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Page 1: White Paper Managing Public Cloud Computing in the ... · PDF fileWhite Paper Managing Public Cloud Computing ... Effectively Managing Amazon Web Services in ... workload on- and off-ramp

1

White Paper

Managing Public Cloud Computing

in the Enterprise

A Quick Start Guide

White Paper

Effectively Managing

Amazon Web Services in

Hybrid IT Environments

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Table of Contents

Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... 3

Amazon in the Enterprise How is it Being Used? .................................................................. 4

Best Practices for Public Cloud Computing in the Enterprise................................................. 5

Cloud Automation Technologies ............................................................................................... 6

Hotlink Platform & Workload Transformation Technology ...................................................... 7

Hotlink + Cloud Automation........................................................................................................ 9

Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 10

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Abstract

Public cloud computing, with Amazon Web Services (AWS) as the most prominent example,

creates an entirely new class of enterprise IT services with very low financial barriers to accessing

a broad menu of compute resources. As a result, many business units, development

organizations and other enterprise end users have independently embraced public cloud

services, generally at a lower budgetary cost, and in a much shorter timeframe than if the same

resources were procured from corporate IT.

The ease with which public cloud resources can be accessed has led to proliferation of loosely

managed or unmanaged AWS accounts in many enterprises. Non-IT professionals are often

creating and operating sizable computing environments that are outside of any consistent

management controls and are completely non-standard with respect to policies and

procedures that internal IT follows when creating and ensuring enterprise-compliant computing.

This activity usually flies under the radar until one of several things happen: (1) the aggregate

costs become large and finance starts asking questions, (2) the expense volatility sounds a

budget or accounting alarm, or (3) a security or compliance breach becomes visible at the

corporate level. At this point, public cloud computing usually becomes an enterprise priority.

What’s the right answer? Business units and developers need to be able to easily instantiate

cloud-based services, matching the quantity consumed to their budgets. But, those services

need to be provisioned and monitored according to reasonable standards, compliance

guidelines and management controls. And, the enterprise needs to be able to easily migrate

workloads back and forth between on-premise internal environments and public clouds, so

workloads are truly portable during their lifecycle. If these conditions are met, business units and

developers can continue to enjoy the productivity benefits of public cloud computing, but with

cloud-based resources being deployed in a structured, managed and compliant manner

consistent with enterprise requirements.

Moreover, if a proper management and operating model for public cloud services is well

integrated into the existing virtualization management environment, internal IT would be in a

position to improve its own operating leverage by selectively migrating other workloads to public

cloud-based services.

This white paper addresses how enterprises can simultaneously meet three goals: (1) allowing

business units and developers to maintain freedom and agility in the use of public cloud services,

(2) enabling enterprise-appropriate provisioning and operating standards for the workloads

deployed in public clouds, and (3) accomplishing the first two goals while continuing to improve

the operating agility and leverage of internal IT departments. We will explain how these three

seemingly conflicting objectives can be addressed easily with HotLink® Hybrid Express™ the

industry’s simplest solution for deploying, administering and managing hybrid IT environments in

the enterprise.

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Amazon in the Enterprise How is it Being Used?

There is no denying the popularity and rapid growth of AWS and other public cloud services.

On-demand resources have become extremely popular with application developers, QA

professionals and business units across the enterprise for the following key reasons:

• Non-IT professionals can quickly and easily order and deploy relatively complete and

packaged servers with the required database, application and web server software.

• Instances can be purchased in a variety of sizes, with a range of committed resources.

• Server operations are completely outsourced to the public cloud provider and do not

require internal infrastructure.

• A range of price plans are available including spot pricing, consumption-based

resources and “always on” instances.

• If applications need to scale up or down, this is easily and automatically accomplished

without significant pre-planning.

• Users do not have to go through a protracted corporate procurement process as they

often do with internal IT services.

However, the tremendous popularly of AWS with non-IT professionals, combined with the low

barriers to procurement and deployment, are creating a range of problems in the enterprise:

• A significant divergence exists in the build and operating procedures of users who

independently establish public cloud accounts and those of corporate IT from how

accounts are established, who can access them, management of proprietary

information, decommissioning of resources, how costs are controlled, etc.

• Running workloads in a public cloud on a small scale or on transient basis is extremely

cost effective. In fact, application prototyping, development and testing have never

been more economical. Deploying applications at scale, 24x7, at a public cloud

provider is usually much more costly and variable month-to-month than anticipated.

• Due to cost, many adopt a “start public and end up private” model. Development and

testing are resourced at a public cloud vendor. Production releases are then deployed

in the corporate data center. But, the public cloud workloads are often not compliant

with IT standards, and migrating off these services can be a big problem.

The bottom line is this. Public cloud resources are a significant opportunity for enterprises to

deliver more innovation, in a shorter period of time and at a reduced total cost. Proactive steps

and leadership by corporate IT to provide best practices, a low-overhead management

approach for public cloud resources, and an efficient bridge between on- and off-premise IT

infrastructure will substantially increase corporate IT’s strategic value to the business.

