Sherif Mohsen Fadi Elhamy - Dell Technologies

ITAAS — USING EHC AND VCE TO

BUILD YOUR DATA CENTER

Sherif MohsenSystems Engineer AnalystTSSO—EMC

Fadi ElhamySE Manager Presales TSSO, EMEATSSO—EMC

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

2015 EMC Proven Professional Knowledge Sharing 2

Table of Contents

Executive Summary ................................................................................................................... 3

Converged Infrastructure: Is it the future of Private Clouds? ...................................................... 4

Is it a big market? ....................................................................................................................... 5

The VCE Story ........................................................................................................................... 6

Vblock Systems 340 and 720 Architectures ............................................................................... 7

EMC Enterprise Hybrid Cloud ...................................................................................................10

Business Challenges.................................................................................................................12

Key Components of EMC Enterprise Hybrid Cloud ...................................................................14

Data center virtualization and cloud management .....................................................................15

Building the Private Cloud Data Center on Vblock ....................................................................18

Conclusion ................................................................................................................................20

Appendix ...................................................................................................................................21

References ...............................................................................................................................22

Disclaimer: The views, processes or methodologies published in this article are those of the

authors. They do not necessarily reflect EMC Corporation’s views, processes or methodologies.


Executive Summary

The IT world is changing, from inflexible older models where IT had to fulfill every request for

each employee in the organization, to the rise of Public Cloud providers who offer more flexible

alternatives which contribute to agile delivery of IT resources to the business users, to the rise

of the Private Cloud model which replicates the Public Cloud model only with additional security

as the resources are located within the safe zone of the customer infrastructure.

Today, the trend is toward Hybrid Cloud technology, which incorporates the use of the Private

Cloud while offloading some resources to the Public Cloud. Although this technology is very

appealing, it is also very challenging to implement a complete solution which empowers the

business users to request services without needing to revert every time to the IT department.

We want the IT department to focus on more value-added services and automate the trivial self-

recurring tasks.

In this article, we discuss the concept of Converged Infrastructure, VCE Vblock® solutions, and

the EMC Enterprise Hybrid Cloud. Thousands of hours of engineering work have been invested

in these solutions in order to empower the IT to be a broker of services and act as a service

provider to business users.


Converged Infrastructure: Is it the future of Private Clouds?

In today’s environments, data centers which serve as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) for the

companies’ Private Cloud has become very complex. The wide variety and options for selecting

storage vendors, networking vendors, servers, and virtualization platforms which motivates the

Private Cloud Management and Consumption models, compel companies to look for ways to

simplify implementation and management of their Private Cloud environments.

In the past, implementing such an environment required weeks or months, taking into

consideration that the technical and financial departments must make decisions from a wide

variety of vendors. Moreover, a main issue which has always consumed a big part of the

planning was how to get support, i.e. if we have an issue in our infrastructure, is it due to the

servers, switches, storage etc.? This led to the lack of accountability and sometimes finger

pointing regarding the root cause of a problem.

Converged Infrastructure emerged to solve these complex issues. The concept was to offload

the many hours needed to guarantee integration of the different components of the Private

Cloud to the vendor, and deliver data center components to the customer as an appliance in a

form factor that can be centrally managed. The goal of a converged infrastructure is to minimize

compatibility issues and simplify management of servers, storage systems, and network devices

while reducing costs for cabling, cooling, power, and floor space. Now customers have a single

point of contact they can refer to in cases where technical support is required.

From a vendor perspective, the benefits include the ability to solidify their footprint with a

customer in various areas of their IT and grow with the customer business.

On a high level, the converged infrastructure market can be divided into three distinct

categories:

Integrated Workload Systems: Server, storage, and network integrated with database

and/or application software to provide appliance or appliance-like functionality.

Integrated Infrastructure Systems: Server, storage. and network integrated to provide

shared compute infrastructure.

Integrated Reference Architectures: Products in which predefined, pre-sized

components are designated as options for an integrated system, whereby the user can

make configuration choices between the predefined options.


Is it a big market?

As shown in Figure 1, IDC estimates that total worldwide spending on converged infrastructure

will reach $17.8 billion in 2016, up from $4.6 billion in 2012. Converged infrastructure will

account for 12.8 percent of total storage, server, networking, and software spending by 2016, up

from only 3.9 percent in 20121.

