1. Enterprises' core demands on private cloud
What kind of cloud does an enterprise need? I think the answer will definitely be varied, because each enterprise has different business characteristics and demands on the cloud will also be different. Although these answers are diverse, as long as we analyze carefully, we will find that there are many common appeals in these answers.
First of all, it is based on the private cloud, and its core attribute is the enterprise's exclusive resources, which are self-controllable, safe and available. Secondly, this private cloud must meet the business characteristics of the enterprise. For example, the game industry and the financial industry, one is a sensitive business, and the other is a stable business, and the business characteristics are completely different. Again, this cloud must be manageable, scalable, and decoupled. Finally, the input-output ratio of this cloud can be calculated clearly and is worth investing in. This is very important, and it often determines the technical route and product selection of your private cloud.
2. Enterprise private cloud solution selection
After more than ten years of development, the cloud computing industry has experienced the stage from concept hype to mature products. Now it can be said that the cloud computing industry is a situation where a hundred schools of thought are contending. Specific to private cloud solutions, there are various solutions in the market to choose from, with extremely rich types of functions and a wide range of products. Enterprises need to choose a suitable private cloud solution based on their own business characteristics and future development needs, rather than blindly following the trend.
In the "2020 China Private Cloud System Platform Market Research" report released by CCID Consulting in 2020, it stated: "At present, the domestic private cloud system platform market has formed a competitive landscape with data center manufacturers and cloud manufacturers as the main players. In the leadership In the quadrant of market participants, Huawei, H3C (Ziguang Cloud), and Inspur Cloud have relatively complete cloud computing industry chains, and have a broad customer base in the enterprise data center market. They have been deeply involved in major private cloud applications such as government and telecommunications for many years. Its private cloud system platform is developing well. As a professional private cloud provider, Yijiexing Cloud has outstanding performance in the financial field. After completing the strategic investment of China Electronics CEC in 2019, it began to make efforts in the government market. VMware virtualization products have a wide range of markets However, there is a large gap between China and the world in the performance of the private cloud market. In addition, Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud and other public cloud vendors have deployed private clouds and performed outstandingly in the government market. They are currently expected in the industry.” In addition, the report also gives a 2019 China private cloud system platform vendor competitiveness quadrant analysis chart, as shown in Figure 1:
Below, the author tries to make a summary and comparison between common commercial private cloud solutions and open source private cloud solutions, hoping to provide some inspiration and thinking for enterprises in terms of technology selection.
2.1. Sangfor Private Cloud Solution
In August 2019, Sangfor released the soft article "From Virtualization to Cloud Computing Transformation Sangfor Chooses Hyper-Convergence" to major IT media. Questions that need to be answered continuously. When it comes to the cloudification trend of data centers, hyper-convergence is the best choice in the cloudification evolution of customers' data centers." Therefore, we can probably know that the entry point of Sangfor cloud computing business is hyper-convergence. After hyper-convergence has gained a firm foothold, it will gradually evolve towards private cloud and continue to build a complete Sangfor private cloud commercial ecosystem. In essence, hyper-convergence is a high-end version of virtualization, which is still far away from the capabilities of the cloud. On the premise of keeping the benefits of hyper-convergence, and then gradually evolve to the direction of private cloud, it has become a convinced must. As the so-called hyper-convergence goes to the depths, it is the cloud.
Convinced of the evolution of the cloud computing business, it provides a path for other hyper-converged manufacturers to learn from. For example, SmartX hyper-converged manufacturers are currently convincing for reference.
The first generation solution: hyper-converged solution
Sangfor's hyper-convergence capabilities are very strong, ranking among the top three in the hyper-convergence market for five consecutive years, and occupying a place in the domestic market. Therefore, before introducing Sangfor's private cloud solution, it is necessary to introduce Sangfor's hyper-convergence solution. According to the "Sangfor Hyper-Converged Architecture Technical White Paper", the Sangfor hyper-converged architecture is shown in Figure 2.
