3.2 Service Definition – Hosted Private Cloud Service
While the hosted private cloud service is a higher value than the virtual data center service, developing automation that is more effective is required. In addition, self-service and the ability to perform adds, changes, and deletions must be provided, both for initial deployment of an environment by the provider, and afterwards.
Today, if a customer orders a hosted private cloud service (either as part of an initial environment deployment or as an in-life addition), the service provider supplies all implementation services. While this is required to verify that all virtual machines are licensed, installed, and operated correctly, further automation in the building and management of these servers is needed.
Many of the virtual data center requirements described earlier are applicable here, with the exception of some of the self-service capabilities which, in a managed environment, must be controlled to a certain degree. In addition, resources (and commercials) will be on a per-virtual machine basis, rather than a pool of resources.
The provider’s next-generation hosted private cloud service has the following key requirements:
• Compute (CPU and RAM) is variable by virtual machine, and can be changed, dynamicallyrough a self-service portal.
• Storage (tiers) must also be provided by pools, but different tiers can be attached by drive to VMs.
• Solution is per customer or a “private cloud,” so that the provider can assign resources delivering a customer’s virtual machines to specific hardware.
• VMware and OS licensing will be provided by the service provider as standard, per virtual machine, and built into the price.
• Within certain bounds, a customer must have some self-service capability, such as requesting additional resources (RAM, storage, and so on).
• A customer must be able to create virtual machines from a controlled catalog of images.
• A customer must be able to request that a new template be created based on their template. However, tasks (ideally automated, but possibly manual) will be required to create this template in such a way that a managed virtual machine can be deployed from it.
• Storage provided by drive to be able to support QoS for specific applications.
• Automation is required for the provider to manage implementation of these services, including creating virtual pools of resources per customer, attaching these resources to specified virtual machines, setting up VLANs and networks (firewalls, switching, load balancing, IP addressing, and so on), installing the operating system, and preparing backups (file level) and storage.
• The provider must be able to manage capacity across the platform (both shared and dedicated) to address any performance concerns and manage the infrastructure.
• All operating system patching must be able to be automated, with rollback and self-service capabilities, allowing a customer to select which patches they require and when.
• (Ideally phase 1) Provide customers the ability to self-service firewall and load balancer changes, as well as create and remove networks. This must be limited to basic requests from a service catalog. More complex changes will be designed and implemented by the provider.
• As a phase 2 feature, provide the capability to auto-scale virtual machines based on monitoring thresholds and criteria being met (possibly with a customer action to reboot the virtual machine at an acceptable time). In addition, support options, such as bringing up powered-down virtual machines within a load balanced group.
• Develop options for “mothballing” a virtual machine at a lower price (as a phase 2 feature) so customers can turn off unused virtual machines (for example, a staging/test environment) and drop to a lower level of billing.
• Self-service must be API or GUI-based (feature parity between the services) and role-based (so customers can have read-only users, for example, and users limited to changing certain environments only).
• Portal access should be through a link (ideally with SSO) from the providers existing online portal.
• All changes on the portal should be logged and visible to the provider.
Key service requirements include:
• Consumer access to vCenter Server and VMware vRealize® Automation™ dedicated private cloud stack
• Provider-managed hypervisor
• Shared storage (Dedicated LUNs) with optional add-on service of dedicated storage hardware
• Snapshot, application-aware, and file-level backups
• Dedicated VMware vCenter Server Appliance™ / management stack / physical resource / fabric
Figure 2. Hosted Private Cloud Service Conceptual Design
