Jason Silverglate, CEO of DedicatedNow presents on Wednesday afternoon.
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — In one of the last sessions on the HostingCon program, in Wednesday’s 4:00-4:45 slot, Jason Silverglate, CEO of Fortress ITX and DedicatedNow, gave a presentation on the “The Anatomy of a Cloud,” getting into the nuts and bolts of cloud infrastructure from the perspective a hosting provider looking to build a solution.
One of the first things he addresses is the question, “what type of cloud are you building?” It’s a question that includes a reflection of the key points of who your target customers are, and what type of SLA you intend to offer them. Do you want it to meet standards like SAS 70, PCI or HIPPA?
His session incorporated a long list of cost and building considerations (unfortunately, it was a lot more than I could record in any detail) that included servers, network gear and software, but also things like the ease of repair, and the time to bring a node back online.
The main components of the cloud infrastructure, from his point of view, are the server, the network, the SAN storage, the hypervisor and the cloud management system.
In case, he discussed the decision making process related to that component (using examples from DedicatedNow’s own experience in building a cloud), and compared several of the vendor offerings available to meet that need.
Taken all together, the presentation was a recipe for building a cloud computing infrastructure. Certainly worth looking at if you were considering embarking on a project like that. I believe the slides should be on the HostingCon site at some point.
Your network, he says, is one of the most important decisions you’ll make in building a cloud. He says your network will be divided into your public IP, your private IP and your storage network, and resources can be applied to those three segments in whatever configuration best suits your offering.
Storage, how you design it and what products you use to power it, is another fundamental consideration, and will be based on the kind of customer you’re looking to get.
A decision he mentions repeatedly, and an interesting point in the architecture design process (not just for cloud) is choosing between the less expensive or sometimes home-brew equipment and the more expensive name-brand equipment.
This, again, is a “who are your customers?” consideration in the sense that in some cases, even cloud customers are going to want to be able to come into your facility and see dell servers or EMC storage.
In response to a question about “why build this” Silverglate said that as servers become more powerful, it becomes less likely that dedicated hosting customers are able to fully use the resources they’re buying. He says the advantage to his company of building a cloud is that by consolidating all of that business into a smaller number of servers, it can save on power, cooling and other facility-related costs.
If you can offer customers a more reliable and stable and better-performing product for about the same price, he says, they tend to be happy with that.
About Liam Eagle
Liam Eagle has worked as a contributor to the Web Host Industry Review since its inception in 2000, and as editor since 2003. He has been editor of the WHIR's print magazine since its launch. His daily involvement in the gathering and reporting of Web hosting news and his regular interaction with Web hosting leaders gives him an uncommonly broad appreciation of the issues and tends facing the business. Through his WHIR blog, Liam spots Web hosting trends and offers opinions on the industry-wide impacts of major developments and the motivation behind big announcements. Follow him on Twitter @liameagle
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