Abstract:

This article (1) provides an overview of the strategies for the key cloud computing vendors as Microsoft, VMware, Eucalyptus and Red Hat, to understand how a cloud provider's plans can affect our environment; (2) outlines the architectural foundations of private cloud infrastructure, and (3) analyses best practices in implementing and managing private clouds. The paper presents our scientific research within the framework of the currently running project of the R&D Laboratory on eLearning Technologies and Standards, namely “Learning and Knowledge Management Fostered by ILIAS”, 2011-2012, funded by the Technical University – Sofia R&D Sector.
The main purpose of our study is to discuss the concept of a private cloud that has emerged recently as a way of managing information technology resources so that they appear to be operated for a single organization from a logical point of view, but may be built from underlying physical resources that belong to the organization, an external service provider, or a combination of both. When planning to invest in cloud computing technology, we must examine factors like degree of lock-in, openness of application programming interfaces, service-level agreements, open standards support, scalability, licensing and pricing. This study also gives examples for state-of-the-art models of private cloud infrastructures, the benefits they provide and implementation of Infrastructure-as-a-Service model of virtualization, based on Microsoft Hyper-V Server. The private cloud concept is both fundamental and transformational. It proposes a distinct abstraction of public resources combined with internal resources that provides equivalent functionality and assurance to a physical collection of resources operated for a single organization, wherein the public resources may be shared with many other organizations that are also simultaneously being provided their own private clouds. The concept also provides an actionable path for an organization to incorporate cloud computing into its IT infrastructure. Once the organization is managing its existing resources as a private cloud (i.e., with virtualization and standard interfaces for resource management), the organization can then seamlessly extend its management domain to encompass external resources hosted by a cloud provider and connected over a VPN. Several technologies are essential to the effective implementation of a private cloud. Virtual data centres provide the insulation that sets one organization’s virtual resources apart from those of other organizations and from the underlying physical infrastructure. Virtual applications collect those resources into separately manageable units. Policy-based deployment and policy compliance offer a means of control and verification of the operation of the virtual applications across the virtual data centres. Finally, service management integration bridges across the underlying resources to give an overall, logical and actionable view. These key technologies enable cloud providers to offer organizations the cost and efficiency benefits of cloud computing as well as the operational autonomy and flexibility to which they have been accustomed.

Keywords:

Cloud computing, private cloud, infrastructure management, virtualization.