This module focuses on the cloud computing reference model, deployment options, and solutions

for building a cloud infrastructure. The module also focuses on various factors that should be
considered by a cloud service provider while deploying a cloud infrastructure.

Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Building the Cloud Infrastructure 1
 This lesson covers the cloud computing reference model. It covers the entities and functions of
the five layers of the model. It also covers the three cross-layer functions of the cloud computing
reference model.

Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Building the Cloud Infrastructure 2
 According to Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), a
reference model is an abstract framework for understanding the significant relationships
among the entities of some environment, and for the development of consistent
standards or specifications supporting that environment. A reference model is based on a
small number of unifying concepts and may be used as a basis for education and
explaining standards. A reference model is not directly tied to any standards,
technologies, or other concrete implementation details, but it does seek to provide a
common semantics that can be used unambiguously across and between different
implementations.

Key goals of reference model are:

• Conveys fundamental principles and basic functionality of a system it represents

• Facilitates efficient communication of system details between stakeholders

• Provides a point of reference for system designers to extract system specifications

• Enhances an individual’s understanding of the representative system

• Documents the system for future reference and provides a means for collaboration

Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Building the Cloud Infrastructure 3
 The cloud computing reference model is an abstract model that characterizes and standardizes
the functions of a cloud computing environment by partitioning it into abstraction layers and
cross-layer functions. This reference model groups the cloud computing functions and activities
into five logical layers and three cross-layer functions.

The five layers are physical layer, virtual layer, control layer, service orchestration layer, and
service layer. Each of these layers specifies various types of entities that may exist in a cloud
computing environment, such as compute systems, network devices, storage devices,
virtualization software, security mechanisms, control software, orchestration software,
management software, and so on. It also describes the relationships among these entities.

The three cross-layer functions are business continuity, security, and service management.
Business continuity and security functions specify various activities, tasks, and processes that are
required to offer reliable and secure cloud services to the consumers. Service management
function specifies various activities, tasks, and processes that enable the administrations of the
cloud infrastructure and services to meet the provider’s business requirements and consumer’s
expectations.

Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Building the Cloud Infrastructure 4
 Physical layer is the foundation layer of the cloud infrastructure. Physical layer specifies the
physical entities that operate at this layer such as compute systems, networking devices, and
storage devices. This layer also specifies the entities such as operating environment, protocols,
tools, and processes that enable the physical entities of this layer to perform their functions and
serve other layers of the cloud infrastructure. A key function of this layer is to execute the request
generated from the virtualization layer or control layer. Examples of requests from the layers
include storing data on the storage devices, performing communication among compute systems,
executing programs on a compute systems, creating backup copy of data, or executing security
policy to block an unauthorized activity.

Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Building the Cloud Infrastructure 5
 Virtual layer is deployed on the physical layer. It specifies the entities that operate at this layer
such as virtualization software, resource pools, and virtual resources. A key function of this layer
is to abstract physical resources, such as compute, storage, and network, and make them appear
as virtual resources. Virtualization software deployed on compute systems, network devices, and
storage devices perform the abstraction of the physical resources on which they are deployed.
Abstracting the physical resources enables multitenant environment, thereby improving the
utilization of the physical resources. Improved utilization of physical resources results in increased
return-on-investment (ROI) on the infrastructure entities.

Virtualization software is also responsible for pooling physical resources from which virtual
resources are created. Examples of virtual resources include virtual machines, LUN, and virtual
network. The request to create resource pools and virtual resources is generated by the control
layer. After receiving the request from the control layer, the virtual layer executes the requests.
Apart from creating the resource pools and the virtual resources, virtualization software also
support features that enable optimized resource utilization that further increases return-on-
investment.

Other key functions of this layer include executing the requests generated by the control layer,
and it also includes forwarding requests to the physical layer to get them executed. Examples of
requests generated by the control layers include creating pools of resources and creating virtual
resources.

Note: While deploying a cloud infrastructure, organization may choose not to deploy virtual layer.
In such an environment, the control layer is deployed over the physical layer and it can directly
request the physical layer to perform an operation. Further, it is also possible that part of the
infrastructure is virtualized and rest is not virtualized.

Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Building the Cloud Infrastructure 6
 Control layer can be deployed either on the virtual layer or on the physical layer. It specifies
the entities that operate at this layer such as control software. A key function of this layer
includes executing the requests generated by the service layer in collaboration with the
orchestration layer. Another key function of this layer includes forwarding requests to the virtual
and/or physical layer to get them executed. Examples of requests generated by the service layer
include creating service instance such as compute system instance for IaaS and application
instance for SaaS.

The other key functions that are performed by control software are resource configuration,
resource pool configuration, and resource provisioning. The control software in collaboration with
the virtualization software enables resource pooling, dynamic allocation of resources, creating
virtual resources, and optimizing utilization of resources. The control software initiates all the
requests such as resource configuration, resource pooling, resource provisioning, and so on.
These requests are passed on to the virtual layer or physical layer. In the absence of virtual layer,
the requests generated by the control layer are passed on to the physical layer. In this case,
these requests are fulfilled by the operating environment in collaboration with the control
software.

This layer also exposes resources (physical and/or virtual) to and supports the service layer where
cloud service interfaces are exposed to consumers.

Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Building the Cloud Infrastructure 7
 Service orchestration layer specifies the entities that can operate at this layer such as a
orchestration software. A key function of this layer is to provide workflows for executing
automated tasks to accomplish a desired outcome. Workflow refers to a series of inter-related
tasks that perform a business operation. The orchestration software enables this automated
arrangement, coordination, and management of the tasks. This helps to group and
sequence tasks with dependencies among them into a single, automated workflow.

Associated with each service listed in the service catalog, there is an orchestration
workflow defined. When a consumer selects a service from the service catalog, an
associated workflow in the orchestration layer is triggered. Based on this workflow, the
orchestration software interacts with various entities (from control layer, business continuity
function, security function, and service management function) to invoke the provisioning tasks to
be executed by the entities.

Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Building the Cloud Infrastructure 8
 The service layer is accessible to the cloud consumers. This layer specifies the entities that can
operate at this layer such as service catalog and self-service portal. A key function of this layer is
to store and present the information about all the services offered to the cloud consumers in a
service catalog. A service catalog is a database of information about the cloud services offered by
a service provider. The service catalog includes a variety of information about the services,
including description of the services, the types of services, cost, supported SLAs, security
mechanisms, and so on.

Another key function of this layer is to enable cloud consumers to access and manage the cloud
services via a self-service portal. A self-service portal displays the service catalog to the
consumers. Consumers can use this web portal to request for cloud services. In addition to the
service catalog, it also provides interface to access and manage the rented service instances. The
provisioning and management requests are passed on to the orchestration layer, where the
orchestration workflows—to fulfill the requests—are defined.

Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Building the Cloud Infrastructure 9
 Business continuity (BC) cross-layer function specifies the adoption of proactive and reactive
measures that enable a business to mitigate the impact of planned and unplanned downtime.
Proactive measures include activities, tasks, processes such as business impact analysis, risk
assessment, and technology solutions deployment (such as backup and replication). Reactive
measures include activities, tasks, processes such as disaster recovery and disaster restart to be
invoked in the event of a service failure. This function supports all the layers—physical, virtual,
control, orchestration, and service—to provide uninterrupted services to the consumers. The BC
cross-layer function of a cloud infrastructure enables a business to ensure the availability of
services in line with the Service Level Agreement (SLA).

Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Building the Cloud Infrastructure 10
 Security cross-layer function specifies the adoption of administrative and technical mechanism
that can mitigate or minimize security threats and provide a secure cloud environment.
Administrative mechanisms include security and personnel policies or standard procedures to
direct the safe execution of various operations. Technical mechanisms are usually implemented
through tools or devices deployed on the IT infrastructure. Examples of technical mechanisms
include firewall, intrusion detection and prevention systems, antivirus, and so on.

Governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) specifies processes that help an organization ensure that
their acts are ethically correct and in accordance with their risk appetite (the risk level an
organization chooses to accept), internal policies, and external regulations. Security mechanisms
should be deployed to meet the GRC requirements.

This cross-layer function supports all the layers—physical, virtual, control, orchestration, and
service—to provide secure services to the consumers.

Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Building the Cloud Infrastructure 11
 Service management function specifies adoption of activities related to service portfolio
management and service operation management. Adoption of these activities enables an
organization to align the creation and delivery of cloud services to meet their business objectives
and to meet the expectations of cloud service consumers.

