openBench Labs

Executive Briefing:

CloudShare Jumpstarts The Staging and Collaborative

Testing Of Business Workflows via Cloud-based VMs

Cloud-based Workflow Virtualization

January 2, 2011

MOVING VIRTUALIZATION FROM MACHINES TO WORKFLOWS

In the midst of global economic turmoil, data centers now face tight budgets andstaffing pressures at a time when solutions to improve IT efficiency are at an all timehigh in complexity. To raise the efficiency of IT operations, the consensus among CIOs isthat virtualization of systems and storage in a Virtual Operating Environment (VOE) isthe magic bullet for hitting higher resource utilization and lower management costs. Thescope of this consensus is so broad that Symantec’s 2010 State of the Data Center reportpegs 83 percent of 1,780 IT sites—representing a full range of small- to large-enterprises—were in some stage of working with server virtualization.

An importantbenefit of a VOE isthe ability to let ITadministratorswork with a limitednumber of abstractdevice pools ratherthan multipleinstances ofproprietary devices.Nonetheless,virtualized systemsand storageintroduce multiplelevels of logicalabstraction andresourceredirection, whichobscures andcomplicatesimportant IToperations.

For savvy CIOswith internalconstituencies, as

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ExecutiveBriefing:

CloudShare Jumpstarts The Staging and CollaborativeTesting Of Business Workflows via Cloud-based VMs

Jack FegreusJanuary 2, 2011

Hypervisor-Independent Cloud Computing

CloudShare Enterprise Development Platform for VM Workflow1) Rapidly Provision Virtual Environments: CloudShare supports a template library of

virtual machines complete with Windows and Linux operating systems and commonapplications such as SQL Server, SharePoint 2010, Oracle, Active Directory, and MSOffice, to enable the provisioning of working VMs in a matter of minutes.

2) Virtualize Entire Environments: CloudShare’s application management layerfeatures a hierarchy of virtualized infrastructure constructs that extend to virtualprototypes, which consist of virtual machines, storage, networks, and installedsoftware and are virtualized as an atomic element for snapshots.

3) Generate Multiple Virtual Environments: CloudShare builds an environment ondemand for each user by assigning the snapshot of a prototype a time package foroperating the environment and access rights for the objects in the prototype basedon user identity.

4) Easy to use Drag-and-Drop Integration: By leveraging RDP protocol support,CloudShare provides developers with a drag-and-drop interface between theirdesktop PC and the VMs in their working environment.

5) Share Virtual Environments via the Web without Agents: Automated emails toclients allow developers to send invitations to access virtual environments via theweb and share files.

6) Track and Analyze Response to Invitations and Usage: Advanced analytics trackand differentiate guests from multiple partners while tracking session events andtime on line.

well as CTOs, integrators, and consultants serving external constituencies, CloudShareprovides a cloud-based extended VMware environment to build and share sophisticatedIT solutions for complex application-driven IT environments. Using CloudShare’s uniqueability to virtualize an entire workflow of VMs and the software running on those VMs,IT developers can rapidly create prototypes of complex business solutions.

More importantly,the next wave ofvirtualization projectswill see a shift in thefocus of IT fromopportunisticconsolidation projectsto the complexapplication-centricissues of critical business processes. New virtualization projects will involve multiplevirtual machines (VMs) and must meet rigorous Service Level Agreements (SLAs) forprocess availability and continuity.

IT projects of this scope raise significant issues with respect to provisioning hardwareand software for the pre-production environment. In addition, IT providers must be able todemonstrate that a solution is able to support a business process to a level that isacceptable to line of business executives.

Using CloudShare, IT providers are able to collaborate with customers, partners, andcolleagues in a way that goes well beyond point-and-show presentations that characterizestandard webinars. CloudShare provides users with true hands-on interaction with adedicated production-class instance of a complete IT environment.

What distinguishes the CloudShare user experience from that of typical cloud-basedVMware environments is CloudShare’s ability to virtualize an independent copy of anentire workflow—VMs, storage, networking, and preinstalled software—and present it withan easy-to-use drag-and-drop user interface. Virtualized on demand workflows also boostdevelopment capabilities by allowing software teams to freeze entire workflows to tracksubtle integration problems that can degrade a process workflow without actuallyintroducing a traceable error. As a result, any IT-provider can now lay a foundation for arock-solid excellence by delivering over the web robust, agent-less solutions for pre-production tasks such as development, testing, QA, staging, and back-end training sessions.

