Embrace the Hybrid Cloud with VMC on AWS
According to Gartner, most of the midsize and enterprise customers will be adopting multi or hybrid cloud services. Companies have already realized that in order to move to the public cloud, it is important to structure workload in a hybrid cloud model.
Companies must understand that hybrid IT is not an easy methodology and therefore they must organize their existing IT resources and application workloads both on-premises and in public cloud efficiently to accomplish the goals of hybrid model. Additionally, they must also look for the right skills for different private/public clouds and different sets of tools from respective cloud and hybrid cloud managed services providers.
At Sify, we define some guidelines and structures to right-fit your workloads in the hybrid cloud. Please read on to know how Sify can help customers identify the right cloud (from the set of appropriate private and/or hosted private cloud services) for different sets of workloads.
Learn why we are one of the most trusted providers of hybrid cloud managed services globally. Read about our hybrid cloud managed services offering to know more.
Unique Challenges in Hybrid Cloud and Hybrid Cloud Services
In hybrid cloud, there are some unique challenges that businesses need to address first. Key challenges that need to be addressed while designing solutions on Hybrid Cloud are mentioned herein.
- Generally, it is very difficult to identify the most suitable cloud environment and manage the cost of different clouds.
- Though all cloud environments are powerful in providing features like scalability and elasticity, however the process of managing a hybrid cloud is quite a complex task.
- Security Risks: The threat of data breach or data loss is perhaps the biggest challenge faced during hybrid cloud adoption. Generally, companies prefer on-premises private clouds to protect data locally. However, in order to ensure top-tier security of data and applications on hybrid cloud, companies must draft robust data protection policies and procedures.
How can you migrate your workloads seamlessly to hybrid cloud? Read about our cloud migration services and hybrid cloud managed services offering to know how we can help.
Identify Applications for Hybrid Cloud
It is very important to identify applications for hybrid cloud, and your decision must be based on applicationβs architecture, behavior and user accessibility. Below are some key points to remember while designing an effective hybrid cloud strategy: β
- Consider the compatibility of applications before deciding whether you want to continue running the applications in an on-prem cloud environment or migrate them to Public Cloud.
- Identify the running cost/budget for an application and compare it with different cloud providers to choose the most suitable cloud platform that suits your budgetary outlines and business requirements.
- Pay due attention to licensing requirements before migrating to Public/Private Cloud because a minor loophole in this aspect can have a major impact on the overall business.
- Relook experience of existing IT teams to manage different Private/Public clouds seamlessly.
Not sure how to take the first step? Connect with us to explore our proven capabilities in hybrid cloud services, cloud migration services and hybrid cloud managed services. Click here.
Why VMC on AWS as Hybrid Cloud Choice?
VMware Cloud (also called as VMC) on AWS brings VMwareβs enterprise-class Software-Defined DataΒ CentreΒ software to the AWS Cloud and enables customers to run production applications across VMware vSphere-based private, public, and hybrid cloud environments, with optimized access to AWS services.
AWS is VMwareβs preferred public cloud partner for all vSphere-based workloads.Β The VMware and AWS partnership delivers a faster, easier, and cost-effective path to the hybrid cloud while allowing customers to modernize applications enabling faster time-to-market and increased innovation.
New Amazon EC2 i3en.metal instances for VMware Cloud on AWS, powered by Intel Xeon Scalable processors, deliver high networking throughput and lower latency so you can migrate data centers to the cloud for rapid data centers evacuation, disaster recovery, and application modernization.
VMC on AWS can be the right choice because VMware has been a trusted virtualization platform for many years in the industry and enterprise VMware ensures that all your applications run seamlessly. Plenty of companies are already running on VMware platform and have applications running on it. Below are some key identifiers for VMC on AWS:
- VMware SDDC is running on bare metal, which is delivered, operated, supported by VMware
- On-demand scalability and flexible consumption
- Full operational consistency with on-premises SDDC
- Seamless workload portability and hybrid operations
- Global AWS footprint, reach, and availability
- Native AWS services accessibility
Explore Sifyβs expertise in the hybrid cloud and hybrid cloud managed services space. Click here.
