The cloud provides businesses with a competitive edge through flexible and scalable capacity that can be rapidly deployed to quickly meet the changing needs of their organization. In addition, cloud enables greater innovation and improvement in client support and services. Cloud can also be viewed as a way to bring visibility to the value that IT delivers to businesses, while also meeting the needs of line of business (LOB) managers requiring faster time to market and increased speed of innovation. The strategic uses of cloud can go far beyond this by enabling the creation of new business processes, new revenue streams, and even new business models.
01
The Cloud Explained
02
Assessing Workload Characteristics
03
ReliaCloud® Hosted Private Cloud
04
Microsoft Azure
05
Right Application, Right Cloud, Right Time
06
OneNeck - Helping you Navigate the Cloud
To no surprise, many organizations are still foggy about cloud infrastructure. While most of the benefits of using hosted cloud services are obvious, it’s still unclear which the right approach is? Is it better to use a private cloud or public cloud? How do you choose the right cloud strategy for your business computing needs? As with most things, there is no “one size fits all” approach to cloud. Every organization and application has unique computing and data storage requirements. This eBook will help IT leaders determine which computing model to choose, public or private.
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07
Getting Started with Cloud
THE CLOUD
Explained
The cloud can be a confusing place. In order to understand where your data and applications should live and how you can access it, you must first understand what public and private deployment models are and their limitations.
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Public clouds are based on shared physical hardware which is owned and managed by third-party service providers. Customers benefit from economies of scale because infrastructure costs are spread across all users, allowing each individual client to operate on a low-cost, “pay-as-you-go” model. Another advantage of public cloud infrastructures is that they are typically hyper-scaled as compared to an in-house enterprise cloud, an in-house enterprise that provides customers with rapid, highly elastic access to resources. Hyper-scale public clouds have no customer perceived capacity limitation, as capacity is available on-demand.
Public Cloud
Private Cloud
Customers on public clouds share the same infrastructure pool, often with limited configurations, perceived security protections and availability variances, as these factors are wholly managed and supported by the service provider.
Limitations
Customers don’t control the security of a public cloud, though all of their data remains separate from others. Security breaches of public clouds are rare and are generally due to misconfigured workloads.
To expand the physical footprint of a private cloud takes time and capital.
A private cloud does not have the on-demand scalability of hyper-scale private cloud since the customer is still responsible for the physical infrastructure and is thus bound by the physical limitation of what has been deployed at that time.
A private cloud is a platform exclusively built and dedicated to your business. The private cloud delivers all the agility and efficiency of the public cloud, but provides greater levels of control over security and management, making it ideal for larger businesses or those with strict data, regulation and governance requirements. Another key benefit of private cloud is the ability to customize the compute, storage and networking components to best suit your business’ specific IT requirements, something that cannot be achieved so easily in a public cloud environment.
Spending on cloud infrastructure is expected to reach $105.6B by 2024 - IDC
Not all workloads are the same. They vary in performance, reliability, control and security requirements.
Workload Characteristics
ASSESSING
Through evaluation against the above criteria, applications can be ranked as Tier 1, Tier 2 or Tier 3. The Tier 1 are critical applications with the strongest requirements for reliable performance or application security, while Tier 2 and Tier 3 have less stringent demands.
The research firm IDC reports that understanding the characteristics of your workloads is crucial when deploying applications in a cloud environment. In order to optimize your cloud deployment, you must understand the six key areas of an application’s requirements in order to place it correctly:
Performance
Data Protection
Storage
Automation
Compliance
Security
ReliaCloud is OneNeck’s enterprise-class IT Infrastructure as Service (IaaS) platform suitable for production, DevOps or disaster recovery solutions that require a secure and compliant operational framework. ReliaCloud provides a flexible platform designed to meet your most demanding applications.
Hosted Private Cloud
RELIACLOUD
Production Environments
Mission-Critical Support
Existing workloads in ReliaCloud
Data Sovereignty Issues
Reliacloud is well suited for:
You have mission-critical workloads requiring maximum uptime. ReliaCloud was architected with these business applications in mind providing high availability for the underlying virtual machine. ReliaCloud offers a 100%, financially backed SLA, premium level of support and account management/customer interaction. Any downtime is unacceptable. We’ve got skin in the game.
If you have a production workload with high performance applications that are required to deliver excellent response times to customers and end users. ReliaCloud provides a flexible platform designed to meet the requirement of most demanding applications. With high performance compute, memory and IO requirements.
You already have existing workloads in ReliaCloud and wants to keep their workloads in ReliaCloud for connectivity, security and portability purposes.
You have an application, with sensitive data, and is not comfortable placing it in a public cloud. ReliaCloud offers the customer a non-shared infrastructure model, protecting the security and privacy of their corporate data. In addition, ReliaCloud offers a higher degree of transparency than public cloud services.
Azure is Microsoft’s hyper-scale, hybrid and enterprise proven public cloud computing platform. It provides a range of cloud services, including those for compute, analytics, storage and networking.
DevOps/Non-Production Environment
You require the ability to spin up and down DevOps or non-production environments quickly and the ability to power down when not in use. Azure provides immediate access to a vast pool of resources, resulting in flexible and streamlined workflow processes and on-demand access to computing resources to accelerate delivery when needed.
Existing Workloads in Azure
Disaster Recovery to Azure
Hyperscale/Auto Provisioning
Comprehensive Regulatory Compliance
Customer already has workloads in Azure and wants to keep their workloads in Azure for connectivity, security and portability purposes. Gives the customer the ability to leverage existing investments in Microsoft products or licensing agreements such as an Enterprise Agreement.