Furthermore, CloudShare provides IT providers with client marketing options andsales tools that are as powerful as the development tools. With the growing adoption ofIT Service Management (ITSM) paradigms, including SLAs, even CIOs now have to sellthe credibility of IT internally to line of business executives. As a result, IT providerswith internal, as well as external constituencies can benefit from the use of CloudShareeven if they are not developing VM-based services.

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“What distinguishes the CloudShare user experiencefrom that of typical cloud-based VMware

environments is CloudShare’s ability to virtualize anindependent copy of an entire workflow—VMs, storage,networking, and preinstalled software—and present itwith an easy-to-use drag-and-drop user interface.”

VIRTUALIZATION OF VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS

Key drivers of the next wave ofvirtualization projects for mission-criticalapplications are the growing concerns ofline of business executives over businesscontinuity in a competitive 24x7 economicenvironment. The challenge for IT is toassuage the business continuity fears ofcorporate executives within budget constraints that exclude costly disaster recoverycomponents, such as fault-tolerant servers, redundant hardware and software, andstandby network bandwidth.

The cost-effective solutionfor business continuity that ITis now embracing is anextended VOE for missioncritical applications. Using ahierarchy of workloads asfundamental building blocks,IT can respond in minutes tochanges in businessprocessing via the automaticprovisioning and moving ofVMs. This is a game changerfor the old perception of IT asbeing a cost center and not abusiness enabler.

Nonetheless, movingbeyond simple stand-aloneVM solutions into the world

of complex business workloads increases the complexity of provisioning and prototyping.Using CloudShare, however, IT can focus entirely on the construct of a workload, whichhas a natural affinity to a CloudShare environment and a business service.

FROM WORKFLOW PROBLEM TO CLOUD PROTOTYPE

Large complex workflows are especially problematic for in-house IT groups. The issuefor them is the freeing up sufficient resources to provision a full environment for testingand evaluation. Using the CloudShare environment, the only resource needed for testingand development is a desktop PC with a high-speed connection to the internet.

To test the ability to stage a second-generation proof of concept VOE thatdemonstrates the ability to deploy and collaborate about a business continuity SLA, weused CloudShare to create a prototype cloud platform with five VMs: four servers andone desktop. Three servers ran 32-bit Windows Server 2008, the fourth ran 64-bit

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OS AND SOFTWARE TEMPLATES

IT professionals can select from numerous OS and applications software provided byCloudShare to jumpstart the building of prototypes without having to provision software or theappropriate licenses. Using the new CloudShare ProPlus edition, which is geared toward ITdevelopers, choices are made by picking from a software carousel.

“Using the CloudShare environment,the only resource needed for testing

and development is a desktop PC with ahigh-speed connection to the internet.”

Windows Server 2008 R2, and the desktop VM ran Windows XP Pro. In addition, weinstalled Active Directory 2008, DNS, IIS 2008, and Exchange 2010 on the servers. Wealso installed up.time 5 server resource monitoring to track performance, resource usage,and SLA compliance. On the desktop VM, we ran MS Office 2010 and Acrobat X.

To simplify theconfiguration of VOEprototypes, CloudShare hasagreements with variousvendors to provide developerswith VM templates that includean operating system andimportant business systems. Asa result, developers usingCloudShare don’t have topurchase and install operatingsystems and applications.

There is a library oftemplates for VMs that includea pre-installed version ofWindows or Linux, as welltemplates that include commonWindows server and desktopapplications, such as MS Office,SharePoint 2010, MS SQL andOracle. In addition CloudShareis adding applications fromother vendors, including SAP.

For our test environment,we were able to utilize a VMwith Windows Server andActive Directory configured foruse a Primary DomainController. In addition, ourWindows XP Pro client desktop

system had MS Office 2010 pre-installed.

SIMPLIFIED CLOUD PROVISIONING

More importantly for prototype development, CloudShare provides a robust drag-and-drop environment that supports file sharing between the PCs or workstations used byIT professionals and the VMs that they are accessing. In particular, access to a VM usingthe Windows RDP client is simplified through the CloudShare environments display,which identifies all VMs in the prototype and their configurations.

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ENVIRONMENT VIRTUALIZATION

For each user, a unique environment is created on demand from a snapshot of a prototype,which consists of VMs, storage, networks, and installed software. A CloudShare environmentadds a run time component and refines the prototype by defining access specificationsincluding automatic logins. In addition, the environment provides a view list for VM access.

Both the internal andexternal addresses are providedfor each VM. Using the externaladdress, a connection can bemade using the RDP client on aWindows system or a connectioncan be made directly using a webbrowser. This later method canalso be set for RDP and filesharing. In addition, a VPN canbe configured to enhanceconnectivity between on sitesystems and the cloudenvironment.