How VMC on AWS Solution Works
VMware Cloud on AWS infrastructure runs on dedicated, single tenant hosts provided by AWS in a single account. Each host is equivalent to an Amazon EC2 I3.metal instance (2 sockets with 18 cores per socket, 512 GiB RAM, and 15.2 TB Raw SSD storage). Each host is capable of running many VMware Virtual Machines (tens to hundreds depending on their compute, memory and storage requirements). Clusters can range from a minimum 3 hosts up to a maximum of 16 hosts per cluster. A single VMware vCenter server is deployed per SDDC environment.
How do We Access AWS Services?
For companies that are using VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC) as a production environment for their business-critical application, it will require connectivity to an AWS account. This is enabled by an AWS elastic network interface which provides a 25Gbps connectivity between VMC and AWS. Applications deployed on VMC can leverage native AWS services for storage, EC2 instances, RDS Databases, load balancing and DNS routing, etc., providing customers with the best of both worlds. These native services can be accessed from applications deployed on VMC and include:
- Simple Storage Service (S3)
- Elastic File Service (EFS)
- Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)
Sifyβs Value Propositions to Help Customer Who are Looking for Hybrid Cloud Services
Sify has been in the Cloud industry since 2012 and has its own cloud for enterprise customers which can be tailored based on the requirement. Over the last few years, Sify has been involved in large enterprise customer requirement understanding, solutions & implementation across Private, Public & Hybrid Clouds.
Sify has dedicated, experienced and certified SMEs involved during solution stage and implementation and to provide operations services which will enable businesses to accelerate the adoption of Hybrid Cloud.
Our approach is to identify potential use cases for Hybrid Cloud options for VMC on AWS and native AWS services during the initial assessment and design phase, and we also suggest the most suitable services that can help customers meet the strategic goals. These services include the following:
- Discovery Workshop
- Assessment
- Build and Migrate
Feel free to contact us to provide your organization with tailored solutions with the required support across the various stages of the setup of VMC & AWS and migration of workloads.
Simplified Cloud Adoption for SAP S/4HANA
Let Sify, your Cloud expert manage your SAP Migration
Every transformation journey begins with adoption of digital technologies on Cloud. Forward-looking organizations worldwide are looking for Cloud-powered solutions to attain the highest level of business agility, scalability, and compliance in the most cost-effective way. Additionally, Cloud-powered solutions facilitate access to new generation technologies, such as IoT, AI, and ML, which help you achieve your transformation goals in an outcome-focused manner.
SAP S/4HANA is a modern business solution suite that fosters intelligent innovations, business process improvement, and IT landscape transformation, without any upfront capital investment in infrastructure, database, hardware, etc. Moreover, it comes with pervasive data modelling capabilities and simplified deployment roadmap options.
Cloud adoption for SAP S/4HANA
Powered with Cloud and Analytics, SAP S/4HANA is undoubtedly a comprehensive, intelligent business suite delivering to organizations, unique insights, and intelligence. However, moving to SAP S/4HANA is not as simple as it may seem initially. It is dependent on your insight and capability to fundamentally examine your business processes, infrastructure, and data. Furthermore, you need to reconsider your business objectives and project priorities to achieve seamless migration to Cloud and realize all its benefits.
To evaluate how SAP S/4HANA can benefit your organization, it is always sensible to assess the consumption and configuration of your existing SAP environment. Subsequently, you need to create a migration to Cloud roadmap for seamless technical deployment, depending on project specific requirements, strategic transformation goals, etc.
Irrespective of the approach you choose, be it New Implementation or System Conversion, there are various advisory tools, such as Business Scenario Recommendations, Readiness Check Tool, etc. that can help you gain the necessary insight and confidence to simplify your move to SAP S/4HANA. After gaining clarity, you should continue forward with your S/4HANA adoption on Cloud in a phase-driven manner.
