Technology White Paper. Making Cloud Computing Soar with Managed Internet Access

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Technology White Paper

Making Cloud Computing Soar

with Managed Internet Access

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Cloud computing has established itself in 2010 as a viable long-term business networking paradigm, and organizations of any size and anywhere on the globe can benefit from its innovations. Many organizations are using cloud networks to facilitate business continuity and disaster recovery and cut costs by using hosted servers, as well as making use of cloud-based services such as storage or Web-based applications such as customer relationship management applications.

In this context, the uptime potential for key organizational services and cost savings can be

promising should these projects be planned accordingly to ensure availability, as these services are commonly hosted at a cloud services organization or at off-site hosting facilities. This document discusses the options available to organizations to ensure access to cloud-based projects.

2. Strategic Telecommunications Challenges Related to Cloud Computing Connectivity

At the core of cloud computing is the concept of outsourcing and/or insourcing, which implies that information, services and equipment reside off-site. This situation is a key challenge, as Internet connectivity now becomes the critical point of failure.

Depending on Internet access means that an entire site’s access to cloud-based deployments can easily be limited or compromised, and few organizations are ready to handle this scenario in a seamless, automated fashion for both public and private cloud access.

The common scenarios which can limit or compromise access to cloud applications include the following:

 Complete loss of Internet connectivity as only one carrier is deployed at a site

 Complete loss of Internet connectivity as two or more carrier links are installed for failover because:

o the failover process is manual and handled by personnel o on-premise equipment is not redundant

o carrier links have not been properly selected and terminate at the same ISP point of presence, resulting in the same points of failure and eliminating redundancy. It is commonplace in North America to find organizations with two T1 circuits for a site in failover, but since only one telco operates in that region, all ISPs use the same lines.

 Carrier link saturation:

o Bandwidth has not been properly planned resulting in over-taxation of existing circuits due to increased Internet use for cloud applications.

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3. Resilient Access to Public Cloud Services

Many organizations have transitioned in recent years to hosted solutions residing in the cloud, including hosted Microsoft Exchange/SharePoint, Salesforce.com, Google Applications (Calendar, Gmail, etc.), Amazon EC2 server hosting and many more.

Publicly available cloud-based services and applications require one basic—and at the same time critical—service: Internet access. Regardless of the hosted solution, unreliable Internet access will deliver poor ROI for the use of these services. In fact every office or site using these services is in the same exact situation, where traditional site-to-site redundancy no longer applies.

Site usage for Internet access now becomes more critical because network administrators need to plan ahead how much bandwidth will be required for each site using cloud applications. Considering that Web-based content commonly found on the Internet is becoming media-rich, carrier link saturation is now a common problem in many organizations, and with deficient bandwidth comes a lower return on investment in public cloud-based projects.

The key to successful public cloud application deployments is to plan ahead for the required incremental bandwidth and costs related to this addition to the network. Link balancing appliances can significantly improve a site’s bandwidth posture by resolving the three primary challenges related to hosted cloud applications:

 Implementing multiple ISP links from multiple carriers employing multiple carrier technologies connecting to different point of presence sites will virtually eliminate any risk of downtime. Should a carrier link be unavailable, one or more other carrier links will be available for the failover process.

 Since cloud-based applications can be download-intensive, it is recommended to complement existing symmetrical carrier links with asymmetrical carrier links such as DSL, cable modem and SMB fiber circuits. These carrier links typically offer a very high download throughput, which is very beneficial in these scenarios.

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 Routine setups found at customer sites employing link balancing appliances include a T1 or fiber circuit, a DSL link and a cable modem. The T1 will remain available for key corporate services such as VPNs and email, while the DSL and cable modem circuits, because of their high throughput for downloading, will be preferred for certain cloud-based applications such as a hosted CRM. The cable modem and DSL add an extra layer of redundancy by combining different carrier networks and technologies in case one of the two fails, and it is common to see the T1 and DSL terminate at the same point of presence.

4. Planning Connectivity for Private Cloud Computing and Hosted Servers/Services

Private cloud network offerings have been growing to accommodate organizations that use cloud-based applications cloud-based on internal performance and/or security requirements. Services such as Amazon’s EC2 offer VPN access to private clouds so organizations can have either an on-demand server, which would be in a secure controlled environment, or a permanent

disaster-recovery/business continuity set of hosted services. In this context, bandwidth availability and

management become even more critical as the private cloud services need to be able to deliver on their abilities. Causes of bandwidth loss such as an ISP link failing or existing bandwidth being saturated by local users will be significant deterrents to the project’s success.

The solution to this type of situation is the same as with public cloud computing. Link balancers will aggregate multiple ISP carriers, but for this context the primary use will be for restarting the VPN session when the designated carrier link fails (see green dotted lines in the diagram on the right). This failover capability will guarantee that the private cloud system will be available 99.99% of the time or better.

Link balancers can manage traffic with Quality of Service so the ISP link with the VPN session will have the appropriate amount of bandwidth to operate as expected, and other sources of traffic will be directed to alternate carrier links.

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5. Conclusion

The evolution of cloud computing is beginning to deliver on its promise, and many organizations have started capitalizing on its benefits. The cloud paradigm has one constant factor to account for in any scenario: bandwidth use and availability. Bandwidth is the key to tie all the components together, and without it cloud computing simply cannot operate.

Properly planning the telecommunications infrastructure using the concepts discussed in this document will ensure that organizations’ investments in cloud computing are not crippled by unexpected downtime caused by carrier or equipment failures or carrier saturation. With private cloud deployments, the principle remains the same, to provide access to users, except that the complexity of the projects will be greater since multiple data centers are commonly employed.

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Produced by Elfiq Networks

Elfiq Networks is a technology leader and innovator in the field of WAN link management and balancing. With successful installations in over 73 countries, Elfiq’s Link Balancer products help organizations of any type and size perform more competitively every day with the ability to use multiple Internet and private links easily and securely.

For more information on Elfiq Networks’ products and technologies, please contact: Elfiq Networks

1155 University, #712 Montreal, Quebec, H3B 3A7 Canada

Telephone: 888-GO-ELFIQ/514-667-0611 Internet: www.elfiq.com

Email: [email protected]

October 2010

© Copyright 2010, Elfiq Networks (Elfiq Inc.). The contents of this document are protected by copyright. Any modification of this document, in any shape or form, is prohibited. Any redistribution, publication or derivation of the contents of this document without written authorization from Elfiq is also prohibited. All rights reserved. All logos, trademarks and copyrights are the property of their respective owners.

Technology White Paper. Making Cloud Computing Soar with Managed Internet Access