Focus On The IaaS Services You Actually Want To Deliver [HP]

So you need to build and integrate a new hosting platform? Maybe your developers need it for a new project, maybe you are a cloud provider setting up a new organization or ‘tenant.’ Public or Private cloud, this means you need to choose the components and work with developers to build a customer management suite. You also need to deliver cost savings to management while ensuring resilience, scalability and availability.

HP CloudSystem Matrix is an infrastructure as a service (IaaS) solution for private and hybrid cloud deployments. Functioning as a platform for private cloud and IaaS, CloudSystem Matrix uses BladeSystem, VirtualConnect, Insight Management software, shared storage such as Fibre Channel SAN and HP networking products.

By converging these capabilities into an IaaS solution, you can now build your infrastructure using your server, storage and networking building blocks that have been pre-integrated for a turn-key solution.

Here is a quick chart from HP’s TCO study on sample three-year CapEx and OpEx savings when comparing a basic blade operation to CloudSystem Matrix:

But why read speeds and feeds when you can get a real customer story?

Digital Planet is a leading Irish managed services provider located in Dublin, Ireland.

Using CloudSystem, Digital Planet can provision and manage their own dedicated virtual and physical environments from a self-service portal.

“Our vision is to be seen as a virtual IT team for our customers. The result is that the people who are currently employed by those companies can spend more time delivering value-added services that drive their company forward.”  Brian Larkin, Digital Planet Operations Director

For example, if customer ‘A’ requires a 200-seat Exchange environment, Digital Planet will design that and test it. Once it is working, it now has a Cloud Map template. When customer ‘B’ comes looking for a 200-seat Exchange environment, instead of going through days of project planning to deliver this, it can be automatically provisioned by the existing workflow and installation scripts within hours. A common configuration of two Web servers, two application servers, and a database server would normally require three to five days to design, configure, test, and deploy. With an approved template, the same task takes less than two hours. Simpler solutions can be deployed in minutes.

Digital Planet’s Larkin had this to say: “It gives us great freedom to develop new services around an incredibly stable platform.”

Still thinking about CloudSystem Matrix 7.0?  Here are some new capabilities to consider: 

1. Cloud bursting – allows IT admins to provision services beyond the ‘private cloud’ by ‘bursting’ into a public cloud for a pre-defined service – this optimizes costs when you only pay for what you use (you want to make sure your service provider ensures that bursting to another provider does not impinge on clients or own security requirements).
2. Provisioning – For up to 10,000 VMs
3. Improved multi-tenancy – Allows secure multi-tenancy through better separation of VLANS between different private cloud users.
4. Automatically provision storage LUNs – offered for both EVA and 3PAR FC storage arrays.
5. Integration with 3PAR storage replication – For automated recovery management of server profiles (Just like how Matrix supports EVA and XP storage replication).
6. CloudMaps program – Offers best-practice solutions with templates, workflows and sizers for key app providers using the Matrix solution.

Interestingly, this new system brings to light the idea of tenancy: users or groups of users that want to use an IO system to manage their resources. With CloudSystem Matrix (an HP IO system) the ‘tenants’ can now manage their own virtual infrastructure rather than relying on the service provider to perform these tasks.

But of course this idea brings a new problem: the need to keep information about users and services private and secure from interferences from other organizations. Weigh in with your opinion on this in the comments below!

Feeling more confused than when you started? Read our Cloud Cheat Sheet: 5 building blocks, 3 service models and 4 deployment models or our Cheat Sheet: Everything you need to know about sizing your Cloud environment to learn more or let us know your thoughts or questions in the comments section below.