Using both access methods,we configured IIS 2008,Exchange 2010 and up.time 5 onthree Windows servers. For ourSLA proof-of-conceptdemonstration, we utilized ourVM running up.time 5 to createmonitoring services for eachvirtual server in our prototype.

We also defined availability and performance Service Level Objectives for our SLA.These objectives were dependent on both our AD controller and the VM runningExchange 2010.

With our proof-of-concept test designed to demonstrate the use of our software andVMs in a client’s production environment, we made the desktop VM the centralreporting device within our VoE. As a result, we were able to simplify our client’sexperience by allowing them to view and manipulate all critical software from thedesktop VM. In addition, we set up the desktop VM to display project documentationwhen a user logged in.

With each client enjoying a private instance of the test environment, each client couldinteract with the proof-of-concept demonstration in a completely isolated sandboxenvironment. Every invitee client was free to engage or adjust any settings without regardto any other guest user. For our test demonstration, this was critical for the integrity ofthe user experience with regard to both the functionality and the performance of ourworkflow.

In particular we had chosen to build a demo of a service resource monitoringapplication that was designed to provide an IT operations group with the ability to bothmonitor and define an SLA for business processes. Such a demonstration would not bemeaningful without full isolation of each user’s environment.

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VM TRANSACTION PERFORMANCE

From the desktop VM in our CloudShare environment, we accessed the up.timesoftware, which was running on a Windows 2008 R2 server, via the up.time web portal.We then assessed the performance of our VM running Exchange 2010 while it ran theJetStress benchmark. With a single virtual drive for the OS, the Exchange logs, and themailbox database, our VM server was still able to process close to 700 transactions persecond during the database maintenance phase of JetStress.

BUILDING IT CREDIBILITY

While CloudShare provides anexceptional developmentenvironment, its most importantvalue proposition stems from itsservice management capabilities.CloudShare is not simply aboutcreating an easy-to-use developmentenvironment to build and stagecomplex VM workflows: CloudShareis about collaboration and building credibility in both the solution and the solutionprovider. To set the stage for these functions, CloudShare utilizes a web-basedmanagement dashboard along the lines of Salesforce.com.

The dashboard servesto integrate theinteractions of twohierarchies: The technicalcharacteristics of the VMworkflows, and thepersonal characteristics ofteams of users anddevelopers. Like allmanagement dashboards,the CloudShare GUIpresents different UIpages with different datato users based on theuser’s hierarchicalpermissions.

What makes theCloudShare dashboardunique is the integrationof user and time basedpermission levels, which

occurs when CloudShare delivers a working environment to a user based on thesnapshot of a prototype. As a result, CloudShare can use a single snapshot of a prototypeto deliver one environment that has a two-year life cycle with domain administrator levelaccess privileges and another environment that has a life cycle of only 15 minutes withend-user access privileges. What’s more, users with a high enough privilege level inCloudShare can change life cycle and access settings on the fly.

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CLOUDSHARE DASHBOARD

The enterprise version of CloudShare has numerous tools for consultants, integrators andcommercial software vendors. In this version there is an elaborate collaboration model that runs thegamut of direct clients, partners, and their clients. Through the enterprise CloudShare interface, veryfine-grained client usage data can be analyzed in both CloudShare and Salesforce.com.

“CloudShare is not simply about creatingan easy-to-use development

environment to build and stage complex VMworkflows: CloudShare is about collaborationand building credibility in both the solution andthe solution provider.”

KEEPING CLIENT INTERACTION ON TRACK

User interaction beginswhen an invitation is sent to anew prospective user to accessa CloudShare environment.Invitations can be sent to atrue end user or a vendorpartner. For large vendors,CloudShare provides thecapability to compare andtrack the activities of usersbrought into an environmentby partners.

Once an invitee accepts aninvitation and logs into thedefined environment, thatperson becomes a user withinCloudShare. CloudShare willthen track the user’s activitieswithin the environment. ITprofessionals can useCloudShare’s activity model totrack IT staff progress on pre-production activities, such asdevelopment, testing, and QA.What’s more, just as ITvendors can estimate thelikelihood that an invited userwill buy a product from thatperson’s activity pattern, ITprofessionals can use theCloudShare statistics toidentify potential internal end-user support issues, such asthose created when line of

business users do not spend sufficient time training with a new software environment.

