There are a few things that every vSphere administrator needs to know before attempting to run VMware on AWS, including how VPCs work and how AWS handles resource provisioning.
Familiarize yourself with these basic Amazon Web Services concepts, including VPC and how AWS handles resources, before attempting to run VMware on AWS.
Now that VMware Cloud on AWS is available, vSphere administrators need to become familiar with how Amazon Web Services works to run VMware on AWS.
VMware Cloud on AWS is an on-demand service that ensures that the datacenter (SDDC) defined by VMware software can be run directly on the AWS Cloud. VMware provides vSphere, vSAN, NSX and vCenter management, as well as support, while Amazon provides the elastic-metal infrastructure and additional components. Provided correctly configured, VMware tools such as vRealize Automation can use standard AWS resources.
This setup is transparent for the VMware Cloud on AWS administrator; VMware implements its SDDC in a "shadow" Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) that the customer does not see. For the vSphere administrator, the VMware management system appears in the same way as in the datacenter.
Although VMware abstracts a large part of the complexity of AWS, it is still in the interest of vSphere admin to become familiar with some AWS basics.
AWS VPC architecture for beginners
To run VMware on AWS, AWS uses its VPC to provide a logically isolated part of the AWS Cloud where you can start AWS components.
A VPC is a software-defined network that contains all network-related functions of AWS. The AWS administrator configures and manages access to everything in the AWS VPC architecture, although he can use AWS Identity Access and Management (IAM) service to delegate this responsibility to other administrators. It's a good practice to create subordinate IAM user accounts for daily work in the VPC instead of using the primary administrator account.
Each VPC lives in a region, a cluster of highly redundant data centers that function as a single logical group. To use a VPC, the AWS administrator must first select a region and then define the VPC. VPCs can not be distributed across different regions, but one of the advantages of the AWS VPC architecture is that you can have multiple VPCs within a single region. The use of multiple VPCs makes management easier because it can logically isolate the infrastructure. This allows multiple customers to live within one account while maintaining privacy and isolation.
AWS command structure
Each AWS customer has a root user account, which is managed at AWS account level. The root user account has access to identity and access management and can generate new resources, create subordinate user accounts, and defer responsibilities to these subordinate accounts as needed. By default, subordinate accounts do not have any rights within the infrastructure until an AWS administrator assigns rights to them.
If you log in to the root account, you'll see that there are different sizes and types of VMs - which AWS refers to copies - that you can use. Elastic block storage is the basis of these VMs.
Note that AWS sources do not offer the option to define VM sizes; instead AWS uses the dimensioning of instances, which means that the administrator can only use the sizes offered by Amazon. If the server usage becomes too large for the dimensioning, the administrator can scale this up to a higher level of CPU, RAM and so on. Scaling is a quick solution, but requires downtime and is limited to the resources that AWS offers.
AWS offers various images from which the administrator can use sources. It is also possible to create highly customized images, which can be useful in a larger implementation. A new AWS setting also requires the administrator to choose a region in which he places his resources. It is important to choose the right region because different regions have different cost implications.
In summary, to run VMware on AWS, the vSphere administrator has two ways to use AWS and use AWS resources directly: vRealize and VMC on AWS. With VMC on AWS, the vSphere administrator can easily access the VMC on the AWS console, create an SDDC and get a vCenter login and continue creating VMs as usual .
Monday, February 5, 2018
Sunday, January 21, 2018
Comcast partners with AWS as it struggles to fight cord-cutting disruption
Cloud providers are eager to brag about their customers and Amazon has received a big prize today by announcing that Comcast chose AWS as the preferred provider of the cloud.
What does this mean exactly? Comcast probably puts most of its workloads in the cloud on AWS. At a time when Comcast is fighting the trend of cable, it may be important to be able to create cloud services and applications that distinguish them from a simple content provider.
These services include features such as voice search via the Comcast Remote or the Xfinity TV Remote App, which lets you see what is currently turned on and lets you choose which programs you record on your DVR. They also created XFi, an application that gives customers more control over their Comcast WiFi networks.
