There were many clever entries, but in the end “Hard Hat Area” won out.  Thanks to all who participated.

Related posts:

1. Cloud Power Caption Contest [Win VMware Workstation 8!]
2. vComeback Contest Winners! [Microsoft Cloud Power]
3. vComeback Contest: Microsoft Cloud Power Billboard
4. Idle RHEV Hypervisors save power?

As it turns out, this Microsoft Cloud wasn’t zoned for optimal utilization — it ended up in a construction site.  Sort of like unsuspecting consumers of the Office 365 service, which is so prominently featured on the sign.  Or, as they say at Azure: Temporary “DNS issue” folks. Nothing to see here.

Cloud Power: Under Construction. Hard Hat area. (Winner: Josh Atwell)

Submit Your Caption for a Chance to Win!

Think of your most clever caption to the photo above and post it below as a comment for a chance to win a copy of VMware Workstation 8 ($199 value).  Hurry, contest ends October 11.

Here are a few examples to get you started:

• This cloud looked a lot taller in the brochure.
• Are they building an entrance?  Or an exit?
• Traffic fines doubled… and so have my operational costs!

Google vs. Microsoft

Want to know the real irony here?  This obstruction is a pedestrian footbridge that will be frequented by Google employees on their commute to one of many buildings in the area.  You can’t make this stuff up.

View Larger Map

Rules: Winner selection is subjective.  If similar entries are received, the first submitter will have priority.  Entry must be received by October 11, 2011 11:59 p.m. PDT.  Prize not claimed within five days of notification will be forfeited.  Contestants must be legal residents of earth.  Not sponsored or endorsed by any third-party.

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2. vComeback Contest: Microsoft Cloud Power Billboard
3. vComeback Contest Winners! [Microsoft Cloud Power]
4. Unboxing the Cloud

Some Things Can’t Be Rushed

Just like Paul Masson, VMware executives Paul Maritz and Steve Herrod will launch no cloud infrastructure before its time.  Fortunately for The Cloud, it is almost time…

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3. Nice writeup on Windows Server licensing
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Getting a VM out of the cloud is a two step process.  First a VM is exported into OVF format, which happens in the cloud:

Next, the resulting OVF artifacts are downloaded and saved so the VM can be imported to vSphere:

Obviously, this is not an operation that would be done daily; it’s not a “vMotion to the cloud” by any stretch, but it is a reasonable feature that gives some assurance that this is not a so-called Hotel California cloud.  When business requirements change, it’s nice to know that workloads could be redeployed as needed without starting over from scratch.

This concludes the VCritical OpSource Cloud Experience series.  I hope you found it interesting.

Related posts:

1. OpSource Cloud Experience — Introduction
2. OpSource Cloud Experience — Networking
3. OpSource Cloud Experience — Connecting
4. Unboxing the Cloud

Layer 2 Networking

If you are a vSphere administrator, it may come as a surprise to find out that some public clouds do not permit layer 2 connectivity between virtual machines.  Actually, you may be even more surprised to learn that it is very typical for your VMs to be instantiated on completely different subnets.  That means that all data must flow through another device on the network — an Ethernet bridge or IP router, filtering traffic — even if two virtual machines are on the same IP subnet.

The OpSource Cloud, just like vCloud Director clouds, offers true layer 2 connectivity.  If two of your VMs are on the same network, they communicate directly, not through an intermediary security bridge or router.  Here you see that the VM I am currently logged into has the MAC address of another VM to which it connects:

Lower Latency

The above discussion on layer 2 connectivity may seem esoteric, but it ultimately manifests as very low latency between workloads running in the cloud — essential for multi-tier applications.  OpSource actually guarantees sub-millisecond response time, and in my experience they deliver:

Plenty of Bandwidth

For a quick test of bandwidth between two VMs, I used iperf with default options and attained well over 900Mb/s — plenty for most applications that would be deployed in this type of public cloud scenario.

Conclusion

Because OpSource Cloud is built on top of vSphere, it works like a vSphere administrator would expect:  VMs are deployed on known subnets with layer 2 connectivity, offering the best potential performance while making it much easier to monitor and diagnose any network-related issues that could arise.

Related posts:

1. OpSource Cloud Experience — Introduction
2. OpSource Cloud Experience — Connecting
3. OpSource Cloud Experience — Import/Export
4. Thanks for all the port groups!

OpSource networking is based on Cisco switches and security; cloud users have various options for configuring access for management or public services.  When new virtual machines are instantiated, they are assigned private IP addresses and cannot be accessed from the Internet directly.  This is a good thing for security, but how does an administrator manage workloads in the cloud?

VPN for VM Management

Cisco SSL VPN capabilities are built into this cloud platform, so administrators can connect from anywhere to securely manage virtual machines.  This is very easy to use and even works from behind corporate firewalls and proxy servers — something that may be a concern if your public cloud requires direct access via SSH or RDP.