Figure 2 depicts factors that may influence customers’ selection of Converged Infrastructure

vendors:

Figure 11

Figure 21


The VCE Story

VCE began in November of 2009 when the leaders of the three companies – EMC, Cisco, and

VMware – announced an unprecedented collaborative effort designed to deliver IT infrastructure

to customers as a single entity through VCE. The first Vblock system was introduced in 2010

and VCE enabled a global community of systems integrators, service providers, channel

partners, and independent software vendors (ISVs) to simplify customer engagement and

provide leading sales, service, and support. Figure 3 illustrates some facts and figures for VCE.

On a high level, Figure 4 illustrates the VCE offerings (please note VCE continues to sell more

Vblock System 720s until such time as EMC makes it economically attractive to transition

customers to the Vblock System 740):

Figure 32


Vblock Systems 340 and 720 Architectures

Vblock 340

The Vblock 340 system is a converged infrastructure solution with high agility. It meets the

needs of virtualized data centers, cloud environments, and service provider implementations.

Vblock 340 features include:

VCE engineering expertise are utilized to configure VDI, SAP, Exchange, and mixed

workloads based on performance and sizing requirements.

Customers can easily scale their resources as required which contributes to high agility

and flexibility

Supports the EMC VNX® Rockies storage arrays

Utilizes vSphere 5.5 to extend support for business-critical applications and new

workloads

Vblock System Management via the VCE Vision Intelligent Operations

Figure 5 provides a high-level overview of the components in the Vblock 340 architecture.

Figure 43


Vblock 720

The Vblock 720 is an enterprise and service-provider class system which incorporates many

components, including:

EMC Symmetrix® VMAX 10K, EMC Symmetrix 20K, or EMC Symmetrix 40K

(Optional) EMC VNX VG2 Gateway or EMC VNX VG8 Gateway

(Optional) EMC RecoverPoint

Cisco UCS Manager

EMC Unisphere® for VMAX on Windows

VMware vSphere Server Enterprise, vSphere 5.5, Plus VMware vCenter Server

Figure 6 provides more information:

Figure 54


Figure 65


EMC Enterprise Hybrid Cloud

EMC Enterprise Hybrid Cloud (EHC) empowers IT to be a Service Provider for internal

employees of the company, providing the best of both worlds; Private Cloud and Public Cloud

support. In today’s complex IT environments, providing the IT services requested by employees

is a time-consuming task involving methods and procedures that have to be followed by the

employee to request the service, and service level agreements (SLAs) which govern the relation

between IT and the employee.

EHC solves this complex environment by providing a self-service portal where employees

requiring service can request it without having to revert to IT. Thousands of hours have been

invested by the EMC Engineering Team to facilitate provisioning of IT services and providing a

marketplace of services that can be used by employees/users of this service. Moreover, EHC

can provide end-users and developers access to a marketplace of application resources, from

Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, and Pivotal Cloud Foundry, as well as the ability to add custom

applications.

This also facilitates control of the IT environment by assigning role-based access and privileges.

Additionally, IT controls who has visibility to which services, who can provision services directly,

and who can provision services only after approval from a manager or supervisor.

Figure 7


The IT Business Management Model is part of the EHC and can be used to make very granular

cost calculations. Decision makers can gain insight into the exact cost of the IT resources each

department is using including cost per virtual machines, per unit of storage, and even power and

cooling, manpower, and rent. Everything can be included in the calculation and the cost per unit

is entered in the system by IT. It is not something that EMC locked down in the solution. EMC

understands that providing full control and visibility over costs is a vital part of any decision

maker’s requirements and has ensured integration of IT Business Management with EHC.

EHC offers a choice of technology on which the hybrid cloud will be built; VMware, Microsoft, or

OpenStack.

Migration between clouds is a feature enabled by EHC, whether on- or off-premise, providing

full control via the self-service portal.

EMC Hybrid Cloud Solution is available in three pre-configured sizes:

1. 500 VMs

2. 5000 VMs

3. 10000VMs

Figure 8


Figure 96

Business Challenges

In the past, when businesses referred to the concept of virtualization, they mainly targeted

server virtualization which is simply making use of the existing CPU resources of a server and

enabling the division of a single hardware into multiple virtual machines. This has been true for

some time and IT have been the beneficiaries of this technology.

As the technology matured, the market began looking more towards making use of this

technology to benefit not just IT, but also end users and business units. There was clearly a

great potential and EHC solution arrived to address this great potential. Its main focus is on

increasing agility, mobility, and control of the IT resources and their consumption by the end

users and business units.

