Better off with Hybrid – Big Data needs cloud and dedicated servers

By Emil Sayegh | Published: May 20, 2013

Ladies and gentlemen - It’s big, it’s data, it’s big data. It was the talk of the town at CloudCon Expo in San Francisco this week. CloudCon Expo was a great event. It was great to meet and talk to so many peers, partners, customers and people from across the industry. One of the highlights for me was participating in the CEO-only, keynote panel, the “POWER Panel: The Business of Cloud & Big Data” – with the likes of other industry thought leaders. From industry legend Marten Mickos, CEO of Eucalyptus (former CEO of MySQL AB); and Ron Bodkin, CEO of Think Big Analytics; to cloud Pioneer Chris Kemp, CEO of Nebula and OpenStack evangelist; and Lawrence Guillory, CEO of Racemi, the message was clear, cutting-edge and undeniable – Big Data is here, the cloud is ready and here is how to do it. We are still at the beginning of this crossover, and the enterprise as well as developers demand the many lessons our industry has to share.

As a cloud pioneer, I have had the distinguished experience of building the largest of cloud businesses at HP and Rackspace, on to the present where we witness the founding work we put into things like OpenStack changing the industry, and our growing success story now at Codero.  These are exciting times where cloud technology is still getting better and Big Data is one of the most intriguing use case developments for the cloud on the scene. As I told the audience, cloud and Big Data have a very natural intersection; however, I was clear to point out that Public Cloud is not the end-all-be-all answer to big data hosting. The entire panel agreed on the following points.

Big Data, perhaps you’ve heard it’s the “next” big thing. It’s actually the “now” big thing, gaining prominence as more and more corporate, client, and personal information grows exponentially day-by-day (and much of it as cloud-data). The opportunity of Big Data and predictive analytics lies in the ability for a company to increase actionable knowledge of their business, market information, and customers. Everywhere you look companies are realizing the value of this immense source of information at their fingertips.  It is data we all want, that we expect in our interactions, in smooth experiences, companies want it and it is changing how we operate, how we problem solve, and how we think.  From the commercial applications like Walmart that processes billions of points of data each day, to the scientific side of the spectrum as it is being utilized in ongoing genome research, Big Data is here to stay.

The technologies that drive Big Data are diverse. There are many standard and emerging platforms in the field.  One of the technologies many are familiar with is Hadoop, a leading framework that is open-source and has a large installed base. Among the many feature points of this and other platforms is that these leading frameworks are constructed with the enterprise in mind, with many points and methods of processing and built-in tolerance of node failure. Big Data infrastructure is all about scale – a wide base of computing that is fast, fault-tolerant, and highly available – after all you are aggregating and analyzing mission-critical company data.  That brings up another critical point in that Big Data requires big performance because of the amount of data systems are expected to handle. That’s why you see systems enabled with flash, tons of RAM, and specialized configurations being utilized.

We at Codero have always believed that a Hybrid Approach of using traditional dedicated host infrastructure and Cloud Computing technologies is the right answer – contrary to many pundits.

  • Big Data requires strong I/O performance, and a highly reliable infrastructure
  • For strong performance and scalability reasons, you need to have the choice to deploy infrastructure that meets the specific needs of your Big Data application.

It’s a very specialized and custom proposition that requires an architecture that combines the best of cloud computing and traditional hosting.

In doing so, one can leverage “cloud servers” to quickly scale on-demand to meet sudden spikes in processing while keeping your Big Data on a dedicated (single-tenant) backend for cost reasons. We have seen that at constant workload levels, or for storing data at rest, dedicated solutions are as much as 3X less expensive than public cloud.

As we review the thought process that goes into Big Data architectures, keep in mind there are various flavors and varieties of Big Data and even cloud out there. So we are staying general, while being descriptive of these emerging constructs. 

Considering Big Data Needs and Risks

Surely, a pure cloud solution has significant advantages, some weaknesses and a cost structure that you need to consider. Some thought points of Big Data in a pure cloud situation include:

  • Integration with other applications
  • Risk
  • Performance
  • Control
  • Value

Big Data is not all that different from a number of cutting-edge technologies in that they require critical, enterprise-grade, high-performance systems, and they hold sensitive business data.  Today’s CIO faces the same questions over and over again when it comes to contemplating cloud.

