A guide to building multiservice cloud platforms

INTRODUCTION
Following the initial excitement that cloud computing will change life as we know it, were now in the heavylifting phase that over time will make cloud services a trusted reality. But enterprises, organizations and government agencies need help to embrace the cloud for mission-critical applications rather than only for an economical test and development platform. Cloud providers have to step up in a big way to design the right infrastructure, whether theyre entrenched telecom providers, newer cloud specialists or niche providers. Challenged on many fronts to usher in the era of scalable and reliable cloud services, providers have to design an architecture and build cloud platforms that can accommodate multiple services without losing the economies of scale that made cloud services an attractive proposition in the first place. In this Telecom Insight guide, Tom Nolle looks at a number of issues all cloud providers have to address, including capitalizing on a common cloud platform to build multiple services, using your cloud platform for internal and purposes and getting your cloud database strategy in order to facilitate application performance. Here are the building blocks you need to get your cloud platform strategy up to speed.

Building multiple services to operate on one cloud platform Building a cloud computing infrastructure to serve dual purposes Planning your DBMS strategy

The content of this Telecom Insight guide is provided by www.SearchTelecom.com

P.1

A guide to building multiservice cloud platforms

Building multiple cloud services from a common infrastructure

e Pluribus Unum, which translates to from many, one, is a familiar phrase written on US coins. For service providers planning cloud computing services, the motto and challenge is exactly the opposite -- how can they produce many services out of one infrastructure, or e Unum Pluribus? Most service providers have neither the option nor the desire to pick out a single model of cloud service and focus investment on it alone. Leveraging their infrastructure and operations to produce superior economies of scale is critical, and from a sales perspective, it will be easier to exploit the cloud quickly when enabling multiple cloud services rather than having only one. Technically, cloud computing is a resource-pool strategy. A set of servers and storage devices located in one or more data centers form a pool of resources that are allocated to service customers on an as-needed basis. The larger the resource pool, the greater the efficiency and lower the unit cost of computing and storage. A lower cost base then permits network operators to offer computing and storage as a service at prices compelling to the buyer and at margins profitable to the seller. The value of generality at the cloud service level is clear -- more services equal more sales, which equal more resource-pool efficiency and higher profits. But the question is how to achieve the multiservice goal with a practical set of cloud computing tools. The strongest starting point to answer the question of how to achieve multiple cloud services using one set of cloud computing tools is to consider how the cloud computing service in question -- infrastructure as a service (Iaas), platform as a service (PaaS) or software as a service (SaaS) -- would appear to a buyer and what the cloud resource interface needs to resemble. The goal of a universal infrastructure would be to offer all of those service appearances and interfaces at comparable efficiency and with full management capability. Where the requirements compromise the ability to use one infrastructure, operators need to weigh the cost and benefits of that offering. Heres a closer look at the requirements of the three cloud services. IaaS services would logically appear to the buyer as a virtual machine host that is essentially an extension of the buyers own data center virtual resource pool. Running an application on a virtual host means creating a machine image that includes the application and its operating system software and middleware, and then loading it on the selected cloud server. Since the application image and operating software is provided by the user, the cloud provider has limited options for managing the internal behavior of the application. The virtual machine host can be managed but not the machine image software. Still, this application is what made Amazons EC2 famous, and operators almost universally expect to support it. A virtualized set of servers and a director function are required to assign free virtual machines to the best available server resource. PaaS services can be viewed as an IaaS framework that has defined one or more middleware services that are available to the applications within the cloud. Therefore, these applications are not included in the machine image provided by the user. The most common platform service is database as a service (DbaaS), followed closely by management services.