Comcast has used a number of AWS services, such as computing, storage and analysis, to help generate these applications. The company hopes that by using this relationship, cloud flexibility can be used to keep fighting malfunctions.
Nowadays, everything you need from Comcast and other cable providers is access to the internet. With a streaming device such as Apple TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV or Google Chromecast, you can make a large number of choices, usually at a lower cost than cable TV subscriptions.
Cutting the cord is faster than expected. According to eMarketer's survey, more than 22 million people have dropped their cable subscriptions last year, a 33% increase over 2016. Not all Comcast customers are, of course, but the trend must be to be the company concerned.
With so many substantive options, even Comcast, who also owns NBC Universal, has ended up in a crisis. One way to combat this disruptive power is to offer content-based services to differentiate themselves from other offers such as Netflix and Hulu, not to mention purer cable alternatives such as Hulu Live TV, Playstation Vue and YouTube TV.
AWS is by far the largest provider of cloud infrastructure. Comcast is one of the leading providers of cable television with 22.5 million subscribers. AT & T had slightly more than 25 million subscribers, both based on last year's figures.
Monday, January 15, 2018
AWS for Beginners: Learning To Use Big Computing For Small Projects
I recently started managing all my own hosting via Amazon Web Services. It may sound crazy - it's not that I run Netflix or a computer-consuming start-up in my spare time - but I've discovered that AWS learning is a rewarding, interesting and even useful one. Of course it is sometimes frightening and AWS is exaggerated by orders of magnitude, but in a few months I have discovered that I am building a new skill, control in a number of areas, and actually save money.
Trust me, nobody is more surprised than me. I always knew that AWS was a powerful tool and I knew it was somewhat accessible, because most of its products are not as technical or command-line as they were years ago, but it turns out that AWS is more accessible (and more affordable) than I had guessed.
If you've read my previous article about the best product management tools, you may have noticed a trend: I'm having trouble accepting second-rate tools. As far as professional products are concerned, if something better exists, I want it. The logic of all of this was clear a year ago when a team team from a Hewlett Packard team explained to me why so many companies wanted to buy their $ 8,000 workstations.
At that time, the costs seemed crazy to me. Do you not get 80% of the performance for 50% of the price? Why do companies not do what I asked? She explained it very clearly: engineers earn a lot of money and every minute they do not spend on engineering is a waste of money. So, if an abbreviated calculation time or abbreviated data calculation can mean the difference between a person who does more work or goes to a coffee while the work ends, most companies like to pay the cost of the increased treatment flow. The lesson for me was that powerful tools could mean an increase in costs in advance, but huge savings in the long term.
I have always seen tools as a way to develop a skill. To go back to this previous article, you can manage your project with a shared Google document or a simple tool like Basecamp, but if you use JIRA, you will learn the ins and outs of a power tool. a transferable tool. competence. This logic does not always work - sometimes speed must be a priority over learning - so it's best to take advantage when you can.
Combine this thought and my desire to launch a few websites, and the result was that I dusted off my AWS account instead of searching for the best cheap web hosting and signing up for GoDaddy or something similar.
Now I have a few months experience with what is essentially an AWS beginners course and I am making real progress. My first goal of hosting as many static sites as cheaply as possible was quickly achieved. Admittedly, I spent a week with what could be achieved in a few minutes, but already learned all that time. From that point on I wanted to give them SSL, manage URL routing with S3 bucket policy, create a subdomain and learn how to handle the CloudFront CDN. These are all things that I can do without outside help during my nights and weekends (except for one AWS premium support ticket).
Lately, my goal was to build a WordPress site on AWS. I am happy to say that I have done so. This is a blog about learning about cloud hosting and I hope that some people will avoid some of the headaches and pitfalls that I had to circumvent (almost all of them were not as confusing or difficult as they seemed at the time). I have a long list of To-Dos that is linked to the separate WordPress site: add SSL to the VPS subsystem, experiment with different levels of server performance and create e-mail accounts, to name a few. Sooner or later I will experiment with caching, digging in my logs, setting up multi-zone redundancy and basically continuing to play Ops until it becomes boring.