Service portfolio management encompasses the set of business-related services that:

• Define the service roadmap, service features, and service levels

• Assess and prioritize where investments across the service portfolio are most needed

• Establish budgeting and pricing

• Deal with consumers in supporting activities such as taking orders, processing bills,
and collecting payments

Service portfolio management also performs market research, measures service

adoption, collects information about competitors, and analyzes feedback from consumers
in order to quickly modify and align services according to consumer needs and market
conditions.

Service operation management enables cloud administrators to manage cloud infrastructure and
services. Service operation management tasks include handling of infrastructure configuration,
resource provisioning, problem resolution, capacity, availability, and compliance conformance. All
of these tasks enable ensuring that services and service levels are delivered as committed.
Service operation management also includes monitoring cloud services and their constituent
elements. This enables the provider to gather information related to resource consumption and
bill generation. This function supports all the layers to perform monitoring, management,
and reporting for the entities of the infrastructure.

Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Building the Cloud Infrastructure 12
 This lesson covered the cloud computing reference model, and the entities and functions of the
five layers. This lesson also covered the activities performed in the three cross-layer functions.

Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Building the Cloud Infrastructure 13
 This lesson covers the greenfield and the brownfield deployment options for building a cloud
infrastructure. The lesson also covers the technology solutions for building a cloud infrastructure.

Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Building the Cloud Infrastructure 14
 Before building a cloud infrastructure, organizations must identify which deployment option is
appropriate for them. There are two deployment options for building a cloud infrastructure and
they are greenfield deployment option and brownfield deployment option. A greenfield
deployment option is typically used when an infrastructure does not exist and an organization ha
to build the cloud infrastructure starting from the physical layer. On the other hand, a brownfield
deployment option is used when some of the infrastructure entities exist, which can be
transformed to a cloud infrastructure by deploying the remaining entities required for the cloud
infrastructure. For example, consider that an organization wants to use a brownfield deployment
option to transform their existing data center, which has the physical, virtual, and control layers
deployed. In such cases, the data center also has the business continuity, security, and service
management in place. However, these three cross-layer functions are limited to a non-cloud
environment. While transforming the existing data center to a cloud infrastructure, the
organization will have to deploy the orchestration layer and the service layer. Further, the BC,
security, and the service management functions will have to be transformed to support the cloud
environment.

In both deployment options, apart from deploying the five layers and the three cross-layer
functions, the organizations have to consider several factors that will enable them to deploy the
cloud services that will meet the consumers’ expectations. These factors are covered later in this
module.

Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Building the Cloud Infrastructure 15
 There are two solutions for building a cloud infrastructure: by integrating best-of-breed
cloud infrastructure components and by acquiring and implementing a cloud-ready
converged infrastructure.

Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Building the Cloud Infrastructure 16
 In an integrated best-of-breed cloud infrastructure components solution, organizations
have the flexibility to use and integrate the infrastructure components from different
vendors. This solution allows organizations to design their cloud infrastructure by
repurposing their existing infrastructure components (in a brownfield deployment option),
providing a cost advantage for this solution. This solution enables organizations to select a
vendor of their choice for infrastructure components. This solution also enables an organization to
easily switch a vendor if the vendor is unable to provide the committed support and not meet the
SLAs.

When this method is used to build a cloud infrastructure, an organization may have to
spend a significant amount of IT staff time evaluating individual, disparate hardware
components, installing hardware, and integrating compute, storage, and network
components. The IT staff may also have to spend effort integrating and testing hardware,
middleware, and software. They also need to check the compatibility of all the
components to ensure that the combined components interoperate and function as
expected. This may delay the deployment of cloud services. Further, scaling of such an
infrastructure takes longer because each component that is scaled requires integration
with the existing infrastructure and testing for compatibility. Finally, this solution requires
acquiring cloud infrastructure management tools and deploying them on the
infrastructure.

Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Building the Cloud Infrastructure 17
 A cloud ready converged infrastructure solution provides a modular design that combines
compute, storage, network, virtualization, and management components into a single
package. This package is a self-contained unit that can be utilized to deploy cloud
services, or can be aggregated with additional packages to support the demand for more
capacity and performance. The package is pre-configured, reducing the time to deploy
cloud services. Further, in addition to integrating various components into a package,
this solution offers single management software capable of managing all hardware and
software within the package.

