Secure Environment for Federal Government Cloud Pilot

How is the Federal government hoping to achieve the $12 Billion in projected annual savings?  This projection was quoted by the MeriTalk Cloud Computing Exchange and published today by Forbes.com, and it doesn't seem too optimistic given that the Federal government is already saving approximately $5.5 Billion per year.

These savings have been achieved by individual agencies adopting cloud solutions, but such organic growth will only go so far.  In order to expand this in a generic and scalable manner, the Federal government would need a secure environment to test the cloud and run pilot programs.

Key features of such an environment:

1. Multi-provider provisioning and compliance

Agencies should be able to provision resources across cloud providers without having to worry about vendor lock-in.  This would require the use of a brokerage platform that enables auto provisioning across providers.  Monitoring would also be necessary to ensure the providers maintain SLA compliance, failing which they would be quarantined.

2. Fed certified cloud providers
The list of cloud providers should include those that are FedRAMP certified, or at least FISMA compliant.  Agencies should be able to compare providers side by side and pick the best-fit provider.  This requires standardization of cloud offerings and pricing models.

3. Integration with existing data centers private / hybrid clouds
Agencies should be able to interoperate between the cloud and their existing data centers and private clouds.  This provides a backup plan in case the cloud solution does not succeed.  For this feature, the test environment would need to be agnostic across VMware, Xen, Hyper-V, vCloud Director, etc.

4. Connectivity to existing security frameworks
The test environment should be integrated with the security frameworks currently used by the Federal government.  In this way, valuable resources need not be wasted in re-designing a security framework that is already very efficient.  Instead, resources can be assigned to enhance the existing framework with intrusion detection and intrusion prevention features.

5. Complete cost transparency
First of all, agencies should not be required to sign multi-year contracts with cloud providers.  Secondly, the cost of cloud services should be visible at the highest level so that budgets may be allocated based on resource requirement.  This allows complete auditability as well.

6. Recalibration based on historical data
Cloud usage data should be constantly correlated with cost to ensure that cost is minimized without impacting mission goals.  This requires the test environment to be powered by advanced analytics engines for continuous recalibration through command and control.

All the above features would need to be tested by the Federal government through a pilot program before executing any major cloud migration initiatives.  If successful, the test environment can then be established as the official government cloud portal which is bound to be successful because it has been built on NIST standards and governed through strict monitoring and compliance.

Creating a Virtual Machine on/off schedule

“Wouldn’t it be nice to have a schedule to automatically turn VMs on or off at certain times of the day?” I’ve heard this from many of our clients, and this is definitely an interesting optimization problem.  Since most providers price by VM hours, one always needs to make sure not to end up with VM sprawl.  The fact that licensing on these VMs are also priced by the hour doesn’t help either.  So, yeah VM scheduling would be great but where do we start?

Actually, it isn't very complicated because most of us use load balancers anyway.  The load balancers are monitoring VM utilization (through connection count) and can thus keep track of times when all the VMs are underutilized.  Dr. Zarifoglu, in his load balancing article, identified thresholds for turning VMs on or off based on the workload.  So, turning one or more VMs off is simply an additional step after load balancing!

This leads to two possible approaches for VM Scheduling:
Dynamic scheduling – where VMs are automatically turned on or off based on demand and threshold policies, or
Static scheduling – where one would simply monitor VM utilization over time and come up with a user defined schedule that doesn’t change.

Obviously, the best approach would be to have a hybrid solution where the static schedule is automatically modified at fixed time intervals (say weekly) and is executed only after being approved by an administrator.  See Gravitant’s CloudMatrix – Policy Manager for more details on managing VMs in the cloud.

Caveat

The caveat is that most cloud providers don’t allow simply turning VMs on or off (except for OpSource and Terremark).  Most providers will charge for stopped VMs as well, unless the VM is ‘deleted’.  So, an alternate process for turning a VM off (with the expectation of turning it on again at some point in time in the future) is to first create an image of the VM and save it in the backup storage space, and then ‘delete’ the VM.  In order to turn this VM back on, a new VM needs to be created and then the image from backup storage needs to be installed on the new VM before it can become functional.

Alternatives

As a result, the process of turning VMs on or off may be not be time and cost efficient.  However, here are a few alternate ways to do this:
(1) Go with a cloud provider like OpSource that allows VMs to be turned on or off at the click of a button and doesn’t charge for VMs that are turned off. (Note that there is a small fee for storage space occupied by the VM).
(2) Go with a cloud provider like Terremark that doesn’t even price by VM.  However, they would still charge for the OS licensing and storage if the VM was turned on at any point in time during the month.
(3) Go with any cloud provider but subscribe to an automated backup and restore service. Gravitant expects to provide this capability in its CloudMatrix console in early 2012.