Five phases of successful SAPΒ S/4HANA Cloud journey
Re-evaluate your current stage and develop a vision:
Before you start your Cloud journey, answer the reasons behind it. You need to evaluate your current IT landscape, analyze your business strategy, consider cross-functional dependencies, and develop a strategic vision before moving to SAP S/4HANA. Herein, Business Scenario Recommendations (BSR) for SAP S/4HANA can help you generate a comprehensive report on how your current system would be impacted and how you should prepare adeptly to derive true value propositions.
Explore the value of SAP S/4HANA:
Once you have evaluated your business landscape, you must start exploring all the value propositions of SAP S/4HANA that can help you transform the overall IT landscape and improve business processes. Mapping key business functions is yet another major area you need to consider while analyzing the values of SAP S/4HANA. SAP Innovation & Optimization Pathfinder can help you analyze all the business improvement opportunities. It also provides rich analysis of innovation recommendations, innovation acceleration, and IT optimization.
Future State Design:
During this phase, you need to start focusing on the technical aspects of your migrating specific parts of your IT landscape or processes to SAP S/4HANA. It is always advisable to define processes and IT landscape that you think are suitable for SAP S/4HANA in order to devise a future-ready migration layout. During this phase, organizations count on different tools such as Readiness Check and Maintenance Planner. Readiness Check highlights the required solution adjustments that are needed for system conversion. Maintenance Planner generates the stack file online from SAP marketplace, which is required to download the SAP S/4HANA software.
Migration and roadmap:
Before the transition begins, you need to outline clearly defined migration strategies to identify, evaluate and select the best migration scenario. To attain seamless transformation and successful SAP S/4HANA migration, you must define the strategy that best suits your vision depending on your current IT stage.
Plan S/4HANA Implementation:
The actual transition begins in this phase, and you must embrace a high-level project management approach to successfully migrate to SAP S/4HANA. As majority of organizations lack technical skill, competence, and expertise to implement such a project, it makes good business sense to collaborate with an expert.
Why Sify for SAP migration, infrastructure, and management?
It is important not to get overwhelmed by the adoption complexity, as finding the right partner will alleviate most of your concerns. Sify has a rich experience and all the state-of-the-art tools required for successfully migrating heterogeneous or homogeneous SAP workloads and managing them.
Sify provides you the option of choosing the most appropriate environment for your SAP workloads. You can host your SAP workloads on HANA grid (which is certified by SAP) on Sifyβs proprietary Cloud β CloudInfinit. You also have the choice of deploying it on a Hyperscaler (AWS, Azure, etc.) with DR on Sifyβs SAP grid or vice versa to leverage the benefits of Hybrid Cloud. Furthermore, we hold a distinct level of specialization in ECC to S/4HANA conversions, implementation and carve out scenarios. Sifyβs integrated play across Network, Cloud and SAP ensures that you get flexibility, agility, and choice for comprehensive coverage of all your SAP needs.
Snapshot of Sifyβs SAP offerings
How to orchestrate workloads between public and private clouds
Imagine how an orchestra combines a multitude of instruments to create a symphony. In the same way, a hybrid cloud orchestrates, skillfully combining public and private cloud, to create a seamless cloud infrastructure.Β As multiple applications on a publicβprivate hybrid infrastructure could add to complexities, with the help of orchestration, a centralized structure can be created to allow management of multiple applications using a single interface. Differences in bandwidths, workloads, and access controls can all be managed by this orchestration software.
Integration of different technologies in a hybrid infrastructure determines how effective the orchestration is. For seamless integration, the compatibility between different systems and applications must be ensured, so that orchestration of workloads between public and private clouds is seamless, providing the needed high-performance compute. In the absence of orchestration, enterprises using a hybrid cloud would be forced to manage the public and private clouds in silos, which can put pressure on their resources and demand additional overheads. In addition, orchestration provides the benefit of streamlining resources for coordination, making it easier to manage multiple workloads.
Orchestration on the Private Cloud
A private cloud may not be cheap, but it brings its advantages. It gives greater control over assets and provides enhanced cloud security, resiliency, and flexibility to the system. With private cloud orchestration, automation of the infrastructure could be managed, by establishing workflows that work without human intervention. While private cloud automation would initiate processes automatically, orchestration results in a unified structure of workflows. In this arrangement, resources can be provisioned as needed to optimize the workloads on a private cloud. Thus, an organization can realize savings in engineering time, and IT costs.
