XCP Announcement Highlights and Issues
- Xen.org is planning to develop Open Source code to connect private and public federated Clouds • SMBs and consumers have been the early adopters of Cloud Computing, SaaS and Web-based applications in general
- Large Business have very significant challenges in making their Data Centres dynamic
- Cloud Service Providers are in the forefront, but standards are needed by all but the largest
- Xen.org members (including Citrix, HP, Intel, Novell and Oracle) may create an ecosystem to support private/public Cloud integration
I’ve been thinking of writing something about the connections between Data Centre consolidation, virtualisation and Cloud Computing for some time. Today’s announcement by Xen.org of the Xen Cloud Platform (XCP) gives me a great opportunity to address the developing links.
What’s In The XCP Annoucement?
Xen.org launched its Xen Client Initiative (XCI) in 2008. It has now launched its XCP, which aims to provide Open Source ways of connecting private and public Clouds (such as Amazon EC2). Among other areas it aims to ‘accelerate the use of cloud infrastructure for enterprise customers by providing open source virtual infrastructure technology that makes it easy for service providers to deliver secure, customisable, multi-tenant cloud services that work seamlessly with the virtualised application workloads customers are already running in their internal datacenters and private clouds, without locking them into any particular vendor.’ It will work with standards such as the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) Open Virtualization Format (OVF).
Xen.org has been widely supported by the ITC industry, with members including HP, Intel, Novell, Oracle, Rackspace, AMD, Carpathia, Cloudera, Dell, Eucalyptus Systems, Fujitsu, GoGrid, HyperStratus, Juniper Networks, Linux Foundation, NetApp, SoftLayer and VA Linux Japan. Its owner Citrix is also a member of course.
Heavy Lifting Need For Private Cloud Computing In Large Business
Cloud Computing is taking off fastest among Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) – ITC customers with little in the way of internal infrastructure. Some are using online backup and restore, others consuming self service applications in the growing Software as a Service area (see my piece on DataScape Online); many are using Web-based applications (email, Facebook, Plaxo, etc.) without even knowing the connection with the Cloud. However there needs to be some heavy lifting for Large Businesses to get involved. In particular most of them need:
- To modify their Data Centres to be able to offer Cloud services to their internal customers
- Guidance in how to integrate their own internal offerings with external Cloud infrastructure providers such as Amazon and Google
- To address new security and isolation issues as application use moves to and fro between ‘federated’ private and public Clouds
- To work out how to balance their spending between capital and operational expenditure – not least between perpetual/annual subscription and ‘pay per use’ software contracts
- To address legal requirements such as eDiscovery, Data Protection and Location issues while building the new Data Centre
Since the rediscovery of server virtualisation four or five years ago and the rise of VMWare, Data Centre managers have been gaining experience of how to use virtualisation and hypervisors as part of IT consolidation. While increasing utilisation and reducing costs have been strong motivators, the ultimate goal is often to establish a ‘dynamic Data Centre’. Microsoft and Xen (now owned by Citrix) have increased the choice of hypervisors – the latter retaining its Open Source status. All the while expertise in these techniques (relatively new in the x64 world) has been growing – not least among ITC suppliers, Service Providers and infrastructure vendors themselves.
As a user of Cloud services customers may not know or care about the servers and infrastructure deployed to make their applications available. As a supplier these issues are paramount. In fact, the easier it is for the user to mix and match, self-serve and modify their applications, the harder it is to supply appropriate services. The Googles and Amazons of this world have the advantage in not having to support legacy applications and Data Centre equipment that has proved too expensive to pension off. While the technical complexities of XCP will be beyond many, the aims are very valid. It will be interesting to see if (and how) the members of Xen.org for an ecosystem for the development of Open Cloud Data Centres, both in Large Enterprises and Cloud Service Providers.
Are you currently trying to work out how to build a dynamic Data Centre or private Cloud? let me know. I’d like to interview and profile your approach.