creating cloud ready center

8/2/2019 Creating Cloud Ready Center

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T E C H N O L O G Y W H I T E P A P E R

With the right inrastructure, service providers can leverage their greatest assets their

network and their expertise to deliver cloud services rom their data centers as a natu-

ral extension o the network and hosting services they oer today. The cloud-ready data

center inrastructure must support new service models at the scale necessary to meet

demand, and operate efciently to ensure proftability and support ull virtualization.

HP and Alcatel-Lucent have combined their strengths to bring service providers all o

the elements needed to deliver cloud services rom their data center: Compute resources,

storage, data center abric, inter-data-center connectivity and unifed service orchestra-

tion. With the HP and Alcatel-Lucent oering, service providers will be better positioned

to address their customers needs and reap the rewards o the cloud services opportunity.

Creating the Cloud-Ready Data Center

Combining the strengths o HP and Alcatel-Lucent to position service providersor the cloud services opportunity


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Table o contents

1 1.Thecloudservicesopportunityforserviceproviders

1 2.Thechallengesofthevirtualizeddatacenter

3 3.HPandAlcatel-Lucent:Deliveringthebuildingblocksforcloudservices

3.1 Unifed service management: A critical capability

3.2 Enhancing service providers inherent advantage

8 4.HPandAlcatel-Lucenthelpserviceproviderswinincloudservices

9 5.Abbreviations


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Creating the Cloud-Ready Data Center | Technology White Paper 1

1. The cloud services opportunity or service providers

The advent o cloud computing has created a signifcant new business opportunity or service pro-viders. To win their share o this new opportunity, service providers need a cloud-ready inrastruc-ture that can both support new service models at the scale necessary to meet demand and operateat an efciency level that ensures proftability.

With the right inrastructure, service providers can leverage their network assets and apply their ex-pertise to deliver cloud services rom their data centers as a natural extension o the virtual privatenetwork (VPN) and hosting services they oer today. The key building blocks o this inrastructureare the network, the virtualized data center and unifed service orchestration.

These building blocks put service providers in a strong position to deliver cloud serivces. For ex-ample, they can embed server and storage resources across their network, using the networks reachto efciently distribute services across their entire inrastructure. This will allow service providers tooer bandwidth and latency characteristics that are superior to those o non-telco data center pro-viders. The inrastructure will deliver services that come with the service level agreements (SLAs)that the most demanding customers have come to expect. It will also combine IT and networkperormance inormation into a single, unifed SLA to provide higher levels o application assurance

and reporting than are available to their enterprise customers today.

Service providers looking to adapt and extend their data center assets to support cloud services willturn to technologies that are similar to those used by their enterprise customers. They will also acemany o the same challenges. However, service providers must support a broader range o require-ments to meet the security, data privacy and scalability levels expected by their enterprise customers.

Computer virtualization technologies will enable service providers to create multi-tenancy modelsin their data centers to ensure the economies o scale necessary to deliver cost-competitive, yetproftable, services. Enterprises will only adopt cloud services that oer an economic advantage overthose they can deliver themselves. This is the economic threshold service providers must meet.The HP and Alcatel-Lucent strategic alliance enables service providers to proft rom cloud technol-

ogy. It allows them to leverage existing network assets to expand their oerings to large enterpriseand small- and medium-sized business (SMB) customers while making network and IT operationsmore efcient across their business.

Beore we take a closer look at the HP and Alcatel-Lucent oering or data centers, it is worthwhileto consider the challenges service providers ace in operating todays virtualized data centers.

2. The challenges o the virtualized data center

The demands on todays service provider data centers are signifcantly dierent than the demandson yesterdays more traditional data centers. The advent o computer virtualization creates a trulyagile service environment. For example, service providers can place a customers service in the opti-mal data center and on the optimal platorm to meet the customers requirements and increase theirown ability to meet SLAs and drive maximum proftability.

Service providers can now host many customers on a single computing asset; like the servicenetwork, the compute environment is now multi-tenant. In addition, just as the computing environ-ment operates independently o physical inrastructure through virtualization, so does the storageinrastructure that supports it. Operating the three data center silos o compute, storage andnetwork independently does not meet the requirements o this new paradigm.


