Hybrid Clouds & Mini PodsThe Business Case

Janet Cloud Conference9 February 2012

Dr Phil Richards

Director of IT, Loughborough University

Overview

The local problems we were trying to solve

How we did it

The wider problem our sector wants to solve

The barriers to this

Can Janet brokerage help break through them?

The local problems we were trying to solve

Distributed Data-centres Under Desks (DDUDs)

Options

i2012 network i2012 data centre i2012 voice TotalsGold: full core upgrade, resilient EMMAN connection to cloud services, full edge replacement, Wi-Fi everywhere for student experience

Gold: green, virtualised ‘pod-based’ data centre with additional management tools

Gold: VoIP core, full migration to VoIP

Gold:

Silver: Some risk of M25 effect, single point of failure in EMMAN connection for cloud services, close to full edge replacement, Wi-Fi everywhere

Silver: green, virtualised ‘pod-based’ data centre with minimal management tools

Silver: as gold, but West Park remains on legacy analogue phone system

Silver:

Bronze: Minimal core and edge replacements, M25 effect, no Wi-Fi everywhere

[Bronze: just a single pod, with no resilience]

[Bronze: use ‘soft phone’ on PC instead of handset]

[Bronze: ]

Capital spend benchmarking

Universities V, W, X, Y and Z undertaking similar exercise

University Network Data Centre PhonesLboro goldUniversity PUniversity QUniversity RUniversity SUniversity TUniversity U

Business Case(joint with Finance)

Holywell Park mini-podavoiding expensive new build

Resilient local cloud architecturefor high availability

Mini pod 1 Mini pod 2

De-risking the cloud and avoiding major build:Loughborough’s Hybrid Cloud

+

2 x ‘mini-pods’Logicalis MPC Remote cloud

via

Avoid refurbSave £Ms

OJEU competitive dialogue for buy-in

Co-operative Cloud

‘Fairly green’ local cloud

The wider problem our sectoris trying to solve

Sector: UK Higher Education

Save £100Ms from £23Bn UK HE turnover

~ 2% spent on servers and storage = £460M

Can we save 50% of £460M?

HP internal consolidation project

Create ‘private cloud’

Data centres: 85 6 (3 x pairs)

Applications 6000 3000

Investment: $100Ms to create own Janet

Saving: $1Bn per annum revenue

(Source: eweek.com)

Lesson: ‘industrial scale’ key to savings

What is ‘industrial scale’?

“… construction of extremely large-scale, commodity-computer data centres at low-cost locations… uncovered the factors of 5 to 7 decrease in cost of electricity, bandwidth, operations, software and hardware at these very large economies of scale.”

Armburst, Armando Fox et al.,Above the Clouds, Berkeley

Industrial-scale US data centres (sample)

Owner Location Square feet

Microsoft Chicago, Illinois 700,000

Apple Maiden, North Carolina 500,000

Google Lenoir, North Carolina 477,000

Facebook Prineville, Oregon 307,000

IBM Boulder, Colerado 300,000

HP Colerado 250,000

Amazon Ashburn, Virginia 180,000

Source: Greenpeace report ‘How dirty is your data?’, April 2011

Industrial-scale European data centres

Owner Location Square feet

Amazon Dublin, Ireland 240,000

Google Hamina, Finland N/K

HP Wynyard, UK 305,000

IBM Dublin, Ireland N/K

Microsoft Dublin, Ireland 303,000

Source: Greenpeace report ‘How dirty is your data?’, April 2011

Others

Eduserv Swindon, UK 37,000

Logicalis UK Slough, UK 10,000

Are cloud service providers passing on economies of scale to customers?

Remote private and public cloud prices 2x to 3x more expensive than local hosting in our mini-pods

Is it because of secure multi-tenant issues?

Or because we don’t have a high-speed distribution network?

Or are we being over-charged?

Secure Multi-Tenancy Built on FlexPod

16

Layer on or enable software NetApp MultiStore and FlexShare Security hardening Cisco Nexus® 1000V Series Cisco® SAFE architecture

Enable capabilities Multi-tenancy and secure separation Service availability and DR Service management Service assurance Workload isolation and mobility

Enhanced Secure Muli-Tenancy (SMT)

Cisco Validated Designreleased October 2010

Where are suppliers angling?

I want Supplier offers Comment

Utility IaaS from industrial data centre with standards and hybrid cloud ‘exit strategy’

Proprietary SaaS/PaaS

Difficult exit strategy, expensive initial system integration/consultancy, pricing based on local hosting+, suppliers don’t need to work hard to retain my business – strong lock-in

Single PSN Multiple PSNs At least one expensive solution per public sector vertical

PSN counter example – Wales PSBA, grew out of Janetwww.psba.org.uk – could more be made of this model in England?

Is it part of our role as public sector IT leaders to allow ourselves to spend much more than we need in this way?

JANET – our ‘national grid’ for hybrid cloud

Remote industrialdata centre 2

Remote industrialdata centre 1

University or College local clouds

Hybrid cloud-bursting via Janet:a national first (July 2011)

Janet Brokerage

What I would like to see: Fast Janet connectivity

Like-for-like price transparency

Real competition

Summary

We want to run virtual servers and storage cheaper in the cloud than local

Evidence shows this is achievable

Large service vendors prefer to focus on (currently) more profitable areas…

Has UK HE and the public sector got the nouse to resolve? Should UK HE lead on this, on the back of Janet, for national

public sector benefit?

HE ability to take risks

HE retention of IT domain expertise

Janet network and Janet Brokerage right at the centre of this