Sangfor hyper-converged architecture softwareizes computing, storage, network, and security based on the underlying infrastructure (standard X86 hardware). Through this software-based approach, computing virtualization aSV, storage virtualization aSAN, and network virtualization aNet , builds the minimum resource unit required in the data center, and provides all the resources required in the IT infrastructure of the data center through the minimum unit in the resource pool.
aSV computing virtualization : based on KVM for secondary optimization and development, with independent intellectual property rights, it is the server virtualization component in the Sangfor hyper-converged architecture solution, and also the core component of the entire hyper-converged architecture. Computing resource virtualization technology is a common The X86 server presents a standard virtual machine to the end user through the aSV component.
aSAN storage virtualization : based on the distributed file system Glusterfs for secondary optimization development, it is a software-defined storage solution for storage virtualization and an important part of the hyper-converged architecture, integrating distributed cache, SSD read and write storage acceleration , multi-copy mechanism guarantee, fault automatic reconstruction mechanism and many other storage technologies can meet the storage needs of key businesses.
aNet network virtualization : Based on the mature Overlay+NFV solution in the industry, the overlay method is used to build a large second layer and realize tenant isolation between business systems, and to realize various network function resources required in the network through NFV (including Basic routing and switching, security and application delivery, etc.) on-demand allocation and flexible scheduling, so as to realize network virtualization in the hyper-converged architecture.
The second generation solution: a private cloud solution based on "hyper-convergence + CMP"
Currently, Sangfor is in the stage of the second-generation solution. In the transition from virtualization to cloud computing, Sangfor has chosen hyper-convergence. That is to say, Sangfor's private cloud solution is based on the "hyper-convergence + CMP" architecture, and in the "hyper-convergence + Under the framework of "CMP", gradually improve the Sangfor private cloud solution to create a commercial ecology of Sangfor private cloud.
There is no doubt that Sangfor's hyper-convergence capabilities are very strong, but Sangfor's cloud capabilities are not strong, and the cloud capabilities are still on the way to catch up with big companies. During the experience exchange and training meetings of Sangfor in various internal regional markets, we often heard the following feedback from salespeople:
- Our cloud capabilities are still insufficient, and many functions of the cloud solution are not supported. When encountering cloud giants, such as Huawei and Alibaba Cloud, we basically have no chance.
- When we were facing the leading companies in the industry, customers had never heard of Sangfor Cloud, and they would not consider us when they said that they said cloud, and they would consider us when there are security projects. I am convinced that in the minds of these customers, it is still a security company, not a cloud company.
- When the customer's demand is a resource pool demand, we are convinced that there is still a chance. When the customer's demand is a cloud demand, our chances are not too great.
Transforming from virtualization to cloud computing, Sangfor chose hyper-convergence. Naturally, hyper-convergence has become the foundation of Sangfor's private cloud architecture. According to the "Sangfor Enterprise Cloud aCloud Technology White Paper", Sangfor's private cloud architecture is shown in Figure 3:
Sangfor private cloud architecture is mainly composed of two parts: the first part is aCloud hyper-convergence, and the second part is aCMP (cloud computing management platform). Based on the private cloud architecture, users can build business systems based on their own needs.
aCloud hyper-convergence : Sangfor enterprise-level cloud aCloud is based on hyper-convergence architecture, with virtualization technology as the core, using computing server virtualization aSV, storage virtualization aSAN, network virtualization aNET, security virtualization aSEC and other components to integrate computing, storage, Network and other virtual resources are integrated into a standard X86 server to form a basic architecture unit; and multiple sets of unit equipment can be aggregated through the network to realize modularized seamless horizontal expansion (Scale-Out) and form a unified resource pool.
aCMP cloud management : Sangfor cloud computing management platform aCMP provides management and resource allocation capabilities for Sangfor enterprise-level cloud and third-party resource pools; through automated operation and maintenance tools, it reduces the difficulty of platform operation and maintenance and reduces the workload of operations; with the help of IT self-service Service and process management, improving the agility and rapid response capabilities of users' IT services, thereby improving IT management level and service efficiency; integrating the metering function of the cloud management platform, fine-grained IT services and IT resources used by each tenant The measurement and statistics of the system can better help enterprises and organizations to calculate departmental costs and benefits.