A good thing about technology is that it spreads in the course of time. Today's academic experience is the ultra-modern technology of tomorrow, the prosumer tool of tomorrow, and ultimately a standard feature of all products in the category ... to humor and ridicule (try to buy a laptop with a DVD player). That is exactly what we see with AWS, so for me it is everything
Trust me, nobody is more surprised than me. I always knew that AWS was a powerful tool and I knew it was somewhat accessible, because most of its products are not as technical or command-line as they were years ago, but it turns out that AWS is more accessible (and more affordable) than I had guessed.
If you've read my previous article about the best product management tools, you may have noticed a trend: I'm having trouble accepting second-rate tools. As far as professional products are concerned, if something better exists, I want it. The logic of all of this was clear a year ago when a team team from a Hewlett Packard team explained to me why so many companies wanted to buy their $ 8,000 workstations.
At that time, the costs seemed crazy to me. Do you not get 80% of the performance for 50% of the price? Why do companies not do what I asked? She explained it very clearly: engineers earn a lot of money and every minute they do not spend on engineering is a waste of money. So, if an abbreviated calculation time or abbreviated data calculation can mean the difference between a person who does more work or goes to a coffee while the work ends, most companies like to pay the cost of the increased treatment flow. The lesson for me was that powerful tools could mean an increase in costs in advance, but huge savings in the long term.
I have always seen tools as a way to develop a skill. To go back to this previous article, you can manage your project with a shared Google document or a simple tool like Basecamp, but if you use JIRA, you will learn the ins and outs of a power tool. a transferable tool. competence. This logic does not always work - sometimes speed must be a priority over learning - so it's best to take advantage when you can.
Combine this thought and my desire to launch a few websites, and the result was that I dusted off my AWS account instead of searching for the best cheap web hosting and signing up for GoDaddy or something similar.
Now I have a few months experience with what is essentially an AWS beginners course and I am making real progress. My first goal of hosting as many static sites as cheaply as possible was quickly achieved. Admittedly, I spent a week with what could be achieved in a few minutes, but already learned all that time. From that point on I wanted to give them SSL, manage URL routing with S3 bucket policy, create a subdomain and learn how to handle the CloudFront CDN. These are all things that I can do without outside help during my nights and weekends (except for one AWS premium support ticket).
Lately, my goal was to build a WordPress site on AWS. I am happy to say that I have done so. This is a blog about learning about cloud hosting and I hope that some people will avoid some of the headaches and pitfalls that I had to circumvent (almost all of them were not as confusing or difficult as they seemed at the time). I have a long list of To-Dos that is linked to the separate WordPress site: add SSL to the VPS subsystem, experiment with different levels of server performance and create e-mail accounts, to name a few. Sooner or later I will experiment with caching, digging in my logs, setting up multi-zone redundancy and basically continuing to play Ops until it becomes boring.
A good thing about technology is that it spreads in the course of time. Today's academic experience is the ultra-modern technology of tomorrow, the prosumer tool of tomorrow, and ultimately a standard feature of all products in the category ... to humor and ridicule (try to buy a laptop with a DVD player). That is exactly what we see with AWS, so for me it is everything
AWS-VMware partnership remains a win-win
The collaboration with AWS-VMware is still in its infancy, but at the beginning of the new year it's time to emphasize the real goals of both companies and what they mean for IT. company.
Although some experts have scratched the deal, both companies can benefit from the collaboration, and their users hope for the same. Let's look at the case from the standpoint of every company.
VMware tried to develop its own public cloud, vCloud Air, a few years ago, but then sold it to focus on its core business, virtualization. But when AWS gained market relevance, companies dropped VMware for AWS. This drew the attention of the VMware management team and probably led to his interest in a partnership.
Let's not waste words: the deal actually makes AWS a co-location provider for VMware, which is strange. VMware runs on naked metal in AWS, which means that, with the exception of the underlying physical servers and the network, it has no dependencies on Amazon.
