Shulou(Shulou.com)06/03 Report--

Inscription: we are in an era of drastic changes, and we must quickly keep up with the pace of the times. This requires bravely riding the tide of change, moving forward courageously, embracing change and making a completely new beginning.

2018 is an extraordinary year, and the IT industry is changing. On Sept. 30, Tencent announced the launch of its third organizational structure upgrade, embracing the industrial Internet in an all-round way. Ma Huateng believes that the industrial Internet is the second half of the Internet, and cloud and enterprise services are one of the key areas to make breakthroughs. On November 26th, the public cloud giant AWS officially launched the hybrid cloud product AWS Outposts at the annual event, re:Invent 2018, which caused a hurricane in the world of private clouds. So where should the enterprise private cloud go and how to develop in the future? The following is an in-depth analysis and interpretation for you.

Open source technology is becoming an important choice for private cloud

Today, cloud computing has become the mainstream choice of enterprise IT infrastructure. Cloud is an irreversible trend and will accelerate the process of enterprise digital transformation. The rise of open source technologies such as OpenStack, Docker, micro services and K8s has greatly reduced the threshold for industry entry, created conditions for enterprises and developers to rapidly deploy cloud environment and build applications, and promoted the development of cloud computing market.

Enterprises' acceptance of open source technology has been at a high level, and create an ecological environment for cooperation through open cooperation and win-win results. Many enterprises begin to actively participate in open source, develop corresponding cloud computing products and components on the basis of open source technology, gradually eliminate the restrictions and barriers of suppliers, make the technology more independent, and build their own developer team. accumulate and form their own technical strength, while speeding up the launch and innovation of their own cloud computing systems, products and services.

Cloud computing technology maturity and sustainability are the top priorities for enterprises when choosing open source. Of course, compared with mature commercial products, there are still some problems in the current open source technology, such as the shortcomings and defects of stability, compatibility, security and so on, and the relatively limited carrying business. it is difficult to manage tens of thousands of servers and super-large clusters. However, on the basis of the continuous rapid iteration of open source technology, the maturity and application scenarios will continue to improve, and the products with high price-to-price ratio for private cloud will be more and more recognized and trusted by enterprise customers.

Open source is a growing wave, it will lift up a whole new world.

Security and controllability is still an important consideration for enterprises to adopt private cloud

The biggest consideration for enterprises not to use public clouds but to build their own private clouds is security. Data show that security has become one of the main reasons hindering the development of cloud computing. According to the CDA data analysts Association, 32% of organizations that have already used cloud computing and 45% of organizations that have not yet used cloud computing regard cloud security as the biggest obstacle to further cloud deployment.

In the cloud computing system, security involves many levels. generally speaking, in the cloud computing environment, nine levels and fields should be considered, such as network security, storage security, physical machine security, virtualization security, virtualization management security, delivery layer security, data security, security services and operation and maintenance security.

It should also be noted that not all application security problems should be solved by the security architecture of the cloud computing environment. Cloud computing infrastructure environment supports many kinds of systems, business requirements and security baselines are different. When providing services to users, the security service content should be strictly regulated according to the types of services and SLA, and a clear division of labor and responsibility interface should be divided.

At present, at the level of private cloud security, business users focus more on data encryption and user privacy protection.

3. The operation and data security of cloud services is the top priority of enterprise private cloud.

On June 27, a large-scale failure occurred in a public cloud, resulting in problems for some customers in using the console of its official website and using some product features. According to a cloud statement, the cause of the failure is that the engineer team performed a change verification operation during the launch of an automated operation and maintenance function, which triggered an unknown code bug.

Similarly, in the enterprise private cloud, after many business clouds go online, the operation and maintenance of cloud services is the key to the success or failure of the enterprise private cloud. The maintenance of cloud services includes two aspects: one is the maintenance of cloud services themselves, including the monitoring of service capability and status, the trend analysis of service performance and scale, the revision and upgrade of services, and the maintenance of service infrastructure. The second is the guarantee of the SLA achievement of the service, including real-time monitoring the KPI of the service and comparing it with the service objectives stipulated by the SLA, intervening in time to make it meet the requirements when it does not meet the SLA requirements, and at the same time, ensuring that the security, isolation and other relevant provisions stipulated by the SLA are met.