What does orchestration involve?
Orchestration enables a coordinated deployment of automation services on the cloud. Cloud orchestration happens at three levels: resource, workload, and service. At the resource level, IT resources are allocated, and at workload level, they are shared. At the service level, services are deployed so that shared resources are optimally utilized. While individual automation only takes care of a single task, orchestration automates end-to-end processes. It is similar to creating a process flow that automates the sequence of automation. The workflows created in the process enable technologies to manage themselves. There are many orchestration tools available in the market that can be used by organizations based on their individual requirements. Some popular tools are Chef, Puppet, Heat, Juju and Docker. Chef is used at OS level while Puppet is more popular at middleware level. Heat is an orchestration method developed from OpenStack, and it can orchestrate everything in OpenStack. Juju is used at the service level while Docker serves both as a tool for orchestration and technology for virtualization.
Workload placement considerations
In a hybrid cloud, both public and private applications generate different workloads. To manage these workloads, and handle their seamless switch between public and private cloud infrastructure, an appropriate cloud strategy is needed. Distributing the workload between different IT assets is aΒ Β business decision in which regulatory compliance requirements, trade-offs, business risks, cost, and growth priorities are taken into consideration. For instance, certain countries like China may have certain federal restrictions on the use of the internet for which a private WAN can be deployed. The cost could be a concern for an organization looking to provide last-mile connectivity if private cloud is deployed, but with public infrastructure used for addressing service needs of remote locations, cost savings can be realized. A private or hybrid cloud may require establishing an in-house team for IT support while public cloud can work without any, and with limited, cloud expertise in-house.
Technical parameters such as data volume, performance, security, and integration are considered when orchestrating workloads between different cloud deployments. Based on the level of importance each of these attributes carries, workloads can be shifted between the public and private cloud. Public clouds could be deployed for workloads that require a higher level of security but a lower level of integration and performance, such as CRM and information systems. When a continuous demand for a higher level of integration arises, an organization may have to add a private cloud to the IT infrastructure. Workloads like file printing, networking, and systems management may work with either nature of the cloud. However, if data volumes grow, the public cloud would not suffice, and the organization should orchestrate to a private cloud. Applications like enterprise resource planning, data marts, and Big Data analytics make use of high volumes of data that need a private cloud to manage.
A true hybrid cloud allows for easy migration of workloads between public and private clouds. It is always wise to develop a hybrid cloud strategy depending upon workloads, as portability of workloads becomes possible and traditional applications can be bridged with modern applications across the cloud infrastructure. When cloud deployments are planned based on the changing needs of the workloads using orchestration, the enterprise can make their IT infrastructure more optimized, flexible, and adaptive.
Sifyβs many enterprise-class cloud services deliver massive scale and geographic reach with minimum investment. We help design the right solution to fit your needs and budget, with ready-to-use compute, storage and network resources to host your applications on a public, private or hybrid multi-tenant cloud infrastructure.
Cloud powered by Content Delivery Network β The Elixir of Internet World
Are we all aware of the staggering statistics about Future of Internet?
India will add 40% of the worldβs incremental Internet users by 2020!
More than 175 million people will do their purchases online because of convenient payment options like e-wallets and easy payments. E-commerce business will be worth $17 billion at the end of FY 2016.
82% of CMOs (across all Industry verticals) report that the Brand health of their organization is directly proportional to the number of visitors of their websites.
When computing power was at a premium in 1990s, web pages were often hosted in local standalone servers and were served as unchanging text files. This type of static content is efficient, but it can quickly become stagnant and viewers lose interest. With the advent of low-cost computing and faster Internet speeds, the concept of Dynamic Content was burgeoned that could capture user attention due to sheer dynamism and possibilities of creativity. The low-cost pay-as-you-go model is ensured via virtualization when we have transformed to Cloud. In bygone days, IT would do a CAPEX investment in Hardware purchase and invest in maintenance especially when your best hired resources should be focusing on core business.
