Cloud Technologies

Jump straight to an abstract:  

• The Business Case for the Cloud
• The Role of WAN Optimization in Cloud
• Interoperable Cloud Storage with the CDMI
• Deploying Public, Private, and Hybrid Storage Clouds
• Enterprise Architecture and the Cloud
• Cloud Archive and Long Term Preservation Challenges and Best Practices

The Abstracts

The Business Case for the Cloud
Alex McDonald
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The fast emerging cloud services business arena is creating numerous new opportunities for both IT users and IT players beyond the traditional Enterprise IT ecosystem. In response, SNIA's Cloud Storage Initiative (CSI) has created the Cloud Data Management Interface (CDMI). Designed to enable interoperable cloud storage and data management, the CDMI specification is addressing a total cloud storage solution – helping users avoid the chaos of proprietary advances and partial solution APIs that would erode the integrity of the cloud model.   This presentation will cover popular use cases for cloud including storage clouds and enterprise or application specific clouds. Multi-tenancy, private, and hybrid clouds are of interest to IT professionals, and this tutorial explores various cloud options and scenarios, along with options and recommendations for building your business case.

Learning Objectives

• Understand your options for cloud and how to create a cloud business case 
• Gain an understanding of how popular cloud use cases are architected and implemented
• Understand what essential elements to include in an RFP/RFI, based on the cloud use case and the business cas

The Role of WAN Optimization in Cloud Infrastructures
Josh Tseng
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Cloud computing promises to deliver potential gains in efficiency and cost savings by consolidating IT assets into public and private data centers.  Virtualization technologies allow migration of virtual machines and data into and out of Cloud infrastructures.  However, cloud-hosted information assets must still be accessed by users over existing WAN infrastructures, where there are performance issues due to bandwidth and latency constraints.  Learn how WAN optimization is one of the key--and often overlooked--technology component necessary for the adoption of cloud computing.

Learning Objectives

• Understand the WAN-related performance problems and how they impact adoption of Cloud Computing technologies
• Learn how WAN optimization can facilitate the deployment and operation of Public and Private Clouds.
• Discover how WAN optimization is key to continued adoption of Cloud infrastructures in the future.

Interoperable Cloud Storage with the CDMI Standard
Mark Carlson
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The Cloud Data Management Interface (CDMI) is an industry standard on its way to ISO ratification. There is now an open source reference implementation available from SNIA as well. Storage vendors and Cloud providers have started announcing their implementations of the CDMI standard, demonstrating the reality of interoperable cloud storage. This talk will help you understand how to keep from getting locked into any given vendor by using the standard. Real world examples will help you understand how to apply this to your own situation.

Learning Objectives

• Walk away with an understanding of the specific CDMI features, such as a standard cloud interchange format, that enable interoperable cloud storage
• Gain a deeper understanding of the outstanding issues of cloud storage interoperability and how the standard helps ease this pain.
• Now that the standard is being implemented, understand what to put in an RFP for cloud storage that prevents vendor lock-in.

Deploying Public, Private, and Hybrid Storage Clouds
Marty Stogsdill
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Everyone has heard talk of cloud but do you know how to deploy one?  This session will be a technical dive into implementations of popular public, private, and hybrid storage cloud use cases and best practices examples of how they can fit into your existing IT operations.  SNIA’s Cloud Storage Initiative (CSI) has created the Cloud Data Management Interface (CDMI) as a de jure standard which can assist you in your cloud deployments utilizing both traditional file systems and new cloud file system formats.  This presentation will dive into the details of designing and deploying public, private, and hybrid storage clouds including how CDMI can assist with cloud federation, peering, differentiation, and how CDMI can interact with external systems for event management, configuration management, workflows, auditing, billing, and authorization.