In addition to the operation and maintenance service, the functional defect of operation and maintenance is also the biggest problem troubling users, which can be used but is not easy to use, and the user-friendliness is not enough. It is particularly noteworthy that with regard to private cloud applications, the incomplete function of the operation and maintenance system is a prominent problem. At present, in enterprises, operation and maintenance outsourcing is still the mainstream, but the rising proportion of independent operation and maintenance is actually conducive to enhance their own operation and maintenance capabilities and better serve the cloud.

As a cloud service provider, the most basic bottom line is to ensure the data security of users, and data security has always been one of the most valued conditions by users. In August this year, a cloud "hard disk failure" led to a start-up company's data "all lost" incident in the online uproar, making people once again realize the importance of priceless and secure data. In the view of many people in the industry, it is difficult to calculate the value of data and the price of purchasing cloud services simply by a formula, but the value of data is difficult to be measured by standardization. Legal personages said that this is a contract dispute, which needs to be dealt with in accordance with the contract agreement, and the liability of the defaulting party needs to be defined. Of course, for cloud customers, in addition to hoping that the cloud service platform can provide more secure data protection, they also need to have more comprehensive data protection measures. After this incident, the market has also spawned cloud data security insurance companies, which is also a step forward.

4. How to build a PaaS platform for private cloud

Sharing, agility and innovation are the biggest changes in the construction of enterprise information in the Internet era. The development of enterprise PAAS cloud platform has also entered an in-depth stage, whether to take into account the new and old different applications or to rebuild the next generation of applications based on the new architecture platform is a topic that we must consider. With the deepening of the degree of cloud in an enterprise, the demand for cloud computing management platform will be more urgent, and the most important thing is to build a correct and sustainable enterprise PAAS cloud platform.

First of all, enterprise PaaS is a three-dimensional platform of point, line and surface. The point is the application of the upper layer, the line is the end-to-end process running through the enterprise, and the surface is the basic service of the platform that supports the continuous interweaving and evolution of the application and process. The core features of enterprise PaaS are mainly reflected in two aspects, one is the management of application life cycle, the other is the support for the construction of enterprise application scenarios. In terms of application life cycle management, the application form of enterprises is constantly changing and evolving in terms of building applications, deploying applications, operation and maintenance, upgrading applications, and clearing applications. From the support of building enterprise application scenarios, process, data, integration and mobility are the highest frequency and headache in the construction of enterprise application scenarios. Unclear requirements and rapid business changes are also the most common problems in reality.

Different scenarios require different technical capabilities, and the degree of intensification of these capabilities also determines the efficiency and cost of operation and maintenance developed in the cloud architecture. When many external cloud vendors encounter complex scenarios in enterprise applications, the cost, efficiency, and quality will be greatly reduced, because simply improving programming capabilities and development efficiency will not solve these problems.

Second, the capabilities of different suppliers of enterprise-level PaaS are different, so it is necessary to learn from each other and refine the operation.

The PaaS platforms launched by IaaS manufacturers include giant platforms such as AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google abroad, and platform giants such as Aliyun, Tencent Cloud, Baidu Cloud and Jinshanyun in China. This kind of PaaS can basically provide traditional basic support software services such as OS, database, middleware, virtualization, container and all kinds of API, and provide more complete support services. the most important feature of this kind of PaaS is that it has many functions, but it is not vertical and fine enough to be close to the traditional enterprise.

PaaS platform transformed by traditional infrastructure software providers. For example, foreign Oracle, IBM, Redhat, VMware, EMC and other databases, middleware, system software, virtualization, storage giants are the leading manufacturers in this field. Domestic Huawei, tide, Lenovo, Ziguang, users. They have a wide range of corporate customers and have launched their own PaaS platform to provide services to customers. They do not provide large and comprehensive application infrastructure services, and often only provide corresponding PaaS services according to the strong parts of their traditional software, such as Oracle's database cloud service and Huawei's enterprise cloud service.

PaaS platform provided by traditional integrated application software giants. SAP is the representative of foreign brands, user friends, Kingdee, Neusoft is the representative of domestic brands. In the traditional PC software era, they are committed to creating a "revolutionary platform" through which the research and development of ERP, CRM and other enterprise applications can be realized. They hope to develop a general platform that can bring revolutionary changes to all kinds of enterprise application development: to achieve all kinds of development quickly, well and at low cost, especially the customized demand development of enterprises. But at present, their disadvantage is that the platform wants to carry too much content, want all kinds of enterprise applications to achieve rapid research and development through the platform, its objective effect is often met with greater challenges.

