My first Magazine Nutanix Flash Forward | Page 21

Chapter 2: Why Enterprise Cloud? 17 Virtualization ≠ private cloud The term private cloud is shockingly misused. Many believe that getting close to 100 percent virtualized means they’ve successfully deployed their private cloud and they can now enter the annals of cloud history for their accomplishment. Not so fast! The word cloud carries some implicit assumptions about architecture, workload manageability, automation, and user self‐service. Only after you’ve successfully deployed an infrastructure that has the right architecture, at least some level of provisioning automation and user self‐service can you start to consider it a private cloud. Without those features, you’re nothing more than a highly virtualized datacenter. Virtualization is only one component of the private cloud. Further, some businesses are trying to build private clouds using OpenStack/vCloud/Azure and a matching virtualization solution, but still relying on traditional scale‐up storage and three‐tier architecture. Although you get self‐service provisioning and scale‐out computing, you still deal with the complex infrastructure life cycle of infrastructure. You end up with silos for different applications (for example, all‐flash arrays and bare metal for high performance, virtualization with hybrid storage for VDI, and so on). This setup may look like a cloud on the surface but doesn’t deliver many of the benefits that public clouds like AWS enjoy. Bear that in mind as you read the rest of this book. Considering public cloud limitations The public cloud, for all its benefits, has limitations. While the public cloud is a viable, cost‐effective option for elastic workloads where demand is highly variable or unpredictable, it is not as cost‐effective as on‐premises infrastructure for more predictable workloads. In fact, managing predictable workloads is where IT shines. We’ve been doing that for decades and we do it really well. On the economic front, it’s often less expensive to implement and maintain your own environment for predictable workloads than it is to pay monthly expenses for cloud infrastructure. Here’s why: Your predictable workloads often include such applications as ERPs, end‐user productivity tools, and These materials are © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Any dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.