From Cloud Offerings: Bitnami / JumpBox on AWS.... to VPS

It all seems cheap and easy to jump on the offerings by Bitnami and Jumpbox when I was looking for alternative solutions to manage the APPs stack for my AWS instance. After some research it all boils down to trading ease with costs, couple with a few control issues.

If we can take care of the APPs stack oursleves, it will give us back the control and save the cost from Bitnami and Jumpbox. For most people with some server administration experience, I think we dont really need those service, unless you really want to save that bit of time and trade off cost and control. That's cost saving number one.

Then it dawn on me why I am using AWS since its likely more costly in the long term than VPS solutions from the likes of Linode and Rackspace. Until i need the scalability of AWS, it probably make more financial sense for me to go for VPS first with a few servers and keep seeming hidden charges at bay. It also gives more technical controls back when i switch from cloud to VPS. Yes, its the reverse pitch of what you probably have heard from cloud vendors, but for start-ups, its probably really make more sense to use VPS first. It's worth the effort to deal with the technical issues yourself. Cost saving number Two.


Related resources:

http://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/calc5.html
http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/reserved-instances/#2
http://aws.amazon.com/amazon-linux-ami/
http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/faqs/#What_is_the_Amazon_Linux_AMI
http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/index.html?LinuxAMIUserGuide.htmlhttp://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2540959
http://www.craigburke.com/blog/2011/06/27/amazon-web-services-vs-linode/
http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/index.html?LinuxAMIUserGuide.html

生命的精髓

人生的长度，就是一呼一吸。只有这样认识生命，才是真正体证了生命的精髓。应该把握生命的每一分钟、每一时刻，勤奋不己，勇猛精进！

Where do you see data centers in Asia evolving in the next 3 years and 5 years?

Wee Wah: In the next 3 years, cloud computing will likely go mainstreams in many data centers.While, I do not expect to see many data centers to go for full cloud implementations, many may likely build service models around IaaS, PaaS or SaaS. “We will see a faster erosion of enterprise class data centers as more and more applications for e-commerce are deployed in public cloud facilities,” said Deborah Grove of Grove & Associate. On top of that, we may also see the emergence of more certifications, standards and best practices for green data centers.

In the next 5 years, I would predict that the total cost of building data centre to reduce as servers, networks and storage optimization techniques mature and together with a bigger pool of well trained professionals, would contribute a significant part to overall cost-savings strategy of the organisation. We may also likely to observe a new wave of cloud thought leadership, as well as practitioners who have mastered the integrated process and infrastructure skills.


* This article is an extract from the media interview I've done with Divya Sangam, Online Communications Manager. For full interview's content, refer to IQPC Worldwide www.iqpc.com.sg   

With the fast pace rate at which technology changes, what are your top tips to manage data centre operations and key personnel?

Wee Wah: To the team who manages the data centre operations, here are my top tips: align IT to business to achieve business outcomes, track your financial outcomes and deliver service outcomes. Achieving business outcomes such as faster time to market products or services keep the data centre relevant and well integrated with business. By keeping in-sync with cost efficiencies, IT would be more aligned as a business unit rather than a technology unit, and thus strategically enabling the business. Service outcomes such as quality improvements, cost reductions, improved delivery lead time and business process enhancements are what keep the users satisfied at the end of the day.

With any new role, we have to understand the history and people involved, as well as its current positioning, in order to know how to move things forward. After years of working with fast technology changes, I have determined that putting the right people into the right place is simply not enough, as the key people often needed “broadening” over time to reflect a wider skill set and new knowledge base as well as to represent both Business and IT in various situations.


* This article is an extract from the media interview I've done with Divya Sangam, Online Communications Manager. For full interview's content, refer to IQPC Worldwide www.iqpc.com.sg   

Do you think “green data centers” are wishful thinking? After all the actual implementation is very challenging – what are your thoughts on this and any tips you can share on this?

Wee Wah: All of us are bearing the consequences of climate change one way or the other on a daily basis and it is only getting worse with the passing of time if nothing is done to slow that pace. “Global greenhouse gas emissions are on an accelerating trend and if left unchecked, could lead to a 6.4 degree C (11.5 degree F) temperature increase by the end of the century, exceeding conservative estimates,” said Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) told delegates at the UN on 26 August 2010.