  • What is the definition of cloud – Are we actually talking cloud and which flavor? Or is it simple hosting?
  • Are the cloud models and providers mature enough to work with my requirements?
  • How are we defining requirements – Performance, SLA, Multi-tenant, Geo-balancing, Capacity, Enterprise-readiness, Regulations, etc.
  • Are we ready for the cloud? – Every situation is unique.

Lining it up:  Big Data and Hybrid Cloud

In general, some apps are quite natural for pure cloud environments, and in other situations, hybrid and even dedicated hosting will win out.  Big Data falls into this second category because as a general rule, when systems are put into the cloud, there should never be a compromise of services, performance or reasonable control.  Big Data infrastructure demands among other things – flexible, configurable networking, workload and throughput balancing, and highly redundant systems, while maintaining the ability to scale easily and quickly. This list screams hybrid cloud environment, and this is reinforced by the following characteristics:

  • Bare metal performance of dedicated servers
  • Oriented as a service to systems and applications
  • Not directly intended for public consumption
  • Proprietary and Confidential data
  • High-performance requirements
  • High Availability infrastructure requirements
  • Tight IT management

In the big picture, with rare exception, Big Data needs follow one or more of these general descriptions. A hybrid infrastructure solution will:

  • Offer highest performance due to bare metal dedicated servers
  • Offer highest configurability and flexibility in design
  • Have the ability to quickly add capacity due to automation, and use of cloud as needed
  • Be more secure due to dedicated servers
  • Reduce risk
  • Offer better management and reporting

A pure cloud environment simply cannot deliver on Big Data requirements in terms of price advantage, infrastructure capabilities, and business needs as effectively as a hybrid solution. We believe Big Data is the next killer app for hybrid clouds made of automated dedicated hosted servers, and virtualized cloud servers.

Making the Case – Hybrid Clouds are Ideal for most Big Data

The risks of putting mission-critical systems into environments that cannot meet present or future needs are too great, and if you look at it, hybrid environments are the best option.  In the enterprise and across the world, mission-critical applications and especially Big Data systems have to be built on the best available architecture that best suits its needs.  The case is clear, hybrid architecture delivers on all the specialized requirements that real-world Big Data systems entail.  Hybrid cloud architecture are also best suited to meet business requirements, including risk, management, compliance, security, and adds considerable cost savings as well – without sacrificing a thing. 

As always, let me know your thoughts, and if you have any questions by emailing me here.

 

About: Codero Hosting delivers a hybrid cloud offering with unparalleled support, featuring the best of cloud capabilities and dedicated hosting performance along with cost advantages that are custom-built. Chat with us for more info. Emil Sayegh is the President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Codero Hosting. Emil joined Codero in January 2012, after launching and pioneering successful Cloud Computing and hosting businesses for Hewlett-Packard, and Rackspace.

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Codero on the Road (Again) this Summer – Come see us!

By Chris Branding | Published: May 10, 2013

Summer is the time for travel and the same is true here at Codero. We are hitting the road, coast to coast, from San Francisco to New York and passing by Texas, with a lot of events planned along the way, with even more to come.

In fact, the fun begins next week. We’ll be headed to the Valley for CloudCon Expo San Francisco – May 14-15. CloudCon Expo is an event that touches on best practices and strategies for Cloud Deployment. Our CEO, Emil Sayegh will be speaking at the conference during the Power Panel session on The Business of Cloud and Big Data. The Power Panel will be a discussion on business issues and lessons learnt by companies in Cloud and Big Data space.

If you are planning on being at the CloudCon Expo, be sure to attend this can’t miss session. I highly encourage it, and we would also love to see you at our booth afterwards!

Even if you aren’t attending the conference, but are in San Francisco, we’ll also have a Customer Meet-up on Tuesday, May 14th. Come by and visit with us at our exclusive customer meet-up – 6pm at Perry’s on Embarcadero. There, we can share a drink, have some good food together, talk about your experiences with Codero and how we can help you further accelerate your business. It’s not anything formal; just a way for everyone to get to know each other.

