Private cloud provides
hosted services to a limited number of people behind a
firewall. Advances in
virtualization and distributed computing have allowed corporate network and
datacenter administrators to effectively become service providers that meet the
needs of their "customers" within the corporation."Customers
will see that we can now better support an environment that’s up and running 24
hours a day, seven days a week. With System Center, we can scale … up and down
faster and get more projects into the cloud."
What Is a Private Cloud?
Private cloud and internal cloud products claim to "deliver some benefits of
cloud computing without the pitfalls", capitalizing on Data Security Policies, corporate
governance, and reliability concerns. Private cloud is the
implementation of cloud services on resources that are dedicated to your
organization, whether they exist on-premises or off-premises. With a private
cloud, you get many of the benefits of public cloud computing including
self-service, scalability, and elasticity with the additional control and
customization available from dedicated resources.
There are two models for cloud
services that can be delivered in a private cloud: Infrastructure as a Service
(IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS). With IaaS, you can use infrastructure
resources (compute, network, and storage) as a service, while PaaS provides a
complete application platform as a service. Microsoft offers solutions that
deliver IaaS and PaaS for both private and public cloud deployments.
Private Cloud Overview and Advantages
The main thing
that sets a private cloud apart from a commercially-used public cloud is where
the hardware is kept and how it’s maintained. A private cloud is typically
hosted on the company’s own virtual servers,
within their own network infrastructure.
The main
advantage one has with a privately-managed cloud is direct control over every
aspect of the cloud’s implementation: the hardware, the networking, the
operating system and other software used to create the cloud itself; the way cloud security is implemented; even the
APIs used (that is, if you’re using an open source system).
Another
advantage of a private cloud is that it can generally be built from reasonably
current commodity hardware. The most stringent requirements, apart from disk
space and memory, are processors that support virtualization.
A third
advantage is locality. A cloud hosted in your own datacenter, or on your own
property, is far easier to move data into (and out of) than a cloud hosting
elsewhere.
A fourth
advantage iscloud security. If you
are hosting your own cloud infrastructure on a private LAN, with no connections
to the outside world, it’s theoretically a good deal easier to secure. Since
it’s your network and your boxes, you can exercise that much more discretion
over it.
Private Cloud Disadvantages
One major
disadvantage of a private cloudis the work involved in creating and maintaining
the cloud. The whole point of using someone else’s cloud infrastructure is to
save you the trouble of having to build it. It becomes all the more difficult
if you want to securely access the cloud from outside your corporate LAN
It’s doubly
hard if you have no experience setting up such things, and need to figure it
out as you go.
Virtual private cloud
A Virtual
Private Cloud (VPC) is a private cloud existing within a shared or public
cloud. It is a portion of a public cloud infrastructure that has been set aside
for use by an organization, and is only accessible via an IPsec virtual private
network connection.
Private Cloud Technology Examples
Eucalyptus
A major vendor
of technology for creating private clouds is
Eucalyptus. Eucalyptus
interfaces directly with Amazon EC2,
and in fact uses the same interface as EC2. Advantage of Eucalyptus is how the
interface module can be swapped with something else. But for now, EC2 is the
default choice due to its wide adoption.
Elestra
Another
private-cloud company is Elestra, whose
Enterprise
Cloud Server was designed to make it easier to package and deploy
application stacks into the cloud. Elestra provides packaging support for
Oracle’s database and Web Logic app servers, among many others.
VMware
Microsoft
Microsoft came
late to virtualization and have likewise come late to cloud computing, but are
preparing their own
private cloud
offerings (“Azure”) for later this year. As you might expect, it’ll be built on
top of Windows Server / Hyper-V, and will be managed with the forthcoming
Dynamic
Infrastructure Toolkit for System Center.
