2016 Public Cloud - cdn.ttgtmedia.comPubl… · Criteria for choosing a public cloud provider Compare the market-leading public cloud providers Getting more PRO+ exclusive content

2016 Public Cloud

Provider Buyer’s Guide

http://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/

Page 1 of 27

In this guide

A primer on public cloud benefits

Criteria for choosing a public cloud provider

Compare the market-leading public cloud providers

Getting more PRO+ exclusive content

In this e-guide:

With the proliferation of public cloud providers out there – from

Amazon Web Services, to Rackspace, Google, and Microsoft –

it has become a daunting task for IT administrators to

determine which, if any, cloud provider is right for their

enterprise.

This comprehensive guide walks readers through the benefits

of using public cloud services, how to weigh the pros and cons

of each cloud provider and the steps to take during the buying

process if/when the decision is made.


Page 2 of 27

In this guide






http://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/feature/A-primer-on-public-cloud-

benefits

With companies such as Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft and

Rackspace offering the ability to create virtual machines in the cloud to support

and replace physical servers, cloud virtualization services are being integrated

into data center infrastructures. But knowing which features to consider and

which vendors to compare can be a daunting task.

This article is the first in a series that walks through the buying process for

public cloud virtual server services. Here we cover the major benefits of using

public cloud services as an extension of your data center infrastructure.

The second article discusses the risks and costs associated with moving virtual

machines (VMs) to the public cloud. The third article focuses on purchasing

criteria and preparing a vendor request for proposal (RFP). Finally, the series

will compare market-leading services against established criteria and against

each other to help you select the best public cloud service for your environment.


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Page 3 of 27

In this guide





In most cases, established organizations with IT resources on-premises should

not dispose of existing servers and move everything to the cloud. It would be a

waste of money, unless the local resources were scheduled to be retired. Even

then, there may be some workloads, such as latency-sensitive ones, that should

run locally. Similarly, you might not want to put all of your domain controllers on

a public cloud.

Of course, this does not mean companies with established IT infrastructures

cannot benefit from the cloud. The best approach is often to treat the cloud as

an extension to the organization's existing IT footprint. In this feature, we look at

the benefits of using public cloud versus an on-premises data center. In the

second part of this feature, we'll cover the disadvantages of public cloud.

Workload scaling

There are multiple ways a data center benefits from being extended to the

cloud, and one involves workload scaling. There may be times your organization

needs to ramp up a production workload beyond what the local data center can

comfortably handle.


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For example, consider the way insurance companies operate. For most of the

year, insurance companies typically consume a predictable level of IT

resources. However, there may be open enrollment periods that occur

throughout the year.

These enrollment periods are especially busy for insurance companies. As a

result, existing servers may not be able to handle open enrollment workloads.

Rather than buy new servers to accommodate temporary spikes in demand, the

companies could use public cloud.

If the company's enrollment applications are Web-based, it would be relatively

easy for cloud-based Web servers to accommodate the seasonal demand.

Once open enrollment is over, the cloud-based Web servers can be

decommissioned.

Business continuity

Another advantage of cloud-based VMs is protecting businesses in case of

equipment failures or physical disasters.


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To protect against data center failures, some organizations build geographic

clusters that span multiple data centers. Then, if a natural disaster destroys an

organization's primary data centers, mission-critical workloads fail over to

secondary data centers.

Building geoclusters, however, is expensive and complicated. Alternatively,

organizations can use public cloud to protect mission-critical workloads using

guest clusters and VM replication.

Guest clusters are clustered application servers that run on virtual hardware.

Since all of the guest cluster nodes are VMs, it's possible to place some of the

cluster nodes in the public cloud. That way, critical workloads can continue to

function even if primary data centers go offline.

However, you probably can't include public cloud servers in existing hypervisor

clusters. Public cloud providers typically don't give customers low-level access

to physical servers, which makes stretching an existing hypervisor cluster to the

public cloud nearly impossible.

Another way to use public cloud for business continuity is through VM

replication. Not every provider or server virtualization platform supports


Page 6 of 27

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replication, but some cloud and hypervisor combinations allow duplicate VMs to

be created in the cloud and kept in sync with on-premises VMs.

Similarly, there are solutions that allow public clouds to act as relays between

private data centers for VM replication. If any primary data centers go down, VM

replicas can be used.

