Getting The Most Value From
Your Cloud Provider
Cloud computing has taken IT by storm and it’s not going anywhere. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), cloud spending will surge by 25% in 2014, reaching over $100B.1 Organizations today, whether it be marketing, sales or IT departments, are being asked to do more with less. Executives expect 100% availability and seamless data management in addition to reduced costs; a majority of businesses are taking to the cloud to address these problems. However, when evaluating potential providers, the common method used to make an informed decision is often misguided. Through a recent research study, third-party consultant Cloud Spectator found that the way organizations are commonly evaluating cloud providers is flawed, potentially leading organizations to select the wrong vendor.
While the use of the cloud addresses many challenges often faced by IT departments, there are two little known pitfalls of the cloud. First, the “Perceived Performance Paradox”: many cloud providers are seemingly comparable because they sell similar services, but actually differ greatly when it comes to underlying hardware architecture and performance. Second, “The Goldilocks Effect:” the common industry practice of offering resources in pre-packaged bundles, rather than allowing customers to determine their own needs. In other words, hosting providers don’t generally offer the resource quantity that’s “just right.”
These challenges are mainly caused by the glaring differences in the underlying architecture of cloud platforms, which have a tremendous impact on uptime, performance and total cost of ownership. For example, some cloud vendors will provide your environment from an individual host, where others deliver the service from an N+2 redundant cluster. Unless you understand the underlying physical hardware configuration, you’re not able to match your performance needs with the correct cloud solution.
Additionally, cloud providers frequently sell resources in predetermined packages. For example, a common offering among brand name providers is a “medium” server; (4GB of memory and 400GB of disk). As a result, unless your resource demand happens to align perfectly with predetermined packages, you’re in the same place you were in with physical hardware: strapped for sufficient resources, or stuck with unused resources, which you’re paying for. Thus, nailing down a solution that’s tailored to fit your requirements is ideal; you should only buy what you need.
This white paper demonstrates how decision makers should evaluate and research the potential providers to find the perfect fit for their organization.
RESOURCE QUALITY VERSUS QUANTITY: PERFORMANCE IS KEY
When comparing cloud providers, people typically line up the quantity of compute resources, and then compare cost and features. This approach doesn’t give the user insight into which solution has the most value.
Organizations should instead investigate the infrastructure of a prospective cloud provider to ensure it can meet the demand for services, security, bandwidth and most importantly, performance. Benchmarking is also a helpful tool. Before you do a full implementation, you should run your actual workload in the provider’s cloud environment, or review benchmark reports to ensure that your application will perform at the desired level.
Comparing cloud providers is similar to comparing cars. When you’re in the market for a new car, you typically know your budget and desired features. The same idea can be applied to searching for a cloud services provider.
With that in mind, let’s assume these two cars are the same price, and only the basic features of the vehicles are being compared. Each have 1 engine, 2 doors and 4 tires.
Based on resource quantity, these cars are the same. Right?
This example makes clear that the assumption made by many cloud buyers is flawed. Equal quantity of resources does not guarantee equal performance.
LIMITATIONS OF PREPACKAGED RESOURCES: THE GOLDILOCKS EFFECT
In today’s market, providers too often back users into a corner with limited options, when they should be acting as a partner by tailoring a solution. The objectives of the person responsible for cloud initiatives in an organization are resource allocation, 100% uptime availability and lower overall costs, yet providers traditionally prepackage resources and market products as “easily consumable.” Well-known providers often offer resources immediately upon entering credit card information, but how well does their solution fit your need?
For some customers, an instant solution is adequate. A startup company testing a new application would be a good fit for such a service, because there would not be long-term needs.