P.2

A guide to building multiservice cloud platforms

To the user, the value in consuming a platform service versus having a completely customer-provided machine image of the application is that the platform service is cloud-aware and can be managed and optimized for a cloud-hosted execution. Cloud databases are almost mandatory for applications that will involve data exchange among application components. Otherwise, these components would have to develop an internal mechanism for data sharing that could be relied upon to work efficiently within a cloud, where resource-to-application assignment is nearly invisible to the user. Cloud management tools, including tools to manage application performance, allow both users and the cloud provider to merge application performance issues with virtual machine resource performance, giving a better management picture. As applications begin to consume platform services, the IaaS framework is likely to take on the appearance of a data center optimized for service-oriented architecture (SOA). The idea of the user providing a machine image is replaced by the idea of the user providing an application to catalog -- an application that will be represented in an SOA directory (UDDI) and instantiated on demand, using the providers virtual machines. This represents PaaS services as effectively an SOA overlay on IaaS infrastructure, a model that seems explicitly adopted by Microsoft with Azure and by IBM with its Cloud Service Provider Platform (CSP2). Platform services are represented as SOA services and accessed as any internal software service would be accessed. This also facilitates the integration of PaaS cloud services with enterprise software; any SOA tool can provide the binding required. Moving up the stack to SaaS, we again find that the next level of cloud services can begin as an extension of the last. The SOA abstraction of a service can be applied both to application components and to entire applications. In the former case, a SaaS offering would be associated with a SOA-compatible interface (including simple object access protocol, SOAP), and could be registered as a service in a SOA directory for access as described with a PaaS cloud service. In this case, an enterprise might be consuming a cloud SaaS component within an application otherwise hosted in-house. If the entire application were to be represented as a service, then the SaaS offering could be made through a traditional URL or RESTful interface and be accessed by a browser. This would be the type of SaaS service that well-known Salesforce.com provides. Operators could provide these types of services directly (using open source software, licensed software or software they develop), or they could offer wholesale PaaS or IaaS support to third parties that would then offer SaaS services. Cloud services at the higher levels, which include SaaS and PaaS, displace more user support and license costs and, therefore, justify higher prices. If operators can use the same infrastructure to offer these services as they use for the more general IaaS services, they can increase their profits and provide cloud services more easily integrated with enterprise IT. That can be particularly valuable in addressing the data center backup and application overflow opportunities that enterprises value most highly for cloudsourcing.

P.3

A guide to building multiservice cloud platforms

Building a cloud computing infrastructure to serve dual purposes

Weve been bombarded with cloud computing services terms that describe many types of services that can be offered through the cloud. For network operators, the challenge with multifaceted clouds is that they have a variety of business drivers. The catch is that if different drivers push cloud computing infrastructure in incompatible directions, the consequences could be dire for service providers capital and operations expenses, as well as for return on investment. Unlike enterprise clouds, this diversity of business drivers requires service provider clouds to function as platforms for traditional OSS/BSS and internal IT, as platforms to host features and content and as platforms for cloud services for different groups of customers -- enterprises, SMBs and consumers. Virtually every operator would have a different balance of need/opportunity in each of these areas. In addition to offering cloud services including IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, DbaaS, and hosting as a service internally, network operators are also giant IT consumers themselves. That means they build data centers not only for OSS/BSS and traditional applications, but for hosting content and features. Network operators have most of the same concerns as enterprises about cloud computing infrastructure efficiency, application performance and even cloudsourcing to third parties. This means that operators are shifting their IT investment from an internal fulfillment strategy to one hosted in the cloud. For this supply-side vision of cloud migration, the best course is often dictated by the cloud strategies supported by the major IT vendors, just as it is for enterprises. Yet the issue of business and network transformation represents a special challenge for service providers -restructuring their network infrastructure to meet changing revenue goals and new service targets. Five years from now, most operators will be earning the majority of their revenues from sources that were minimal or nonexistent contributors five years before. The service-driven transformation of network operators is more than a network infrastructure transformation. Content and social network services, mobile features, app stores and all of the things included as elements in the future of network services are predominantly hosted rather than simply connected. That makes a providers IT structure as critical as its network. Hosted services and features also make the architecture that binds these IT elements into a critically important set of cohesive resources. The cloud is important to operators because it is the abstract model that nearly all providers are selecting for their own internal IT needs, which include hosting features and content, as well as supporting their backoffices or OSS/BSS systems. If service providers were to create a single cloud for all their diverse IT needs, it would be among the largest pools of IT resources ever built. And if cloud computing is an opportunity created by economy of scale, then operators will be the leading contenders to provide it. This story works just as well in reverse. Network operators worldwide have listed cloud computing as one of their top three applications to create new revenues. A decision to offer cloud computing services and create infrastructure for these services -- as Verizon did by buying cloud provider Terremark -- will create an IT platform that can then be exploited for the operators own IT applications. You could consider this a servicefirst cloud evolution.

