Last week's GestaltIT post by Devang and Ed was quite insightful and I enjoyed reading it. They've obviously been paying close attention on many fronts. Well done, guys.
In particular I found their statement on federation to have great applicability to private cloud:
The next logical step for them is federation within and between storage systems.
Devang and Ed proceed to talk about the Atmos storage system and how it already "federates" today based on metadata and policy.
The conversation about federation becomes particularly important in the context of a fluid private cloud. By fluidity I am referring to the fact that a corporation may choose to implement a portion of their private cloud within their own IT organization, while the rest of it is owned by a third party provider. This type of flexibility allows for eventual mobility of private cloud resources to be 100% out-sourced, or a corporation can choose to always keep a percentage of critical private cloud resources in-house.
As we (EMC) are building out our private cloud software architecture, I have asserted that a CMDB (Configuration Management Database) is essentially the "software center" of a private cloud implementation.
If 50% of a private cloud is managed in-house, and 50% of the same private cloud is out-sourced, where is the central CMDB?
The answer, quite simply, is that the CMDB must be federated. A federated CMDB must be securely partioned; remember that portions of the CMDB contain CIs (Configuration Items) that are managed by one organization, and the remaining CIs are managed by the other. As services are moved across boundaries a federated CMDB must be intimately involved.
While Ed and Devang are correct in their assertion that this type of CMDB federation is the way that EMC will go, they are also agreeing with the beliefs of the latest revision of the ITIL v3 standard. Here's Jeff Abbott's take from the ITManagement blog:
It’s actually well aligned with the ITIL v3 concept of a configuration management system (CMS)where the CMDB is part (a critical part) of a more modular and federated approach to configuration visibility across the data center.
What are the implementation details of a private cloud CMS? How do the tools and applications surrounding the CMS enable federation, partitioning, and IT mobility? I plan on covering the required software plumbing in future posts.
In the EMC private cloud implementation it is the Ionix portfolio that takes responsibility for these important capabilities.
Steve
http://stevetodd.typepad.com
Twitter: @SteveTodd
EMC Intrapreneur
Comments