Clouds on the ground

Garvan McFeeley09/11/2017 1

Cloud Realities

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Cloud Realities

• Cloud is now mainstream • Cloud adoption is not easy• Cloud services require new skills • Migration is complex• End users have embraced the app culture• One cloud does not fit all

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Adoption and service support.Strategic collaboration

Network: No data traffic charges.Connect to GÉANT and NRENs networks over public IP.Direct connect to institutions, Layer 2 point-to-point connections

Exit support.Data portability

Identity Management: SAML2 and eduGAIN

Compliance with EU Data Security Directives.Ability to offer IaaS from inside the EC/EEA

General security policies. Handling of sensitive data (including public health or military research).Certifications

Volume discount (initial discount and additional tiered discounted pricing). No price increase.Purchase order and postpaid billing.Recognising aggregated spending, combined for all participating institutions.Accommodating capital expenditure (upfront commitment)

Mechanisms to reduce costs for underutilised (or paused) cloud resources. Support for Bring Your Own License (use existing educational licenses).Migration of existing contracts

Admin management portal.Customer self service portal.Order placement, reporting and group management

API support

IaaS Framework Experience and FAQ

• What can I buy?• What can I not buy?• This looks expensive• Is it really this complex to compare offerings?• I can only spend Capex• This is not an exhaustive list!

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• Unlimited• IaaS• Onboarding• Architecture supports• Related support services

• Limited• Managed Services • Implementation services• License based services (e.g. VMs with applications pre-installed from a vendor's

cloud "marketplace")• 50% of the contract value

FAQ – What can I buy?

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Can be easily overlooked

• Private Cloud • Co-location • SaaS• BUT

• You can tender for SaaS and possibly bring your own IaaS• Just like you did with servers and software licensing

FAQ - What can I NOT buy

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Definition important

• Do you know the true costs of onsite hosting?• Who pays your electricity bill currently

• Facilities?• You?• Someone else?

• Who pays support and maintenance on HVAC systems?• Do you have a ‘sinking fund’ in your budget cycles?

FAQ - This looks expensive

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• Pricing is complex• What you can consume is broad• Expect that ANYTHING can be metered• Discounts can be multifactorial• Like for like comparison difficult• This will make your head hurt on occasion• Software licensing can be

• Confusing• Complicated• A source of hair loss and/or hair colour

FAQ - It’s Complicated!

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• Handling Capex is supported by ALL framework participants• Will take Capex payment and drip feed to Opex bill• Multi-year obviously!• This brings interesting benefits

• Price drops over time• Machine performance improvements• Economies of scale• Service evolution

FAQ - Capex/Opex

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FAQ - Direct Award Experience

• Is it really this easy to use?• Is it really this easy to use?• Is it really this easy to use?• 19 Clients using it• Azure• AWS• Cloudsigma• Dimension data• Interoute

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Summary

• On our way• Client need exists• Trusted advisor• Concrete benefits from IaaS tender• This is complex stuff• Blended Approach• We are here to help!

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Optimising Infrastructure costsDr Ray O’Neill

Quality and Qualifications Ireland

QQI and Azure

• December 2012 – first pilot systems on Azure – Pay as you go• June 2014 – Enterprise Agreement – Azure Monetary Commitment• July 2017 – GÉANT framework• Nov 2017 – More than 98% of infrastructure in Azure• Infrastructure including resilience and backups for little more than data

centre costs

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Leveraging GÉANT and HEAnet

Monthly Spend Nov 2016 – Oct 2017How costs were reduced• GÉANT Framework – from July 2017

• Azure Hybrid Benefit - Campus• Right sizing• Azure automation tasks –

scheduled shutdown• Benefits

• Monthly cost would be 33% higher

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80%

85%

90%

95%

100%

105%

110%

115%

Axis

Titl

e

AZURE SPEND NOV 16- OCT 17

Leveraging GÉANT and HEAnet

Daily Spend Nov 2016 – Oct 2017How costs were reduced• GÉANT Framework – from July 2017

• Azure Hybrid Benefit - Campus• Right sizing• Azure automation tasks –

scheduled shutdown• Benefits

• Monthly cost would be 33% higher

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Next steps….

• Prepayment for specific VMs• Continued Right Sizing

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Rory Hopkins

Maynooth University

Maynooth’s BI Project

Maynooth’s BI Project

The Problem:MU needed a reporting and information delivery solution to replace Oracle Discoverer.

The challenge: To cost the project, to get investment for project, and to build the solution

Getting SupportWorking with the University IT management steering committee (ITMSC) a project budget was allocated after presenting a successful POC developed with Opensky.The technical Solution: To leverage our investment in Office 365 we selected the Microsoft Business Intelligence stack

Maynooth’s BI Project

The project Solution: • Microsoft helped identify the main technical & cost elements• Used the IaaS framework to purchase Azure• Working through a Microsoft partner to develop the solution• PowerBI Pro licences obtained via our Microsoft campus agreement

** We could purchase 10 more consultancy days **

Maynooth’s BI Project

Maynooth’s BI Project

DIT School of ComputingBrian Gillespie

LecturerCloud Computing and Systems Infrastructure

Hosted Private Infrastructure

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Commercial Public Clouds

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Cost Management

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DCU IaaS PROGRESSBased on Microsoft Azure

Billing in brief

DCU recently gained access to the enterprise portal. This enabled the following billing structure:• The ISS department retains ownership of all resources in Azure

while ensuring that billing can go to the resource user directly if preferred. This is enabled using the structure:• Department• Subscription• Resources

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Integration with on-prem systems

Authentication and identity

management

Azure Active Directory is fed hourly by data in our on-prem active directory infrastructure. All staff and student accounts and specific service accounts

are synchronized.

Delegating ownership and

monitoring usage.

All DCU departments and subscriptions will be created under a single Azure active

directory tenancy. Users in the EA Admin group can monitor usage in all departments and

subscriptions.

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Network design

• A site to site VPN is established between DCU and Azure.

• VNet peering is created between the main DCU ISS subscription and other subscriptions.

• Traffic to and from the main DCU network is routed through the ISS subscription to other subscriptions over the VNET peers.

• Vnet peering does not count toward bandwidth usage. It also does not require separate gateway objects.

Connecting networks across subscriptions so

that virtual machines running

in Azure can communicate securely to On

premises systems is achieved by

creating a site to site VPN to Azure then using virtual network peering

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Final points

Windows license costs

• Azure Hybrid Use Benefit (HUB) allows you to use your Windows server licenses on Azure virtual machines. This further reduces the cost of running infrastructure on this platform.

Upskilling

• The usability and efficiency of the Azure portal and the Azure enterprise portal is improving rapidly. However documentation doesn’t always keep pace. A support agreement with a professional services company may be beneficial when building IAS on Azure.

Billing and licensing

• Micromail have been particularly helpful when questions have been raised in relation to the correct billing and licensing considerations.

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Discussion

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