Public cloud VM deployment can be simpler than on-premises deployment

because public cloud providers typically offer templates to generate new VMs.

Templates are used to automate VM creation. And, because they don't require

manual installation of guest operating systems, templates cut down on

administrators' work. Some templates even include pre-installed applications.

Public cloud VM deployments are especially attractive for startups. Any new

business incurs startup costs, but operating virtual servers in the cloud

eliminates the capital expenditures associated with server hardware and

software.

Cloud-hosted VMs are usually billed on a monthly basis. For a startup, this

monthly charge is likely far less than the hardware and software costs required


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to run the workload locally. A startup organization can first run a workload in the

cloud, and then later bring network load on-premises.


http://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/feature/Criteria-for-choosing-a-public-

cloud-provider

As organizations transition to public or hybrid cloud, they inevitably have to

choose a public cloud provider to host their cloud-based virtual machines. And

while there are many infrastructure as a service (IaaS) providers, each has its

own strengths and weaknesses. Furthermore, each public cloud provider has its

own pricing structure, so the cost of running a VM in the cloud could differ

substantially from one provider to the next.

This article is the third in a series that walks through the buying process for

public cloud virtual server services. The first article described the benefits of


http://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/feature/Criteria-for-choosing-a-public-cloud-provider

http://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/feature/Criteria-for-choosing-a-public-cloud-provider

Page 8 of 27

In this guide





hosting virtual servers in the cloud, while the second detailed public cloud costs

and risks.

This article outlines the purchasing criteria to include in a vendor request for

proposal (RFP) to ensure you get the right services for your environment.

The fourth article will compare market-leading public cloud virtual server

services against established purchasing criteria and against each other to help

you determine which service offers the best features and price for your needs.

Determining public cloud costs

New public cloud users are often surprised to learn that IaaS has a complicated

pricing structure. You will rarely, if ever, find flat rate pricing for running a virtual

machine (VM) in the cloud. And although cloud providers disclose their pricing

formulas, they tend to be extremely complex, making it difficult to estimate the

cost of running a public cloud VM.

These formulas are complex because they're based on the resources VMs

consume. Some of the factors included in public cloud pricing structures are

CPU consumption, the type of CPU activity being performed, network bandwidth


Page 9 of 27

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consumption, storage I/O consumption, operating system (OS) selection,

storage type and storage consumption on a per GB basis.

Before running a VM in the cloud, set up trial accounts with different cloud

providers. This will create identical VMs on each cloud, and track costs. You

can then compare how pricing differs from one provider to another.

For this method to work, however, the VMs must be somewhat representational

of what you will run in your production environment.

VM migration to public cloud

Another important consideration is VM migration support. Most organizations

have on-premises VMs they will migrate to public cloud. Most of the major

public cloud providers offer a mechanism for importing existing VMs into the

cloud, but some are easier to use than others. Some providers will give you a

graphical interface, while others require the operation be performed

programmatically.


Page 10 of 27

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Hypervisor support also varies widely among public cloud providers. For

example, some providers make it easy to import VMware VMs, but do not

support Citrix VMs.

Be aware of VM migration costs. Most public cloud providers charge you for the

resources you use, including the storage space the new VMs occupy. Some

cloud providers -- particularly the smaller ones -- may impose a surcharge for

importing VMs.

Custom image support

Any public cloud provider allows you to create VMs based on precompiled

generic images. But because they're generic, these images may not fully meet

your needs. For example, you may want to create VM images that include your

preferred antivirus software, or that adhere to specific security requirements.

These custom VM images make it easy to configure VMs to meet your specific

needs, and to reproduce those configurations on future VMs. However, if you

plan to create custom VMs in the cloud, you need to make sure your provider

supports that process. And while major public cloud providers tend to offer that

support, some make it easier than others to import those images. If you are


Page 11 of 27

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considering smaller public cloud providers, make sure you understand their

custom VM image support before signing on.

VM templates

While any public cloud provider allows you to create generic VMs based on

predefined templates, the complexity and number of those templates varies

wildly. Generic VM templates typically include an OS and, possibly, the ability to

build application servers. Providers don't always offer the same OSes or

applications, if they offer applications at all.

Most of the major public clouds allow you to create Windows and Linux VMs,

although the Windows Server versions and the Linux flavors offered vary. If you

are considering smaller providers, confirm their template catalog allows you to

deploy the computing environments and applications you require.

