Enterprise Cloud Computing Blog

Blended Cloud Environments – A Financial Services Use Case

Posted by Damon Miller on Sep 26, 2011 at 6:10 AM

By Damon Miller, Director of Technical Field Services

One of the most interesting trends in cloud computing is the emergence of “hybrid” solutions which span environments that were historically isolated from one another.  A traditional data center offers finite capacity in support of business applications, but it is ultimately limited by obvious constraints (physical space, power, cooling, etc.).  Virtualization has extended the runway a bit, effectively increasing density within the data center, however the physical limits remain. Cloud computing opens the door to huge pools of computing capacity worldwide.  This “infinite” capacity is proving tremendously compelling to IT organizations, providing on-demand access to resources to meet short and long-term needs.  The emerging challenge is integration—combining these disparate environments to provide a seamless and secure platform for computing services.  CloudSwitch provides a software solution that allows users to extend a data center environment into the public cloud securely without modification of workloads or network configurations.  I’d like to discuss a specific example of how CloudSwitch delivered a solution which spanned environments in a corporate data center and external cloud.

A large financial services company approached us some time ago with an ambitious plan to leverage cloud computing as a strategic initiative within the organization.  Their goals were to reduce operating costs, improve responsiveness to the various business units, and differentiate themselves within the industry through technological innovation.  Security was a fundamental requirement and a number of risk assessment groups were involved throughout the design and evaluation phases of the engagement.  Finally, this company also wanted to leverage a traditional colo environment from their cloud vendor to provide high-speed access to shared storage while also supporting their traffic monitoring equipment.  After a period of technical diligence, we established a reference architecture which satisfied all internal security requirements while remaining true to the fundamental goal of moving to a dynamic cloud environment. The result was a true realization of the hybrid model.

In the customer’s reference architecture, there are three primary components:

  1. Internal data center environment hosting the CloudSwitch Appliance (CSA)
  2. Private colo environment hosting the CloudSwitch Instance (CSI) and CloudSwitch Datapath (CSD) as well as shared storage for cloud instances
  3. Public cloud environment hosting customer workloads

The CloudSwitch Appliance is deployed into the customer’s data center environment to allow central management of one or more colo environments.  Each of these environments supports an isolated cloud deployment, for example for a particular business unit. CloudSwitch’s virtual switch and bridge components are implemented for high-speed connectivity between cloud servers and shared storage.  Finally, the public cloud environment is used to host actual customer workloads (operating systems).  Network communication and local storage are protected through CloudSwitch’s secure overlay network and transparent disk encryption functionality.

This approach yields several benefits:

  • Multiple instances of this dedicated environment can be independently deployed to support different business units
  • High-speed access to the enterprise cloud environment is available since the colo environment is physically located in the same facility
  • Physical infrastructure can be deployed into the colo environment in support of cloud servers—for example, shared storage devices
  • Dedicated firewalls can be deployed and traffic inspection is possible, satisfying the security groups’ requirements

The reference architecture supports the organization’s high-level goals while remaining compliant with all existing security and regulatory requirements.  Cloud servers have high-speed access to shared storage as a result of the colo deployment alongside the public cloud environment.  All network traffic and storage is encrypted automatically through CloudSwitch’s security capabilities, and through CloudSwitch’s role-based access controls (RBAC) the security team has centralized control over who is able to access each cloud environment.  The end result is a deployment model which truly implements a hybrid environment combining resources from the public cloud with traditional colo resources to deliver a secure, scalable platform for dynamic computing.

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Reader Comments

  1. Mark szynaka

    October 19, 2011 6:51 PM | Permalink

    It is good to hear that a financial firm is looking into a hybrid cloud solution. I know from personal experience they can be be some of the more cautous users and for good reason given their applications. I know the idea of multi-tenant cloud is pretty much out of the question and it has only been with the advent of this isolation cloud technology that it makes sense for them so that they can leverage their extensive investment in ITIL, SOX and ISO27001 best practices. Once the issue of security has been satisfied no doubt latency will be the next topic. Most of these forms already use Riverbed so the inclusion of that solution along with the CloudSwitch technology could prove to be a turning point in the mindshare on Wall Street.

  2. Alex Saca

    February 10, 2012 1:06 AM | Permalink

    The Beginning of Hybrid Cloud in Cloud Computing helps to achieve scalable and cost effective cloud resources that are secure, configurable and policy compliant.

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