Solution brief eNlight Cloud B2B Enterprises & e-commerce Cloud Computing
A highly versatile, agile and elastic cloud solution that automatically provisions resources to meet business-critical demands Intel and ESDS join forces to help B2B enterprises accelerate their cloud migration journey Dedicated servers are no longer sustainable as they age due to their lack of scalability, agility and high operating costs. Unlike cloud servers, which allow resources to be dynamically provisioned in tandem with real-time demands, on premise servers rely on pre-allocated resources. Given the challenges involved with resource planning, IT managers inevitably end up over- or under-allocating computing resources such as bandwidth, CPU and RAM. To manage data growth more efficiently, many enterprises are turning to cloud computing. 38% of enterprise IT organizations have already adopted cloud computing, a figure projected to increase to 45% by 2019.1 Considering the myriad of benefits cloud computing offers − from lower capital and operating costs to greater scalability, accessibility and manageability, digital transformation is no longer a question of why but when. Findings from Gartner, the leading global IT research firm substantiates this. A report by Gartner estimates that the public cloud service-based market will grow by 18 percent by 20172 with the shift from traditional IT set-ups to cloud-based infrastructures estimated to affect more than 1 trillion in IT spending by 2020.
“ As part of our commitment to accelerate digital transformation among enterprises, Intel helped ESDS build their cloud Business Challenge: B2B cloud-migration is a complex infrastructure in line with process with operational and security risks their scalability, security and Although cloud-migration appears to be the way forward for most enterprises, the journey to the clouds isn’t always linear. First, enterprises will need to replicate availability requirements. their existing mission-critical legacy apps and systems to prepare for the move to With the best-in-class the cloud. This process essentially involves adapting existing system components for newer platforms. Next, they will need to establish their migration strategy out performance of the new of the five migration strategies available: full migration, iterative migration, limited Intel® Xeon® Scalable migration, vertical migration and horizontal migration. Full migration entails a “lift and shift” of an existing IT infrastructure to a new Processors, resource infrastructure while the iterative migration and limited migration employs provisioning across diverse a component-by-component migration strategy for business applications comprising multiple modules, and in the case of the latter – a migration strategy workloads will now be that mandates the moving and modification of specific components to optimize faster and smoother than interoperability with existing applications. ever before.” – Prakash Mallya Managing Director Sales and Marketing Group Intel India
Solution Brief | eNlight Cloud
Since legacy systems are tightly-coupled architecture with interdependent components that handle business-critical legacy file format and applications, they cannot be simply lifted and shifted. Similarly, iterative and limited migration strategies are just as unfeasible due to the extended downtime involved for the former, and the technical risks the latter brings. That leaves us with the vertical and horizontal migration strategies. Of the two, the horizontal migration strategy is most commonly employed by B2C and ecommerce businesses as the majority of their apps and databases are typically designed to scale outwards. However, this approach is not ideal for B2B enterprises since most still operate legacy systems, whose tightly coupled DNA contrasts with the loosely coupled framework of horizontal architectures. In some cases, migrating legacy applications to a horizontal architecture may result in extended downtime or operational failure. To avoid these risks, a number of B2B enterprises end up making do with their existing dedicated servers. Another alternative would be a vertical architecture. Unlike horizontal architectures, which scale by increasing the number of servers to cope with higher workloads, vertical architectures scale by adding more CPUs and RAM to an existing server. That said, vertical architectures can be scaled with no change to the code and are generally easier to manage as data is traditionally stored in one robust server unlike its horizontal counterparts, which distributes data across a fleet of smaller-scale, virtual machines. However, there is a catch − vertical architectures come with scalability limitations and are only scalable to the size of their server. While there are numerous cloud service providers, most only offer a horizontal architecture. To address the gap in cloud service offerings catered to B2B enterprises, ESDS brought together a team of highly experienced engineers to develop a highly agile and scalable cloud-based architecture with auto-scaling technology. For the system to be successful, any modifications should be seamless for the end-user. On top of that, this system should also be capable of orchestrating resource provisioning in real time to respond to any sudden increase or decrease in traffic or data load.