Learning Objectives

• Understanding how cloud computing and specifically CDMI interact with traditional file systems (CIFS, NFS, FC) and new cloud formats such as Amazon S3.
• Gain an understanding of how cloud can integrate into existing IT Service Management (ITSM) or ITIL best practices for event, configuration, incident, and problem management.
• Presenting in detail reference architectures for cloud and an overview of the reference deployments done to date and how it fits into standard tiered storage enterprise architectures

Enterprise Architecture and the Cloud
Marty Stogsdill
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This SNIA tutorial will explore the impact public, private, or hybrid clouds will have on existing enterprise architecture and also show ways that established enterprise architecture processes can help align Cloud deployments to business requirements.  Enterprise architecture is a tool organizations leverage to ensure mapping of IT solutions to business or organizational requirements.  Deployed too loosely an organization may not receive noticeable value and conversely if enterprise architecture is deployed too rigidly it can be actively avoided.    If IT organizations do not alter existing enterprise architectures to allow for Cloud deployments internal users may choose to adopt services from Cloud providers independently of their internal IT and IT organizations without established enterprise architectures can receive benefits from not only exploring cloud options but also adopting established best practices.    The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) and the Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA) are the most popular enterprise architecture methodologies found in US IT end users and are also the basis for proprietary vendor and consultancy derivatives.  Cloud deployments can specifically impact the Architecture Vision, Opportunities and Solutions, Migration Planning, and Implementation Governance phases of TOGAF’s Architecture Development Method (ADM) and the Service Component, Data, and Technical Reference Models in the FEA methodology.    Enterprise architecture’s should leverage vendor neutral standards such the Cloud Data Management Interface (CDMI) that is designed to enable interoperable cloud storage and data management while allowing users to avoid lock-in by proprietary solutions.  CDMI can specifically impact an organizations enterprise architecture strategy by:  - Creating the option of federating data across multiple public Cloud providers, or a combination of public and internal/private Clouds (TOGAF Architecture Vision, Opportunities and Solutions, and Migration Planning phases & FEA Technical Reference Model phase)  - Ensure data integrity so an outage at a public Cloud provider does not bring down an organization’s IT resources (TOGAF Architecture Vision and Implementation Governance phases & FEA Service Component and Data Reference Models)  - Allow data to be moved into or out of a public or private Cloud seamlessly (TOGAF migration planning phase & FEA Data and Technical Reference Models)

Learning Objectives

• Understand the goals of enterprise architecture, why organizations leverage established frameworks (TOGAF or FEA), and what can go wrong with enterprise architecture in practice
• Attendees will walk away seeing the value in leveraging enterprise architecture best practices in any IT project but especially in Cloud deployments
• Leverage established enterprise architecture frameworks to translate both the revolutionary and evolutionary impacts Cloud technologies can have on an IT organization into realizable business value to their organization

Cloud Archive and Long Term Preservation Challenges and Best Practices
Chad Thibodeau
Sebastian Zangaro
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Cloud storage is touted as being the end-all solution to a variety of current business challenges—a very important one being the explosive growth in the amount data that needs to be archived and retained for a long period of time.  However, there are significant concerns businesses have raised in putting their data into the Cloud such as: the lack of an industry standard for data validation, what may happen to their data if the Cloud provide dissolves or gets acquired, how to ensure that formats and integrity are maintained if the data needs to be migrated from one Cloud provider to another.  Furthermore, regulatory and compliance issues (e.g. digital auditing) may become even more difficult with the use of public clouds for data archiving and preservation.  This technical session will address the questions of how companies can successfully utilize the Cloud for archiving and long-term data preservation.

Learning Objectives

• The first learning objective is to understand how SNIA defines Cloud Archiving (as opposed to Cloud Storage or Backup) and long term preservation.
• The second learning objective is to better understand the challenges that exist in archiving data within the Cloud, migrating data from one Cloud provider to another and how to ensure data integrity is maintained within the Cloud throughout the life of the archive
• The third learning objective is to understand how the use of capacity optimization technologies complements the use of the Cloud for archival and long-term retention.