Legacy systems have encountered some restrictions, including:

Inefficiency and inflexibility

Slow, reactive responses to customer requests

Inadequate visibility of the requested infrastructure cost and usage

Limited choice of availability and protection services


Public Clouds address these challenges by providing a model where IT resource consumption

can be assigned very easily and cost models are clearly identified, leading to insight to the IT

organizations’ costs and consumption. However, there is a limiting factor which prohibits some

organizations from fully relying on public clouds; security and traceability of where the

organizations’ data assets are saved, and the level of security of this data.

This led to the need for the same flexible IT model but within the confines of the organization,

namely in the company’s private cloud. Moreover, features such as Data Protection, Disaster

Recovery, and Service Levels had to be addressed in the private cloud. This does not mean

public clouds should go away, but rather organizations can make use of public clouds in

situations where the cost-benefit balance makes sense. This gave rise to Hybrid Clouds, the

integration of Private and Public Clouds. The following factors should be considered in any

hybrid cloud implementation:

Quick deployment of the infrastructure so that business value can be recognized quickly

Reducing costs through higher utilization

Downtime and change control policies should be in place

Support agreements must be established for all elements of the solution


Key Components of EMC Enterprise Hybrid Cloud

Key components of the solution are shown in Figure 10.

Figure 10

7


Data center virtualization and cloud management

VMware vCloud Automation Center

VMware vCloud Automation Center (vCAC) is the end user interface/portal which allows for self-

service provisioning and lifecycle management of cloud services that comply with established

business policies. Authorized administrators, developers, and business users can request new

IT services and manage existing computer resources from predefined user-specific menus.

VMware vSphere ESXi and VMware vCenter Server

VMware vSphere ESXi is the virtualization platform above which the cloud infrastructure is built.

VMware enables running business-critical applications at lower total cost of ownership (TCO).

VMware vCenter Server provides management capabilities that provide insight to the virtual

environment for improved availability, performance, and capacity utilization.

VMware vCenter Orchestrator

VMware vCenter Orchestrator (vCO) is an IT process automation engine that enables

administrators and architects to develop complex automation tasks within the workflow

designer. The vCO library of pre-built activities, workflows, and plug-ins help accelerate the

customization of vCAC standard capabilities.

Figure 118


VMware vCloud Networking and Security

VMware vCloud Networking and Security (vCNS) is a software-defined networking and security

solution that provides a broad range of services in a single solution, including virtual firewall,

virtual private network (VPN), load balancing, and VXLAN-extended networks.

Premium deployment option: VMware NSX for vSphere

An alternative to vCNS, NSX provides next generation software-defined network virtualization

and offers additional functionality and improved performance over vCNS and traditional network

and security devices. Additional functionality offered by NSX include:

Distributed logical routing

Distributed firewalling

Logical load balancing

Support for Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), Intermediate System to Intermediate

System (IS-IS), and Open Shortest Path First (OSPF).

NSX also introduces Service Composer, which integrates with third-party security services.

VMware vCenter Operations Manager

VMware vCenter Operations Manager (vC Ops) provides a simplified approach to operations

management of vSphere by displaying information of infrastructure Health, Risk and Efficiency.

This provides insight into current utilization and expected future resource requirements, which

facilitates planning for future growth.

VMware vCenter Log Insight

VMware vCenter Log Insight delivers automated log management through log aggregation,

analytics, and search. It provides operational intelligence and enterprise-wide visibility needed

to proactively enable service levels and operational efficiency.

VMware IT Business Management Suite

VMware IT Business Management (ITBM) Suite provides for cost analysis and reporting as

explained earlier in this article.


EMC storage services

EMC ViPR

EMC ViPR is a EMC’s answer for the software defined storage segment. It enables aggregation

of storage resources under one management platform which provides more control and visibility

of the storage features offered in the private cloud environment.

EMC VNX and EMC Symmetrix VMAX

EMC VNX and EMC Symmetrix VMAX®are powerful, trusted, and smart storage array platforms

that provide the highest level of performance, availability, and intelligence in the hybrid cloud.

VNX is the midrange storage array while VMAX is the high end. They offer multiple features

including Fully Automated Storage Tiering for Virtual Pools™ (FAST® VP), enabling multiple

storage service levels which can be utilized in the hybrid cloud environment.

EMC ViPR SRM

EMC ViPR SRM enables visualization of applications to storage and monitoring and analysis of

configurations and capacity growth. Furthermore, it enables monitoring, analysis, and reporting

of block, file, and virtualized storage environments.


Building the Private Cloud Data Center on Vblock

Why EHC with VCE Vblock?

Vblock is the fastest way to deploy EHC. Vblock and EHC are pre-packaged and engineered

solutions which consist of a number of underlying components. EMC, VMware, and Cisco have

taken on the task of creating these pre-packaged solutions to lift the burden of integration off the

customer.