Autoscaling

Another essential feature to look for when evaluating cloud providers is

autoscaling. The basic idea of autoscaling is that server workloads are rarely

linear. Sometimes, there are performance demand peaks, such as insurance

companies' open enrollment periods or online retailers' big holiday sales. At


Page 12 of 27

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other times, usage demand shrinks. Autoscaling allows VMs to deliver higher

performance in response to heavier workloads, and to scale down when

possible to save money.

Autoscaling varies across different cloud platforms. Some providers only offer it

for web applications by bringing extra web servers online. Others increase VM

memory and CPU resources to perform workload scaling. This can be done

manually, or can be automated based on a set of rules, performance metrics or

a schedule.

Network connectivity

Every cloud service provider offers VM network connectivity. It's a given that

your VMs will be able to access one another and the Internet.

Even so, the larger cloud providers typically offer multiple network connectivity

options. They vary between providers, but there are usually premium

connectivity options that allow VMs to receive higher network performance

levels. This is especially useful for VMs running applications that are sensitive to

network latency. If you plan to run cloud-based, latency-sensitive applications,

be sure to investigate your potential cloud provider's networking options.


Page 13 of 27

In this guide





Storage choices

Just as every cloud provider allows for basic VM network connectivity, they also

offer basic VM storage. After all, VMs use virtual hard disks, and you have to

put them somewhere. Many cloud service providers also offer options beyond

basic, entry-level storage.

Storage services vary tremendously from one provider to another, but, at a

minimum, there are usually standard and premium options. The larger cloud

providers tend to offer a lot of customization as part of their premium storage.

For instance, customers might be able to choose between rotational storage

and solid-state storage, although solid-state storage is almost always more

expensive.

Premium storage may also include fault-tolerant options. Some cloud service

providers allow you to replicate storage or build virtual storage arrays that boost

performance and ensure fault tolerance. Although somewhat rare, some

providers also allow you to use premium storage to create VM snapshots or for

backup targets.


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When evaluating service providers, it's important to pay attention to the storage

types offered. Some providers only offer object storage, which is very different

from the block and file storage normally used in local data centers. Similarly,

some providers treat databases as storage options, while others treat

databases as VMs.

Regional support

Pay attention to cloud providers' regional availability. Larger cloud providers

establish data centers all over the world. If you have regulatory or business

requirements that mandate your data be kept within a specific country, it's

extremely important to be able to choose which data centers will host your VMs.

In the event of a provider outage, it's also critical to ensure your VMs will not fail

over to unauthorized regions.

Examine each cloud provider's specific regional offerings. Some providers use

lower-end servers in certain regions. Likewise, some OSes or OS features, such

as encryption, may not be available in certain regions due to regulations.

As you can see, there are a number of criteria to consider when evaluating

cloud service providers. Not all providers are created equally, so it's necessary


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to look for the provider that will best meet the technical needs of your

environment, and the business needs of your organization.


http://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/feature/Compare-the-market-leading-

public-cloud-providers

You've done your homework and determined you need to extend your data

center to the public cloud. You've researched the technology and determined

the criteria you will use to make your purchasing decision. Now, it's time to

choose the public cloud provider to host your virtual machines.

But which provider offers the services and support that best matches your

environment and needs?

This is the final article in a series about cloud computing buying decisions. The

first article described the benefits of hosting virtual servers in the cloud, while

the second detailed public cloud costs and risks.


http://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/feature/Compare-the-market-leading-public-cloud-providers

http://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/feature/Compare-the-market-leading-public-cloud-providers

Page 16 of 27

In this guide





The third article detailed the purchasing criteria to include in your vendor

request for proposals (RFPs) to make sure you get the right services for your

environment.

This article compares four leading public cloud providers -- Amazon Web

Services (AWS), Google, Microsoft and Rackspace -- and how well they meet

the following seven criteria:

VM migration support

Custom image support

Image library

Autoscaling

Network connectivity

Storage choices

Regional support

1. VM migration support

As public and hybrid clouds increase in popularity, it's important for

organizations to be able to move virtual machines (VMs) from an on-premises


Page 17 of 27

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hypervisor into the public cloud, and to bring those workloads back in house if

necessary.

