Building a Private Cloud,

Step-by-Step
A white paper by David S. Linthicum

Building a Private Cloud, Step-by-Step

Executive Summary
Today the private cloud is a well-used architecture and technology within enterprises. Even so, most
enterprises are still not well-versed in how to dene, build, and deploy private clouds. There is a gap
of confusion that exists between the proper use of private clouds and rank-and-le enterprise IT.
The purpose of this paper is to solve the mysteries from private cloud. We will provide you with a stepwise path to understand your own requirements, pick the right hardware and software, deal with security and governance, and nally implement the private cloud solution that will get it right the rst time.
These steps include:
Step 1: Dene the Purpose
Step 2: Dene the Workloads
Step 3: Dene the Hardware
Step 4: Dene the Software
Step 5: Dene the Network
Step 6: Dene Security
Step 7: Dene Governance
Step 8: Dene Management Processes and Tools
Step 9: Implementation
Step 10: Testing
Step 11: Operations

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Building a Private Cloud, Step-by-Step

Introduction
The private cloud oers most of the advantages of the public cloud: Self-service and scalability,
multi-tenancy, the ability to provision machines, and change computing resources on-demand.
Private cloud also improves on security by limiting access to key IT people. Complexities are emerging
for DevOps teams around their "infrastructure as code" practices as larger companies consider
moving their most business-critical applications o the public cloud and onto private/hybrid clouds.
Complexity issues include:
Time-consuming infrastructure conguration and maintenance.
Inconsistent visibility into infrastructure utilization and cost.
Ever increasing complexity with custom requirements in every project.
Private clouds are specialized cloud computing implementations that are purpose-built to address
some limitation or shortcoming around the use of public clouds. Core factors that drive private cloud
adoption are compliance, security, and even the sense of control that many in enterprise IT require.
Or, think they require.
As DevOps organizations are built within enterprises, private clouds as the deployment platforms
mesh well with existing DevOps automation approaches and tool sets. Those within enterprises can
tell you that private clouds are a sound architectural option, and they require some time. Just as
public clouds require some time. Most enterprises will end up with both, using hybrid or multi-cloud
implementations. In this paper, well focus on private clouds, and the steps to successfully implement
private clouds.

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Building a Private Cloud, Step-by-Step

Why Private Cloud

Private and hybrid clouds are emerging around common use case patterns that are most likely to
provide value for enterprises. They include:
Compliance-oriented, or, basically, deploying to private and hybrid clouds to deal with industry regulations and, ultimately, risk. The use of private cloud, including the cost of hardware and software, is
justied considering the risk of running afoul of industry regulations.
For instance, PII (Personally Identiable Information), if breached, can cause all sorts of legal and
public relation nightmares, as well as damage an actual person. If the cost of this risk outweighs the
additional cost of using a private cloud, then the private cloud should be selected. Other examples
include control and security around nancial information, as well as some customer data.
Performance-oriented means deploying to private or hybrid clouds based upon the need to have
dedicated hardware resources to insure high and consistent performance. These requirements are
typically around large database systems that need direct raw access to underlying hardware systems,
such as I/O to support systems that wont function well with bursty performance metrics that are
often delivered by public clouds.
Core systems that dene the business are often found in this category, including predictive analytics
that link directly into business processes, transactional systems that are customer-facing, as well as
high performance computing requirements. Most recently, there have been several gaming companies that have pulled their gaming systems back in-house to deal with performance limitations of
some public cloud providers, as well as to control cost (explained next).
Business-oriented, or, when the use of private clouds saves money. There are two scenarios that
seem to be emerging:
First, when there is a sunk cost in hardware and software systems made in the recent past, and the
use of public cloud means those investments go unutilized. Thus the cost in dollars lost exceeds any
cost benet that comes from using a public cloud.
Second, when the cost of public cloud exceeds that of maintaining a private or hybrid cloud infrastruc
ture. While the hype and the press would lead you to believe that this will never be the case, the reality
is that, even with the never-ending price reductions, public clouds can cost more than private clouds,
when considering the costs holistically.
DevOps-oriented, when the use of private or hybrid cloud is needed to support an emerging DevOps
organization. As we mentioned above, public clouds are often the desired end-points, when it comes
to DevOps and application development that can be automated with DevOps approaches and tools.

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Building a Private Cloud, Step-by-Step

However, there are many use cases where it makes sense for these deployments to occur on private
or hybrid clouds, based upon requirements that the infrastructure be 100 percent in control of operations and developers.

Building a Private Cloud

Now that the value of building a private cloud is well understood, lets look at what it takes, stepwise,
to build one. While there are many patterns that can be found in traditional IT, there are some new
approaches and technology that must be understood around the proper design and deployment of a
private cloud.
Step 1: Dene the Purpose
While you would think that this goes without saying, many enterprises dont reect on the core
purpose of the private cloud. Its general purpose infrastructure has general purposes uses, many of
which have yet to be dened. However, the keys to dening the core purpose include the following:
Understand the current requirements, such as storage and compute.
Understand the future requirements, with an estimation of growth over the years.
Understand security requirements.
Understand governance requirements.
Dene the types of workloads that the private cloud will host (discussed next).
Dene the operation of the private cloud.

