I was looking into EMC’s new Federation Enterprise Hybrid Cloud solution (EHC). This new solution takes advantage of powerful integration points that have been developed by EMC and VMware product and services teams to create a true hybrid cloud out of a traditional client-server data center. This includes the use of EMC storage arrays, integrated management tools, and EMC and VMware monitoring and data-protection suites, to ensure that your hybrid cloud solution becomes the foundation for enabling an IaaS model within your own organizations.
Note that most people already have a lot of the pieces needed for EHC (ESXi, VNX, etc) so all they have to do is fill in the missing pieces. Then they can turn their traditional virtual environment to a cloud-like software defined environment. Obviously many people won’t be EHC ready for a while but it is still good to know all the different EMC/VMware pieces that can help automate and manage a little data center because they will grow. Getting the hooks in now will be paramount if you plan on one day turning your data center to a Software Defined Data center for the hybrid-cloud.
I have listed the pieces out below with descriptions. These are all the pieces need to implement a full EHC environment with VMware (EHC for Openstack and Hyper-V are a little different).
Data Center Virtualization and Cloud Management
- VMware vCloud Automation Center (a.k.a. vRealize Automation)
- VMware vSphere ESXi and VMware vCenter Server
- VMware vCenter Orchestrator (a.k.a. vRealize Orchestrator)
- VMware NSX for vSphere
- VMware vCenter Operations Manager (a.k.a. vRealize Operations)
- VMware IT Business Management Suite (a.k.a. vRealize Business)
- VMware vCenter Log Insight (a.k.a. vRealize Log Insight)
- VMware vCloud Application Director (a.k.a. vRealize Application Services)
- VMware vCloud Connector
Storage and Storage Virtualization Components
- EMC ViPR
- EMC VNX, EMC Symmetrix VMAX, and EMC XtremIO
- EMC Fully Automated Storage Tiering for Virtual Pools
- EMC ViPR Storage Resource Management
EMC and VMware Integration
- VMware vSphere Storage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI) & VMware vSphere Storage APIs for Storage Awareness (VASA)
- EMC ViPR Analytics Pack with EMC Storage Analytics Adapter
- EMC ViPR Plugin for vCenter Orchestrator
- EMC ViPR Storage Provider
- EMC Data Protection Workflows for vCenter Orchestrator
- Data Protection Content Packs for VMware Log Insight
Federation Enterprise Hybrid Cloud Data-Protection Components
- EMC Avamar Backup and Recovery
- EMC Data Protection Advisor
- EMC Data Domain System
Piece of cake right? So what does all that give you?
Well it allows IT departments to go from a cost center to a revenue generating aspect of the business. It allows IT to be faster, more scalable, agile, flexible, and competitive. Allowing them to offer Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).
I say “competitive” because whether IT see’s it or not, they are at a tipping point. The business units that IT has traditionally supported are now looking at cloud solutions (like Azure or AWS) to service their needs instead of going to IT. This is because cloud is much more fexable and faster then IT. Imagine a developer waiting for test/dev environment for an application he is developing. If he has to go through IT he may have to wait days or weeks to get all the correct resources or he can swipe his card and get everything he needs from AWS in minutes.
If IT is going to continue to supply the the business with the technology needed to run the business they will need to complete with these new emerging cloud offerings. They need to disrupt themselves before someone like AWS does it for them. They need to become more agile, automated, and over all more “cloud-like” themselves. This is where EHC steps in to take all the pieces you have and ties them all together allowing IT to help the business units faster, cheaper, and more securely then most of the Public cloud vendors out there.
Checkout this quick demo below of a true hybrid cloud built off of EHC :
Tell me what you think in the comments below! 🙂