The Nexus of Forces in Action – Use-Case 7: Multi-Service Provisioning Orchestration
Summary
Ability to provision rapid IT resources across multiple platforms and devices. Ability to re-platform (for example, either by virtualization – P2V, V2C or VPN, VPC – or by content interchange).
Primary Industry Sectors
IT services
Business Value
Accelerated IT process automation; e.g., storage, compute and apps deployment, and configuration elastic scaling, service-level options, flexibility, TCO cost management, technology refresh cycles, rapid migration and movement between clouds, inter-cloud deployments.
Key Business Functions
Prebuilt cloud apps category management, auto-scaling, self-service provisioning, regional zone management, DR and BC, marketplace trading (spot instances), apps catalog, service request self-service, template catalog, metering and billing, automation of IT resources, measurement and performance outcome management, secure service management, legacy business and technology change management governance
Primary Actors
Infrastructure service buyer, technology procurement, systems administrator
Secondary Actors
Systems administrator, data center manager
Machine Actors
Infrastructure and software provisioning and orchestration apps, virtualization management apps, cloud, social network alerts, and service reporting
Key Technologies
Business orchestration: BPM, self-service applications provisioning as a service.
Infrastructure orchestration: virtualization management on-demand, storage, computation, and network as a service. Portability of cloud session to alterative cloud environments (hybrid cloud, inter-cloud).
Main Scenarios
- Automated service requests – self-service
- Template catalog selection and automated movement to IT production
- Automation of IT resources
- Faster testing and validation of IT apps and service
- Faster response to remote resource team needs for development and test IT environment capacity
- Measurement and performance outcome management
- Secure service management
- Legacy business and technology change management governance
Key Data
Master Data
Virtualized instance templates; e.g., small, medium, large, extra large, storage, server, network, application specification. Converged infrastructure specification (appliance box specification). SLA availability: actual and planned, RPO, RTO.
Current Observations Data
Current workload demands on the cloud virtualized infrastructure.
Historical Data
Customer and alternative cloud provider usage, usage growth patterns for scalability and elasticity.
Query Data
Reporting on SLA performance, capacity cost and pricing, alternative sourcing; e.g., hybrid cloud, community cloud.
Action Taken Data
Adjustments to capacity, alternative cloud supplier.
Real Business Examples
Automating Application and Service Delivery
“Social networking, mobility, big data, and cloud services are changing the role of IT from infrastructure support to an enabler of business growth. IT teams need solutions that enable business efficiencies, agility, and scale while managing compliance, reducing complexity, and leveraging their existing investments in heterogeneous environments. HP’s new set of Automation, Orchestration, and Cloud Management software is an integrated portfolio that helps to automate the complete lifecycle of IT services – from routine, repetitive tasks and operations to automated application delivery in the data center or as a cloud service.”
(Source: HP Software Solutions website.)
Cloud Data Migration Tools
See Larry Dignan’s article in ZDNet.
Sega
Sega reduced game testing time by 17% and IT estate by 80% through virtualization.
“Sega have to share large volumes of uncompiled code with up to 1,000 different testers across the globe. Traditionally, once game builds get towards their final stages, the size of the files involved can be enormous and difficult to share. In the past they had relied on couriering files within the country and overnight file transfer for international instances, but this was slow, carried an inherent security risk, and dramatically increased overall testing times. One of their priorities was to find a better way to manage large data files across geographic distances, but without losing control of where game builds are or which version each testing office was using or compromising on security.”
(Source: Sega website.)
Additional Considerations
Existing Interoperability Standards
VMware vCloud Hybrid Service extensions for the vCloud API: “This release aims to provide API-level access to essential vCloud hybrid service functionality including: access to virtual data centers across all dedicated and virtual private clouds, creation of virtual machines from catalog templates, powering on/off of virtual machines, and modifying network configuration, including firewall rules. The combination of these extensions and the vCloud APIs allows developers to create RESTful solutions on top of vCloud Hybrid Services. With these APIs, you can programmatically control and automate repetitive tasks to increase your operational efficiency.” (Vendor standard – Source: the VMware blog.)
Standardized infrastructure: Open Virtualization Format (OVF) from the DMTF (industry standard adopted as an International Standard).
Standardized cloud resource requests: Cloud Infrastructure Management Interface (CIMI) from the DMTF (industry standard).
Cloud service choreography: Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications (TOSCA) from OASIS (industry standard).
APIs to access cloud resources and requests; e.g., Amazon Web Services (AWS) API (vendor standard).
Open stack services (open source standard).
Open access or paid access to cloud infrastructure and apps; e.g., Google email, Yahoo email, Google Drive, Drop box (vendor standards).
Standard SLA and templates for cloud infrastructure resources: Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA) – industry standards body.
Software Defined Storage (SDS).
Software Defined Network (SDN) – nascent industry standard. The Open Networking Foundation (ONF) is a non-profit, mutually beneficial trade organization, founded by Deutsche Telekom, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Verizon, and Yahoo! to improve networking through SDN. The standards-setting and SDN-promotion group was formed out of recognition that cloud computing will blur the distinctions between computers and networks.
Software Defined Data Center (SDC). A software-defined data center is an IT facility where the elements of the infrastructure – networking, storage, CPU, and security – are virtualized and delivered as a service. The provisioning and operation of the entire infrastructure is entirely automated by software. (See the SDC article by Archana Venkatraman in Computer Weekly.)
Comments on Context
The access to cloud capacity may involve multiple cloud environments that span multiple providers. Typically, cloud workloads run in a public or private cloud environment but increasingly hybrid cloud management may enable workloads to span across multiple cloud environments. Micro-sourcing multiple cloud services involves orchestrating a provisioning process across these environments to provide a brokered single point of use and access. In this context, Open Platform 3.0 describes micro-sourced services from social, mobile, big data, cloud apps, and other workload functionalities that may be provided by one or many providers and used by one or many consumers. Standards for policy control of resource partitioning and tenancy isolation are crucial in this area.
Preconditions
Standard templates of cloud infrastructure capacity are defined.