  • What: Informal get together/Meet-up with me and members of the Codero team
  • When: 6pm – 8pm, Tuesday, May 14th
  • Where: Perry’s – Embarcadero – 155 Steuart Street, San Francisco, CA 94105

Other events along the way:

3rd Annual Austin IT Symposium – Emil Sayegh, CEO, will be sharing his expertise on the Cloud Strategy panel during the event.  This event will bring together the region’s top IT leadership and allow for the exploration of new ways to maintain a competitive advantage in a global economy and allow collaboration across the region’s IT population. For more information, visit the 3rd Annual Austin IT Symposium.

TechCrunch Meet-up Austin, Texas 5/30 – Here is a place to have excellent conversations and a competition of entrepreneurs for bragging rights in under 60 seconds. Watch or join in to pitch-off with local venture capitalists to dazzle them and pitch your best ideas. For more information, visit TechCrunch Meet-up Austin.

Cloud Expo New York City 6/10 – 6/13 – Join team Codero in New York at this event. There, stay and watch Codero CEO Emil Sayegh discuss hybrid cloud technology and why it’s a win-win for the industry. For more information about the event, visit Cloud Expo New York.

HostingCon 6/17 – 6/19 – Austin Texas– This is the premier event where you’ll find anyone who’s anyone in the industry. Here, you will also find us conversing about hybrid cloud technology and what it can do for your business. First, you should come by to see our CEO, Emil Sayegh, and our customer/partner panel discuss building a revenue stream for life with hybrid hosting services. Then, check out Chandler Vaughn’s panel talk on eliminating noise and optimizing performance for cloud technology. We’re sure you will have a great time! Panel details are as follows:

Emil Sayegh, CEO, and Codero Customer/Partner Panel – “Build a Revenue Stream for Life with Hybrid Hosting Services” 

Chandler Vaughn, SVP of Product Dev – “Eliminating Noisy Neighbors and Optimizing Performance in the Cloud”

Don’t think we forgot about you with all our traveling around! You’re invited to join us! If you call one of these cities home or if you are planning on attending any of the events, please come see us, and stay tuned for our other customer meet ups. If you have any questions regarding our upcoming events please call, chat or email us. Hope to see you soon!

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Don’t believe the HYPE: Dedicated Hosting is 3x cheaper than AWS

By Emil Sayegh | Published: May 9, 2013

AWS – The 10,000-pound gorilla

We know that Amazon Web Services (AWS) — Amazon’s Cloud — has its sights set on the enterprise market and is looking to make a splash.  They have a lot of our competitors on the run.  Amazon is a big name, and cloud adoption is good, but I am here to tell you that AWS is not for everyone, and we are not scared!  Here is why.  An overwhelming 90% majority of enterprise workloads are better suited for a dedicated server.  In fact, dedicated server infrastructure wins on price and performance, with costs typically three times cheaper than running similar workloads on AWS.

To give you a simple perspective and cut to the chase let’s take a look at one of our most popular mid-level dedicated server solutions:

Codero Dedicated Server vs. Amazon EC2

*1TB Persistent EBS Storage required assumes you want to keep configs, data through maintenance, etc

Yes, you read the chart right. This is showing a 3.3x differential in monthly price!   Why then would you pay a hefty premium for EC2 from AWS?  AWS is focused on flexibility, scale, and other elastic features that make cloud computing great.  Despite its continued cost drops, AWS was not built with “constant” workload cost effectiveness in mind.  Think of it like a hotel — if you want to live somewhere 365 days a year, a hotel is not the most economical or practical option.  A house, or even an apartment, is the better alternative.   Computing and housing are very similar!   90% of IT workloads available right now are largely predictable and constant.

