% virtualized by the end of next calendar year. As part of this project they will be implementing a new SAN to consolidate their virtual machines as well as using it for advanced data protection and scalability. Since the customer has only been running Hyper-V with servers that are used primarily for in-house development, they asked me for some advice or best practices as they move forward with a production deployment of Microsoft virtualization. Of course this is one of those "it depends" answers but below is a list of some of the items I came up with that I thought would be good to share: …       Read More

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