2.2. SmartX private cloud solution
The company SmartX is very interesting. "SmartX" is the name of Fanwen. This company seems unwilling or intentionally not to let people know what its Chinese name is. I don't know if this is the legendary inferiority Flatter on the outside. You have searched the official website of SmartX, but there is no company introduction, and you can’t find the name of the company until you search for “Company-> Learn about SmartX-> About the company” on the official website. Reluctantly tell you, its Chinese name is "Beijing Zhiling Haina Technology Co., Ltd.", as shown in Figure 1. If you want to know the profile of this company, I suggest you go to "Tianyancha" and "Qchacha" to find out.
The first generation solution: hyper-converged solution
SmartX, like Sangfor, is based on hyper-convergence in terms of cloud computing business, and both companies have achieved good results in hyper-convergence. SmartX is a professional provider of hyper-converged and distributed storage products and solutions, ranking first in China's hyper-converged software financial industry market share in 2020.
SmartX relies on SMTX ZBS distributed storage as a leading product, and through matching with VMware ESXi virtualization to form a hyper-converged solution, it has achieved good results in the hyper-converged market, especially in the financial industry. After the hyper-convergence gained a firm foothold, it immediately launched the self-developed native virtualization platform SMTX ELF (based on KVM), thereby realizing the self-developed hyper-convergence solution.
According to SmartX's official website "Hyper-convergence is becoming the mainstream solution for building the "cornerstone" of private cloud, but do you understand the relationship between them? "soft article, the hyper-converged architecture of SmartX is shown in Figure 2.
In addition to its own virtualization service (SMTX ELF) and distributed storage (SMTX ZBS), SmartX's hyper-converged architecture is also compatible with virtualization services from other vendors such as VMware and Citrix.
Computing virtualization : SMTX ELF, SmartX's computing virtualization service, supports VMware and Citrix computing virtualization. SmartX did not have a self-developed computing virtualization suite at the beginning, but directly used VMware's ESXi computing virtualization suite, which is why SmartX boasted about VMware's market share and the maturity of ESXi in its initial soft articles. SmartX hyper-convergence directly uses ESXi to help protect the original investment of the enterprise. Now that SmartX finally has its own native virtualization platform SMTX ELF (based on KVM), the trend of soft articles has also begun to change. However, there are not many introductions about SMTX ELF on the official website, and there are very few related documents. Maybe the product is still in the process of being advanced.
Distributed storage : The SMTX ZBS distributed storage independently developed by SmartX is the most core component of hyper-convergence. SMTX ZBS is also the foundation and foundation of SmartX. SMTX ZBS distributed storage virtualizes storage resources such as SSDs and HDDs on multiple x86 or ARM architecture servers in the cluster to provide a unified storage resource pool service.
Web console : Provide tools for unified management of computing, storage, network and other resources for hyper-converged architecture.
The second generation solution: a private cloud solution based on "hyper-convergence + CMP"
After the self-developed hyper-convergence was completed, SmartX, like Sangfor, began to evolve into a private cloud in terms of cloud computing business. In August 2019, Sangfor announced to major IT media officials that "Sangfor has chosen hyper-convergence for the transition from virtualization to cloud computing" and began to evolve to a private cloud. SmartX followed suit and released on its official website on May 21, 2020 "Hyper-convergence is becoming the mainstream solution for building the "cornerstone" of private cloud, but do you understand the relationship? ", also sounded the clarion call for the evolution from hyper-convergence to private cloud. On July 14, 2021, SmartX's official public account "SmartX Hyper-Convergence" was officially changed to "SmartX", intending to get rid of the image of a hyper-convergence provider and begin to move closer to a cloud provider. In addition, other supporting publicity is also conveying the concept of "hyper-convergence is the best solution for building a private cloud foundation" to the outside world, as shown in Figure 3.