P.4

A guide to building multiservice cloud platforms

The fact that service provider clouds obtain optimum economies of scale by serving many different missions means that their design has to support a range of uses that most private or even public cloud infrastructures could elect to avoid. An example is the classic IaaS versus PaaS versus SaaS debate. Operators that want to host SaaS providers services may need to offer their partners IaaS or PaaS clouds, or both. Most cloud providers elect to support one approach, but a network operators cloud will likely have to support all three, since they offer customers different functions: IaaS services are the baseline cloud offering due to Amazons EC2 popularity. SaaS services are mandatory for small business and consumer offerings PaaS services are essential for some enterprise data center workload overflow and backup applications. In short, all models are needed. Operators turn to PaaS Many network operators are now conceptualizing their own internal use of cloud infrastructure in PaaS terms as well. If we were to describe the architecture of a service delivery platform in modern terms, wed call it a PaaS host because it combines a hardware platform with a structured set of middleware that creates a uniform development environment. Feature-building missions for the cloud are certain to be supported by assembling and even creating custom middleware. For operators that want to offer app stores, developers are likely to operate inside a micro-PaaS sandbox that includes tools to manage the offerings and integrate them with operator billing and support applications. Operators have many choices of cloud architecture, and some of the popular IT giants are now customizing cloud middleware into packages for use by providers as well as enterprises. IBMs (CSP2) and Microsofts Azure Platform Appliance are examples of this trend, and the use of an integrated toolkit has the advantage of ensuring compatibility and management commonality across the elements of cloud infrastructure. Some operators are also considering clouds created from open source or commercial dual-licensed software like Eucalyptus (Eucalyptus Enterprise Edition) and Hadoops Cloudera. For operators, the key to creating successful cloud services and supporting internal IT on the same infrastructure is ensuring that an IaaS framework built on data center virtualization can be extended upward first to the platform and then to the services level without creating voids in the management processes, and without compromising a single-resource economy of scale value proposition. In the final analysis, the combination of the economies of resources and management efficiency will define the provider cloud and differentiate it from other cloud computing offerings in the market.