A cloud-ready converged infrastructure solution has built-in capabilities that provide

secured multi-tenancy. However, additional security mechanisms should be deployed to
prevent external attacks. The solution is capable of managing and mitigating failure
scenarios in hardware, software, and cloud services.

A potential area of concern regarding cloud-ready converged infrastructure solutions is the lack of
flexibility to use infrastructure components from different vendors. Some vendors may provide
organizations with the flexibility to choose multi-vendor infrastructure components such as
network devices, compute systems, and hypervisors for this solution.

Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Building the Cloud Infrastructure 18
 This lesson covered the greenfield and brownfield deployment options for building a cloud
infrastructure. The lesson also covered the two technology solutions to build a cloud
infrastructure: best-of-breed cloud infrastructure components and cloud-ready converged
infrastructure.

Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Building the Cloud Infrastructure 19
 This lesson covers various factors that should be considered while building a cloud infrastructure.

Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Building the Cloud Infrastructure 20
 After deciding on the deployment option and solution to build the cloud infrastructure, a cloud
service provider have to consider several factors to deliver cloud services that meet their business
objectives and consumer’s expectations. These slides list the key factors a service provider must
consider while building a cloud infrastructure.

Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Building the Cloud Infrastructure 21
 Governance is the active distribution of decision-making rights and accountability among
different stakeholders in an organization. It also describes the rules and procedures for
making and monitoring those decisions to determine and achieve the desired behaviors
and results. The role of governance in IT is to implement, maintain, and continuously
improve the controls on the use of IT resources. IT governance enables a service provider to:

• Ensure that IT resources are implemented and used according to agreed-upon policies and
procedures

• Ensure that these resources are properly controlled and maintained

• Ensure that these resources are providing value to the organization

Instituting IT governance usually involves establishing a review board, which is a team of

members from across business units including IT. This review board is responsible for
creating rules and processes that the organization must follow to ensure that policies are
being met.

These rules and processes might include the following:

• Understanding business issues, such as regulatory requirements or funding

• Establishing best practices and monitoring these processes

• Assigning responsibility for things such as standards, design, review, and certifications

If a service provider is using a greenfield deployment option for building a cloud infrastructure,
then they must establish governance by choosing appropriate governance model (discussed in the
next slide). If a service provider is using a brownfield deployment option, then that service
provider must transform their existing governance model to meet the cloud requirement.

Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Building the Cloud Infrastructure 22
 Depending on the size, structure, geographic presence, and culture of an organization,
one of these fundamental governance models can be implemented:

• A centralized model provides one governance body for the entire organization. This
fits best with a smaller or a strongly centralized organization where governance
policies are, for the most part, consistent throughout the organization.

• A federated model proposes separate governance bodies, one for each business unit.
A business unit can be a functional organization, a product group, or a geographic
location. Each business unit has its own set of governance policies. Even though the
services for a given business unit can be independently standardized, managed and
owned, a single, enterprise-wide governance body can still subject all services to a
common governance system.

• A distributed model proposes separate governance bodies for each business unit.
These governance bodies function autonomously and are not controlled by any
common governance system.

The organization can choose a governance model that best meets its requirements. After a
governance model is chosen, the organization then needs to take steps to establish or transform
to the chosen governance model.

Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Building the Cloud Infrastructure 23
 A cloud service provider needs to institute or transform the organization to a proactive
and services-based model. This requires defining several new roles that perform tasks related
to cloud services, such as service definition and creation, service administration and
management, service governance and policy formulation, and service consumer management.
Some of these tasks can be combined to become the responsibility of an individual or
organizational role. A few examples of new roles required to perform tasks within a cloud
environment include service manager, account manager, cloud architect, and service operation
manager.

• A service manager is responsible for understanding consumers’ needs and industry trends to
drive an effective product strategy. The service manager ensures that IT delivers cost-
competitive services that have the features that clients need. The service manager is also
responsible for managing consumers’ expectations of product offerings and serves as key
interface between clients and IT staff.

• An account manager supports service managers in service planning, development, and

deployment. The account manager maintains day-to-day contact to ensure that consumers’
needs are met.

• A cloud architect is responsible for creating detailed designs for the cloud infrastructure.

• The service operations manager is responsible to streamline service delivery and execution.
Service operations manager is also responsible to provide early warning for service issues,
such as emerging capacity constraints, or unexpected increase in cost. The service operations
manager also coordinates with the architecture team to define technology roadmaps and
ensure that service level objectives are met.