Dear readers, whether it’s Convincing “From virtualization to cloud computing, Convincing has chosen hyper-convergence, hyper-convergence is the best choice in the cloud evolution of customer data centers”, or SmartX’s “Hyper-convergence is becoming a private cloud” Cornerstone "mainstream solution", we will find that both of them are emphasizing hyper-convergence as the cornerstone of private cloud, why is this so? Because hyper-convergence is the leading product of these two companies, it is their foothold and bridgehead in the cloud computing business, it is the interest that must be defended, and it is the basis for the evolution to private cloud.
Like Sangfor, SmartX builds a private cloud solution based on hyper-converged products with CMP and other components. The SmartX private cloud architecture is shown in Figure 4:
The SmartX official website and official documents do not introduce much about the SmartX private cloud solution. They basically give a private cloud architecture diagram as shown in Figure 4, and then give some value or empowerment descriptions. There is basically no introduction to the architecture. The official website There is no relevant technical white paper, so I don't know much about SmartX's private cloud architecture, such as what SmartX's PaaS is like, and what CMP is like. These are not very clear. This also shows in reverse that SmartX's private cloud solution is not yet very mature and is still being advanced.
CMP cloud management : There is no relevant introduction on the SmartX official website.
PaaS layer : There is no relevant introduction on the SmartX official website.
HCI hyper-convergence : According to the architecture and characteristics of hyper-convergence, it can be seen that this technology provides a more efficient and simple infrastructure resource pooling solution for the IaaS layer of the private cloud. Hyper-convergence helps the IaaS layer to easily complete the infrastructure The transformation of "cloudification" enables it to have features such as scale-out and software definition.
Next-generation solution: full-stack private cloud solution
SmartX is a step behind Sangfor in terms of cloud computing business. At present, SmartX's private cloud solution based on "hyper-convergence + CMP" is still in progress, and it is too early to evolve to the next-generation full-stack private cloud solution. SmartX's official website and related materials do not have "full-stack private cloud solutions".
At that time in 2018, SmartX did not have its own virtualization platform, and the self-developed distributed storage was still combined with VMware virtualization to build hyper-convergence. How good is it to pair SMTX ZBS with VMware virtualization? For example, VMware has a high market share and many people are familiar with using it. Using VMware can protect the existing IT investment of enterprises. They even published an article "Do not blindly follow domestic" How does SmartX create an enterprise cloud core with hyper-convergence? 》In the soft article, I emphasized that I am not full-stack in hyper-convergence so I am professional, and I emphasized that my SMTX ZBS is financial-grade and professional. Looking back now, SmartX now has the SMTX ELF virtualization platform, and it finally has a "full stack" in terms of hyper-convergence. At this time, VMware virtualization is like an abandoned shoe and is no longer touted.
In the same way, SmartX does not yet have a full-stack private cloud solution. Not only can SmartX not mention a full-stack private cloud at this time, but on the contrary, it will continue to "oppose" the full-stack, emphasizing that it is not a full-stack so it is professional, so as to compete against those who have a full-stack Manufacturers of private clouds. Just like SmartX's official soft article "Hyper-convergence is becoming the mainstream solution for building the "cornerstone" of private cloud, but do you understand the relationship? " said:
- The construction of the PaaS layer can be done step by step and does not have to be bound by the "full stack"; (meaning I don't have a full stack yet, but there will be one in the future)
- The professional PaaS platform is compatible with the mainstream IaaS platform and is loosely coupled, so there is no need to invest in a "full stack" at one time; (meaning I don't have a full stack yet, but there will be one in the future)
- Compared with public cloud vendors and full-stack private cloud solutions, this solution (referring to SmartX hyper-converged + CMP) is more open, more flexible and lightweight; (meaning I am not full-stack but lightweight)
God knows, when SmartX's private cloud solution becomes "full-stack", the views of "do not need to be full-stack" in this soft article will be abandoned like VMware virtualization. Everything is expedient.