The AWS-VMware collaboration has yielded some important benefits for the virtualization giant. First, it slows the bleeding of those who leave VMware for AWS or other public clouds. VMware now has a powerful cloud offering based on its own technology and uses the most popular public cloud product.
Secondly, VMware has an aggressive sales team that can sell in cloud markets that were not open a year ago. Finally, this agreement offers some viability to VMware. To this partnership, some experts and analysts have merged VMware with other business dinosaurs.
Although some experts have scratched the deal, both companies can benefit from the collaboration, and their users hope for the same. Let's look at the case from the standpoint of every company.
VMware tried to develop its own public cloud, vCloud Air, a few years ago, but then sold it to focus on its core business, virtualization. But when AWS gained market relevance, companies dropped VMware for AWS. This drew the attention of the VMware management team and probably led to his interest in a partnership.
Let's not waste words: the deal actually makes AWS a co-location provider for VMware, which is strange. VMware runs on naked metal in AWS, which means that, with the exception of the underlying physical servers and the network, it has no dependencies on Amazon.
The AWS-VMware collaboration has yielded some important benefits for the virtualization giant. First, it slows the bleeding of those who leave VMware for AWS or other public clouds. VMware now has a powerful cloud offering based on its own technology and uses the most popular public cloud product.
Secondly, VMware has an aggressive sales team that can sell in cloud markets that were not open a year ago. Finally, this agreement offers some viability to VMware. To this partnership, some experts and analysts have merged VMware with other business dinosaurs.
Thursday, January 4, 2018
The End of Larry Vs. Amazon? AWS Looking to Dump Oracle, Report Says
According to reports, Amazon Web Services (AWS) does not want to spend "another $ 50 million" on Oracle technology this quarter.
In the company's most recent revenue call, Larry Ellison, Oracle's Technical Director, relied on AWS, Salesforce and SAP using the Oracle software. Now at least two of the three companies, AWS and Salesforce, are working to get rid of Oracle and develop their own databases, according to The Information.
"Let me tell you that is not moving away from Oracle," said Ellison in Oracle's second fiscal quarter on fiscal year 2018 results. "A company you've heard of has given us 50 million dollars to buy. Oracle databases and other Oracle technologies, this company is Amazon. "
Ellison also said that Salesforce "works completely with Oracle".
However, Amazon has changed two internal databases that run its ecommerce business from Oracle to NoSQL, a type of open source database software, according to The Information, citing "two people with knowledge of change".
In the meantime, Salesforce plans to be completely out of Oracle by 2023, according to the report, which quotes a former Salesforce employee. The company has developed its own database to replace Oracle, with the code name Sayonara, Japanese for "say goodbye", and is ready to implement it internally.
Oracle declined to comment and AWS did not respond to requests for comments. A Salesforce spokesperson said the company was not commenting on the rumors, but added, "Salesforce is focused on providing the most reliable, reliable and resilient infrastructure available and we do it with a multi-vendor approach. . "
Will that result in a quieter Ellison, who likes to make fun of AWS at every possible opportunity? Probably not.
Another company that can lose if AWS develops its own software is Red Hat.
Jeff Barr of AWS writes about the new version of his Linux operating system, Amazon Linux 2, in a blog post published in December. This decision could put the cloud giant in direct competition with Linux and the open source software distributor Red Hat in the corporate space.
But while it's "not a good thing" for Red Hat, according to Karl Keirstead of Deutsche Bank, investors should not "overreact." AWS software is always pre-beta and the "full version will take time". "Barron's reports.
In the company's most recent revenue call, Larry Ellison, Oracle's Technical Director, relied on AWS, Salesforce and SAP using the Oracle software. Now at least two of the three companies, AWS and Salesforce, are working to get rid of Oracle and develop their own databases, according to The Information.
"Let me tell you that is not moving away from Oracle," said Ellison in Oracle's second fiscal quarter on fiscal year 2018 results. "A company you've heard of has given us 50 million dollars to buy. Oracle databases and other Oracle technologies, this company is Amazon. "
Ellison also said that Salesforce "works completely with Oracle".