Optimizing hardware performance with Intel inside After evaluating an array of scaling methodologies and their implications, it became clear to ESDS that the most ideal solution would be an integrated cloud infrastructure with horizontal and vertical scaling functionality, built-in data security and reduced latency. Designed with a comprehensive array of enterpriselevel features that delivers powerful yet energy-efficient performance, the all-new Intel Skylake-SP architecture not only presented ESDS engineers with a scalable platform to efficiently and cost-effectively develop their next-generation cloud-computing solution but also offered seamless integration with their existing platform and backwards compatibility with older versions of Intel processors, ensuring future enhancements can be implemented with minimal downtime and reconfiguration. By leveraging on Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors, ESDS was able to achieve best-in-class performance, security, agility and efficiency on eNlight Cloud - the first-of-its-kind, auto-
scalable, managed cloud solution with vertical and horizontal scaling functionality. On top of that, these processors also helped improve data security, resource utilization and system uptime on eNlight Cloud, while retaining workload isolation. A virtual machine density test performed by ESDS on the deployed Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8170 Processors demonstrated that the key to successfully increasing virtual machine consolidation is largely dependent on the core count of the server and not just the virtualization technology used. To prevent bottlenecks in resource provisioning, typically caused by depleted memory resources (RAM), proper memory resource management should be implemented to ensure a higher number of mission-critical virtual machines can be deployed on demand. Through the deployment of the new Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8170 Processors, which feature 26 cores and a 2.1 GHz clock speed, eNlight Cloud was able to achieve a huge boost with the overall performance of eNlight Cloud, and generate up to 176 virtual machines per server3. With these dense 26-core processors, multitasking will be faster than ever before as more cores can be deployed to execute mission-critical tasks. So, in the event one of two cores are engaged, other available cores within the processor can spring into action to execute the tasks on-hand instead of stalling the job.
A faster and safer B2B cloud migration strategy With eNlight Cloud, B2B enterprises can accelerate their journey to the clouds without incurring downtime or operational risks as eNlight Cloud is built with a live migration feature that allow servers to be migrated without downtime. In addition to that, eNlight Cloud can also efficiently and securely replicate the original execution requirements of enterprises’ legacy applications without disrupting operations or requiring any modification or redesign of the application programming interface (API). From a cost perspective, eNlight Cloud delivers massive savings through the complete eradication of capital investments and substantially lowered operating costs. Unlike physical servers, which require hefty upfront investments, eNlight Cloud requires no sunken costs since its servers are hosted on the cloud. In addition to that, it also operates on a metered, pay-per-consume billing model that charges enterprises only for utilized resources – so, enterprises will no longer have to incur unnecessary costs from over-allocation of resources. On the operations side, eNlight Cloud offers greater agility, scalability and accessibility as it comes with an intelligent auto-scaling feature that can elastically scale up RAM, CPU and bandwidth during peak periods to cope with increase in workloads. Best of all, operations remain unaffected during the scaling process as eNlight Cloud can perform a live server upgrade. Managing servers will be significantly easier with eNlight Cloud as it provides a host of on-demand services that end-users can tap on to automatically deploy, manage or repair virtual machines, from wherever they are through a web-based console. Even without access to a computer, users can enjoy unparalleled access their cloud via the dedicated eNlight Cloud mobile app. 2
Solution Brief | eNlight Cloud
Solution Benefits • Greater business agility: Automatically scale resources to cope with increased workloads • Easily deploy, manage or repair virtual machines through a user-friendly, web-based console • Access your cloud, anytime anywhere with the dedicated eNlight Cloud mobile app • No downtime: With eNlight Cloud, you can scale resources, do a live server migration or upgrade and backup your apps without downtime • Never pay for unutilized resources with eNlight Cloud’s pay-per-consume billing model • Accurately predict future costs with eNlight Cloud’s resource usage prediction feature • Greater flexibility: Customize resource provisioning and scheduling to match your business needs
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Solution Architecture: eNlight Cloud Security Architecture 3
Solution Brief | eNlight Cloud