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PERFORMANCE
• Horsepower: 570 @ 9,000 RPM
• 0-60 Time: 3.4 seconds
• Top Speed: 201 mph
FERRARI 458
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passengers passengers
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SMART CAR
SMART CAR
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WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN YOUR
PROSPECTIVE CLOUD PROVIDER
Provides enterprise-grade environment
• N+2 Redundant hardware
• Operational approach complements a variety of industry and
government compliance requirements including SOX, PCI DSS and HIPAA, supported by third-party SOC attestation
• Geographically diverse cloud locations
• Enterprise-grade hypervisor
• Provides transparency of hardware used
Measureable performance
• Ability to monitor network capacity (Mbps), memory capacity (GB),
storage capacity (GB), disk I/O (IOPS) and CPU utilization in real time
• Easily accessible performance statistics
• Assures performance consistency when a nearby client reaches peak
load conditions
• 100% uptime SLA
Assures optimal interoperability between virtual and
physical platform
s
• Colocation and cloud services located in the same facility,
interconnected by high capacity bandwidth for seamless interoperability
Guaranteed security and compliance
• Known location of your cloud environment
• Allows annual or semiannual reviews of procedures to ensure
adherence to your data control policies
• Robust procedure in place to address compliance issues
• Measures in place to automatically verify integrity of hypervisors and
data volumes
• Server platforms based on Intel® Xeon® processors that factor
hardware-based Intel® AES-NI strong encryption protocols into computing transactions
• Intel® Trusted Execution Technology
Timely, quality support staff
• 24x7x365 on-site technical support
• Multiple available data centers positioned in varying geographical
locations to offer redundant failover
• Ability to switch service to a different facility without customer-facing
interruption in the event of a major service issue
• Highly compartmentalized cloud environments to prevent a
component failure from cascading to an overall environment
• Personal service in the event of a disruption
Consider the story of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.” As you may recall, Goldilocks wandered into an empty cottage in the forest. She was hungry, and conveniently, there were three bowls of porridge on the table. Goldilocks helped herself to the first bowl of porridge, but to her dismay found the temperature too hot. When she sampled the second bowl of porridge, it was too cold. Finally, Goldilocks tasted the last bowl of porridge.
“Ahhh, this porridge is just right,” she said. The last bowl she tasted was exactly the right temperature. Not too hot, not too cold; just right. Although in modern times it would not be recommended for a child to wander through the forest alone or enter a stranger’s home, let alone steal their porridge, a relevant conclusion can be drawn from Goldilocks’ experience of inconsistency.
In the place of porridge enters your prospective cloud providers. In your search for a partner that makes sense for your computing needs, you’ll find that some providers offer resources in pre-packaged buckets that may not satisfy your requirements. As you review solutions, some packages may be larger than you require; others may be too small. It is critical for your business’ cloud provider to offer a tailored package that will be “just right” for your needs, so that you can focus on what’s important.The allocation of individual servers should be within your control. The flexibility to purchase an environment that fits your needs eliminates the headaches of underperformance or overspending. For instance, Amazon Web Services uses a ratio of storage to memory that is much higher than is usually consumed. While Amazon asserts that you “pay for what you use,” the truth is that you pay for what you provision.
Your provider should be up-to-date with current technology to provide you the best quality of service. When you put your data in the cloud, it should be running at the top. For example, Expedient Data Centers utilize the latest Intel® Cloud Technology to deliver better performance. Staying ahead with Intel Cloud technology, including Intel® Data Protection Technology (with AES-NI), and Intel® Platform Protection Technology (with Trusted Execution Technology) , ensures security and performance.”
After all, the infrastructure of your cloud determines its
performance. When the foundation of a provider is based on state-of-the-art technology, you’re guaranteed efficient and scalable infrastructure with the greatest value.
The allocation of individual servers
should be within your control.
The flexibility to purchase an
environment that fits your needs
and eliminates the headaches
of underperformance or
CPU
The CPU is the most important component of overall system performance. It pulls data out of storage, fills the RAM and determines how fast processes can happen.
Expedient outperformed both Amazon and Rackspace in speed and stability.
Expedient has an average speed of 7,557 MIPS, seconded by Rackspace with an average of 3,481 MIPS and Amazon with an average of 2,079 MIPS.
RAM
RAM is an integral part of any server. The RAM (or memory) is the temporary storage that the CPU can use to access data quickly, compared to waiting for data to be pulled from the hard drive storage.
Applications are loaded onto the RAM for faster access and better user experience.