However, Amazon has changed two internal databases that run its ecommerce business from Oracle to NoSQL, a type of open source database software, according to The Information, citing "two people with knowledge of change".
In the meantime, Salesforce plans to be completely out of Oracle by 2023, according to the report, which quotes a former Salesforce employee. The company has developed its own database to replace Oracle, with the code name Sayonara, Japanese for "say goodbye", and is ready to implement it internally.
Oracle declined to comment and AWS did not respond to requests for comments. A Salesforce spokesperson said the company was not commenting on the rumors, but added, "Salesforce is focused on providing the most reliable, reliable and resilient infrastructure available and we do it with a multi-vendor approach. . "
Will that result in a quieter Ellison, who likes to make fun of AWS at every possible opportunity? Probably not.
Another company that can lose if AWS develops its own software is Red Hat.
Jeff Barr of AWS writes about the new version of his Linux operating system, Amazon Linux 2, in a blog post published in December. This decision could put the cloud giant in direct competition with Linux and the open source software distributor Red Hat in the corporate space.
But while it's "not a good thing" for Red Hat, according to Karl Keirstead of Deutsche Bank, investors should not "overreact." AWS software is always pre-beta and the "full version will take time". "Barron's reports.
Monday, November 13, 2017
Qumulo goes all-flash and replicates to AWS
Scale-out file start up Qumulo has revealed all-flash filer nodes.
The all-flash QF2 (Qumulo File Fabric) P-series node joins its QC hardware with its hybrid flash and disk media drives.
The P-series' hardware design is straightforward enough: it's a 2U Intel box that can run up to 24 NVMe SSDs in U.2 format, dual Xeon Skylake Gold-level 6126 processors and 192GB (12 x 16GB) of RAM. The networking interface cards are dual 100GbitE or 40GbitE QSFP+ NICs, with separate front-end and back-end data paths.
Power supplies are fully-redundant.
The latest Qumulo Core software delivers continuous replication and supports AWS as a replication target that is synchronised to a source cluster. It has a REST API interface.
There are two models; the 23T is a 23TB model with 12 x 1.92TB SSDs while the 92T has a 92TB capacity using 24 x 3.84TB SSDs. The drives use 3bits/cell (TLC) 3D NAND.
There are a minimum of four nodes in a cluster. A node delivers 4GB/sec of bandwidth, hence a 4-node set provides 16GB/sec, and a 400-node set pumps out 1.6TB/sec. Qumulo says the system copes with both single-stream (video-editing) and multi-stream requirements.
It scales to billions of files and, Qumulo says, can handle small file workloads as well as large file applications.
The QF2 software can run in the AWS public cloud as well as on the on-premises QF2 nodes. An on-premises cluster can continuously replicate data to another on-premises cluster or to AWS so that AWS QF2 instances can be fired up when a burst of additional processing power is needed beyond available on-premises capabilities.
The system management provides real-time visibility and control of system performance, with analytics focussing down to the file level when trouble-shooting. Cloud-based monitoring of the filer cluster can detect an oncoming SSD failure and alert customers and provides historical trend data.
Qumulo expects to sell all-flash QF2s into the machine learning applications, genomic sequencing and analysis, high-resolution video editing and scientific computing markets. They all have a need for fast performance processing of file-based workloads, including large-scale datasets.
Peter Godman, Qumulo's co-founder and CTO, said; “Using QF2, our customers will sequence more genomes, create more special effects and train more learning models across all-flash and the public cloud.”
The company claims QF2 all-flash clusters deliver the best price performance of any all-flash file storage system available today. It has hundeds of customers, including DreamWorks.
The all-flash QF2 (Qumulo File Fabric) P-series node joins its QC hardware with its hybrid flash and disk media drives.
The P-series' hardware design is straightforward enough: it's a 2U Intel box that can run up to 24 NVMe SSDs in U.2 format, dual Xeon Skylake Gold-level 6126 processors and 192GB (12 x 16GB) of RAM. The networking interface cards are dual 100GbitE or 40GbitE QSFP+ NICs, with separate front-end and back-end data paths.