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Creating the Cloud-Ready Data Center | Technology White Paper2

The virtualized data center poses a number o operational and management challenges. Some o theprimary challenges include:

Secure multi-tenancyComputer virtualization maximizes the economies o scale that service provider data centers de-liver. Today, it is not uncommon to have 20 or more virtual machines on a single physical server.This could mean the service provider is supporting 20 dierent customers on the same server.The service provider must ensure that customer data never mixes on the virtual platorm. They

must also ensure it does not mix in the network. The multi-tenant model must be end-to-end,rom the customer premises to the server where the service is instantiated.

Virtual machine mobilityComputer virtualization allows service providers to instantiate a customers compute service onany machine in its inventory, in any o its data centers. This means service providers now havethe luxury o moving a customers service rom one machine to another at will ideally with-out service disruption. This new exibility requires a new virtualized network model that notonly virtualizes the IP domain, but now also virtualizes the Layer 2 domain so that Layer 2 spansservers and data centers.

Inrastructure scalabilityWith computer virtualization, service providers can host many more customers on their physical

inrastructure. This dramatically increases the number o logical nodes operating over the datacenter network. For example, a rack o 64 servers with 20 virtual machines each could orce theservice provider to support, as many as 1200 IP subnets and virtual LANs (VLANs) just or thatone rack. Because virtual machines can suport up to 10 virtual interaces, that fgure can rapidlyincrease. Ten racks would require at least 12,000 IP subnets and VLANs. This is a signifcant is-sue becuase it breaks the limit o 4094 usable VLANs that is specifed in the Institute o Electri-cal and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.1Q standard. The dramatic growth o IP and Layer 2networks puts signifcant strain on the switches and routers required to operate the network.

Storage transportMany data centers use centralized storage systems to aggregate customer data. While computervirtualization has enabled service providers to move customer services rom one machine to an-other, each o these virtual machines must still communicate with its storage system. To increase

efciency and reduce latency, service providers need to move storage with virtual machines.This is particularily important in cases where, or optimal perromance, the service providerdeploys micro data centers at points o prescence near end users. It is also likely that inter-data-center storage transport will be required.

Bandwidth and latencyMost service providers will want to host a wide array o application-based services in their datacenters. Technologies such as video conerencing, unifed communications and desktop virtu-alization require low-latency, high-bandwidth networks. Service providers will be required tochoose the placement o these services based on network characteristics, not just the availabilityo RAM and CPU resources.

Unifed service management

A service being delivered rom a service providers data center is multi-aceted. It is composedo compute, storage and network elements, all working together. This drives the need or unifedprovisioning, assurance and billing. Service providers need the ability to troubleshoot acrosstechnology boundaries, provide one bill and oer one complete-stack SLA.

HP and Alcatel-Lucent have developed a data center oering that addresses these challenges whilesimultaneously ocusing on enhancing service providers competitive advantage.


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3. HP and Alcatel-Lucent: Delivering the building blocks or cloud services

The HP and Alcatel-Lucent oering or data centers includes the complete data center portolio:Compute resources, storage, data center switching abric, high-speed inter-data-center connectivityand unifed data center orchestration.

With these assets, service providers are better positioned to leverage the network as a resource in the

cloud to automate and more eectively manage and distribute resources or improved perormance.

As illustrated in Figure 1, the HP ProLiant and Blade Center server technology is internal to thedata center. Intra-data-center connectivity is provided by either the HP A-Series switching portolioor the Alcatel-Lucent 7450 Ethernet Service Switch (ESS), depending on whether the data centerdeployment is in a central ofce or a central data center. The Alcatel-Lucent 7750 Service Router(SR) amily and the Alcatel-Lucent 1830 Photonic Service Switch (PSS) provide inter-data-centerconnectivity.