THE ZEN OF CAPABILITY AND CREDIBILITY

Current IT surveys consistently show that over 80 percent of IT sites are in somestage of system virtualization. Most have successfully gone through the first stage ofvirtualization, which focuses on the consolidation of systems running workloads notdeemed critical for business process support. The next wave of virtualization, however, isset to target important business processes in order to leverage the performance andstructural resilience that at VOE provides.

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RESOURCE CLASSIFICATION

User interaction begins with an invitation to use a CloudShare environment. Invitations canbe sent to end users or vendor partners. Once an invitee accepts an invitation, that personbecomes a user and CloudShare starts fine-grain tracking of all activity with respect to anenvironment. IT vendors use this data to analyze top sales prospects and compare the effortsof partners. In house IT professionals can use the collected data to track IT staff progress onpre-production activities, such as development and QA.

This shift brings greaterpressure on IT to provision andtest multiple VMs in support ofcomplex workflows. As a result,IT will have to provision projectswith sufficient physical andsoftware resources required tosupport business processapplications that run on multipleVMs and involve multiple software licenses.

For internal IT departments, theprocess of developing a proof-of-conceptproject, which will have to be tested andthe accepted by end-user organizations islittle different from the process followedby IT vendors in the virtualization space.As a result, in-house IT groups cangarner many of the same advantages theCloudShare VOE platform offersprofessional developers.

In particular, the ability tosignificantly jumpstart the process ofconfiguring a test bed with multiple VMsrunning the appropriate base software isa universal necessity for any ITorganization. More importantly,CloudShare provides a number of subtlebenefits that are quite sophisticated andcan provide substantial savings indevelopment time. One of the most

important of these features comes in the ability to utilize the central construct ofprototype virtualization, which treats all systems and resources in a workflow as a singleobject.

To allow vendors to offer multiple clients access to their own copy of a virtualenvironment, CloudShare applies the construct of a snapshot to all of the systems thatunderpin a virtual environment. Each user launches a fresh copy of the environmentbased on snapshot of a prototype. When developing a complex system to support abusiness process, small changes to programs running on separate VMs can cascade onthe entire system making debugging a very complex process.

Utilizing snapshots of workflow prototypes, initiated when a key change is introducedon any VM, IT can freeze entire configurations of multiple VMs and later return ondemand to any past configuration in minutes in order to simplify the debugging of a

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CloudShare Feature Benefits1) Rapid Prototyping with Fully Configured VM Templates:

CloudShare provides VM templates with a Windows or Linux OSinstalled and many also include popular server software, such asSharePoint 2010 and Exchange for rapid configuration.

2) Access Multiple Versions of a Virtual Environment in Minutes:IT professionals can create snapshots of entire workflow prototypesand launch an on demand virtual environment in minutes based onthe choice of a prototype snapshot.

2) Drag-and-Drop Prototype Configuration: IT professionals canleverage RDP protocol support in CloudShare to drag-and-drop filesbetween their desktop PC and VMs in their working environment.

4) Share Virtual Environments via the Web: Invite users to access apersonal independent instance of an environment for pre-productionactivities conducted by IT staff such as development, testing, and QA.

5) Track and Analyze Invitation Responses: Via a managementdashboard, apply advanced analytics on user activity that can beintegrated with Salesforce.com and other CRM software.

“Utilizing snapshots of workflow prototypes,initiated when a key change is introduced

on any VM, IT can freeze entire configurations ofmultiple VMs and return on demand to any pastconfiguration in minutes in order to simplify thedebugging of complex business workflows.”

complex business workflow. Attempting to replicate this capability by restoring individualVMs in sequence can easily deteriorate into a massively complex task.

In-house IT professionals can also benefit from the collaboration and client trackingcapabilities that CloudShare offers professional developers by using the user-activitymodel to track the progress of IT staff in pre-production activities, such as development,testing, and QA. IT professionals can also keep much closer track of end-userparticipation in system acceptance and training projects conducted before releasing anew complex system into production. As a result, CloudShare can provide IT with anumber of cost avoidance benefits, by flagging insufficient testing and preparation.

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Jack Fegreus is Managing Director of openBench Labs and consults through RidgetopResearch. He also contributes to InfoStor, Virtual Strategy Magazine, and Open Magazine,and serves as CTO of Strategic Communications. Previously he was Editor in Chief of OpenMagazine, Data Storage, BackOffice CTO, Client/Server Today, and Digital Review. Jack alsoserved as a consultant to Demax Software and was IT Director at Riley Stoker Corp. Jackholds a Ph.D. in Mathematics and worked on the application of computers to symbolic logic.