In fact, according to the characteristics of their own business, enterprises need to optimize the PaaS capabilities provided by different suppliers, integrate and share their strengths and weaknesses, decouple business from supporting software environment, decouple general business from customized business, and build modular and diverse platform support capabilities.

Third, the cost and efficiency of enterprise PaaS. Usually people will often say that enterprise applications are too complicated. The complexity here has several meanings: first, the interface interaction, rules and permissions are complex and changeable; second, the relationships and controls between data are complex

Third, the lack of standardized information construction, the introduction of a new application, there are a large number of heterogeneous systems to be integrated, while adding a system island; fourth, the process may be simple or complex, but there are great differences between enterprises and enterprises. Fifth, do not want to be solidified applications hinder enterprise innovation, hope that applications can be quickly adjusted and created to support management and business innovation, but the management is too rigid and closed.

Therefore, whether the enterprise PaaS can achieve the lowest cost and the best efficiency requires the enterprise to make real efforts to unify the ideological and standardized construction, at the same time follow the openness and standards, optimize the process and simplify management, and constantly innovate and solve these development problems sustainably.

Fourth, standard and openness. The construction of enterprise PaaS platform is like building blocks, standard and openness are the most important. There are two key points in the design of technical architecture: one is to evaluate the compatibility, scope and best practices of all kinds of technical architecture in advance in the design stage, and to avoid the design that can not be integrated in the choice of technology stack. Second, for the application of technology, especially open source technology, we should choose the basic functions that are universal, standard and widely used as far as possible, and do not strongly rely on some advanced functions that are difficult to integrate and whose future development direction is not clear enough. Only in this way can we develop steadily.

The standard opening of enterprise cloud environment specifically, there are two dimensions: internal and external. In terms of hardware configuration, virtualized cluster configuration, container cluster configuration, network configuration, service configuration, development specification, and micro-service specification, we should formulate corresponding standards according to business bearer requirements and resource control requirements, and gradually supplement and improve them in the process of construction and operation. The other dimension is the opening of standards to the outside world. The platform construction of cloud computing is a process of continuous improvement and continuous integration. Open and standard design specifications help to introduce new technical architecture and functional modules, continuously accumulate the ability of precipitation platform, and construct an ecological environment with cloud platform as the core.

Fifth, the migration and change of application development. Generally speaking, migration to a cloud environment is often a process of application redeployment, while migration to a PaaS or SaaS environment requires a resplit, architecture redesign and reconstruction of the application system. Many application systems PaaS is to make better use of containers, micro-services and other technologies and concepts, to achieve flexibility and agility, to meet the needs of software services. In this process, micro-service splitting is the key and difficult point. The lack of a good micro-service design specification and governance framework will lead to the disorder of micro-service management and operation, resulting in the so-called "entropy of micro-service".

The split and design of micro-services need to follow the overall design principles of high cohesion and low coupling, and should be fully considered in the process from many aspects, such as synchronous asynchronism, data sharing, decentralization, decentralization, standardized interface and technology-independent design. On the other hand, the SaaS of the application makes the relationship between the user and the product closer and more sticky, which expands the life cycle value of a single user. At the same time, these applications are for multiple customers, centralized management and authorization, which can effectively reduce the cost of production management and improve the efficiency of enterprise operation and management.

Sixth, it is to build a platform with a variety of service capabilities, specifically, "thick platform, thin application". On the one hand, universal capabilities are formed in the process of platform construction and evolution, and in the process of enterprise informatization, enriching the platform service catalogue; on the other hand, it helps to realize the precipitation and sharing of data assets, form a data closed loop, and promote the digital transformation of enterprises. The key to the construction of the platform is the refinement and abstraction of service capabilities, that is, to achieve different levels of "decoupling", the decoupling of hardware and application system will form an infrastructure cloud (IaaS), the decoupling of business and supporting software environment will form a platform software cloud (PaaS), and the decoupling of general business and customized business will form the so-called "business platform".