PaaS container cloud : Sangfor's private cloud solution based on the "hyper-converged + CMP" architecture did not involve PaSS at the beginning, and now it is gradually building Sangfor PaaS, but its functions and services cannot be compared with private cloud manufacturers in the leader quadrant. In September 2019, Sangfor released container cloud PaaS6.0. At present, PaaS container cloud is still evolving. It is believed that there will be container cloud PaaS7.0, PaaS8.0, ... and other evolution versions.
Next-generation solution: full-stack private cloud solution
The word "full stack" seems to be very popular in the cloud industry. If your solution is not called a "full stack" solution, it seems that it is not tall enough, so a swarm of cloud vendors refer to their cloud solutions as "full stack" Full Stack Cloud Solution". So, as for what is "full stack", I think each cloud vendor has a very different understanding of the meaning of the term "full stack". For example, Huawei has a relatively complete cloud computing industry chain, so what does Huawei think of "full stack"? Zhang Yinggeng, Director of IT Solution Sales Department of Huawei EBG China, said at the HUAWEI CLOUD full-stack private cloud solution press conference: "What is a full-stack? It means not only the underlying capabilities, but also the upper-layer platform capabilities. From hardware to software, to complete application capabilities, including the ability to understand the industry, so that we can provide customers with full-stack capabilities. Not just saying that you have full-stack capabilities, but you really have full-stack capabilities.”
So how does Sangfor define its full stack? At the beginning of 2021, Sangfor released the soft article "Sangfor was rated as an outstanding member unit of cloud computing standardization work, and the cloud platform was rated as the annual outstanding product". The soft article said: "Sangfor cloud computing platform is a cloud computing product developed by Sangfor. The management platform, with virtualization technology as the core at the bottom layer, integrates computing, storage, network, and security virtualization, and has the ability to uniformly manage various heterogeneous resources such as X86 clusters, ARM clusters, virtualization platforms, and public clouds. It can provide users with a rich catalog of cloud services, covering IaaS services and PaaS services such as containers, DevOps, and microservices, and has the characteristics of rich business load, safety and reliability, and convenient operation and maintenance." Sangfor's "full stack" has an obvious meaning. It sounds like "hyper-convergence + CMP + PaaS". The meaning of "full stack" is very different from that of Huawei, and the definitions of each company are not on the same channel. Therefore, the so-called full-stack is nothing more than each company talking about it, but every cloud manufacturer is using this term. I believe that the term "full-stack" will be rotten in the street in a short time.
Well, let’s get back to business, let’s take a look at the main film of “Sangfor Full-Stack Private Cloud Solution” officially released by Sangfor. The subtitle of the main film “Achieving a full-stack private cloud solution based on a hyper-converged architecture resource pool” caught my attention. ,As shown in Figure 4.
I am deeply convinced that the three sentences are not far from my old business, and that it is always a certain solution based on the hyper-converged architecture. I often carry the label "hyper-converged" with me, and strengthen this label all the time. There are two main reasons for this. The first is that the convinced "security vendor" is too burdened. If you don't carry a "hyper-converged" label, people will think that you are still the original security vendor. The second is that Sangfu wants to use the label of "cloud", but the ability of cloud is not enough, and the label with "cloud" is not worthy of the name.
According to "Sangfor Full-stack Private Cloud Solution", Sangfor's full-stack private cloud architecture based on hyper-converged architecture resource pool is shown in Figure 5:
"aCMP6.0.15 Sangfor Cloud Platform Technology White Paper" made a clear roadmap for the evolution of Sangfor's full-stack cloud solution. The following content is excerpted from the white paper:
- Sangfor launched a full-stack cloud solution through an in-depth analysis of the current status of customer data center construction and management. It includes private cloud, dedicated cloud, and hybrid cloud with the same architecture, and provides a container cloud PaaS platform to meet the construction and management needs of different customer data centers.
- Sangfor's full-stack cloud solution uses the stable, reliable, and high-performance aCloud as the basic IaaS platform. Unified management of data center heterogeneous resources through hybrid cloud management aCMP, while providing product services, multi-level operations, multi-tenants, business security, and disaster recovery and backup capabilities.
Look forward to Sangfor's next-generation full-stack private cloud solution to a higher level and catch up with big cloud vendors as soon as possible.