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BIG-IP Solutions for Microsoft Private Cloud

Five of the top six services critical to cloud are application delivery services and available with F5 BIG-IP.

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The big news at MMS 2012 was focused on private cloud and Microsoft’s latest solutions in the space with System Center 2012. Microsoft’s news comes on the heels of IBM’s latest foray with its PureSystems launch at its premiere conference, IBM Pulse. 

As has become common, while System Center 2012 addresses the resources most commonly associated with cloud of any kind, compute, and the means by which operational tasks can be codified, automated, and integrated, it does not delve too deeply into the network, leaving that task to its strategic partners.

One of its long-term partners is F5, and we take the task seriously.The benefits of private cloud are rooted in greater economies of scale through broader aggregation and provisioning of resources, as well its ability to provide for flexible and reliable applications that are always available and rely on many of these critical services. Applications are not islands of business functionality, after all; they rely upon a multitude of network-hosted services such as load balancing, identity and access management, and security services to ensure a consistent, secure end-user experience from anywhere, from any device.most important features cloud nww 5 of the top 6 services seen as most critical to cloud implementations in a 2012 Network World Cloud survey are infrastructure services, all of which are supported by the application delivery tier.

The ability to consistently apply policies governing these aspects of every successful application deployment is critical to keeping the network aligned with the allocation of compute and storage resources. With the network, applications cannot scale, reliability is variable, and security compromised through fragmentation and complexity. The lack of a unified infrastructure architecture reduces the performance, scale, security and flexibility of cloud computing environments, both private and public. Thus, just as we ensure the elasticity and operational benefits associated with a more automated and integrated application delivery strategy for IBM, so have we done with respect to a Microsoft private cloud solution.

BIG-IP Solutions for Microsoft Private Cloud

BIG-IP solutions for Microsoft private cloud take advantage of key features and technologies in BIG-IP version 11.1, including F5’s virtual Clustered MultiprocessingTM (vCMP™) technology, iControl®, F5’s web services-enabled open application programming interface (API), administrative partitioning and server name indication (SNI). Together, these features help reduce the cost and complexity of managing cloud infrastructures in multi-tenant environments. With BIG-IP v11.1, organizations reap the maximum benefits of conducting IT operations and application delivery services in the private cloud. Although these technologies are generally applicable to all cloud implementations – private, public or hybrid – we also announced Microsoft-specific integration and support that enables organizations to ensure the capability to extend automation and orchestration into the application delivery tier for maximum return on investment.

F5 Monitoring Pack for System Center
Provides two-way communication between BIG-IP devices and the System Center management console. Health monitoring, failover, and configuration synchronization of BIG-IP devices, along with customized alerting, Maintenance Mode, and Live Migration, occur within the Operations Manager component of System Center. The F5 Load Balancing Provider for System Center
Enables one-step, automated deployment of load balancing services through direct interoperability between the Virtual Machine Manager component of System Center 2012 and BIG-IP devices. BIG-IP devices are managed through the System Center user interface, and administrators can custom-define load balancing services. The Orchestrator component of System Center 2012
Provides F5 traffic management capabilities and takes advantage of workflows designed using the Orchestrator Runbook Designer. These custom workflows can then be published directly into System Center 2012 service catalogs and presented as a standard offering to the organization. This is made possible using the F5 iControl SDK, which gives customers the flexibility to choose a familiar development environment such as the Microsoft .NET Framework programming model or Windows PowerShell scripting.

 

F5 big ip msft private cloud solution diagram

Private cloud – as an approach to IT operations – calls for transformation of datacenters, leveraging a few specific strategic points of control, to aggregate and continuously re-allocate IT resources as needed in such as way to make software applications more like services that are always on and secured across users and devices. Private cloud itself is not a single, tangible solution today. Today it is a solution comprised of several key components, including power/cooling, compute, storage and network, management and monitoring tools and the the software applications/databases that end users need.

We’ve moved past the hype of private cloud and its potential benefits. Now organizations need a path, clearly marked, to help them build and deploy private clouds.

That’s part of F5’s goal – to provide the blueprints necessary to build out the application delivery tier to ensure a flexible, reliable and scalable foundation for the infrastructure services required to build and deploy private clouds.

Availability

The F5 Monitoring Pack for System Center and the F5 PRO-enabled Monitoring Pack for System Center are now available. The F5 Load Balancing Provider for System Center is available as a free download from the F5 DevCentral website. The Orchestrator component of System Center 2012 is based on F5 iControl and Windows PowerShell, and is also free.

Connect with Lori: Connect with F5: o_linkedin[1] google  o_rss[1] o_twitter[1]   o_facebook[1] o_twitter[1] o_slideshare[1] o_youtube[1] google Related blogs & articles: Complexity Drives Consolidation  At the Intersection of Cloud and Control…  F5 Friday: Addressing the Unintended Consequences of Cloud  F5 Friday: Workload Optimization with F5 and IBM PureSystems  The HTTP 2.0 War has Just Begun  F5 Friday: Microsoft and F5 Lync Up on Unified Communications  DevCentral Groups – Microsoft / F5 Solutions  Webcast: BIG-IP v11 and Microsoft Technologies – Applications   Technorati Tags: F5,F5 Friday,MacVittie,Microsoft,MMS 2012,BIG-IP,private cloud computing,cloud computing,devops,automation,orchestration,architecture,System Center 2012,load balancing,security,performance,scalability domain,blog

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Cloud computing, compliance, risk management

Avoid the Security Umpire Problem

Have you ever been part of a team or committee working on an initiative and found that the security or compliance person seemed to be holding up your project? They just seemed to find fault with anything and everything and just didn’t add much value to the initiative? If you are stuck with security staff that are like this all the time, that’s a bigger issue that’s not within the scope of this article to solve.  But, most of the time, it’s because this person was brought in very late in the project and a bunch of things have just been thrown at them, forcing them to make quick calls or decisions.

A common scenario is that people feel that there is no need to involve the security folks until after the team has come up with a solution.  Then the team pulls in the security or compliance folks to validate that the solution doesn’t go afoul of the organization’s security or compliance standards. Instead of a team member who can help with the security and compliance aspects of your project, you have ended up with an umpire.

Now think back to when you were a kid picking teams to play baseball.  If you had an odd number of kids then more than likely there would be one person left who would end up being the umpire. When you bring in the security or compliance team member late in the game, you may end up with someone that takes on the role of calling balls and strikes instead of being a contributing member of the team.

Avoid this situation by involving your Security and Compliance staff early on, when the team is being assembled.  Your security SMEs should be part of these conversations.  They should know the business and what the business requirements are.  They should be involved in the development of solutions.  They should know how to work within a team through the whole project lifecycle. Working this way ensures that the security SME has full context and is a respected member of the team, not a security umpire.

This is even more important when the initiative is related to virtualization or cloud. There are so many new things happening in this specific area that everyone on the team needs as much context, background, and lead time as possible so that they can work as a team to come up with solutions that make sense for the business.