In my opinion, having “green data centers” compared to “traditional data centres” is probably a must, rather than a wish. Building environmentally sustainable data center delivered benefits that went way beyond the simple equation of reducing greenhouse emissions. By consolidating shared resources and improving the agility to scale, while generating less heat and consuming less total power, energy used for equipment manufacturing to data center operations could be drastically reduced. And this goes on to affect the whole eco-system. The question to key decision makers is thus “will we continue to mine, burn and consume resources rampantly for energy or will we try to be more innovative and think of our children and grandchildren?”


* This article is an extract from the media interview I've done with Divya Sangam, Online Communications Manager. For full interview's content, refer to IQPC Worldwide www.iqpc.com.sg   

Several solutions have been put forward as a way forward to control cost. What’s your take on Virtualization, Cloud & Outsourcing as potential solutions?

Wee Wah: IT outsourcing is not new and has been around for a long time. Under traditional IT outsourcing an enterprise hires an outside service provider to provide one or more business-IT functions that were previously provided internally by the enterprise. With the maturing of technologies of virtualization, virtualization-ready hardware and management software, IT services provisioning are taking shape fast in companies deploying private, public and hybrid clouds. According to CIO.com, “Cloud services are a boon for many IT departments willing to forego customization: They help IT organizations chip away at hefty capital expenditures from back-end infrastructure to customer-facing software and everything in between. Consequently, the cloud is turning the traditional IT services industry on its head.” In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2012, 20 percent of businesses will own virtually no IT assets.

 I think this new cloud-enabled IT Outsourcing can be broadly translate into two new IT outsourcing broad offerings: managed services and on-demand services. By outsourcing non-strategy IT Services, organizations could concentrate on core-businesses that will help improve its cost-savings measures and eventually create greater business value for its stakeholders in the long term. On-demand services, on the other hand, provides ad-hoc computing power on a per-use basis case and you pay only for the services you use during the “rental” period. This will definitely help in cost predictions as well as in controlling running costs.


* This article is an extract from the media interview I've done with Divya Sangam, Online Communications Manager. For full interview's content, refer to IQPC Worldwide www.iqpc.com.sg   

With data center operating costs rising, what are some of the challenges when it comes to keeping costs under control?

Wee Wah: With the economic turbulence and rising data centre operating costs forming the backdrop of the last decade, one of the main challenges to keeping overall costs under control would be the ability of the organization to balance operating costs against growing demands for computing resources so that the long term benefits outlast the overall capital and operating expenditures. The greater challenge then, is to make IT the key driver of growth within the organizations by knowing aspects of IT organisation that provide value directly to the business, and leveraging third parties for offerings that are not strategic.

Another area of concern is Data center assets that have reached their power, cooling and space capacity limits. Assets being regularly upgraded to meet growing demands, consume more energy, generate more heat and take up more valuable floor space. Thus, a new challenge for data center managers would be finding the right balance in costs, operational efficiencies and improved capacity. With this right balance in place, growing business demands would translate to lower total cost of ownership. If the prediction from Gartner is right, “by 2015, information-smart businesses will increase recognized IT spending per head by 60 percent” - See “Gartner Top Predictions for 2011: IT’s Growing Transparency and Consumerization”. When the increased spending on IT contributes to economy of scale, we could expect a greater control on costs.

* This article is an extract from the media interview I've done with Divya Sangam, Online Communications Manager. For full interview's content, refer to IQPC Worldwide www.iqpc.com.sg   

What are some data center trends in 2011 that you think are worth watching?

Wee Wah: In 2011, we see that many organizations are no longer just talking about virtualization; they are actually implementing it with greater confidence as the adoption rate on virtualization picks up. In fact, the June 2011 market research report from Forrester Research, Inc. entitled “Data Virtualization Reaches Critical Mass” reported that technology advancements, new patterns and customer successes are making data virtualization both a short and long term solution to today's data integration challenges.

I think another trend that is quickly evolving are the roll-outs of new best practices and standards for green data centres. Spring Singapore, for example, has recently published the SS 564: 2010 – Singapore standard for Green Data Centres – Energy and environmental management systems. The emergence of new approaches and management tools that integrates data centre, cloud computing, virtualization, power, cooling, security, efficient hardware & software administration and service processes are also exciting areas to keep an eye on. 