Expedient has the highest RAM performance. Expedient has an average of 17,589 Mb/sec, outperforming Amazon’s average of 9,156 Mb/sec by 92% and Rackspace’s average of 7,481 Mb/sec by 135%.
Average performance in MIPS
Rackspace Expedient 1,000 1,000 8,000 8,000 (3,481) Amazon 1,000 8,000 (2,097) (7,557) 18 10 7 (7,481) (17,589) (9,000) Thousands of Mb/sec
Average performance in Mb/sec
Internal Network Performance
The internal network is used to transmit data between different servers within a data center. In cloud computing, data is stored and processed in virtual environments spread across multiple physical servers. It is important that the data is accessible from anywhere within the data center, as quickly as possible.
Applications that split their workload across multiple machines can be limited by bottlenecks in the internal network, and slow network negates the benefit of having high performance machines.
Average throughput in Mb/sec
Expedient is 1,600% faster than Amazon and 2,500% faster than Rackspace
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THE FINDINGS OF THE REPORT
For the purpose of generating this document, Cloud Spectator, a third-party consulting firm, measured the performance of Expedient’s cloud services against comparable offerings from Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Rackspace. Over a period of fifteen days, Cloud Spectator ran benchmark tests across Expedient Virtual Colocation, Amazon AWS, and Rackspace OpenCloud. Each test was ran to understand the
unique performance capabilities of each provider’s CPU, internal network, RAM and disk.
Also available from the Expedient library of white papers:
Not All Clouds Are Created Equal
As your organization looks to a cloud solution provider for services, there are key areas that need to be reviewed and essential questions that need to be covered. This white paper will provide an overview of the areas that should be considered, outlining a list of questions that every client should ask of any prospective cloud provider.
http://thecloudcalculator.com/resources/whitepapers/whitepaper-not-all-clouds-are-created-equal.html
Cloud Security Uncompromised
Trusting your organization’s most critical data and business processes to an outside cloud services provider means more than simply relying on someone else to spin up your virtual images and keep an eye on backups. This white paper defines what it really means to ensure cloud security, emphasizing the importance of finding a cloud partner who will ensure your data remains fortified against attack.
http://thecloudcalculator.com/resources/whitepapers/whitepaper-cloud-security-uncompromised.html
Translating TCO When Taking to the Cloud
Adopting a cloud solution does not always translate to lower total cost of ownership. - This white paper outlines your path to finding a cloud provider and ensuring cost savings.
http://thecloudcalculator.com/resources/whitepapers/whitepaper-translating-tco-when-taking-cloud.html
Cloud Offerings Explained
This informative brief offers insight for identifying the right approach for your IT infrastructure by exploring public, private and hybrid clouds.
Other content and resources can be found here:
http://www.expedient.com/resource-library.php
http://thecloudcalculator.com/resources/whitepapers/index.html http://thecloudcalculator.com/resources/whitepapers/whitepaper-cloud-offerings-explained.html
SUMMARY
Partnering with a provider that offers granular control and enterprise-class performance not only provides your organization with increased security and stability, but ensures that you won’t have to pay for unneeded resources.
Your solution should be “just right.” There is no need to be stuck in a situation where you suffer from underperformance or overspending. Lastly, when you partner with a provider like Expedient, high
performance and state-of-the-art technology are guaranteed. Benefits are passed on to you, the customer.
ABOUT EXPEDIENT
Expedient is a network of nationwide data centers offering a wide range of managed services and network connectivity. Reliable data center facilities interconnected with a private 10 Gbps network enable Expedient to deliver premier colocation, cloud computing, network and managed services to enterprise, commercial, education and government organizations. Expedient’s approach complements a variety of industry and government compliance requirements including SOX, PCI DSS and HIPAA, supported by third-party SOC attestation.
ABOUT INTEL
Intel is a world leader in computing innovation. The company designs and builds the essential technologies that serve as the foundation for the world’s computing devices and datacenters. In addition, Intel works with industry partners to make it easier to build, enhance and operate cloud infrastructure. Learn more about Intel at www.intel.com.
