Better understanding of Private Cloud

Introduction

When dealing with the private cloud, we need to keep in mind that we are dealing with something within our network, i.e., it is implemented in-house. Whereas the public cloud may deploy software on the public cloud hardware that we have nothing to do with since we do not manage that hardware at all, while in the private cloud, we manage it all. So this is something that we as an organization deploy from a hardware perspective and a software perspective.

Private cloud management

The end-user organization typically manages private clouds like conventional on-premises infrastructure, including upgrades, OS patches, middleware, and application software management. Private cloud solutions offer more control and better security over private cloud servers, though it does require more IT expertise than using a public cloud.

Private cloud architecture

Private cloud architecture aggregates resources within a data center into a single pool of resources. Through virtualizing hardware components, organizations can increase the efficiency of their private cloud infrastructure. Several leading software companies offer private cloud solutions, such as VMware, Microsoft. Enterprise-grade open source solutions are available from OpenStack, Red Hat, and others.

Companies can build a private cloud using software-defined networking (SDN) and virtual machines (VMs). Private clouds can span the globe to accommodate multiple server locations or leased space in international colocation facilities. With private cloud solutions, businesses can manage the security of their data on-premises, allowing complex network orchestration on bare-metal servers.

Types of private cloud

The three major types of a private cloud are:

Virtual private cloud

A virtual private cloud is a private cloud instance hosted on and located on a public cloud infrastructure. Unlike other private clouds, it is not on an organization’s premises or in a colocation facility.

Hosted private cloud

Cloud service providers host Hosted Private Clouds and can reside on-premises or in a data center. Cloud service providers manage the resources and handle all updates, upgrades, and maintenance.

Managed private cloud

Cloud management responsibilities are typically delegated to a third-party hosting provider. The provider handles hardware, software, networking, and operations of the private cloud, providing value-added services such as backup and disaster recovery.

Factors to consider while choosing private cloud

We use virtual machines to deploy new servers as we need them rapidly. Therefore we need to over-engineer our hardware, i.e., we need way more physical hardware than we need at this moment.

So at this moment, we might need ten virtual machines and get the physical hardware to give us those ten virtual machines. We have some cloud layers helping us manage our ten virtual machines. We do not have any of the cloud benefits ongoing.

We might use virtual machines in a virtual management interface and forget about the cloud. Still, if we want to get one of the significant advantages of the cloud, which is rapid deployment, we need to over-engineer our hardware. We will need more hardware to achieve the ability to rapidly deploy new VMS as we need them as well as additional storage spaces or compute engines based on serverless computing.

So when we think about serverless computing, we say that we do not worry about the actual server that a particular process runs on. We need the process to run. That would be compute detached from servers, hence serverless computing. The point is, all of these things will be running in a private cloud where we manage the hardware and get the great benefit of rapid deployment or scalability and growth over time as we need it.

We need to over-engineer the hardware so we buy more hardware than we need at the moment so that when we need it later, it is already there, and we can deploy and utilize it.

Open source private cloud solution: OpenStack

Now, let us show you an example of an open-source private cloud solution available to you, and that is OpenStack.