* This article is an extract from the media interview I've done with Divya Sangam, Online Communications Manager. For full interview's content, refer to IQPC Worldwide www.iqpc.com.sg   

Cisco WAAS plus ACE

What I would recommend would be to use WAAS as WAN edge / module in ISR and use the ACE to load balance the server farm. With that we should expect better end to end quality service delivery from the core to client-side devices.

Read about it here:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/solutions/Enterprise/Data_Center/WAASDC11.html

Cisco ACE vs F5 load balancer

I've always wanted to know if anyone has done a real comparison on the physical machines testing out Cisco ACE and F5 LTM... and I think Brad Reece has done a good job on this even though the article on this is pretty old; still its worth some considerations before using any these devices. Here's the link:

http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/24947

What is the VMWare RedWood Project?

Today, someone asked me what is the VMWare Redwood Project all about... and i scratched my head thinking "isnt this some secret project VMWare works on a couple of years back?" After comfirmation with some leads, that has probably evolved into the VMWare vCloud Director we see today.

EMC Ionix

EMC Ionix to help with the transition from physical servers to virtualized ones and then to the cloud:

http://www.emc.com/products/family/ionix-family.htm

Great Technical Resources for VMWare Vsphere 5

http://www.vmware.com/technical-resources/products/vsphere.html

ITIL Process Wiki

The ITIL Process Wiki is about ITIL V3, ITIL V2, ISO 20000 and IT Service Management (ITSM). It is intended to promote more widespread use of Best Practice by IT professionals. [1]


This ITIL Wiki is run and sponsored by IT Process Maps, creators of the ITIL Process Map.


http://wiki.en.it-processmaps.com/index.php/Main_Page

ITILv3 Passrates Official Stats.

2008 ITIL Exam Numbers
2009 ITIL Exam Numbers
October 2010 Exam Numbers

http://www.itil-officialsite.com/News/ExamStats.asp

ITIL V3 Certification May Be In Trouble » ITSMinfo.com

ITIL V3 Certification May Be In Trouble » ITSMinfo.com

PPT for 19 August 2011 presentation

 

Acknowledgement

We would like to thanks our supervisor Mr. Lam Wee Wah for his guidance and patience with us through our final year project. Mr. Lam has thought us a lot through this period of time. He has always been helpful to us. Moreover, he is willing to take his time to provide guidance to us, helping us in times of doubts and providing us with resources to our project. The feedback that he gave us and the resource provided by him has been useful for us. Mr. Lam is also always willing to check our progress and works and that allow us to keep track of our project flows

Blades Servers vs. Rack Servers

Blades Servers

A blade server is a server chassis housing multiple slim modular electronic circuit boards named server blades, each blade is an individual server in its own right. Blades are literally servers on cards, containing processors, memory, integrated network controllers, an optional Fiber Channel host bus adapter and other IO ports. Blade servers allow more processing power in lesser rack space, simplifying cabling and reducing power consumption

Rack Mount Server

A rack server, which is also called a rack-mounted server, is known as a computer dedicated to use as a server and designed to be installed in a framework called a rack. The rack contains multiple mounting slots or bays, each designed to hold a hardware unit secured in place with screws. Rack servers have low-profile enclosures, in contrast to tower servers, which are built into upright, standalone cabinets.

A single rack may contain multiple servers stacked one above the other, consolidating network resources and minimizing required floor space. The rack server configuration also simplifies cabling issues among network components. In an equipment rack filled with servers, a special cooling system is required to prevent excessive heat buildup that would otherwise occur when many power-dissipating components are confined in a small space.

Blades Servers vs. Rack Servers

Rack Mounted Server	Blades Server
Inflexible	Flexible
Lower Cost	Higher cost
Occupy more spaces	Save spaces
Higher power efficiency	Lower power efficiency
Number of expansion slots base on the size of rack mount	Limited number of expansion slots for storage or network needs
Support eight or more CPU sockets	Support up to four processor sockets

Conclusion

With blades server, it goes green because it provides:

• Energy saving

• Cost saving

• Environmental improvements

• More physical space

• A better working environment

References
http://www.dcs.bbk.ac.uk/~geoff/Blade-server.pdf
http://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/tip/Blades-vs-rack-servers-Basic-purchasing-principles-still-apply