In the final analysis, the competition of PaaS is the competition of platform maturity, openness and ecology. In the future, PaaS manufacturers will not have a dominant company, but there will not be too many players. The comprehensive threshold of enterprise-level PaaS will be higher and higher, only by tamping the foundation to cover products and improve the ecosystem, can we control the future.

5. The future of multi-cloud management

With the advent of the era of the Internet of everything, the demand of enterprises for cloud will show multiple growth in the future, but the demand of enterprises for different "clouds" is very different. First of all, in the enterprise, there are many different types of business, based on different businesses can construct different clouds, and even adopt different technologies and solutions.

So by building multiple clouds, enterprises can achieve unified management of public and private clouds, cross-regional deployment of business systems, cloud disaster preparedness of key data, response to short-term cloud outbreak business requirements, overall high availability and performance requirements, cloud service providers' advantages / cost-effective service selection, cost sharing and optimization capabilities.

But at present, the biggest problem brought by multi-cloud management is that the services are heterogeneous, and there are many things that need to be customized, so we see AWS launch Outposts, introducing AWS into the enterprise's local data center, so that users can "run AWS infrastructure locally to get a truly consistent hybrid cloud experience." Why doesn't AWS do multi-cloud management? My guess is also to simplify multi-cloud hybrid management and provide users with the same consistent control plane and API to facilitate collaborative management and operation and maintenance.

And doing more work based on multi-cloud also means that there must be a lot of challenges in terms of data synchronization, bandwidth, latency and data consistency, and management costs will go up. Therefore, enterprises can give priority to the construction of the same city and different places in a single cloud, so that the basic level is isomorphic and can better focus on business disaster recovery and double-living construction.

Interpretation of Storage Wind Direction

Blocks, objects and files are stored. From the point of view of the stored data, there are online data, hot data and cold data. Combined with the scenario, it also involves the secure encryption of stored data and high reliability and high availability. So where is the next wind direction of storage? The following is a specific interpretation.

1. Storage vendors begin to transform to pure software vendors.

In terms of enterprise storage, many storage vendors began to transform to pure software vendors last year, including Nutanix,Kaminario, E8 and so on. The transformation of storage manufacturers to software is not for technical reasons, but for commercial considerations. Considering the merger of Dell and EMC, the profit margin of storage hardware is bound to decline. The biggest advantage of software is that it can improve the profit margin in the financial statements, make the company's financial position healthier, and avoid competition with traditional storage hardware manufacturers.

2. The rise of the second storage

Recently, the more representative cases are the foreign super-fusion enterprises and the data disaster preparedness and data management companies derived from the super-fusion enterprises. These companies rely on their technological innovation to form the innovation of the scene. Focus on the original cold backup or archived data, to achieve the data can be queried, retrievable and available. Such a business model is called "second storage". With the further development of enterprise business, the requirements for data are no longer simple storage and backup, but need to analyze, test, query and other data calls to eliminate data isolated islands. In such an industry and business context, unified data management has become a productive rigid demand.

The future should include data monitoring, disaster recovery, migration, synchronization, distribution, sharing, integration, governance, archiving and other multi-dimensional unified management, rather than being limited by storage. Who can master the management ability of data, who can really grasp the future of data!

3. Open channel SSD

The so-called Open-Channel SSD refers to the SSD that FTL (Flash translation layer) is not on the device side, but is maintained by Host's operating system. Compared with the traditional SSD, Open-Channel SSD only provides a simplified SSD, including only NAND chips and controllers, but not FTL. The functions in the original FTL, such as Logical Address Mapping,Wear Leveling,Garbage Collection, etc., need to be implemented by the upper layer. In other words, Open-Channel SSD provides a naked SSD, and users can design and implement their own FTL according to their own needs to achieve the best results. However, to use Open-Channel SSD, operating system kernel support is necessary. Through the introduction of the LightNVM subsystem, the Linux kernel added Open-Channel SSD support in version 4. 4 and later. Some companies in the industry have launched commercial Open-Channel SSD products based on NVME.

Summary

In the face of the tide of change, do not be afraid, do not hesitate, adhere to will see the future! The landing of any new concept and new technology is essentially to be combined with specific business to really solve specific problems. I believe that with the rapid development of technology, everything is infinitely possible in the future!

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.