AWS offers the most seamless VM migration path of all the major cloud

providers, although Microsoft is not far behind. AWS provides a graphical

interface called the AWS Management Portal for vCenter which allows

virtualization admins to manage their Amazon-based resources through

VMware vCenter. The portal also makes it possible to migrate VMware VMs to

the public cloud.

Microsoft built its Azure public cloud on top of Windows Server and Hyper-V.

Because Azure runs the same software as many on-premises networks, it is

relatively easy to migrate VMs between local data centers and Azure. The

process isn't seamless, but is relatively easy once connectivity is established

between Azure and a local network.

Google does not support VM migrations into the Google Compute Engine cloud.

However, there are third-party providers, such as Cohesive Networks, which

allows VMs to be imported into Google Compute Engine.


Page 18 of 27

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Rackspace does not offer a way to migrate VMs to and from the cloud. It does,

however, provide a service called RackConnect that's geared toward hybrid

clouds.

2. Custom image support

Cloud providers generally allow VMs to be built from predefined images, but

these generic OS images don't always meet an organization's needs. As such,

a cloud provider should allow custom virtual machine images to be created and

used.

AWS provides Amazon EC2 API tools which can be used to import VM images

into the Amazon cloud. AWS allows for the importing of:

VMware ESX and VMware Workstation VMDK images;

Citrix XenServer virtual hard disk (VHD) images;

Microsoft Hyper-V VHD images for Windows Server 2003, Windows

Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2,

Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2; and


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Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.1-5.11, 6.1-6.6 (using Cloud Access),

Centos 5.1-5.11, 6.1-6.6, Ubuntu 12.04, 12.10, 13.04, 13.10, 14.04,

14.10, and Debian 6.0.0-6.0.8, 7.0.0-7.2.0.

Microsoft makes it fairly easy to create a custom image. The easiest way is to

create a virtual hard disk file and import it into Azure. Although you can build

VHD-based images from scratch, System Center Virtual Machine Manager can

help with the image creation process.

Rackspace supports the creation of custom images, which can be imported and

exported from its cloud environment. Rackspace also provides a custom API

that can be used to share custom images.

Google supports the importing of raw device mapping images, Amazon Machine

Images and VirtualBox Images.

3. Image library

Although many organizations try to minimize the number of server operating

systems they use, heterogeneous environments are becoming much more

common, especially in the cloud. A good cloud provider should offer a variety of

server OS choices.


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Rackspace offers a broad selection of server operating systems. It provides

nearly a dozen different Linux variants, including Ubuntu, Red Hat Enterprise

Linux and CentOS. In addition, Rackspace offers Windows Server 2008 and

Windows Server 2012. Windows Server images can be preloaded with SQL

Server or with SharePoint. The versions that are offered vary depending on the

operating system you select. The available Windows Server 2008 images

include Base OS, SQL Server 2008, SQL Server 2012, and SharePoint 2010.

The available Windows Server 2012 images include R1 base image, R2 base

image, R1 with SQL Server 2012, R1 with SharePoint 2013 and R2 with SQL

Server 2014.

Microsoft provides a variety of operating system images including Windows

Server, Ubuntu, CoreOS, CentOS, SUSE, Oracle and Puppet Labs. Windows

images can be deployed using only the base operating system, or they can

include Microsoft server products such as SharePoint, SQL Server, BizTalk

Server, Visual Studio or Microsoft Dynamics.

AWS provides Windows-based images, as well as a variety of Linux images.

The available Linux flavors include Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux,

Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, CentOS, Gentoo Linux, Oracle Linux and FreeBSD.


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Google offers a collection of premium operating systems, including Red Hat

Enterprise Linux, SUSE and Windows Server.

4. Autoscaling

Workloads do not typically experience linear demand; instead, demand

increases and decreases over time. Ideally, a cloud provider should allow

workloads to automatically scale up or down in response to current demand.

Rackspace provides an autoscale feature that expands or shrinks your cloud

according to a set of user-defined rules. These rules can include a schedule

allowing workloads to scale up just prior to an expected demand spike, and

scale down when the event passes.

Microsoft includes a Scale page in the Azure interface. You can use this page to

manually scale an application, or you can set parameters that will be used to

automatically scale the workload.

Google has an autoscaler that scales a workload up or down based on

changing demand, and can be used with a managed instance group.


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AWS provides autoscaling capabilities that can be enabled on a group basis.