Figure 1. HP and Alcatel-Lucent enable service providers to intra- and inter-connect data centers

Data center corerouting, inter-datacenter fabricAlcatel-Lucent 7750 SR

Inter-data centerphotonic transport

Alcatel-Lucent 1800 PSS

Data centerfabric HP 12500Fiber

channelSAN

End of rowLAN switchHP 12500

HP ProLiant, Blade Center HP ProLiant, Blade Center HP ProLiant, Blade Center

Top of rackLAN switchHP 5820

IPattachedstorage

Fiberchannel

attachedstorage

To address the challenges o multi-tenancy and mobility, the HP and Alcatel-Lucent oering usesindustry-standard technologies such as Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), Virtual Private

Routed Networks (VPRN), Virtual Private LAN Services (VPLS) and Provider Backbone Bridging(PBB). The result is a scalable, secure, virtualized network that allows service providers to provisioncustomer services anywhere within their inrastructure while still enjoying the benefts o virtualmachine mobility. PBB is used within the data center while MPLS and PBB over VPLS are usedbetween data centers and rom data centers to clients to create a highly available, low-latency abricthat supports long-distance virtual machine mobility.


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Multi-tenancy means individual customers must always remain isolated rom one other, starting attheir premises, all the way to the virtualized computer that defnes their data services. Technolo-gies such as VPRN, VPLS and VPLS-PBB isolate and massively scale customer VLANs and MACaddresses on the cloud network. HP FlexFabric isolates individual virtual machines on the samephysical server. The Alliance Data Centre storage oering is capable o providing thousands osecure virtual private arrays Virtual Domains. By providing secure administrative segregation ousers, hosts, and application data, HP virtual domains allows the service provider to deliver virtual

private array services and sel-service storage that is both secure and capable o high quality-o-service. The combination o FlexFabric, virtual private arrays and a virtualized data center networkensures service providers can leverage their data center to maintain the highest level o security orevery customer.

The HP and Alcatel-Lucent oering gives service providers scalability at both Layer 2 and Layer 3.The Alcatel-Lucent 7750 SR platorm scales to support more than 10,000 VPRNs, enabling serviceproviders to scale and to segregate the Layer 3 domains needed to support customer isolation.Using PBB inside the data center switching abric as well across the wide area network masks thepotentially tens o thousands o MAC addresses and VLANs that could be required. PBB groups allo a customers Layer 2 domains within one service-specifc container. As a result, service providersbackbone routers are not burdened by immense numbers o MAC addresses. This approach maxi-

mizes the routers scalability and simplifes the challenge o troubleshooting issues across multipledata centers.

Storage in a service provider data center must be mobile and always available. There are a numbero dierent storage models in use today. Storage over IP (SoIP), Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)and traditional Fiber Channel all require a network that oers low latency and high availability.In addition, strong multi-tenant support o storage separation mirrors virtual machine separationwithin the hypervisor1. The HP and Alcatel-Lucent approach to data centers accommodates all othese models, including storage mobility between data centers.

The Alcatel-Lucent 1830 PSS supports native Fiber Channel transport with low latency, enablinginter-data-center storage mirroring. FCoE or SoIP models are ully supported inside the data center

and between data centers. Because Alcatel-Lucent optical products include advanced quality oservice (QoS) eatures, long-distance mirroring over Ethernet is also possible. The rapid distributiono storage enables the astest possible virtual machine movement.

The HP and Alcatel-Lucent oering is designed with network elements that scale to meet the largestbandwidth requirements. All o the photonic and data elements in the oering are 40 Gigabit- and100 Gigabit-capable. The Alcatel-Lucent 1830 PSS and the Alcatel-Lucent 7750 SR support 100Gigabit interaces today. Inside the data center, pairs o HP S12500-series core data center switches areclustered to operate as a single logical system. Four HP S12516 switches provide 12 Terabits o capacity.

3.1Uniedservicemanagement:Acriticalcapability

One o the most signifcant challenges that service providers must address is that o unifed servicemanagement. Within the data center, multiple systems must be managed as a cohesive system. Ad-ditionally, the data center systems themselves are complex. The workows to create a service thatincludes multiple compute resources, storage and is linked to a specifc customer VPN service couldinvolve so many steps that the service provider is unable to quickly turn up a service.

1 A hypervisor is also known as a Virtual Machine Monitor ( VMM) or a virtualization manager. It is sotware that manages either mul-tiple operating systems, or multiple instances o the same operating sys tem, on a single computer.