eNlight Cloud is designed with comprehensive security features to tackle the increasingly sophisticated threats today’s businesses face in the cloud. Figure 1 depicts the advanced security infrastructure for eNlight Cloud, which is not only industry-certified to adhere to security requirements but also comprises a multi-layered, security framework to ensure maximum security. With this security infrastructure, eNlight Cloud can effectively safeguard customers’ sensitive data from threats, while retaining the high availability their end-users’ businesses demands. To protect data stored on the cloud, eNlight Cloud developed a system that is capable of isolating storage from the public networks and negate sharing through a thick provisioning of storage. The underlying technology for this is a hardware virtualization technology that isolates cloud servers at the hypervisor level to improve data security. To facilitate a smooth migration with zero downtime, eNlight Cloud was designed to permit its cloud resources to duplicate the execution requirements of users’ original servers. Through this innovative mirroring technique, existing servers and applications can be integrated quickly and safely to eNlight Cloud without any modifications, redesign or downtime. To prevent any instances of data compromise, ESDS employees are prohibited from accessing customers’ data and only able to view files’ names and location. Tight security measures were also taken with hosting. For instance, storage servers at ESDS are hosted on a private network to filter out threats from public networks. Even traffic to and from eNlight Cloud is closely monitored by a firewall, which restricts users from accessing the Internet. Network vulnerabilities and traditional network security threats are also minimized by assigning each and every eNlight Cloud user a VLAN with L3 switch.
Conclusion Migrating legacy servers and applications is a complex process that varies from company to company, depending on their existing IT infrastructure and licensing agreements. Depending on their respective business goals and operating costs, migrating to the cloud may or may not be ideal. For some, upgrading their existing physical server seem more viable to avoid the technical challenges altogether but this is a myopic solution as business demands will eventually outgrow the server’s available resources. With eNlight Cloud, B2B enterprises can eliminate the operational and security risks with cloud-migration and accelerate their cloud migration journey as eNlight Cloud is not only designed to integrate with legacy systems and applications but also able to perform a live server migration. With eNlight Cloud, enterprises can leverage on a highly agile, flexible and cost-effective cloud solution to achieve greater agility, manageability and flexibility while enjoying huge savings on their IT expenditure in the long run.
ABOUT ESDS Founded in 2005, ESDS is one of India’s leading Managed Data Centre and Auto-Scalable Cloud Solutions provider with the expertise in Managed Data Center services, Managed Cloud Solutions, Virtualization and Disaster Recovery System, backed by a team of highly experienced engineers and technical support specialists. For more information, please visit: https://www.esds.co.in/ Find a solution that is right for your organization. Contact your Intel representative or visit the Reference Room at www.intel.com/references.
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Intel technologies may require enabled hardware, specific software, or services activation. Performance varies depending on system configuration. Check with your system manufacturer or retailer. Software and workloads used in performance tests may have been optimized for performance only on Intel® microprocessors. Performance tests, such as SYSmark* and MobileMark*, are measured using specific computer systems, components, software, operations and functions. Any change to any of those factors may cause the results to vary. You should consult other information and performance tests to assist you in fully evaluating your contemplated purchases, including the performance of that product when combined with other products. Intel® technologies’ features and benefits depend on system configuration and may require enabled hardware, software, or service activation. Performance varies depending on system configuration. Check with your system manufacturer or retailer or learn more at www.intel.com. ¹ http://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2016/07/10/google-study-finds-enterprises-who-trust-the-cloud-beyond-cutting-costs-see-revenue-growth/ ² Gartner Says Worldwide Public Cloud Services Market to Grow 18 Percent in 2017. (n.d.). Retrieved May 15, 2017, from http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3616417 3 Based on an internal Virtual Machine Density Test conducted by ESDS on Intel Xeon Platinum 8170. Copyright © Intel Corporation 2016. All rights reserved. Intel, the Intel logo and Quark are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. *Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.
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