For more information, go to www.gravitant.com.

Cloud Computing - 58% Average Savings Per Month

Application: CRM
Environment: Production
Capacity: 40 Web/App Servers, 12 DB Servers, 8 VPN Servers, 5TB Storage, 10 Mbps Bandwidth
Demand: 1000 concurrent users, 3.0% growth per year


Scenario results from CloudWiz:


To run additional scenarios (for free), please go to http://www.gravitant.com/cloudwiz-home.html

*Note that these results are simply for comparison and decision support.  All cost and savings results are based on publicly available data, and Gravitant is not responsible for any discrepancies in the numbers shown above.  To increase the accuracy of the results from CloudWiz, please contact us to schedule a calibration meeting with our Professional Services group.

Top 4 Cloud Providers on CloudWiz

Cloud providers seem to be popping up everyday in some part of the world, but some providers are emerging as the key players by dominating all the others in one or more aspects.  CloudWiz - the free cloud capacity and provider comparison tool - has enabled an apples to apples comparison of a number of providers, thus revealing the winners.

Quality of Service - Savvis
A number of compute, network, and storage benchmarks are run by CloudHarmony.org to evaluate the true performance of cloud providers.  Savvis outperforms all the other providers with a QoS rating of 9.71, with GoGrid following close behind with a QoS rating of 9.64.  The QoS ratings are given in terms of GQU (Gravitant Quality Units) which are explained in Gravitant's corporate website.

Infrastructure Cost - GoGrid
While many commodity cloud providers price their cloud services at very low on-demand rates, GoGrid offers the best value for money by providing enterprise class services at close-to-commodity prices.  GoGrid started off as a commodity cloud provider but is soon emerging as a strong competitor among enterprise cloud providers.  A large application of 400 GCUs (Gravitant Compute Units) costs $ 22,491 per month at GoGrid, while Rackspace charges $24,744 per month.  All other providers charge $40,000 per month or greater for the same compute capacity.

Total Cost - Rackspace
The total cost includes infrastructure as well as operations and support cost.  While many companies would migrate to the cloud for infrastructure savings, they would end up investing quite a bit on operations and support.  This is where Rackspace truly stands out from all the others due to their 'fanatical' customer support.  As a result, the total cost for 400 GCUs of cloud capacity with Rackspace is $80,941/month (for infrastructure as well as operations and support), while GoGrid charges $84,448/month.  Amazon comes in next at $103,928/month and all the others charge $125,000 or more.

Cloud Management - Terremark
We've all heard of VM sprawl and how monitoring and governance is of utmost importance in the migration to cloud. Terremark has made a name for itself with a very easy to use management console, as well as its standardization with jcloud APIs.  Furthermore, Terremark's pricing is package based as opposed to VM based which alleviates the need to scrupulously monitor and govern at the VM level.

So, it seems like GoGrid and Rackspace dominate from a cost perspective, while Savvis and Terremark dominate with QoS and cloud management.  This shouldn't come as a surprise since GoGrid and Rackspace are commodity cloud providers while Savvis and Terremark are enterprise cloud providers.

Now, what if we could mix and match?  What if we could migrate our mission critical LOB applications to Savvis or Terremark for the QoS and monitoring features, and at the same time deploy email exchange and some of our dev and test environments on GoGrid or Rackspace?  Well, that's where the CloudWiz tool plugs into Gravitant's CloudMatrix management console that allows a consumer to provision Virtual Data Centers from different providers and then monitor and govern them across the board.

See press releases at http://businesscloudnews.com/applications/351-cloudwiz-makes-cloud-evaluation-easy.html

For free access to CloudWiz or for more info on CloudMatrix, please email
analytics-support@gravitant.com

CloudWiz (beta) - A wizard based decision tool for going cloud!

Gravitant announces the release of CloudWiz on June 1st, 2011.  Using this tool, potential customers can evaluate the option of going cloud in less than 5 minutes, thanks to the work of the Advanced Analytics group at Gravitant.  Cloud hosting providers can also use this tool for onboarding new clients, while showing ROI benefits to the office of the CFO.  This tool summarizes the decision of going cloud into a simple three step wizard.

Step 1. Plan Capacity
Step 2. Compare Vendors
Step 3. Analyze ROI

"This tool truly eliminates the mist around the cloud!" - Robert Erickson, EVP of Product Management.

