Although many organizations have adopted the cloud and are reaping the benefits of a cloud computing platform, there are still concerns with the handling of sensitive information on a public cloud platform. For such organizations an alternate option is available, and it means having their own private cloud.

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The ABC of
Private Clouds
A viable option or another cloud gimmick?
Although many organizations have adopted the cloud and are reaping the
benefits of a cloud computing platform, there are still concerns with the
handling of sensitive information on a public cloud platform. For such
organizations an alternate option is available, and it means having their own
private cloud.
The IT Landscape today has found its nirvana in the concept of the cloud.
Cloud Computing has moved from a concept to a reality. It has followed the
original concept of providing convenient on demand resources and
consolidation across IT workloads in enterprise-wide (Private) or World-wide
(Public) deployments. The CIO today is harnessing the concept of on demand
IT for his workloads and balancing the same on a consolidated platform. The
broad form of cloud has followed the NIST definition since inception:
"Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network
access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks,
servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned
and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction"
Traditionally IT systems have been built on initial predicted sizing supported by
mature forms of capturing data and sizing right from an ERP system to Mailing
system. These inputs formed the basis for investing in the capex for the IT
Landscape under design, investing into workload spikes during peak usages.
The CIO was increasingly forced to adopt known and mature technologies in

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the form of Compute, Storage and usage. This led to them losing their agility
application stacks and increasingly paying and response to the business needs for
premiums for the projected loads as well varied unpredictable surges and need of
as saddled with non-performing the hour.
inventories. This led to a widening gap in
the business needs and the way IT CtrlS intends to bring the concept of
responded to their need as depicted scalable private clouds to the CIO, which
below: would help him address requirements as
brought out by the following statements:
Growing Gap
The mould was broken with the advent of Imagine a scenario where your
open source technologies and adoption of organization could rapidly access and
these technologies by the IT world, based analyze information and make
on collaboration as a central theme. These decisions?
led to the birth of the concept of cloud, Innovate and launch new business
which disrupted the traditional way of capabilities faster?
predicting and stocking to just in time Scale business operations up or down
availability for the compute elements as needed?
initially. Today this has grown from IAAS Tap into new information and expertise
(infrastructure as a service) to PAAS - both inside the company and in the
(Platform as a Service) and moving to marketplace - on demand?
SAAS (Software as a Service). And do all this while safeguarding
sensitive information and other
As clouds were formed, they were either business assets?
labeled as Private (Enterprise-wide) or Private cloud offers you this and much
Public (world-wide) with the single largest more adding up to genuine business
differentiator being the security agility.
component. This slowed the adoption of
cloud in the security conscious enterprise What is a 'Private Cloud' anyway?
domain and led to deployment of private The private cloud offers an opportunity to
clouds in the traditional method of CAPEX a business enterprise to create a
investments for projected work-loads and virtualized IT architecture on its own terms
once again the CIO's being saddled with with the internet as a backbone for
extra compute capacity than the average facilitation. The applications reside on the
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organization's hardware, within its network Control
along with the data. The IT infrastructure is A private cloud infrastructure provides an
distributed across the enterprise LANs and organization with total control of the cloud
WANs. A private cloud offers the same services. An in-house information
benefits as that of a public cloud - cost technology (IT) department will be able to
reduction, asset utilization, information handle every aspect of the administration.
availability, rapid deployment of new
services, and business agility - sans the Location
security risks. In the future as the need A private cloud is located in a nearby
may be, a private cloud can also serve as facility, making it practical for the IT team
a gateway to the public cloud, enabling a to go on-site and resolve problems and
business to make use of the growing array issues as they arise.
of services available on a public cloud,
while keeping business-critical information Security
systems 'inside' the private cloud. The organization with a private cloud has
the flexibility and freedom to establish its
IDC, a premier IT research firm, views own security policies i.e., the organization
private cloud computing as maturization of decides on the level of security for each
the evolution of the IT datacenter, and area of the cloud platform.