P.5

A guide to building multiservice cloud platforms

Planning your DBMS strategy

No matter what kind of cloud computing services operators plan to offer, they need to have an effective cloud database strategy in place or customers wont have access to the necessary data in their cloud applications. With that growing awareness, one of the most significant (and complex) cloud infrastructure issues facing cloud providers of many types is deciding how database support will be offered in the cloud, which is also leading to selling D. The wrong cloud database strategy can create application performance problems significant enough to discredit a cloud service, forcing the provider to incur additional costs to establish credibility with users. Ready or not, in 2011, database capabilities in the cloud are going to become a differentiator and a factor in sale for cloud providers. The cloud database issue is complicated because it sits at the intersection of two cloud infrastructure models, two storage service models and two database management system (DBMS) models. Sorting out the details will require cloud services providers to consider their infrastructure, network performance and service goals. The following services models can affect cloud database support, including single- and multi-site cloud infrastructure models. The two cloud infrastructure models differ in the way that resources are allocated to customers. In the single-site model, a customers applications run within a single data center in the cloud, even if multiple data centers are available. This means that the storage and/or DBMS resources used by a customer can be contained within a single storage area network (SAN), and that the customers application performance in the cloud can likely match that of a standard data center that uses virtualization. In the multi-site model, the customers applications can draw on resources from multiple data centers, which means that making the connection between the application and the database resources could involve wide area network connectivity that limits performance. Whichever choice they make, service providers must be ready to address the issues that come with single- or multi-site cloud infrastructure. Then there are storage and database service models. The storage service models available to a cloud planner are storage as a service or the more complex DbaaS. With storage services, the customer will access virtual storage devices as though they were native disk arrays, which means that the applications will send storage protocols (such as fiber channel over Ethernet or IP SCSI) over any network connection. In the relatively new DbaaS offerings, applications will access storage through a cloud DBMS that will accept high-level database commands and return the required results. This can create a less delay-sensitive connection, so it is better suited to cloud configurations where storage might be distributed over multiple sites. Another major cloud database planning decision is whether a cloud database service should be based on the popular relational database management system (RDBMS) and its Structured Query Language (SQL) standards, based on a lighter-weight RDBMS without SQL, or based on a non-relational structure like the Google BigTable structure that gives users dynamic control over data layout and format. Note: The terms NoSQL or NoREL have been applied to the latter two approaches, but they are used inconsistently. Weighing the value of DbaaS For cloud planners, the most challenging issues may be deciding whether to roll out DbaaS offerings, and if
P.6

A guide to building multiservice cloud platforms

so, which DBMS to offer. Some cloud providers are starting to offer DbaaS, which may compel other network operators to do the same for competitive reasons. DbaaS has advantages beyond marketing. With a cloud DBMS, storage virtualization isnt directly visible to the applications, which gives operators more latitude in how they manage storage resources. With a direct storage model, a mechanism for storage virtualization that protects customers data from being accessed by others but still makes the virtual disks look real is essential. The efficiency of this process is paramount in controlling the performance of applications that use storage extensively. Its easy to provide cloud database services as part of a cloud PaaS offering, but the applications may have to be written to access cloud database services in some IaaS configurations. If customers arent likely to access storage/DBMS across multiple data centers in the cloud, the performance implications of the storage/DBMS choices are less critical. But where multi-site resource distribution among customers is expected or required, it may be necessary to optimize performance by reducing the sensitivity of storage access to network performance, as well as enhancing network performance for site-to-site connectivity. Offering DbaaS can help by replacing storage input/output (I/O) with simply sending a query and a return of results. Even when considerable data is retrieved by a query, the query/response traffic is typically much lower in volume than storage I/O traffic, reducing network congestion and improving performance. Overall, the type of DBMS offered in a cloud-based DbaaS is a function of the needs of the applications, which in turn may be a function of how the service offerings are positioned. Planners preparing for large-scale enterprise services are probably considering an IaaS model, which suggests that cloud database services should be based on storage virtualization rather than on cloud DBMS. At the minimum, cloud services targeting enterprise application overflow or data center backup almost certainly demand an IaaS model, as well as a virtual storage service capability. DbaaS can be offered in addition to storage as a service, but not likely as a replacement. For SMB cloud offerings, DbaaS is likely to have more appeal. The impact of DBMS issues on application performance will always be easier to control when cloud services are offered from a small number of local and highly interconnected data centers, or when individual customers are limited to a single data center or a tightly connected cluster. Network operators may be able to achieve sufficient resource scale within a single data center to reduce performance issues related to SAN extension across multiple sites, which could be a competitive advantage. DbaaS can then be targeted more at customers application needs rather than at infrastructure and performance considerations. Cloud database models are a major issue for buyers, even though they arent a mainstream media topic yet. They are a major factor in assuring that cloud services will perform well and offer the same level of data reliability as private data centers. Proper cloud database strategy selection can provide a network operator with a key feature differentiator in an increasingly competitive cloud services market and help increase both adoption rates and overall sales and revenue. A little time spent planning can pay a major dividend. Tom Nolle is president of strategic consulting firm CIMI

P.7