Introduction

The basic concept of Cloud IT is a serverless office, all servers (domain controllers, file servers, mail servers, etc.) are virtualized in a datacenter with WAN Optimized connections. Why? Less expensive and more reliable.

This is not theoretical. My name is Rick Parker and I started Bedouin Networks in late 2006 to prove this would work. Bedouin's beta client was Gimundo.com and Gimundo ran on the Bedouin platform for about 14 months before being sold. The results were simply stunning, no downtime for any services, none, for the last 7 months. This is the way IT should be and can be. What I will be doing is explaining how this was done and what can be done to improve the concept and design by suggesting and requesting feedback from others.

Some of the Vendors on the right I am sure you have heard of, others probably not, but they were selected primarily through experience but a few out of sheer interest. This is one of those circumstances where the whole is exponentially more important then the parts. The list is a Cloud IT Stack made up of the primary components, Datacenter, WAN Optimization, Virtualization, Monitoring, etc. some components may be swapped out but one of each is required.

The othe key concepts are the Virtual Private Cloud and RAID to the next level, The Redundant Array of Inexpensive Datacenters

Friday, August 29, 2008

Cloud IT Basics - IT Nirvana

Virtualization plus WAN Optimization.

Does not sound exciting, but what does this do? WAN Optimization
turns a 1mb/sec T1 into a 50mb /sec circuit allowing all servers to be
moved to a datacenter. Virtualization drops the cost of servers about
1000% Immediate server redundancy. What stays in the office?
1 small firewall, 1 small riverbed. I moved the office IT systems to
a new office in a backpack. No downtime during the move.

IT Nirvana.

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