sees virtualization as the necessary
stepping stone to the private cloud Hosted Private Cloud
environment. While public cloud Hosted private cloud is another form of
computing raises issues of reliability, data private cloud where the infrastructure is
security, system protection, compliance hosted at the provider's location rather
and governance, none of these concerns than at the organization's own premises.
are as prominent with the private cloud. In a hosted private cloud, physical
infrastructure is provisioned and
The main benefits of having a private cloud dedicated to a single customer that
infrastructure are as follows: ensures no sharing of data, applications,
user credentials, or other sensitive
information. This dedicated infrastructure
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is secured in state of the art datacenters provision that service or retire it as
and is often locked within a cage, further needed.
limiting physical access to a select few
individuals. Hosted private clouds have all Key elements of a Private Cloud infrastructure
the benefits of shared clouds that are The key elements of a private cloud
typically associated with cloud computing. include the following:
Hosted private clouds also have many
additional benefits, mostly in the areas of Self-service portals: access to a Web-
enhanced security, privacy, control, and based system that enables on-demand
configurability. consumption of IT services;
Policy-based controls: rules, policies
The building blocks of a Private Cloud and other mechanisms that govern the
Infrastructure Automation, Virtualization, terms and conditions of IT resource
and Service Management are fundamental consumption;
building blocks for Private Cloud. Standardized hardware: servers and
other hardware resources that are under
IT Automation the centralized control of the IT supply
Automation of even complex processes chain and lifecycle;
for deployment and management allows Automated deployment and
network-accessible IT components maintenance: software and other
(servers, applications, storage, networks, management tools that eliminate
etc.) to be rapidly deployed and manual administration as well as reduce
repurposed, as required. cost and variability of IT resource
maintenance;
Virtualization Targeted independence: the ability to
The flexibility and agility of a well- move services dynamically between
managed virtual system eliminates the internal and external deployment
roadblocks of the 'racking and stacking' environments based on price,
physical systems, providing the basis for performance or policy; and
rapid elasticity and resource pooling. Elasticity: the ability to provision, de-
provision, and scale resources up and
Cloud Service Management down on demand.
By providing a set of business focused
and policy-driven services, this delivers Another key element of a private cloud is
the on-demand self-service and automating server management and
measurement that rounds out the essential maintenance - as well as management of
characteristics of a private cloud. other resources, including networks, and
storage.
A critical and indispensible component of
a private cloud is the Service Catalog, Cloud characteristics and advantages
providing a menu of standard cloud The resources in a cloud have three
service offerings and a self-service essential characteristics:
'storefront' for IT. The Service Catalog
provides visibility into IT's offerings for the Pooled
enterprise - what services are being All the resources in the cloud are
offered, what costs are associated with a organized and managed as a common
given service level, and the ability to shared pool. Pooling usually begins with
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servers and storage and then come data usage levels and thus can understand how
and applications. Common methods for much they have been charged. Through
structuring, connecting, and accessing the the cloud resources can be made available
resources are used for pooling. on an on-demand model, often via self
provisioning as per the customer's
Virtualized requirements. The cloud enables well-
All the resources in the pool are packaged defined services, simple interfaces, and
in electronic 'shipping containers.' Each automated provisioning so that the
contains not only the resource itself, but customers can find and use services on
also the business rules governing its their own or with minimal intervention and
access, use, and management. assistance from IT staff.