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Best Practices for Enterprise Public Cloud Computing

The most important point when considering best practices in enterprise public cloud computing

is the following. If people opt out, it will not work. Amazon Web Services caught on like wildfire

because end users were not getting the IT services needed, in a reasonable timeframe for an

acceptable cost. Erecting all the same barriers or dispensing heavy-handed best practices for

public cloud in the enterprise is exactly the wrong thing to do.

Best practices in enterprise public cloud usage must be lightweight and occur without

negatively impacting the productivity of developers, business units and other end users of public

cloud services. Critically important is that these constituents be able to use public cloud services

in the same flexible and productive manner as before, but now have access to new and useful

capabilities like a seamless workload on- and off-ramp for AWS workloads. For best practices

to be accepted, end users and their managers must derive actual benefit from the new

operating model, not just become victims of a new set of corporate restrictions.

With extensive infrastructure and operations experience in managing virtualized resources,

corporate IT can deliver tangible value to public cloud consumers in the enterprise by: (1)

helping new users quickly and effectively utilize AWS resources without training or knowledge

of the details of Amazon services, (2) arming managers with real-time tools to monitor AWS

workloads, usage and costs, (3) providing automated, painless capabilities for migrating

workloads to and from AWS, and (4) delivering guidance in the construction and configuration

of workloads that will transition in-house for production.

If corporate IT has standardized on VMware vCenter to deploy, administer and manage on-

premise virtual machines, this infrastructure can and should be leveraged for all public cloud

workloads. Ultimately, cloud-based services become part of a global IT resource pool. The

investments made for managing on-premise virtual resources need to be extended to include

off-premise resources so the enterprise can:

1. Utilize the existing on-premise management infrastructure and skills across AWS accounts

and instances

2. Manage all functions of on-premise virtual environments and off-premise resources within

this singular console

3. Enable end user managers to have trusted access roles for AWS resource visibility and

management

4. Standardize snapshots and templates for provisioning across internal data centers and

off-premise public clouds

5. Implement seamless two-way migration of all workloads (both Windows and Linux)

between on- and off-premise environments

6. Use consistent enterprise policies for role-based access and change management

across all on-premise virtual resources and off-premise public clouds

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Technology now exists that enables full platform interoperability and workload portability as a

seamless extension of existing VMware vCenter management environments. IT architects would

benefit from a robust understanding of this technology to design streamlined infrastructure for

hybrid management in the enterprise. More about this will be covered later in the paper.

If corporate IT takes a leadership role early in delivering useful tools and operating models for

enterprise end users of AWS resources, they can not only provide strategic value to the business

but also avoid having their own productivity derailed in the future by the use of fragmented,

overlapping and incompatible processes and toolsets that will inevitably proliferate among

developers, business units and other public cloud end users as operations grow.

Cloud Automation Technologies

Some vendors are promoting the notion that hybrid on- and off-premise management can be

solved through cloud automation. With this approach, a self-service portal, orchestration layer

and service catalogs are implemented on top of the public cloud resources and on-premise

private clouds, including all of their associated and disparate management consoles.

While layering a self-service provisioning portal on top of disparate on- and off-premise virtual

environments provides benefits for certain use cases, these capabilities alone do not address the

fundamental manageability requirements for public cloud computing in the enterprise, as

outlined in the earlier best practices section.

VM

VM

Self-Service Portal

VM

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First of all, each virtualized environment still requires its own management toolset for

deployment, administration and management. Enterprises often support multiple hypervisors on-

premise and a variety of public cloud platforms, so the complexity of operating all these

management consoles is considerable. Second, there is no mechanism for common templates

and snapshots that span the heterogeneous on- and off-premise environments to ensure public

cloud instances are both initially provisioned and remain consistent with IT standards and

compliance requirements. Third, no seamless or automated mechanism exists by which

workloads can migrate across all these environments.

The net result is that cloud automation solutions alone will not deliver a cohesively managed

solution for enterprise IT and the business unit and development teams currently utilizing public

cloud resources. Moreover, cloud automation is a complex and expensive endeavor, often

referenced as a “journey” because of the many products, management layers, databases,

custom scripts, service catalogs, self-service portal and professional services required to

implement. Enterprises should not confuse the requirement for seamless hybrid operational

management, spanning on- and off-premise resources, with a cloud automation “journey.”

HotLink Platform & Workload Transformation Technology

Most enterprise IT organizations have significant investments in VMware vSphere for on-premise

virtual infrastructure and have invested substantially in training administration staff and architects

on the VMware administration tools, particularly VMware vCenter. Additionally, 3rd party tools,

custom scripts and workflows have been built and deployed around the on-premise virtual

management infrastructure.

Effective hybrid management of on- and off-premise resources mandates interoperability with

existing infrastructure and operations. Any hybrid management “solution” that that does not

enable the VMware management infrastructure to readily extend to public cloud resources will

be complex to integrate into current operations, challenging to scale and expand, and difficult

to administer and manage. That’s why HotLink assumes hybrid management in the enterprise

must utilize VMware vCenter as the single point of administration, management and integration

across hybrid on- and off-premise virtualized resources.