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Unifed service management or the data center must automate and link multiple workows, allow-ing service providers to complete service requests in a competitive period o time. Non-telco cloudservice providers can activate services in minutes; service providers must have the same capability.To address the challenges o managing the entire data center stack, HP and Alcatel-Lucent areuniying their management tools. Figure 2 illustrates the data center stack.

Figure 2. Unified service management allows service providers to manage the entire data center stack

Unifiedmanagement

Application OSvertualization

Servers

LAN andstorage

Servicerouters

Serviceaccess

Linux

VMware

Windows Server System

Accessnetwork

Alcatel-Lucent provides advanced network and service management, provisioning, reporting andanalysis. Alcatel-Lucent also contributes its application assurance technology which allows serviceproviders to enable the network to automatically adjust QoS metrics to ensure the highest level oSLA granularity available.

HP provides data center acilities management, compute, storage, operating system, virtualization

and application management. Once combined, these capabilities are converged to allow serviceproviders to simpliy data center service provisioning, minimize time to troubleshoot and provideull-stack SLAs.

3.2Enhancingserviceprovidersinherentadvantage

Service providers have a natural advantage over other providers: The network. Service providerscan distribute their data centers to create advantages in terms o service-access latency and band-width. They can also bundle data center and network services with unifed SLAs.


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With this in mind, the HP and Alcatel-Lucent oering or data centers allows service providers toplace services in both central and distributed data centers based on the economic model that pro-vides them with the greatest advantage. Figure 3 illustrates the elements in a distributed data center.

Figure 3. A distributed data center improves service access latency and bandwidth

Customers

Access network Service rovider POPs and CO Central data centers

Compute resource managementNetwork resource management

Service orchestration

Application Enablement (APISs)

Convergedmetro and

aggregationConverged

wireless access

Wirelessaccess

DC

DC

Multi-serviceedge router

Convergedbackbone

Photonicservices switch

Large distributeddata center

Microdata center

Large centraldata center

HP

HP

HP

HP

HP

Service providers gain fnancial beneft by distributing their data centers, positioning select servicesclose to the customers who will use them. Due to their proximity to customers, distributed datacenters will have much lower latency characteristics per application and per service than thosethat are deployed centrally, urther away rom customers. Applications such as virtualized desktops,online gaming and video distribution are all aected by latency and can consume more networkbandwidth as the number o users increases.

Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs has developed models that confrm the benefts o distributed data centers.The Bell Labs models describe the relationships among the number o application subscribers, the

network bandwidth and proximity to the customer.

In one scenario, Bell Labs examined the relationship between bandwidth consumed per-subscriberor a data-center-hosted application and the cost to deliver it. The Bell Labs model shows thatthe cost o bandwidth per subscriber eventually exceeds the cost o operating the distributed datacenter. As illustrated in the upper chart in Figure 4, the cost per application increases linearly orservices hosted in a centralized data center while it remains relatively stable or applications hostedin a distributed data center.


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Figure 4. A distributed data center stabilizes and reduces the cost per application compared to a centralized

data center

0 2,000 4,000 6,000 8,000

Subscribers/application

Cost per application, varying number of subscribers/application

10,000 12,000 14,000$0

$16,000

$12,000

$4,000

Distributed data center costCentralized data center cost

$14,000

$10,000

$6,000

$2,000

$8,000

0 200100 300 400 500

Bandwidth per subscriber (kb/s)

Cost per application, varying number of subscribers/application

600 700 800$0

$3,200

$2,400

$800

$2,800

$2,000

$1,200

$400

$1,600

Source: Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs

In another model, Bell Labs examined the relationship between the cost o delivering an applica-tion and the growth rate in the number o subscribers using it. In this scenario, the centralized datacenter has the early cost advantage. However, as illustrated in the lower chart in Figure 4, the costadvantage o the distributed data center is signifcant as the application becomes more popular.These are just two o many scenarios that illustrate the exibility service providers have in deploy-ing appropriately-sized IT assets across their data centers. By providing an end-to-end architecturethat scales rom the smallest micro data center to the largest central data center as well as unifed

service management and data center automation capabilities, HP and Alcatel-Lucent enable serviceproviders to monetize their network.

