to get from where you are today to where you
want to be? Well, it begins with cloud tech and
cloud infrastructure. Cloud computing is a type
of online-based computing that provides shared
IT resources and data to computers and other
devices on demand.
First, let’s assume that your IT stack is a
traditional setup with multiple vendors’ servers,
storage, and networking solutions. In this
infrastructure, an application like SAP/Oracle
would have its own dedicated resources. The
database and applications would all sit on a
physical server with dedicated physical storage
and, usually, semi-dedicated (zoned) networking.
The database administrator would be limited
to those resources. Adding resources would
involve scheduled downtime. The standard setup
also creates operation silos and bottlenecks in
administration and information flow.
The first step is virtualization. You must
virtualize the foundations of your environment
before you can start providing services. There
are three basic building blocks of any given
infrastructure: servers, storage, and networking.
Storage and servers
If you’re an average business, you have at least
three storage vendors and, usually, a combination
of two different technologies such as Storage Area
Network (SAN) and Network-Attached Storage
(NAS). This provides you with very little flexibility. But,
virtualizing storage is a key feature for monitoring,
managing, and distributing storage according to its
properties rather than vendor or type.
Let’s say you need a very fast disk for a new
production database. In legacy infrastructures,
that disk would exist inside a single vendor’s disk
array. However, if virtualized, the disk could exist
across multiple vendors’ storage products — even
in different cities.
Products like VMware and ZEN are now
used to virtualize servers. This blurs the lines
between physical resources and the actual places
where applications live, unfortunately creating
a point at which more complexity could choke
an organisation. This physical versus virtual
relationship must be proactively managed to avoid
further complicating the IT infrastructure.
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