VCE Vblock systems enable EMC customers seeking to deploy EHC to build enterprise-class,

scalable, multi-tenant infrastructure that:

Guarantees interoperability as components are factory integrated

Validates patch interoperability with Vblock components, avoiding problems that typically

arise due to integration of several components in the infrastructure

Enable the end user to perform provisioning, monitoring, and management of the

infrastructure, without having to revert to the IT administrator

Maximizes asset utilization

Provides a single point of contact for the entire Vblock solution; no need to manage

multiple vendors to diagnose and resolve issues

The edge enjoyed by Public Cloud Providers has been that they provide infrastructure which

enables end-user agility and control. Today, EHC addresses this issue effectively and provides

for integration of Public and Private Clouds.


Figure 12 and 13 provide more insight to the solution.

Figure 129

Figure 1310


Conclusion

In this article, we discussed the EMC Enterprise Hybrid Cloud and the VCE Vblock solution and

elaborated on the different components included in each offering. Additionally, we focused on

the value proposition that Converged Infrastructure provides today’s IT world, which cannot fully

rely on Public Cloud Offering due to its inherent constraints. The answer is to utilize a Private

Cloud environment and integrate Public Cloud offering, thus providing the benefit of both worlds.


Appendix

1. http://www.1cloudroad.com/why-converged-infrastructure-technologies-are-important/

2. vce-facts-and-figures.pdf

3. vce-portfolio-update.pptx – Slide 3

4. http://www.vce.com/asset/documents/vblock-340-gen3-1-architecture-overview.pdf

Pages 7-9

5. http://www.vce.com/asset/documents/vblock-720-gen4-2-architecture-overview.pdf

Pages 7-9

6. https://infocus.emc.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/EMC-IT-Service-Story-

Map_Links1.pdf

7. https://www.emc.com/collateral/solution-overview/cloud/h13190-emc-hybrid-cloud-

foundation-sg.pdf Page 14

8. https://www.emc.com/collateral/solution-overview/cloud/h13190-emc-hybrid-cloud-

foundation-sg.pdf Page21

9. http://www.emc.com/sp/cloud/h13022-hybrid-cloud-sg-supplement-for-vblock.pdf Page

12

10. http://www.emc.com/sp/cloud/h13022-hybrid-cloud-sg-supplement-for-vblock.pdf Page

14

http://www.1cloudroad.com/why-converged-infrastructure-technologies-are-important/

http://www.vce.com/asset/documents/vblock-340-gen3-1-architecture-overview.pdf


https://infocus.emc.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/EMC-IT-Service-Story-Map_Links1.pdf


https://www.emc.com/collateral/solution-overview/cloud/h13190-emc-hybrid-cloud-foundation-sg.pdf




http://www.emc.com/sp/cloud/h13022-hybrid-cloud-sg-supplement-for-vblock.pdf

http://www.emc.com/sp/cloud/h13022-hybrid-cloud-sg-supplement-for-vblock.pdf


References



http://www.emc.com/collateral/solution-overview/h12476-so-hybrid-cloud.pdf

EMC HYBRID CLOUD 2.5 WITH VMWARE - Foundation Infrastructure Reference

Architecture White Paper

EMC HYBRID CLOUD 2.5 WITH VMWARE - Foundation Infrastructure Solution Guide

White Paper

EMC Enterprise Private Cloud with VMware vCloud Suite and VCE Vblock Systems

White Paper

https://infocus.emc.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/EMC-IT-Service-Story-

Map_Links1.pdf

EHC_2.5_OnePager_v3_EB

https://www.emc.com/auth/playbooks/cloud/off-premise-solutions-sp.htm

http://www.vce.com/about/company/history

VCE Partner Support Website

EMC believes the information in this publication is accurate as of its publication date. The

information is subject to change without notice.

THE INFORMATION IN THIS PUBLICATION IS PROVIDED “AS IS.” EMC CORPORATION

MAKES NO RESPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND WITH RESPECT TO

THE INFORMATION IN THIS PUBLICATION, AND SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIMS IMPLIED

WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Use, copying, and distribution of any EMC software described in this publication requires an

applicable software license.



http://www.emc.com/collateral/solution-overview/h12476-so-hybrid-cloud.pdf



https://www.emc.com/auth/playbooks/cloud/off-premise-solutions-sp.htm

http://www.vce.com/about/company/history

Sherif Mohsen Fadi Elhamy - Dell Technologies

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