AWS (and its cloud competitors CloudStack and OpenStack) is and has always been about horizontal scalability – which is the right solution in only the following limited and specific scenarios:

  •  Need for quick scalability – Think of a company that anticipates a boom in audience, or perhaps does not expect it. Recently, the BitCoin currency exchange marketplace MtGox became a victim of its own success when its servers were unable to keep up with surging demands. MtGox runs its infrastructure and apparently has significant high-performance needs along with others. This creates a specific situation, however, where a rapid, perhaps even automated scale-out could have helped to avert an outage.
  • Flexible workloads – Let’s say you are starting your own Netflix. When planning your infrastructure you have to look at your network, disk and CPU utilization throughout – not only the day, but also the week and even seasonal schedules.  It’s not much of a stretch to assume that viewership will increase across the board – over spring break, in the evenings, on the weekends, etc. You need the flexibility to turn systems up or down in relation to your workload.  That’s exactly why Netflix lives on AWS. It’s also why Zynga, which has a similar spikiness footprint, retains capacity with AWS in a hybrid deployment.
  • Applications built for scale-out infrastructure – At the heart of a successful enterprise scale-out operation is a distributed software application.  Whether out of the box or built in-house, these applications have to be flexible in recognizing additional computing resources with as little reconfiguration as possible.
  • Cost is not a factor in your decision – If all of these requirements are met and operational costs are not an issue at this particular stage, then it may indeed make sense to look beyond dedicated to a cloud only solution.  But when is budget not a concern?  You will indeed find that this is the case the minority of the time in the big picture.

 

Can the gorilla outrun the cheetah? No!
Customization still is king.   The AWS cloud is too big to customize.   Customers may have uncertainties and custom
requirements around storage requirements, security, privacy, SLAs, automated scaling needs, resource deficiencies in backup and disaster recovery capabilities.  The overwhelming majority of computing workload requirements are still customized.

 

“Not everything will move to the cloud as there are many business processes, data sets and workflows that require specific hardware or proprietary solutions that can’t take advantage of cloud economics.” – James Staten, Forrester Research, Playbook on Cloud Computing 

 

Most workloads are consistent.
Most workloads are relatively consistent and predictable.  In cases of high-performance requirements, they are not meant to be competing for I/O in some infrastructure somewhere.  Real-world data processing does not always scale linearly so paying for that capability when it’s not even a requirement is simply unnecessary.  In the majority of cases traffic demands are in fact predictable so the cost of rapid scalability doesn’t add up either.  The persistent question of course is whether an organization is better served to build on dedicated servers or on an elastic and highly prescriptive cloud somewhere.  There are many use-case scenarios where the hybrid approach is more compelling, encompassing the advantages of both worlds – where dedicated servers handle the constant, high-performance and predictable load while cloud servers are available for bursts.  For many, this may be an important capability to build into solutions at some point.  For others, dedicated servers are perfectly suited for most high-performance, security-minded, reliability concerns.

 

When part of a complete strategy, dedicated servers are still the kings of the Savannah. Dedicated servers are important enterprise workhorses.  For years dedicated servers have delivered reliable and cost-effective computing to many organizations.  The word ‘dedicated’ makes it very clear; dedicated systems are specifically built and tuned for a single customer application and the users who rely on them.

 

Cloud solutions whether OpenStack, CloudStack or Amazon’s AWS are for everyone to consider, but not for every application out there. I have personally pioneered building three major cloud platforms that all compete with AWS.  So, I should know a thing or two about what applications work in the cloud. Cloud platforms are worth considering as part of the IT mix, but they are not necessarily an ideal solution in every case as the hype suggests especially when used as a sole technological platform.

 

Despite the cloud hype, the case for dedicated infrastructure is very strong.  Pure cloud solutions are definitely not the most cost-effective either. With on-premises, in-house solutions there are issues with space, costs, additional infrastructure, personnel, support, etc.  A dedicated hosting solution addresses many of those concerns. We believe the world wants to leverage the best of both worlds and needs a good hybrid cloud that bridges the advantages of dedicated and cloud, with the ability to spin up or ramp down capacity as required.

 

See beyond the hype, get to know the services you are looking at, the advantages and disadvantages of each, and be sure the costs align with your goals.  Keep watching Codero as we continue developing on the cutting edge, separate our products from the industry noise, and excel in delivering solutions that actually work for business.

 

As always, let me know your thoughts, and if you have any questions by emailing me here.