The HP and Alcatel-Lucent approach uses the network as a critical resource in the cloud to auto-mate and more eectively manage and distribute resources or better perormance. For example, ourapproach uses the resources reed through optimization eorts to support service providers entryinto public and private hybrid cloud services. This helps service providers dierentiate themselvesby delivering responsive and distributed cloud-based services that take advantage o their real-estateootprint, brand, culture o customer experience management and access networks.


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4. HP and Alcatel-Lucent help service providers win in cloud services

The HP and Alcatel-Lucent oering or data centers ensures that service providers networks are acompetitive advantage, enabling new selling opportunities and allowing service providers to delivermore services rom their data centers. Service providers gain the IT expertise, data center technol-ogy, carrier-grade scalability and network agility needed to deliver new and high-value data-center-based services.

The unique combination o global reach, technology and portolio breadth oered by HP andAlcatel-Lucent cannot be matched by other vendors. The ollowing oers a brie look at the beneftsthat HP and Alcatel-Lucent bring to service providers considering cloud services.

End-to-end oeringsHP and Alcatel-Lucent are commited to synchronizing their product roadmaps to create end-to-end oerings. For example, HP supports PBB in its core Ethernet switches within the data centerwhile Alcatel-Lucent supports PBB in its multiservice edge routers. This allows or highly scalable,end-to-end service delivery rom the heart o the data center, all the way to the edge o the serviceproviders network.

A rich API setHP and Alcatel-Lucent oer a complete API set or both network and IT assets. The combinedassets o the IT and service network inrastructure are exposed as an open development platormthat provides new service capabilities to end users and to application and content providers. Thisenables migration rom a closed system to an open system that provides access to network, compute,memory, and storage resources through web APIs. These APIs can be ederated through agreementswith other service providers to extend the reach o services and prevent ragmentation.

Commitment to industry standardsHP and Alcatel-Lucent are commited to industry standards across both the IT and network stacks.This commitment reduces vendor lock-in, simplifes integration and migration and ensures thatservice providers are not tied to technologies that are at risk o becoming obsolete.

Fast deploymentsHP and Alcatel-Lucent enable quick micro and remote data center deployments. Our combinedoering is based on the HP Peormance-Optimized Data Center (POD) pre-integrated with HP andAlcatel-Lucent servers, storage and networking components. This combination gives service provid-ers a unique plug-and-play approach to rapid service delivery.

Flexible fnancingHP and Alcatel-Lucent oer exible multivendor fnancing options that range rom up-ront capitalor equipment purchases to fnancing or pruduent, growth-based operational expenditures.

Services expertise

HP and Alcatel-Lucent oer a ull range o proessional services to help service providers assess,plan, design, test, install, integrate and manage data centers and cloud services. Our oeringsinclude consulting services that enable applications to be migrated to the cloud. They also includenetwork design methodologies, algorithms, tools and fnancial modeling techniques developedat Bell Labs. Our services oerings help ensure service providers beneft rom a cost-eective anduture-oriented data center.


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In summary: All the benefts o two world leadersWith the leader in IT and the leader in networking, service providers gain the best o both worlds.

HP : ALAL-LU :

In-depth IT expertise In-depth network expertise

A large installed IT base A large installed telecoms base

Leadership in IT and data center transformation Leadership in network transformation

IT outsourcing leadership Telecoms outsourcing leadership

Together, HP and Alcatel-Lucent create a data center oering that empowers service providers todeliver cloud services.

5. AbbreviationsAPI application programming interface

ESS Ethernet Service Switch

FCoE Fiber Channel over Ethernet

IP Internet Protocol

IEEE Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

IT information technology

MAC media access control

MPLS Multiprotocol Label Switching

PBB Provider Backbone Bridging

POD Performance-Optimized Data Center

PSS Photonic Service Switch

QoS quality of service

SAM Service Aware Manager

SLA service level agreement

SMB Small and medium-sized business

SoIP Storage over IP

SR Service RouterVLAN virtual LAN

VMM Virtual Machine Monitor

VPLS Virtual Private LAN Service

VPN virtual private network

VPRN Virtual Private Routed Network


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Copyright 2010 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein issubject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth inthe express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein shouldbe construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorialerrors or omissions contained herein.

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