Top Basic Benefits of using Cloud

Top basic benefits of deploying Cloud for your Organisation.

When we need to go "CLOUD"? What are the Benefits?

1. Reduced Cost - Cloud technology is paid incrementally, saving organizations money. No need buy your own hardware.
2. Increased Storage - Organizations can store more data than on private computer systems.
3. Highly Automated - No longer do IT personnel need to worry about keeping software up to date.
4. Flexible -  Cloud computing offers much more flexibility than past computing methods.
5. More Mobility - Employees can access information wherever they are, rather than having to remain at their desks.
6. Allow IT to shift Focus - No longer having to worry about constant server updates and other computing issues, government organizations will be free to concentrate on innovation.

Keep Clouding...

Practical Steps to build a private Cloud - Worth a try.

Practical Steps to build a private Cloud

Try and see what it takes to build a private Cloud using Open Source Tools

It's time to build your own cloud!

I have tried many ways of building a private Cloud and deploying certain application in it.

There are many Open Source Technologies available to do it. (Remember, i am talking about Open Source SDK's available in the internet using which we can develop a private cloud, not some cloud based application available for free. We shall talk about some freely available cloud apps in future posts.)

Some of them are here. For each of them, i have included a User Experience Level/ Difficulty level/ Complexity Constraint involved -

• Eucalyptus - Eucalyptus enables the creation of on-premise Infrastructure as a Service clouds, with no requirements for retooling the organization's existing IT infrastructure or for introducing any specialized hardware. The Eucalyptus Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) platform maintains high fidelity with the Amazon Web Services (AWS) API, allowing support for both on-premise and hybrid IaaS clouds.
  User Experience Level - 5/10
  
• OpenStack - OpenStack is a cloud operating system that controls large pools of compute, storage, and networking resources throughout a datacenter, all managed through a dashboard that gives administrators control while empowering their users to provision resources through a web interface.
  User Experience Level - 9/10
  
  
• Cloud Stack - CloudStack is an open source cloud operating system which delivers public cloud computing similar to Amazon EC2 but using your own hardware. CloudStack provides orchestration of your virtualized resources into one homogeneous environment where you can delegate the creation to users of the virtual machines using the self-service CloudStack portal. This package is available for use in Ubuntu 10.04 and RedHat Linux (Cent OS) platforms.
  User Experience Level - 8/10
  
  
• Xen Cloud Platform Project -The Xen Cloud Platform (XCP) is an open source enterprise-ready server virtualization and cloud computing platform, delivering the Xen Hypervisor with support for a range of guest operating systems including Windows® and Linux® network and storage support, management tools in a single, tested installable image, which is also called XCP appliance.
  User Experience Level - 10/10
  
• OpenNebula.org - OpenNebula.org is an open-source project developing the industry standard solution for building and managing virtualized enterprise data centers and cloud infrastructures.
  User Experience Level - 5/10
  

Out of all the above 5 technologies, Eucalyptus is the one you can go with if you are building a private cloud for the first time. Well, if you are done with it, then try using Open Stack. Since all the above software's are open source, their websites have very good documentation regarding the steps to create and deploy your own cloud. However, i have included 2 technical papers for starters - you can readily deploy your own private cloud - follow the steps.

1.  Deploying an Open Source Private Cloud using Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud(Eucalyptus Fork).
   Requirements -
   1 Machine(2gb RAM, 160 GM HDD), Virtualization Compatible Hardware, VM Hyper-visor like VMware, XEN, Sun Virtual Box.
   3 Virtual Machines to run(minimum) - 1 Cloud Controller, 1 Cluster Controller and 1 Node Controller.
   
2.  Deploying a Private Cloud using Eucalyptus and Xen Hyper-visor.
   Same Configuration.
   

Feel free to post your comments and queries. I am always open to interaction.

Keep Clouding,

Jade Nagaraja