 

Sincerely,

 

Emil Sayegh

 

About: Codero Hosting delivers a hybrid cloud offering with unparalleled support, featuring the best of cloud capabilities and dedicated hosting performance along with cost advantages that are custom-built. Chat with us for more info. Emil Sayegh is the President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Codero Hosting. Emil joined Codero in January 2012, after launching and pioneering successful Cloud Computing and hosting businesses for Hewlett-Packard, and Rackspace.

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Codero Hosted Network Attached Storage (NAS) and SAN Storage Offerings Help Customers with Affordable Scale Out

By chandlervaughn | Published: April 30, 2013

I’ve heard it from customers before, “When are you going to offer more storage options?” Well, you asked and we delivered. I’m happy to announce our newest offering: Network Area Storage (NAS) & Storage Area Network (iSCSI SAN) storage for your Dedicated Hosting and Managed Hosting services.

We always work to offer our customers the best options and with NAS and iSCSI SAN you get two types of storage to choose from. We developed these new solutions to more efficiently and effectively serve Windows and Linux customers in need of scale-out storage. Ideal candidates for Codero’s NAS and SAN storage are organizations that are comfortable with network-bound performance.

NAS provides file storage perfect for those in need of lots of file storage. For those requiring more performance from their storage, we offer the iSCSI SAN option – great for those seeking disk space that’s good for application level demands, such as databases.

Examples of Use

Network Attached Storage 
With NAS, you get file-level storage that’s well-suited for large file server options. Simply attach the storage as a mapped drive to your server and storage files, such as media, backups and virtual machine snapshots.

  • Store more files, like videos, documents, backup files
  • Add more storage to existing servers
  • Archive older files no longer needed on production machines

iSCSI Storage Area Network
iSCSI SAN enables you to add in space that helps maximize performance. For example, say you want to create multiple virtual server instances. Simply create the instances with the iSCSI SAN storage and you have a higher performance disk that serves each of your virtual server instances. You could have a web server, database or other type of server with plenty of storage to accomplish any operation.

  • Create virtual machines
  • Host database intensive operations
  • Cluster servers for High Availability and Failover

Options
We have a few configurations available for this offering including both NAS and SAN options starting at 4 TB with 8 GB of caching. Please visit Codero.com/Storage for additional information on our NAS and SAN storage options.

As always, we’re here to help you with any of your hosting service questions. For more information, please chat with one of our hosting experts or email me at Product at Codero.com.

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The fiber is coming! The fiber is coming!

By Chris Branding | Published: April 11, 2013

That’s right. Google has announced its next city for Google fiber and guess where it’s going to be? Why Austin, Texas, of course! That’s something everyone at Codero is happy about.

It’s great and all that Google fiber is coming to Austin, but we got to thinking about something. Google has already brought fiber to Kansas City and now, Austin. Now, we don’t want to say it’s because Codero has offices in both cities, but…

First, it was Kansas City (and for those of you who don’t know Codero is headquartered in KC and is home to the majority of Codero’s employees) Google brought in fiber and gigabit speeds to the Kansas City metro area. With instant downloads and crystal clear TV reception, it’s no wonder Kansas Citians love it so much.

And just recently, Google announced Austin as its next target for Google fiber goodness. Now, here’s the second piece of proof. Codero opened up an office last fall in Austin, TX, as well. Is it a coincidence that Google went from our home office city to another one of our cities? Hmmmmm…

To read more about the Austin announcement, check out some of the recent articles on the Google Fiber Blog as well as Time – Business & Money.

Now why is it such a good thing to get Google fiber in your city? Well, it’s far faster than anything available now. Imagine instant downloads and uploads. Yep, it’s that fast. Not only that, but think of the economic considerations. That means more local business growth, more jobs to help with the implementation and support the infrastructure afterwards. Yep, sounds like a win-win for the cities getting the fiber.

Well, we can’t say for sure if Google’s decision is because of Codero or not, but with Google Fiber in both cities many members of Team Codero are doing the happy dance!

What do you think? Are you one of the lucky ones in KC or Austin? All we know is Google is following a good thing, with all the great things happening with Codero, who could blame them for following us down to Austin, too.  For more information on Google fiber, click here.

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