Cloud Computing: How to Fund and Build a Cloud

Within the next decade, cloud computing is set to transform the way we run IT and our businesses. It’s a technology and a methodology still in its infancy, but one that IT professionals will need to come to terms with quickly.

To cut away the hype, cloud takes a utility approach to computing, enabling businesses to turn on or off IT resources as needed. Essentially it creates efficiencies in the data-centre, as the business only pays for IT services it needs.

But if you are responsible for the management of IT resources in your organisation, how do you present a business case for cloud, and how do you fund and build the storage infrastructure needed to create a successful cloud?

Why build a Cloud

There are two critical drivers behind cloud computing. Firstly, in the current market companies have limited resources to invest in IT. In many situations there is an increasing imperative to ‘do more with less’, to make the data-centre more efficient and to drive out cost from the existing infrastructure. Secondly, virtualisation in all its guises has become a mature and trusted paradigm for delivering IT to the business. Hosts, systems, servers, networks and storage are all available as logical, rather than physical infrastructure components. The need to reduce CAPEX and OPEX combined with the ability to build highly efficient, virtualised infrastructures, creates the perfect storm from which cloud computing is emerging.

Cloud computing offers a real and achievable alternative to the traditional siloed approach to IT, as each application or line of business has its own hosts or servers, network and storage. It allows IT managers to deliver IT as a service (ITaaS), either in whole or in part, such as storage as a service (STaaS). The benefits are that a data-centre built to deliver a cloud – a virtualised, horizontal infrastructure – will be more dynamic, more agile, significantly more efficient and ultimately cheaper to own than a data-centre built to deliver IT in silos.

Anyone embarking on the journey to cloud computing faces three main questions:

1. Technical – How do I evolve my data-centre from where it is to where I need it to be?
2. Commercial – How do I convince the business to accept a different way of receiving and, more importantly, paying for IT?
3. Financial – With money in short supply, how do I build a business case that will unlock the funding to start the transition?

Needless to say, the answers are all connected.

Funding and Building a Cloud

A simple place to start is to build an understanding of how much could be saved by virtualising the existing storage infrastructure. The silo approach often leads to storage from multiple vendors, as storage is bought for one particular project or one line of business. The result is the need to maintain multiple models for planning, provisioning and protection. The inability to share storage between vendors prevents unused capacity in one silo from being used by another that is running low. A detailed study of which data sits where leads to an accurate perspective on how much provisioned storage actually contains data. This in turn, provides the foundation from which to start to build the business case.

Presenting applications with a virtual array rather than a physical one increases storage utilisation dramatically. It also has the potential to reduce the variety of storage in the data-centre. Both these improvements result in reductions in the range of storage management techniques, and reduction in power, cooling and housing storage. The resulting savings in CAPEX and OPEX fund subsequent steps along the road to a cloud infrastructure.

It may be necessary or desirable to maintain a multi-vendor storage strategy; in which case appropriate gateway technologies can further reduce the variety of storage management skills and techniques required. In fact, storage from multiple vendors, fronted by unified storage virtualisation gateways, could be the most pragmatic solution to deliver additional efficiencies from existing storage investments. From here it is possible to create the services the business needs from this virtualised storage infrastructure. Provisioning and protecting storage through policies that are defined at the virtualisation layer provides the agility and flexibility that are necessary characteristics of an effective cloud. These policies should codify the characteristics of the services they underpin. Typically, these will include storage protocol, response time, throughput, availability, backup schedule and mirroring schedule.

With a storage cloud established and functional, it is possible to reduce cost further, and fund additional progress towards building a broader cloud infrastructure. Storage efficiency is the goal of a set of tools and techniques that attempt to squeeze additional value out of each block of data. Techniques such as de-duplication, thin provisioning, cloning and thin replication individually contribute towards the reduction in the storage capacity required to serve the business, and individually they can make a useful contribution. However, by applying these techniques in combination at the virtualisation layer, the capacity cost savings are magnified. For example, de-duplication in conjunction with cloning can achieve in excess of a 90 per cent reduction in the storage capacity required to underpin a production service in the cloud.

 Reaping the Rewards

The last step in the process is to provide application owners with the ability to provision storage themselves. By building on a solid virtualisation technology and a policy-based approach to the definition of services it is possible to make the storage cloud largely a self-service entity. Within boundaries defined for each policy and application, the owner can request or relinquish storage as the demands of their application fluctuate. Unused storage is available to all who need it and the storage that is provisioned is the storage that is required – and no more.

Cloud computing in general and storage clouds in particular have the potential to reduce IT costs significantly. Storage virtualisation provides the technology enabler, and a step-by-step approach to its deployment can release the funds to make it possible today.

Summary:

• The combination of limited available funds for IT, the need to ‘do more with less’, and the need to reduce CAPEX and OPEX has created a perfect environment for cloud to emerge
• There are three areas to address when considering a cloud implementation: technical (how do I evolve my data-centre?), commercial (how do convince the business to change the way it receives IT?) and financial (how do I fund it?)
• By consolidating your storage infrastructure and implementing technologies like virtualisation, data de-duplication, thin provisioning, cloning and thin replication, you can dramatically increase storage utilisation and realise cost savings that can fund a cloud project
• The last step is to provide application owners with the ability to provision storage themselves, as and when it’s needed
• A step-by-step approach, like this, can put your business on track to reap the benefits of cloud today

About the author: Jeremy Wallis is Head Systems Engineer at storage supplier NetApp.