Networked With a private cloud, one can change the
All these modular resources are accessible unit of consumption itself. Instead of
over a network using standard interfaces. consuming and being charged for basic
In more technical terms, they are available technology resources (e.g., servers, CPU
as "Web services." cycles, gigabytes of storage, and
bandwidth), business people and
Cloud computing changes the way in processes can consume relevant and
which the technology resources are easy-to-understand business services
consumed by the business. As the activity (e.g., business transactions, e-mail, and
in a cloud is measured and metered, information analyses).
customers who avail of cloud-based
services are charged on a pay-per-use Cost and Cost Structure
basis. This gives enhanced visibility to the This includes not only direct cost
customer as they can measure their actual reduction, but also cost avoidance and
Benefits of the cloud approach
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Benefits include:
Private Clouds vs. Public Clouds
Expanded access to information and
THE distinction between public and
applications
private clouds is based on whether
Rapid scaling of business operations up
the IT resources are shared between
and down
many distinct organizations (a public
Rapid business innovation
cloud) or dedicated to a single
Rapid deployment of new business
organization (a private cloud). Private
capabilities
clouds can be external to your
Expanded coordination and
company's data center, such as
collaboration
Amazon's Virtual Private Cloud
Better compliance, security, and
service, which securely walls off a
continuity
section of its public cloud
infrastructure for a unique customer.
IT performance and agility
Compared with traditional virtualized
With a private cloud, IT can collaborate
data centers, both private and public
and innovate better, develop and deploy
clouds benefit from automated
applications faster, and provision
management (to save on manual
technology and services more efficiently
labor) and homogenous hardware (for
and flexibly. The work mix changes
lower cost and more flexibility).
dramatically. Less time and effort are
spent for commodity activities in the data
improving cost structure. Through center as the virtualized environment is
consolidation of hardware andmore automated and dynamically self-
virtualization of the digital assets, adjusting, thus, increasing the amount of
organizations can reduce their short term time and effort needed for business
costs. This leads to an overall reduction of innovation and improvement projects. In
40% in data center costs, including a 30 addition to meeting individual business
percent reduction in power consumption needs as they arise, IT is much better able
and cooling costs. Virtualization enables to look across the computing environment
organizations to resize the data center and optimize its performance and cost on
closer to average capacity. Accordingly behalf of the business at large.
when the need arises, resources can be
automatically channeled to the most The roadmap to the Private Cloud
important business activities. A private cloud helps an organization to
organize and manage the technology
By pooling and centrally managing assets, better. Before embarking on this journey
a private cloud delivers economies of carefully evaluate what you want to
scale, better resource utilization, achieve through a Private Cloud, is it:
reductions in capital outlay, ongoing
operational efficiencies, and the Consolidating servers, storage,
conversion of fixed costs to variable. networks, and other technology
resources
Business performance and agility Virtualizing technology resources,
Private cloud can enable all technology- including information and applications
dependent business processes of an Organizing and provisioning IT offerings
organization to operate more efficiently, as business services
with faster cycle time and at a lower cost. Structuring and managing IT as a
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shared services organization
Automating technology resource and The Private Cloud Model
security management The following elements comprise a
Building standard interfaces with private cloud computing, or
compatible service providers Infrastructure as a Service, model.
Making effective use of selected public
cloud services Virtualization
By virtualizing physical resources,
A private cloud roadmap can be the then placing a management layer on
means of integrating all the above top, applications, servers and other
mentioned activities and enhancing their resources can be dynamically moved,
business benefits. managed and offered up to end users.
Private cloud represents a more Multi-tenancy
productive way for technology services to Multiple end users share the same
be provided, consumed, and managed. resources (hardware, applications,
For example, technology assets may be etc.). Multi-tenancy enables the
defined and packaged differently, through centralization of infrastructure where
methods like metadata management and resources can be priced at lower cost.
virtualization. IT's work may be structured
and provisioned differently, as a catalog of Self-service
business services. Business people may Customers can request and provision
consume many services differently, using cloud resources as they need them.
a self-service browser interface, and pay
for them differently, if a pay-by-use Automation
method is implemented for selected Automated processes ensure timely
services. And IT and the business can service delivery to customers.
manage the technology environment and
its services differently, with greater Dynamic, on-demand scalability
transparency into business performance Computing resources can be
and value. dynamically increased or decreased
based on user demand.
Key issues to be looked at before starting your
journey to Private Cloud Chargeback model
Following considerations must be Users' resource consumption is
evaluated before embarking on a journey measured and billed for by the IT
to the private cloud: department.