It is not only required to define the roles of IT staff and the skills they need, but it is also
essential to identify the skill gaps that should be filled in order to successfully provide cloud
services.

Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Building the Cloud Infrastructure 24
 A service provider needs to institute or transform the financial/payback/showback/pricing
model that will enable them to manage their budgeting, accounting, and chargeback
requirements. The model helps the service provider to plan for investments to offer cloud
services and determines the IT budget for cloud infrastructure and operations for the
lifecycle of services.

The service provider should perform service valuation. Service valuation determines the
price (or chargeback) that a consumer is expected to pay for a service, which helps
recover the cost of providing the service, ensuring profitability, and meeting the
provider’s ROI and reinvestment goals. The service provider aggregates all types of costs
(both CAPEX and OPEX) down to the service element level of granularity by mapping the
elements to the relevant cloud services. Then it calculates the service costs on per-unit
basis by dividing the aggregated cost for a service by some logical unit of demand such
as GB of storage or an hour of usage for that service.

However, the per-unit service costs may vary over time, depending on the demand for or
utilization of the services and service elements. Thus, service provider should track the
demand and utilization to establish a stable per-unit cost baseline. Finally, the service
provider may add some margin amount over per-unit service cost to define service price,
or may establish the price at the true cost of service depending on the provider’s
business goal. The service provider then defines chargeback or showback model(s) based on the
pricing strategy for cloud services.

Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Building the Cloud Infrastructure 25
 A chargeback model defines how consumers need to pay for the consumed services. A
list of common chargeback models along with their descriptions are provided below.

• Pay-as-you-go: Metering and pricing is based on the consumption of cloud resources

by the consumers. Consumers do not pay for unused resources.

• Subscription by time: Consumers are billed for a subscription period. The cost of
providing a cloud service for the subscription period is divided among a predefined
number of consumers. For example, in a private cloud, if three business units are
subscribing to a service that costs $60,000 a month to provide, then the chargeback
per business unit is $20,000 for the month.

• Subscription by peak usage: Consumers are billed according to their peak usage of IT
resources for a subscription period. For example, a provider may charge a consumer
for their share of peak usage of network bandwidth.

• Fixed cost or pre-pay: Consumers commit up-front on the required cloud resources for
the committed period such as one year or three years. They pay fixed charge
periodically through a billing cycle for the service they use, regardless of the utilization
of resources.

• User-based: Pricing is based on the identity of a user (a person) of cloud service. In

this model, the number of users logged in is tracked and billed, based on that number.

Service provider deploys chargeback tools in the cloud infrastructure. These tools enable
service provider to define a chargeback model. Based on the model, these tools
automatically collect billing data, store billing records in a billing system, and generate
the billing report per consumer.

Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Building the Cloud Infrastructure 26
 Tools play an important role in building cloud infrastructure; therefore an early step in building
the infrastructure is to deploy the necessary technologies using the tools. Examples of the key
tools used for building cloud infrastructure include virtualization software, orchestration software,
security software, business continuity software, self-service portal software, and so on. These
tools enable the service provider to build and offer cloud services to the consumers. Apart from
considering the tools that enable the providers to build a cloud infrastructure, providers should
also consider tools that will enable them to connect multiple clouds or applications. Examples of
such tools include cloud integration tools, APIs, and specialized connection, transformation, and
business logic programs. These types of tools are specially useful while deploying hybrid or
community cloud. Also, such tools are important to consider when a service provider is providing
brokerage services.

Cloud integration tools enable connecting cloud applications with other cloud and non-cloud
applications to leverage the capabilities of multiple applications. Cloud integration technology
integrates multiple cloud applications using application programming interface (API) support.
These APIs enable secure access to the data of integrated applications. However, integration
cannot be accomplished only with APIs because they do not perform functions such as
transformation of data formats, data mapping, data validation, and error processing. These
functions are typically handled by specialized connection, transformation, and business logic
programs. These programs gather data with the help of APIs, then transform formats as required,
and validate the accuracy of the transformation.

Consumers may avail different cloud services from multiple providers. In such cases, consumers
may need assistance in selecting the providers that best meet their requirements. Moreover,
using multiple cloud services from different providers may lead to operational complications and
integration issues between the various services. Such issues have led to the emergence of cloud
consumption assistance services known as cloud services brokerage, which are provided by cloud
brokers.

Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Building the Cloud Infrastructure 27
 A service-level agreement (SLA) is a contract negotiated between a provider and a consumer that
specifies various parameters and metrics such as cost, service availability, maintenance
schedules, performance levels, service desk response time, and consumer’s and provider’s
responsibilities.

SLAs must be carefully written before offering to a consumer. SLAs are part of a service contract:
an agreement between the cloud service provider and the cloud service consumer, stating the
terms of service usage. A legal contract must be established with the consumer before a service
can be used. When writing a legal contract, the key considerations include business level policies
such as data privacy, data ownership, data retention, secure deletion, security, confidentiality,
auditing, regulatory requirements, redundancy, jurisdiction, disruption resolution, compensation
for data loss and misuse, excess usage, availability and performance metrics, payments and
penalty methods, contracted services, a list of services not covered, licensed software, and
service termination.

Finally, a disaster recovery plan, penalties, and an exit clause should be included. An SLA should
include an indication of how an unexpected incident will be handled and what actions will be taken
in case of a prolonged service outage. It should cover penalties for not meeting the SLA. The SLA
should also include clauses related to the termination of the service by both the consumer and the
provider.

Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Building the Cloud Infrastructure 28
 Cloud vendor lock-in refers to a situation where a consumer is unable to move readily
from the current provider to another. This condition may result from various causes such
as high cost of migration, significant re-engineering effort requirement for an application
migration, lack of open standards, or restrictions imposed by the current provider.

When building a cloud infrastructure, providers must avoid using proprietary tools, APIs,
or file formats, which may cause vendor lock-in. The use of widely accepted open standard
tools, APIs, and file formats not only prevent vendor lock-in, but also make services offered using
open tools more acceptable to the consumers. The use of open standards provides interoperability
and portability among providers, which consumers typically prefer. For example, the provider may
use APIs based on the open standards that enable an application’s data to migrate to another
provider with minimal or no change to its format. Likewise, if the provider supports the use of
Open Virtual Machine Format (OVF), which is an open standard for virtual machine format, then a
virtual machine created in one of the provider’s environment can be migrated to another
provider with minimal or no changes.

Sometimes providers may impose restrictions or burdensome penalties for migrating to

another provider, causing lock-in. Including an appropriate exit clause in the SLA can
prevent vendor lock-in due to restrictions and penalties.

Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Building the Cloud Infrastructure 29
 While building a cloud infrastructure, providers must consider challenges associated with software
(application and operating system) licenses. It is important to asses these challenges at an early
stage. Software licensing challenges are relevant to infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and
platform as a service (PaaS) models.

Consumers can use their existing software license in the cloud only if it is cloud enabled.
Therefore, providers must identify whether the consumer’s existing software license is cloud
enabled. If not, then the consumers can pay additional fees to get their license cloud enabled.
Alternatively, consumers can use the software provided by the service provider and pay a fee for
the software usage.

Further, the service provider in collaboration with the software vendors and consumers must work
to understand the software license rights and its usage. This is important because the cloud
service provider may have to create redundant systems by replication to combat against
unplanned outage or disasters. Understanding the license rights and its usage will enable the
service providers preventing any non-compliance and violation of the license agreement.

Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Building the Cloud Infrastructure 30
 The slide lists the key factors that must be considered while deploying SaaS.

Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Building the Cloud Infrastructure 31
 The slide lists the key factors that must be considered while deploying PaaS and IaaS.

Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Building the Cloud Infrastructure 32
 Migration strategy and considerations depend on whether a consumer plans to migrate
their application (in case of IaaS) or only their data (in case of SaaS).

For application migration, service providers must work with consumers to develop a
migration strategy for their application. Also, they must identify the various
dependencies of the application. For example, if an application depends on an
authentication service that is on-premise, then appropriate configuration changes are
required in order to make the application work after migrating to a cloud. Based on
dependencies, a consumer may choose one of the two migration strategies. The
strategies are forklift migration and hybrid migration.

• In the forklift migration strategy, the application and all of its related components are
migrated to the cloud at once. This strategy is typically used for tightly coupled
applications or self-contained applications. Tightly coupled applications are multiple
applications that are dependent on each other and cannot be separated. Self-
contained applications are applications that can be treated as a single entity.

