Many enterprises are embracing a private cloud model to achieve greater agility, scalability and cost-efficiency in the data center environment. A private cloud enables organizations to focus less on infrastructure management and more on the delivery of services. Resources are centrally controlled and automatically allocated according to policies, allowing IT to quickly deploy the resources users need.
The private cloud model requires an agile network with flexible path management, granular policy enforcement, automation and the ability to support multiple vendors. Automated, efficient provisioning and sharing of network resources through orchestration is also essential.
Legacy network architectures, which are largely based upon manual processes, cannot support the private cloud model. Traditional networks lack virtualization, automation and other capabilities, resulting in slow provisioning, bandwidth bottlenecks, poor resource utilization and increased risk. In fact, legacy networks are stalling innovation in many organizations due to cost, complexity and a lack of workload flexibility.
As we’ve discussed in the last two posts, software-defined networking (SDN) is an emerging approach that makes the network highly automated and programmable. By separating the network control plane from the data plane, SDN allows a large number of devices to be centrally managed through a single controller rather than manually. Device-agnostic applications can be spun up and deployed in minutes rather than months. This makes it possible to fully leverage a private cloud infrastructure that is more flexible, reliable, scalable and cost-effective.
SDN offers a number of features and functionality that are critical to a successful private cloud:
- The ability to granularly program the network to meet specific user needs and support business processes.
- Network-wide visibility, which enables efficient resource management and optimization.
- Strict policy enforcement that enhances security and ensures regulatory compliance.
- Automation and orchestration of resource management and provisioning.
- Open standards that allow the use of hardware from multiple vendors.
OpenStack has quickly become a leader in helping organizations utilize SDN in their private clouds. OpenStack is an open-source cloud operating system that enables organizations to build cloud networks and centrally manage and provision compute, storage and networking resources through an online dashboard.
OpenStack is also a global community of developers who collaborate to create, improve and support open-source cloud infrastructure solutions. The goal of OpenStack is to make it easy for any organization to leverage the cloud on standard hardware and eliminate the limitations of vendor lock-in.
Because OpenStack is an open-source platform, it enables much greater flexibility and agility than traditional solutions. Various versions can be customized based upon specific business requirements. Organizations can compare services and tools from multiple vendors. The process of configuring, testing and rolling out new cloud services is accelerated with OpenStack, while self-service provisioning reduces management costs.
OpenStack encourages experimentation and the development of new functionality and features. This do-it-yourself mentality has led to the availability of more plugins and tools that can overcome deficiencies and enhance existing services, benefiting the OpenStack community as a whole.
OpenStack has also been embraced by leading technology vendors, including EMC, VMware, Oracle, IBM, HP and many others. This further fosters innovation and helps ensure that cloud workloads remain portable.
Many enterprises have built their private and hybrid cloud infrastructures on OpenStack-based solutions. Let Technologent show you how OpenStack and SDN tools can provide the flexibility, agility and cost-efficiency you demand from your private cloud.
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