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Cloud computing can enable new capabilities and lower your IT costs. By pooling together computing resources in a private cloud or hosted solution and automating their management, you can improve scalability and make the business more agile. Microsoft delivers the products to enable private clouds or hosted solutions so businesses of all sizes can harness the power of cloud computing.
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Amy Newman
Senior Managing Editor
Internet .com
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Amy Newman is a senior managing editor at Internet .com. She has been overseeing Internet.com's ServerWatch since 2001 and its Server vertical since 2010. Newman writes about virtualization and cloud computing each week on ServerWatch in her column, Virtually Speaking. She is also the coauthor of Practical Virtualization Solutions, which was published by Pearson in 2009. Prior to Internet.com, Newman was a research editor at Gartner, where she edited and managed the workflow of four monthly research deliverables related to software infrastructure.
Twitter: @amnconn
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Q: Can you briefly explain the concept of a private cloud and how it differs from the type of infrastructure admins are already providing to the business?
A: The private cloud model is very similar to the utility computing model of a decade ago. Unlike what we have come to think of as the traditional data center, a cloud-based data center treats computing resources as a commodity, and they can be added or removed as needed based on whatever applications or services are required at any given time. Typically, virtualization plays a key role in ensuring resources are able to meet the demand.
Q: What are the first steps a business should take when moving to the cloud?
A: Planning is essential. Before virtualizing a single server or deciding which app or service to run in a cloud environment, determine what your end goal is and plan accordingly. It is also important to give some thought to which type of cloud environment makes sense for the apps and services under consideration. Mission-critical apps are often best kept in a private cloud, but other apps may be better-suited for the public cloud and some services may be most effective when run in a hybrid cloud environment.
Q: What are some of the management challenges that business face when they build a private cloud solution?
A: Because a private cloud relies purely on data center recourses, resources must be able to be provisioned and scaled quickly and easily to meet demand. If the enterprise opts to scale out to the public cloud when demand is high, security and reliability implications must be taken into account.
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