• In a hybrid migration strategy, an application and its components are moved to the
cloud in parts. This strategy is a lower-risk approach to migrate applications to the
cloud. This is because parts of an application can be moved to the cloud and
optimized before moving other parts. This reduces the risk of unexpected behavior of
the application when it is moved to the cloud. This strategy is typically good for
applications with many loosely coupled components.

In some cases, consumers may only require migration of data. The data can be migrated
to the cloud by deploying replication technology to copy the data from the consumer’s
data center to the cloud. While migrating data to the cloud, the provider must consider
the factors such as network bandwidth, data security, data integrity, data consistency,
jurisdiction, and so on.

Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Building the Cloud Infrastructure 33
 After the application or data is migrated to the cloud, the provider must work with the consumer
to test their application to ensure that it is working as expected. The degree of testing may vary
depending on the scope and magnitude of the consumer’s requirements. While developing a test
strategy, the providers in collaboration with the consumers must consider the following:

• Define roles and responsibilities of the personnel involved in test and quality assurance (QA)
process

• Identify the tools required to perform test management and automation

• Design tests for data migration to the cloud

• Design test cases to perform various testing modes such as stress, performance, functional,
interoperability, and compatibility

Apart from testing the application, the provider must also test other cloud capabilities such as
fault tolerance, disaster recovery, security controls, and any other capabilities to ensure that the
migrated application has successfully been configured with the capabilities that are committed by
the provider.

Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Building the Cloud Infrastructure 34
 This lesson covered several factors that must be considered while building a cloud infrastructure.

Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Building the Cloud Infrastructure 35
 The Concepts in Practice section covers two product examples Vblock and EMC VSPEX.

Note:

For the latest information on Vblock, visit [Link].

For the latest information on EMC products, visit [Link].

Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Building the Cloud Infrastructure 36
 Vblock is a completely integrated cloud infrastructure offering that includes compute, storage,
network, and virtualization products. These products are provided by EMC (storage solution
provider), VMware (virtualization solution provider), and Cisco (networking and compute solution
provider), who have formed a coalition to deliver Vblocks.
Vblock is an integrated IT infrastructure solution that combines compute, storage, network,
virtualization, security, and management software into a single package. This solution is a self-
contained unit that accelerates deployment of a cloud infrastructure. Vblocks are pre-architected,
preconfigured, pretested and have defined performance and availability attributes. Rather than
the customers buying and assembling the individual IT infrastructure components, Vblock
provides a validated solution and is factory-ready for deployment and production. This saves
significant cost and deployment time associated with building a cloud infrastructure.
EMC VSPEX is an end-to-end virtualized infrastructure solution for cloud deployment, which
includes compute, storage, network, virtualization, and backup products. The product vendors
include EMC, Brocade, Cisco, Citrix, Intel, Microsoft, and VMware. VSPEX offers choice to the
customers in terms of the hypervisor, compute systems, and networking components. Therefore,
customers have the flexibility to choose the infrastructure components that fit their existing IT
infrastructures.
EMC VSPEX is a complete virtualization solution that accelerates the deployment of cloud
infrastructures. It provides the customers the flexibility to choose the hypervisor, compute
system, and network technology they prefer along with EMC’s VNX and VNXe unified storage, EMC
Data Domain, EMC Avamar, and EMC NetWorker backup and recovery solutions. Regardless of
customer’s choice of hypervisor, compute system, and network technologies, validation of VSPEX
by EMC ensures fast and low-risk deployment. VSPEX significantly reduces the planning, sizing,
and configuration burdens that typically come with designing, integrating, and deploying a best-
of-breed solution.
VSPEX, unlike Vblock, does not offer unified management. It comes with element management
tools such as Microsoft System Center, VMware vCenter Operations Management Suite, and EMC
Unisphere. But, it offers customers the choice of service elements that make up the solution. The
tradeoff made for this freedom of choice is less integrated management.

Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Building the Cloud Infrastructure 37
 This module covered the cloud computing reference model. It also covered the greenfield and
brownfield deployment options. Further, it covered the two technology solutions—best-of-breed
cloud infrastructure components and cloud-ready converged infrastructure—that can be used to
build the cloud infrastructure. Finally, it covered the various factors to consider while building a
cloud infrastructure.

Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Building the Cloud Infrastructure 38