Review IT infrastructure complexity the information and insights that can be
Organizations can derive the value of IT gained from the data the organisation
from three basic factors. These are: retains.
the business specific applications and IT infrastructure of most organisations is
data that are used to run their unnecessarily complex. This is because of
operation; many varied business decisions taken
the business process improvements over the years, with little thought given to
that can be implemented more their effect impact on the organization's
effectively through using IT; and overall IT infrastructure. Complexity of IT
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infrastructure leads to deployment of a application virtualization will help an
vast amount of internal resources and organisation meet several other key
increased costs whilst delivering very little objectives that include application and
real business benefit. What more, it limits service standardization; central control
performance, scalability and particularly and management of desktop; simplified
agility, reducing the ability to implement and cheaper licensing; and most
change quickly to meet the changing importantly the capability to deliver
business requirements. All these issues location independent flexible working.
can be addressed through cloud
computing. Need for internal IT control
Effective use of any form of cloud requires
It has been observed that organisations that all the 'traditional' IT disciplines as
that optimize their infrastructure through defined by ITIL and other best practice
concepts such as resource pooling, frameworks should ideally be automated.
virtualization and dynamic provisioning If these are not already in place cloud
can improve operational performance and computing will not provide the shortcut to
realize significant savings. By optimizing delivering them. However, most
their infrastructure, they can then easily organisations already have most of the
create a private cloud. A private cloud required elements, which may just need to
offers flexible capacity, together with be re-architected or enhanced for cloud.
scalability, flexibility and resilience, and These include:
can provide applications to users
wherever they are. The use of private On-demand self-service: This can be
cloud, rather than public cloud, enables provided through standard web portals,
organisations to maintain a higher level of with packaged and streamed
control and conserve their existing applications, services and complete
investment and develop support and desktops published through the portal.
management skills. In future, should the Access to these is linked to user
need arise to move to an external service authentication mechanisms that define
provider, they can do so without any which users will have access to what all
hassles. applications and services. New users
can be set up directly from the portal
Application delivery with appropriate security capabilities,
The ubiquity of the Internet has led to and new services can be published and
cloud computing. Internet provides the accessed on demand.
standard interface for cloud: the browser. Resource pooling: Most organizations
Not all applications yet run natively in a have already implemented virtualization
browser but most are heading that way. or are in the process of doing so.
Studies indicate that every mainstream Virtualization provides the capability of
commercial application can be published resource pooling for servers, storage,
to a Web portal and accessed through a desktops and more recently networks.
browser. Except where specific device Rapid elasticity: This is one of the key
drivers are required that negate the capabilities of virtualization; additional
application being ported to a cloud resources can be added quickly and
service, applications can be centrally easily as per specific needs. With a
streamed from datacenters. private or hybrid cloud servicing a
defined set of users this is less of an
Flexibility, delivered through desktop and issue.
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Measured Service: If organisations virtualized desktop environment is that no
have effective Capacity Management data ever leaves the datacenter unless the
and Service Level Management in place organization's security policy specifically
then two of the most important allows mapping of local drives, USB
requirements for moving to private memory sticks or other external storage.
cloud and eventually provider Also, on private cloud, the existing user
independent cloud are already met. directory infrastructure can be reused
whereas most public cloud services
Service level require this to be recreated from scratch.
One of the primary benefits of the private
cloud is cost effective delivery of high Resilience and disaster recovery
quality and guaranteed service levels that Resilient hardware and disaster recovery
usually meet the requirements of an processes should be an embedded and a
organisation. The first step in this direction fundamental part of the private cloud. The
is a review of the organization's business key elements to making failover fast, cost
and IT alignment. This review is necessary effective and efficient are virtualization of
to ensure that the organisation has all elements and standardization.
accurately defined the service levels it Virtualization makes automated, scripted
requires for the key operational processes failover and full service recovery between
that IT supports, and has a full datacenters achievable in minutes,
understanding of the cost, performance potentially seconds.