For the organizations where-in Internet facing Application/Site performance and users experience is the key to growth, Cloud Services powered by best CDN (Content Delivery Network) is the panacea. Quick, reliable, secure and personalized viewing experiences across all the devices on your fingertips is what CDN offers.
Empiricism is the theory that all knowledge is based on experience derived from the senses. Thatβs where human beings sense of feeling will always reign over machines or robots. Businesses in all verticals flourish only when Empiricism gives way to a satisfied customer. It thrives on the fact that customer thinks exactly the thoughts which you want them to think so that they get hooked-on and his brain signals his fingers again and again to key in just the URL of your website and better still β donβt even open the competitorβs website on the adjacent tab.
CDN service providers delivers Internet contents like β web-objects, Applications, live/on-demand streaming media and social networks to the end-users.
Load-time, Availability, Response time, Security are few parameters on which a good CDN is adjudged.
Direct visible impact of CDN is on Business Revenue, Business Agility and increase in ability to take it to global scale.
How?
Take an example, Mr. ABC, the CIO of organization β XYZ is sitting in US with best Internet Connection speed (25 Mbps), his site is hosted in Data Center in India with Best Compute, Storage, and Network, Redundancy ensured at the First mile. When he accesses his website β www.xyz.com, he starts counting β 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7β¦..while his eyes are forced to see that vexatious Loading icon.
Oops, it takes 8 seconds to load the Home Page of his own Brand. If I were a site visitor, I would definitely go to next tab and load another site to do justice to those 8 wasted seconds. So result is rise in distraction, confusion and higher chances of site abandonment and hence Revenue.
Thatβs where the concept of CONTENT DELIVERY NETWORK was incepted.
Following are the series of steps executed when customer keys in his web-site address on the address bar of his browser:
Step 1: Browser contacts DNS for conversion into IP address
Step 2: Browser will establish connection with the web server that hosts the website using IP address
Step 3: Retrieval of HTML code over the internet of the requested web-page
Step 4: HTML Content is delivered over the internet to the browser which then displays the HTML page β bare bone html structure, followed by hyper-linked stuff β static images etc. and lastly Dynamic content.
Step 5: When you leave the browser window idle for long or close it, the connection with Web server will end
So Step#4 above entails the need of a CDN to ensure rendering of page with lightening speeds. In absence of CDN, the complications of middle-mile will ruin all the performance optimizations, best coding practices you might have followed in creating your website.
Static files like images, javascript, css files can be cached by the browser so that in future it doesnβt have to fetch them again. Of course, many technologies and CDNs exist which ensures caching. The Site owners face the chill wind with regard to performance only when there is good amount of Dynamic content in their website.
Dynamic content is web content that changes between subsequent requests based on user access time, user preferences and personal information in order to ensure an engaging online experience. Some of the worldβs largest websites are powered primarily by dynamic content as static content cannot capture user interest. According to recent studies, Seventy-four percent of online consumers get frustrated when a website promotes content that isnβt tailored to their interests
E.g. Amazon is delivering you a personalized content experience in an attempt to make you buy more. Notice the section called βBuy It Againβ below the items you want to purchase. Amazon is populating this section by pulling your previous orders from its backend servers. This is much more effective for upselling purposes than listing random items.
The very reason why site performance is impacted in case of dynamic content is due to enforced round trips to the origin server, as it cannot be cached.
Only few CDNs on the planet give the required acceleration to dynamic content. Several techniques like route optimization are needed to optimize communication between the CDN edge servers and origin infrastructure to deliver dynamic content to the user that avoids Internet problem spots.
So the philosophy of having good dynamic content in your website with the lure of increasing user interest and hence hits, should be carefully chalked out along with the appropriate choice of CDN adoption.
Walking with the false myths of considering CDN as just a redundancy (or good-to-have) service can jeopardize the Business strategy significantly and will eventually become the bane of Business advancement prospects.
Facing performance pressures with your Websites and Web Portals? Feel free to reach out to us atΒ cdn@sifycorp.com.