Directly Connect with NAT

For VMs providing services to the public Internet, a 1-1 NAT mapping can be configured for any of the 8 public IP addresses that come standard with an account.  There are also richer load balancing capabilities that can spread requests across multiple web servers.

With a NAT mapping in place, it is possible to SSH or RDP without connecting via VPN — if desired — provided the necessary ACL (access-control list) is configured in the firewall:

Concluding Thoughts

These networking features provide enough security and flexibility for most private cloud needs.  It’s a big benefit for corporate users to be able to connect via SSL VPN, since RDP and SSH are often blocked in this scenario to enhance security.

Related posts:

1. OpSource Cloud Experience — Networking
2. OpSource Cloud Experience — Introduction
3. OpSource Cloud Experience — Import/Export
4. Cloudy with a chance of vaporware

OpSource Cloud competes effectively with other public IaaS clouds and was positioned as a “Challenger” in the 2010 Gartner Magic Quadrant.  Treb Ryan, the CEO, co-founded the company back in 2002.

I’ve recently had the opportunity to take the OpSource Cloud for a test drive and found it very easy to use.  Getting started was simple, and in no time at all I was deploying a network of virtual Windows and Linux machines to do my bidding.

This week I will be publishing a series of articles documenting my experience with the OpSource Cloud.  You may like to subscribe to the VCritical RSS feed or follow along on Facebook.

Getting Started

After setting up an account, the first thing to do is deploy a virtual network.  OpSource has designed their multi-tenant network environment using Cisco gear, separating customers with VLANs and hardware firewalls.  It takes just moments to request a new network, which includes a /24 private IP address block as well as 8 public IPs:

Virtual Machine Templates

After deploying a network, you are ready to spin up some virtual machines.  OpSource provides a variety of Linux and Windows images in various CPU and RAM configurations.

I found the Red Hat image to be well-configured and a great starting point for production workloads — it is not a kitchen sink install; compilers and other unnecessary packages are not included by default.  Having said that, the OpSource knowledge base has very clear instructions on using package management tools, which are fully configured for use in the template, to quickly add gcc or other optional features as necessary.

Interestingly, all VMs are offered at the same hourly rate — there is no additional fee for Windows VMs.  Customers are free to choose genuine Red Hat or CentOS for the same price as well.

CPU, RAM, and storage are priced per hour, and discounted bundles are available.  For example, $79/month gets you a healthy 2GB instance with 80GB of persistent storage. OpSource doesn’t appear to offer ephemeral storage like EC2 — shut down your instance and the data remains intact.  Hey, it’s vSphere!

Flexible Virtual Machine Configurations

One difference between OpSource and Amazon EC2 is the ability to arbitrarily configure — and reconfigure — the CPU and RAM allocated to a particular VM.  For example, if your workload requires a large amount of memory but not much CPU, or vice-versa, you can easily set this up and pay for only the resources that are actually needed:

Closing Thoughts

There are plenty of public IaaS clouds to choose from today.  While Amazon EC2 is the best-known, a cloud like OpSource that is based on VMware vSphere is certainly worth considering for compatibility and SLA advantages.

[Disclosure: OpSource provided a free account for this evaluation but did not influence the content in any way.]

Related posts:

1. OpSource Cloud Experience — Connecting
2. OpSource Cloud Experience — Networking
3. OpSource Cloud Experience — Import/Export
4. Microsoft likens vSphere cloud to ancient fax machines

Not to throw The Cloud under the bus, but somehow a glitch has allowed this Evernote note to circulate freely; it appears to be straight from Steve Ballmer’s MacBook Pro:

Your Turn!

What should Microsoft be looking for in the next STB leader?  Leave a comment below — funny or serious, your choice!

Disclaimer for the humor-impaired:  This is satire.  No, seriously.

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4. Storage vendors unanimously applaud SCVMM innovation

Hat tip to my coworkers for passing this along.

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The response was overwhelming and many of the entries were quite hilarious.  It wasn’t easy, but I’ve selected two winners, each will receive a copy of Maximum vSphere:

Tony DiMaggio:  Yoda called…he wants his speech writer back.

Jacob Foster:  Do you work for Microsoft?

I hope you got a kick out of reading the entries — it’s all in good fun.  There were several interesting concepts submitted that VMware really should take a second look at; I’ll be sure to mention them to my colleagues in the marketing department!

Who knows… we might have to do this again sometime.

Related posts:

1. vComeback Contest: Microsoft Cloud Power Billboard
2. Announcing the Cloud Power Caption Contest Winner
3. Cloud Power Caption Contest [Win VMware Workstation 8!]
4. Microsoft likens vSphere cloud to ancient fax machines