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Building a Private Cloud, Step-by-Step

Step 2: Dene the Workloads

Determine, as best you can, what types of applications and application data will run on the private
cloud. The best way to do this is to divide the workloads up into the following categories:
Applications
Solutions dened by code, including the mechanism for execution. You need to note the impact on
compute and storage needs, and how applications can be managed. Also, the impact of coupling with
the data or databases, discussed next.
Data
Dene the data workload, no matter if its stored in a raw le system or within a database. You need
to note the data model, structure (if any), and how the data is accessed. The focus needs to be on
input/output mechanisms and their impact on the platform/private cloud.
Infrastructure
This includes le systems, networks, anything that sits below the applications and data. We look at this
separately due to the fact that, in some instances, private clouds just provide infrastructure, and have
little to do with applications or data. Again, you need to determine the prole of the infrastructure
services that will be impactful on the platform, and to what degree.
Step 3: Dene the Hardware
Dening the hardware means that we take the data gathered in the previous step and size up a hardware system that will provide the right support now, and into the future. You must select the right
servers, networks, power, cooling, and even approaches to physical operations. Work with your
private cloud software provider to determine the best hardware sizing for your needs, based upon
your workload proles and plans.
Step 4: Dene the Software
You need to select a private cloud software system. You can
go either proprietary or open. If youre moving to open solutions, then OpenStack is your primary choice.
OpenStack is an open-source software solution that provides
an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) platform for private
cloud deployments. OpenStack has become the de-facto
standard in the open source community. While still a relatively new technology, industry support for OpenStack has been
impressive. Thus, it should be the rst technology on your list
to consider when moving to a private cloud.

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Building a Private Cloud, Step-by-Step

Step 5: Dene the Network

Now that we know the workloads, hardware, and even have an idea of the private cloud software, its
time to dene the network. This includes:
Physical network, including all equipment.
Physical network security.
Network management.
Step 6: Dene Security
The focus here should be on Identity and Access Management (IAM). IAM is clearly the best security
model and best practice. Indeed, many private cloud providers use IAM, such as OpenStack distributers. The concept is simple; provide a security approach and technology that enables the right individuals to access the right resources, at the right times, for the right reasons. The concept follows the
principles that everything and everyone gets an identity. This includes humans, servers, APIs, applications, data, etc.. Once that verication occurs, simply dene which identities can access other identities, and create policies that dene the limits of that relationship.
Step 7: Dene Governance
Why do we leverage cloud governance? Once we get to a certain number of cloud services, we wont
be able to keep track of them all and provide the control they will require. Those who leverage many
services provided by private clouds call this the tipping point, or, the point where the number of
services under management becomes so high thats its impossible to manage them properly without
a governance model, approach, and service governance technology.
The number of services, as well as the complexities around using those services within the context of
cloud computing, makes service governance even more compelling. Youll need service governance
that covers:
Location of the services.
Service dependencies.
Service monitoring.
Service security.

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Building a Private Cloud, Step-by-Step

Step 8: Dene Management Processes and Tools

Here we focus on what it will take to operate the private cloud. This includes determining the
point-of-monitoring, including part of the application, data, and infrastructure. Also, we need to determine the platform itself, network, and even the power that supplies the servers.
While this seems like IT best practices that already exist, the reality is that you need something dierently when considering a private cloud. The private cloud can do very dierent things on dierent
days, thus the monitoring and operations aspects of private cloud become that much more important. You can easily run out of capacity, or cause failures or service disruptions in other ways.
Step 9: Implementation
Here we stage the private cloud, including hardware and software, and be sure to at least pre-test that
the system is running up to standard. It is a good idea, in some cases, to hire consultants who understand the private cloud that youve selected. They can work around the inevitable issues youll have
with installation and conguration. Keep in mind that this is pre-testing, and we may have to loop
back to this step to correct any issues found in testing.
Step 10: Testing
Testing your private cloud should be a high priority. Your private cloud will do many dierent things,
running many dierent workloads, and all should be validated. Test processes should include:
Black box testing.
White box testing.
Penetration testing.
Performance testing.
Recovery testing.
Customized testing to reect workload usage.
Step 11: Operations
We nally reach private cloud operations, also known as CloudOps. At this step, we dene how we will
operate the cloud, taking into consideration all thats been dened thus far (see step 8). In some
instances, operations need to mesh with your DevOps strategy, and need to include:
Monitoring and metrics.
Automated management tools.
Security operations.
Governance operations.
Data operations.
Application operations.
Network operations.
Etc.

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Conclusion
We cant include everything in a single paper that youll run into when building a private cloud. However, we can provide some basic guidance, or a checklist, for how to approach your rst or perhaps
second private cloud project.
Keep these facts in mind as you move forward:
Your requirements are everything. Understand where youre at now, and what is critical to the
success of your private cloud deployment.
Trust, but verify. Test all hardware and software components that deal with security, management,
governance, and performance.
Sweat the details. Take your time and understand all aspects of your solution. Private cloud that are
missing key components, due to unrealistic deadlines, often fail.
Plan on making mistakes. They are a part of the process, and should be understood before being
overcome. Dial them into your initial project.
If followed, these will become your guide for successful private cloud deployments.

About Stratoscale
Stratoscale is redening the data center, developing a hardware-agnostic, software platform converging compute, storage and networking across the rack or data center. The self-optimizing platform
automatically distributes all physical and virtual assets and workloads in real time, delivering
rack-scale economics to data centers of all sizes with unparalleled eciency and operational
simplicity. Stratoscale is backed by leading investors including: Battery Ventures, Bessemer Venture
Partners, Cisco, Intel and SanDisk.

For more information visit:

http://www.stratoscale.com
US Phone: +1 877 420-3244
Email: sales@stratoscale.com

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