and availability implications of the
requested service levels. Effectively private cloud provides
datacenter clustering. Standardization
The second step is to ensure that best ensures that each datacenter is identical,
practice frameworks such as allowing active/active and active/standby
ITIL/ISO20000 for IT Service Delivery, datacenter operation, with the added
ISO27000 for Information Security and BCI benefit that the organization can replicate
best practice for Business Continuity are its entire datacenter to any organisation
refined and optimized to suit the that offers comparable facilities, saving
requirements of your organisation. the investment cost and management
overhead of running a separate disaster
Thirdly, private cloud infrastructure is by recovery environment.
definition a fully resilient, virtualized
environment that allows applications and How to get to private cloud
services to be dynamically reassigned. If The steps most organisations will need to
properly designed, implemented and undertake to get to an initially private or
managed, downtime from hardware hybrid clouds, and potentially public cloud
failures should be non-existent. in future, are as follows:
Information security Understand what services your
For a private cloud every aspect can be business requires from your IT function.
audited against ISO27000 or PCI DSS Define your Service Catalogue based
best practice information security on this.
standards. Effective security processes Review the required service levels
can be embedded into the portal and the needed for each of the defined services,
platform. One of the key advantages of include resilience and data security.
using a private cloud to deliver a Define and agree the services you want
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Key business drivers of Private Cloud
to provide internally and those that can cloud providers can offer for the same
be hosted or provided by a third party. level of service.
Measure the current resources you Monitor every service provided whether
require to deliver the internally provided in house delivered or externally to
services to the require service levels. ensure it meets agreed service levels.
Review your current infrastructure and
look for all opportunities to simplify, A unique offer from CtrlS: the on-demand
rationalize and standardize what you Private Cloud
support and how you manage it. Although organizations are excited about
Virtualize every element you have not using cloud technologies to bring in IT
already done so where it is technically spend efficiency in the organization, they
and commercially appropriate to do so; are still apprehensive about data security
this includes desktops. when migrating to the public cloud, but
Implement a common user portal where while Private clouds are really secure, they
all users access all services whether are also expensive. CtrlS offers a solution
provided internally or by a third party. that cuts mid-way.
Refine and improve your operational
processes to take advantage of the new With CtrlS's on-demand Private cloud
environment. framework, organizations can now avail
Implement suitable internal charging the benefits of a Private Cloud and also
mechanisms so all users/departments scale up and down as per need as you can
can understand the costs of the in a Public Cloud solution. The costs too
services they are using. are scaled down without any significant
Review cost of internal service additional CAPEX or OPEX, making it an
provision against what commercial ideal solution for organizations who want
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the Private Cloud, yet also have the reduction, business agility, and customer
flexibility of scale and at costs that are satisfaction that no IT organization should
definitely not prohibitive. pass up.
On-demand Private Cloud is a never-see- About CtrlS Datacenters Limited
before concept and an extremely With over 20,000 racks planned across
innovative framework that will bring cloud India, CtrlS is the country's first and only
computing solutions close to
certified Tier 4 datacenter and is offering
organizations. It is also the ideal solution
cutting-edge DR solutions to over a 100
for small and mid-sized organizations who large enterprises across verticals. CtrlS
are eagerly considering a cloud solution, has invested a lot of time and effort in
but with robust security features, provision
creating a fault tolerant datacenter which
to scale up or down and with costs that fitcan guarantee an uptime of 99.995%, the
well into their budgets. On-demand highest in datacenter industry. To know
Private Cloud offers the best of both more about On-Demand Private Cloud,
Public and Private Clouds. and our Cloud Computing solutions send
us an email to mycloud@ctrls.in or visit
CtrlS believes that this is an opportunity www.CtrlS.in
for efficiency improvement, cost
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‘This document is for informational purpose only. Ctrls makes no warranties, expressed or implied in this document. Copyright 2010 CtrlS Datacenters Ltd. All rights reserved.’