5. Network connectivity

Network connectivity is another important consideration when choosing a public

cloud provider. There should be a way to connect your on-premises network to

your cloud network, and the provider should offer various connectivity features.

AWS offers something it calls Enhanced Networking. This service is available

for Windows and Linux VMs, and offers higher-performance networking than

what is delivered out of the box. Enhanced Networking is specifically designed

to provide low latency and low jitter, and is enabled by default for Amazon

Machine Images based on Windows Server 2012 R2 and Linux HVM.

Rackspace offers several networking options. Extreme Networking, for example,

is Rackspace's high-bandwidth solution that uses twin bonded 10 Gbps

connections. A more generic Rackspace option is Cloud Networks, which allows

for multi-tier software-defined networks. Rackspace also offers cloud load

balancers and IPv6 support.

Google Compute Engine provides all the basic cloud networking capabilities,

but also cloud load balancing and cloud DNS. In addition, Google offers an


Page 23 of 27

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interconnect feature that allows customers to establish connectivity to the

Google cloud either directly or via VPN.

Microsoft designed Azure to easily support hybrid clouds. Although you can

define virtual networks within Azure, it is also possible to connect Azure to your

corporate network through point-to-point VPN. By doing so, the Azure network

acts as an extension of an on-premises network. For instance, a cloud

application might access a local SQL Server database.

6. Storage choices

Storage needs vary depending on workloads. Some workloads can use

commodity storage without any issues, while others require high-performance

storage. As such, a cloud provider should offer a variety of storage options.

Amazon EC2 includes basic storage for VMs, but the service is really designed

to connect to Amazon's Elastic Block Store (EBS) service, which is designed to

be scalable, flexible and fault tolerant. For instance, storage can be provisioned

as general purpose, with solid-state disk (SSD) and hard disk drive (HDD)

options available, or Provisioned IOPS. Furthermore, Amazon EBS supports the


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use of point-in-time consistent snapshots. AWS also offers a variety of fault

tolerant storage configurations.

Microsoft provides basic storage for its Azure VMs. In addition, Microsoft offers

premium storage for high-performance workloads. Premium storage is based on

SSDs, while standard storage uses rotational HDDs. Premium storage

allocation is flexible; you can define multiple disks per VM and allocate up to 32

TB of premium storage to a single VM. Premium storage can achieve up to

50,000 IOPS per VM with extremely low latency, especially for read operations.

Google offers three different storage options. Cloud Datastore is a managed,

NoSQL schema-less database for storing non-relational data. For database

storage, Google offers a fully managed MySQL database. For more generalized

storage, Google offers Cloud Storage, which is essentially object storage that

can be managed programmatically through an available API.

Rackspace provides two main storage options: No Spinning Disks and Cloud

Block Storage. As the name implies, the No Spinning Disks option is a pure

SSD storage solution, and is available for VMs and bare-metal cloud servers.

Cloud Block Storage, on the other hand, is available only for virtual servers.


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Cloud Block Storage can consist of SSD or spinning disks, and can be

connected to VMs via a 10 Gbps connection.

7. Regional support

Sometimes business or regulatory requirements mandate hosting resources in a

specific geographic region. That being the case, a cloud provider should ideally

give its customers a choice of where VMs will be hosted.

AWS allows VM instances to be hosted in specific regions. It also designates

various Availability Zones within those regions that are far enough apart from

one another to be insulated against disasters.

Google allows you to choose the regions where your VMs are hosted. However,

there are some hardware differences between the various regions, and each

has multiple zones. Google's available regions include locations in the U.S.,

Ireland, Germany, South America and Asia. Some resources, such as VM

images, are not region-specific.

Microsoft has defined 17 different regions for Azure, including locations

throughout the U.S., Europe, Asia, South America and Australia.


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Rackspace has cloud data centers in the U.S., London, Hong Kong and

Sydney, Australia. The company uses these data centers to provide redundancy

and guaranteed uptime. Rackspace does not offer the ability to confine a VM to

a specific region.

Going with the right public cloud provider can make all the difference in

providing an effective extension to your on-premises data center. Examining

prices and features may be difficult, so make sure you put together a solid RFP

to compare apples to apples and select the right service for your environment

and business needs.


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2016 Public Cloud - cdn.ttgtmedia.comPubl… · Criteria for choosing a public cloud provider Compare the market-leading public cloud providers Getting more PRO+ exclusive content