Cloud providers interested in adding themselves to the list are requested to send an email to analytics-support@gravitant.com.  Gravitant is also giving out limited time free access to CloudWiz...

Reserved Capacity vs Usage based Capacity

As a cloud broker, Gravitant works with clients to match their needs with what different cloud providers have to offer.

In this process, we have noticed that most of our clients have high transaction volumes on their Dev and Test environments.  However, in the Production environment, transaction volume is low with a lot of variability.  This makes sense because transaction volume in the Production environment is customer driven.

And most of the cloud providers we work with have lower rates per hour for dedicated capacity and higher rates per hour for usage based capacity.

Therefore, the lowest cost solution for most of our clients is to go with dedicated capacity for their Dev & Test environments, and usage based capacity for their Prod environment.

However, this may not be the case for all clients.  Therefore, it is important to analyze historical transaction volume and utilization for each environment and application type separately in order to identify the optimal combination.  Eventually, the main objective is to derive the optimal target of reserved capacity for each environment/application.  More on this topic coming soon...

Acknowledgements:
I would like to thank Robert Jenkins, CTO of CloudSigma, for his input to this discussion.

Comparison of Traditional Hosting and Cloud Computing Solutions

Cloud Consulting in an app?

Researchers at Gravitant have successfully converted their Cloud Consulting practices into an app that will soon be available on the company website.  The app, which will be called the Cloud Value Planner, allows users to simulate the capacity and cost impact of replacing their current physical servers with virtual private cloud or public cloud options.





“The Cloud Value Planner is like consulting-in-a-box.  Questions that typically take 60-90 days and thousands of dollars to answer are solved within a few minutes using this app.” – Mohammed Farooq, CEO Gravitant

This simulator, which is still in its beta phase, will be launched as a free app before the end of February 2011.  Please check www.gravitant.com for updates.

Stay tuned for details on specifics of the app…

Jobs phased out by the Cloud

Is your job secure from being phased out by cloud computing?  Cloud providers will be responsible for most of the technical requirements, so where does that leave you?

Most technical issues in computing will soon be handled by the hypervisors, load balancers, etc. on the suppliers end. However, each supplier will have to be monitored and managed through service contracts.

Infoworld has specified some role shifts based on Forrester and Gartner:

IT jobs of the future will be highly administrative with a focus on capacity planning and contract management – Gravitant, Inc.

Quick tools to help you prepare for this shift are available here…

Overutilization vs Underutilization of Virtual Machines

Does virtualization truly improve utilization?

If so, shouldn’t cost be lower as a result?  Well, maybe in the short term…  but in the long term we are starting to see cases where costs accumulate over time and virtualization ends up being more expensive.

Gravitant’s response:
“Over-provisioning of Virtual Machines has resulted in Virtual Machine sprawl, which is difficult to manage.  This has resulted in higher cost over time.  On the other hand under-provisioning results in lower performance and SLA penalties.” – Mohammed Farooq, CEO Gravitant

Gravitant’s capacity planning tool configures the optimal physical and virtual machine landscape of servers, network, and storage to

1. Minimize VM Sprawl
2. Meet application performance thresholds
3. Reduce data center costs – systems and operations

Operations Research tools are used to balance the tradeoff between cost (due to sprawl) and performance (from SLAs).

3 keys to Capacity Planning for Virtualization

Fact:  Everyone’s going virtual to reduce cost and improve utilization. Why not?  Sharing of resources and paying for resources on-demand should be beneficial.  But that just makes the job of the capacity planner even more difficult!

3 big challenges in Virtualization that do not exist in traditional capacity planning:

1. Capacity of each box is dynamically allocated, so which virtual machine (VM) actually got how much of resources?

2. Each box has overhead utilization from each VM due to the hypervisor which reduces performance, so what is the critical number of VMs to be configured on each box?

3. Cost models are complex with options for on-demand vs dedicated vs burst capacity, so which option should be chosen?

Solutions: 1. We use a couple of key performance metrics (Transaction Rate and Response Time) that are uniform across all layers and applications.  This tells us how much capacity was effectively used by each application.

2. We use a slowdown factor that discounts available resources due to hypervisor utilization.  As a result, we can derive the optimal number of VMs on each box.

3. Because of solutions 1 & 2, we are able to accurately forecast capacity requirements which can then be compared with the different cost models.  If capacity requirements are high but stable, dedicated would be cheaper, but on-demand is better for unstable capacity requirements.