Customer wants to eliminate the burden of maintaining expensive DR sites for critical workloads. Azure Site Recovery allows customers to automate replication to Azure or a secondary datacenter to safeguard workloads against outages, enhance RPO and RTO, and reduce infrastructure maintenance costs by permanently migrating workloads to Azure. Flexibility to choose the location of your DR target within Microsoft Azure. Can protect Hyper-V, VMware and physical servers.
Customer has a web application that has the potential for unpredictable spikes or predictable (seasonality) bursts in traffic which requires them to exponentially scale their infrastructure to handle the extra load. Azure offers access to unlimited resources on demand.
Customer has compliance standards that OneNeck cannot provide. Azure meets a broad set of international and industryspecific compliance standards, such as ISO 27001, HIPAA, FedRAMP, SOC 1 and SOC 2, as well as country-specific standards like Australia IRAP, UK G-Cloud, and Singapore MTCS.
Azure is well suited for:
Comprehensive Service Portfolio
Customer requires access to a wide portfolio of services that OneNeck cannot provide such as machine learning, and batch compute jobs.
With those concepts in mind, below are the scenarios best-suited for each cloud deployment model:
Feature Comparison
Azure and ReliaCloud
ReliaCloud Azure
Location/Connectivity
Architecture
Extensive Hybrid Options Offers public cloud Offers private cloud Dedicated connectivity into cloud infrastructure Accessible, local data centers Global data centers High LAN bandwidth Direct integration with colocation
Hyper-scale 100% VM Uptime SLA Bare metal compute capabilities Architectural flexibility High IOPS, low latency storage Integration with physical appliances
Complex scientific processes that require specialized high-performance environments that are difficult for organizations to implement and maintain inhouse Choice for development and testing because you can easily spin up test instances, as needed, and eliminate the environment and related costs when the application moves to production Addressing : Infrastructure services and data management, including virtual desktops, databases and analytics, and content services Applications that need to share data with third parties on their private cloud, because managing the applications across environments can be challenging Any workload utilizing an organization’s most sensitive data
Public cloud can be well suited for:
Private cloud can be well suited for:
A short-term need with a large resource requirement On-demand resource requirements Unlimited scalability requirements
No cloud service stands alone, and we know not all workloads are the same. Sometimes it’s not a public versus private cloud decision, but rather a combination of the two. Hybrid cloud solutions combine the best of both private cloud and public cloud and are transforming the way organizations develop and deploy technology solutions. By allowing workloads to move between private and public clouds as computing needs and costs change, hybrid cloud gives businesses greater flexibility and more data deployment options.
Right Cloud, Right Time
RIGHT APPLICATION,
Benefits of a hybrid cloud solution include:
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Shift CAPEX to OPEX, capitalize on the new economics of cloud, with the ability to deliver everything as a service.
Create new services, capabilities, hybrid applications and exploit new business opportunities.
Scale on demand, optimize for price, performance and business continuity.
Agility and Speed
Security, business, resiliency and control delivered efficiently and effectively.
Governance and Control
Cost Efficiency
Innovation and Performance
Unless you plan on putting your entire business on one cloud, you will need a solution that brings public cloud and private cloud capabilities seamlessly together. Why should you compromise how you manage and consume cloud services just because you know that a one cloud strategy doesn’t fit every one of your applications’ needs? OneNeck understands that any one flavor of cloud should only be one part of a bigger hybrid cloud approach. We can help optimize your workloads across customized hybrid solutions that span on-premises, ReliaCloud (OneNeck’s hosted private cloud) and Microsoft Azure.
The Cloud With OneNeck
NAVIGATE
Managed Microsoft Azure
Flexible, agile and scalable environment Secure and compliant 24/7, from initial design to ongoing managment from OneNeck
ReliaCloud Hosted Private Cloud
On-Premises Private Cloud
Reliably deliver your enterprise applications, 100% SLA Optimize your IT cost structure between CAPEX and OPEX Comply with security and other compliance requirements Flexible and scalable
Dedicated infrastructure at your own data center Scale, performance and compliance
Whether you are looking to outsource all or part of your IT needs, OneNeck IT Solutions is a turnkey, full-service managed service provider with 20+ years of experience. Our certified experts are experienced in deploying services in a variety of IT environments, and our goal is to improve your efficiency so your internal IT staff can focus on your strategic initiatives. Our goal is to offer best in class services using our tools, our technology and our tried-and-true best practices. We’re here to give you relief from the mundane so you can focus on the strategic. Learn more about OneNeck's managed services offerings by visiting our website.
GETTING STARTED WITH CLOUD
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Ready to extend your IT capabilities with our cloud solutions? Let us show you how.
Our approach is to fully understand your business needs and requirements to help you define the right cloud infrastructure for your workloads. We help IT organizations define their cloud strategies and move forward in their cloud journey using proven tools and our expertise.
Need help building out your cloud plan?
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Need help building your cloud plan?
Defining the right roadmap to leverage hybrid cloud requires a holistic look at how your organization’s applications support your business. We conduct a thorough Hybrid Cloud Assessment that covers all the bases to complete a successful migration to the cloud: workload analysis, bandwidth analysis and end-user experience analysis.
Already leveraging the cloud, but looking to take a hybrid approach?
Contact us today to schedule a meeting and we’ll answer all of your questions. We look forward to helping you transform your business while retaining control and compliance with our cloud solutions.