Power supplies are fully-redundant.
The latest Qumulo Core software delivers continuous replication and supports AWS as a replication target that is synchronised to a source cluster. It has a REST API interface.
There are two models; the 23T is a 23TB model with 12 x 1.92TB SSDs while the 92T has a 92TB capacity using 24 x 3.84TB SSDs. The drives use 3bits/cell (TLC) 3D NAND.
There are a minimum of four nodes in a cluster. A node delivers 4GB/sec of bandwidth, hence a 4-node set provides 16GB/sec, and a 400-node set pumps out 1.6TB/sec. Qumulo says the system copes with both single-stream (video-editing) and multi-stream requirements.
It scales to billions of files and, Qumulo says, can handle small file workloads as well as large file applications.
The QF2 software can run in the AWS public cloud as well as on the on-premises QF2 nodes. An on-premises cluster can continuously replicate data to another on-premises cluster or to AWS so that AWS QF2 instances can be fired up when a burst of additional processing power is needed beyond available on-premises capabilities.
The system management provides real-time visibility and control of system performance, with analytics focussing down to the file level when trouble-shooting. Cloud-based monitoring of the filer cluster can detect an oncoming SSD failure and alert customers and provides historical trend data.
Qumulo expects to sell all-flash QF2s into the machine learning applications, genomic sequencing and analysis, high-resolution video editing and scientific computing markets. They all have a need for fast performance processing of file-based workloads, including large-scale datasets.
Peter Godman, Qumulo's co-founder and CTO, said; “Using QF2, our customers will sequence more genomes, create more special effects and train more learning models across all-flash and the public cloud.”
The company claims QF2 all-flash clusters deliver the best price performance of any all-flash file storage system available today. It has hundeds of customers, including DreamWorks.
Thursday, November 2, 2017
Partners Praise AWS For Solving Intra-Region Connectivity Challenges With New Offering
Amazon Web Services on Wednesday resolved a major connectivity problem for partners working with some of their most important customers to extend virtual networks across multiple AWS regions in their backbone network.
The new service, Direct Connect Gateway, allows customers with private direct connection circuits that connect their AWS access data centers to the Amazon cloud in other geographic areas without significant investment in terms of time, money and administrative power.
Gateway makes it "simpler and more powerful than direct connection," commented Jeff Barr, AWS principal evangelist.
Partners told CRN that they expected the public cloud leader's ability and often listened to customers that the difficulties in the AWS regions have made them reluctant to adopt the dedicated connectivity solution.
Tom Ray, director of Cloudreach, an international cloud computing consultancy, said clients were asking for an intraregional capability for a long time.
Partners told CRN that they expected the public cloud leader's ability and often listened to customers that the difficulties in the AWS regions have made them reluctant to adopt the dedicated connectivity solution.
Tom Ray, director of Cloudreach, an international cloud computing consultancy, said clients were asking for an intraregional capability for a long time.
According to Amazon, there are more than 60 colocation service providers worldwide that offer direct connection. These dedicated links provide more predictable security, bandwidth and data transfer performance.
The new service, Direct Connect Gateway, allows customers with private direct connection circuits that connect their AWS access data centers to the Amazon cloud in other geographic areas without significant investment in terms of time, money and administrative power.
Gateway makes it "simpler and more powerful than direct connection," commented Jeff Barr, AWS principal evangelist.
Partners told CRN that they expected the public cloud leader's ability and often listened to customers that the difficulties in the AWS regions have made them reluctant to adopt the dedicated connectivity solution.
Tom Ray, director of Cloudreach, an international cloud computing consultancy, said clients were asking for an intraregional capability for a long time.
Partners told CRN that they expected the public cloud leader's ability and often listened to customers that the difficulties in the AWS regions have made them reluctant to adopt the dedicated connectivity solution.
Tom Ray, director of Cloudreach, an international cloud computing consultancy, said clients were asking for an intraregional capability for a long time.
According to Amazon, there are more than 60 colocation service providers worldwide that offer direct connection. These dedicated links provide more predictable security, bandwidth and data transfer performance.
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