Convinced today is the future of SmartX, and SmartX will eventually go to a full-stack private cloud, looking forward to SmartX's full-stack cloud solution!
2.3. ZStack private cloud solution
The first version of ZStack Cloud v0.6 was released in April 2015. In September of the same year, ZStack (Cloud Axis) was established in Shanghai. In March 2016, the ultra-lightweight cloud management platform ZStack Cloud v1.0 Enterprise Edition of Cloud Axis Technology Released, it has been developed to ZStack Cloud v4.1.2 version, and the version changes very fast.
ZStack Cloud private cloud solution
According to the "ZStack Cloud V4.1.2 Technical White Paper" released by the official website of Yunxi Technology, the functional architecture of ZStack Cloud is shown in Figure 5.
ZStack Cloud provides management of computing, storage, network and other resources of enterprise data center infrastructure. The bottom layer supports KVM and VMware virtualization technology, supports DAS/NAS/SAN/DFS and other storage types, supports local storage, NFS storage, SAN Storage, distributed block storage, support VLAN/VXLAN and other network models.
Cloud management platform : Provide web-based access control and management for the entire cloud platform, and provide basic cloud platform management services, such as access control, performance monitoring and configuration functions. The cloud management platform unifies the resources in each computing server to form a unified virtual computing pool. Its principle is to manage the allocation of virtual machines to computing servers and the allocation of resources to virtual machines in a given computing server according to the policies set by the system administrator.
Computing virtualization : standard x86 servers running ZStack computing modules on bare metal. Computing nodes provide resources for virtual machines and run virtual machines. Each compute node is called a standalone host in a cloud environment. Many similarly configured x86 servers can be grouped together and connected to the same network and storage subsystems to provide a collection of resources in a virtual environment, called a cluster.
Storage virtualization : FC SAN, IP SAN, NAS, and distributed storage are widely used storage technologies, and ZStack supports these technologies to meet the storage requirements of different data centers. Storage arrays are connected to and shared among server groups through a storage area network. Allows for the aggregation of storage resources and enables more flexibility in resource storage when provisioning those resources to virtual machines.
Network virtualization : Each computing node can have multiple physical network adapters to provide high-bandwidth and reliable network connections for the entire ZStack cloud platform, and support network models such as VLAN, VXLAN, and VPC.
About ZStack's cloud management platform
Unlike Sangfor and SmartX, ZStack's flagship product is a cloud management platform rather than hyper-converged. It focuses on the hybrid cloud concept and has relatively complete IaaS capabilities, but the product value is biased towards a cloud management platform. In fact, ZStack is essentially a cloud management platform. , Therefore, we can judge that the main focus of ZStack is on the cloud management platform. Because the cloud management platform is the advantage, ZStack always influences customers from cloud management and Alibaba Cloud management when ordering projects, focusing on strong management needs and hybrid cloud needs.
About ZStack's hyper-convergence
Contrary to ZStack, Sangfor and SmartX’s key products are hyper-convergence, and distributed storage is the core component of hyper-convergence. Both Sangfor and SmartX have self-developed distributed storage products, such as Sangfor’s aSAN and SmartX’s SMTX ZBS. On the other hand, ZStack's hyper-convergence seems a little difficult to come up with. ZStack's distributed storage is not a self-developed product, but directly uses the distributed storage product of an entrepreneurial company XSKY. The product value of Sangfor and SmartX tends to be hyper-converged. In fact, Sangfor and SmartX are essentially hyper-converged, and their cloud management capabilities are not as strong as ZStack. Therefore, Sangfor and SmartX always focus on hyper-converged architecture when ordering projects. Guide customers and focus on distributed storage requirements.
To sum up, ZStack's flagship product is the cloud management platform, and its focus is also on the cloud management platform. From this point of view, ZStack's competitors seem to be not Sangcon and SmartX, but more like OpenStack and CloudStack.
Due to space limitations, private cloud solutions of other commercial brands will not be introduced.