HotLink invested extensively in the patented platform and workload transformation technologies

that enable the industry’s simplest solution for deploying, administering and managing hybrid on-

and off-premise compute environments HotLink Hybrid Express. The HotLink software natively

extends the existing VMware vCenter management environment to Amazon EC2, with the full

management functionality of on-premise now extended to public cloud. There is no prerequisite

of any other management consoles, databases, connectors, new templates or professional

services. With HotLink technology, hybrid platforms, both on- and off-premise, can be

incorporated into the existing management infrastructure and operational model without

increasing management complexity or requiring professional services to implement. HotLink also

enables fully unified administration and management of multiple-hypervisors on-premise, as

shown below.

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Hybrid IT Simplicity with HotLink

HotLink hybrid management does not just mean being able to accomplish tasks on each

platform in its native manner; it means being able to accomplish cross-platform on- and off-

premise tasks in a manner consistent with the standards and processes that have been well-

honed for the existing on-premise virtual data center and with a management console that is

intuitive, robust and already in use VMware vCenter.

Public cloud users and managers in business units and development teams can now be given

roles-based VMware vCenter access to enable easy management of their public cloud

resources including the ability to:

• Clone & migrate workloads to/from public cloud with simple point & click

• Create, use & manage hybrid snapshots

• Convert workloads bi-directionally

• Utilize existing on-premise templates in hybrid environments

• Monitor, track and manage team and individual usage

• Apply automation across hybrid resources

The Hotlink technology also allows unified templates for provisioning to/from public cloud

resources, consistent with internal standards. This provides significant productivity benefits by

eliminating the complexity and time involved in rebuilding workloads for hybrid environments.

VM

VM

Self-Service Portal

VM

VM

VM

VM

Orchestration

Hardware

On-Premise Off-Premise

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HotLink Platform

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With the HotLink platform and workload transformation technology, enterprises can readily

extend existing consoles to public cloud resources so deployment, administration and

management of all on- and off-premise resources can be consolidated with a single pane of

glass and single point of integration VMware vCenter. Because other platforms are

managed natively, compatible orchestration tools, service catalogs and self-service portals work

out-of-the-box. Best of all, these hybrid capabilities can be added to the existing environment in

less than a half a day, with no special IT skills.

HotLink plus Cloud Automation

The Hotlink technology is complementary to self-service provisioning models and cloud

automation deployments. In fact, deploying HotLink substantially streamlines the

implementation and operation of cloud automation infrastructure by enabling VMware vCenter

to be the single point of administration, management and integration for all hybrid resources.

Native management toolsets for disparate virtual infrastructures can be eliminated since full

functionality is available through VMware vCenter.

HotLink

Transformation

Cloud

Automation

Example solutionsHotLink plus

VMware vCenter

vCloud Suite,

RightScale,

Eucalyptus

Single admin & mgt console for on & off-premise

hybrid platforms VMware vCenter

Eliminates multiple native consoles

Seamless cross-platform VM snapshots, cloning,

single template provisioning

Workload conversions & migration

Unified security, monitoring, performance reporting

Single point of integration VMware vCenter

Self-service portal

Workload orchestration

Service catalog

NOYES

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Conclusion

Best practices in enterprise public cloud computing need to provide value to all parties, whether

corporate IT, developers or business units otherwise, they will not be embraced and adopted.

In this paper, we have outlined straightforward and practical methods for IT to provide important

services to the public cloud users and managers inside the enterprise by leveraging existing IT

infrastructure, knowledge and best practices. When considering the best overarching

management strategy for hybrid on- and off-premise resources, the logical approach is to

extend a known management construct, selectively deploying high value capabilities to the

new users who need them.

At HotLink, our charter is to enable hybrid computing using the IT management infrastructure

already installed a simple idea with sizable impact for the enterprise. We believe this is the

most pragmatic way to enable compute resources, whether on- or off-premise, to pooled and

consumed on-demand while supporting responsible corporate governance and efficient

resource delivery. To that end, the HotLink patented platform and workload transformation

technology addresses hybrid platform complexities at a fundamental computer science level,

so enterprises can easily and cost-effectively provide public cloud based services in a managed

model. The best news is that with HotLink, hybrid capabilities can be added to the existing

environment in less than half a day.

Many vendors will financially benefit from a more radical reengineering of the environment over

an extended period of time and characterize it as a “journey.” History strongly suggests that

leveraging existing investments and building new enterprise capabilities on a solid foundation is

more highly correlated with future success than a taking a journey.

If your organization is facing any of the challenges or opportunities presented in this paper,

please contact us to learn more about HotLink Hybrid Express the industry’s simplest solution

for deploying, administering and managing hybrid IT environments in the enterprise.

Contact Us

HotLink Corporation

3130 De La Cruz, Suite 211

Santa Clara, CA 95054

(408)463-6130

www.hotlink.com

[email protected]

© 2017 HotLink Corporation. All rights reserved. HotLink and HotLink Hybrid Express are trademarks or registered trademarks of HotLink Corporation. All other company and product names may be trade names or trademarks of their respective owners.