Category Archives: Highly Available Architectures

Google Cloud Platform Prices Reduced Up To 30 Percent

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Preemptible Virtual Machine Instances Provide Reduced Google Cloud Platform Prices

There’s an interesting new development in Google Cloud Platform prices that I think is worthy of review.  I’ve always felt that cloud computing prices should be lower.  The technology has been around long enough for many providers to have recouped their upfront deployment costs.  Cloud companies can now begin to pass on cost savings to their customers as the next generation of IT begins to pick up additional momentum.  Also, the level of service provider maturity is bringing about new and more robust offerings.  This in turn continues the technology road map for those companies who have been early adopters.  Check out the additional resources provided below.  You’ll learn more about Google’s cloud platform pricing structure and philosophy, and even how to create your first cost savings virtual machine.  I definitely recommend that you take the time to review these resources and any others found within the web of links.  You can also give us a shout if you’re looking to learn more about the product.

 

Google Drops Cloud Computing Prices By Up To 30 Percent, Launches Preemptible Instances

Google today announced yet another round of price cuts for its cloud computing platform, as well as a new instance type that will allow businesses to save even more on some of their cloud computing tasks. Today’s cuts focus on the Compute Engine side of the service and include cuts of up to 30 percent for the smallest instances.

 

Google Proposes “Pay Less, Compute Moore” (Not a typo)  New Tab

Google Cloud Platform Pricing Philosophy  New Tab

Google Cloud Platform vs AWS TCO Tool  New Tab

Google Compute Engine Pricing  New Tab

Google Cloud Pricing Calculator  New Tab

How To Create A Preemptible Virtual Machine Instance  New Tab

 

Cloud Foundry Now With New Vendor Support

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Pivotal Software Updates Cloud Foundry Product with New Vendor Support

Cloud Foundry has been updated with support for Spring Cloud Services, Microsoft Azure and even Docker. Check out this on ADT blog post for more information on this new product development.
 

 

Cloud Foundry Adds Support for Spring Cloud Services, Azure, .NET and Docker — ADTmag

Pivotal Software Inc. has released a new version of its Cloud Foundry (PCF) platform with expanded support for Spring Cloud Services, .NET applications, Docker images, Microsoft Azure and several ALM toolchain products. With version 1.6 of its cloud-native platform, Pivotal is making a number of enhancements previewed earlier this year at O’Reilly’s annual Open Source Convention, generally available.

Microsoft Azure – New Development with Red Hat

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Microsoft, Red Hat and Azure

Microsoft and Red Hat have entered into an agreement in the cloud space.  Red Hat will now be an option for Linux customers in the Azure platform.  It looks like the war is on hold for now.

 

 

 

 

Microsoft just buried the hatchet with another huge and bitter rival, Red Hat

Microsoft and Red Hat struck up a major new partnership on Wednesday. They’re giving Red Hat’s Linux operating system a starring role on Microsoft’s cloud computing service, Azure. Linux is a free and open source competitor to Windows offered by a number of players, with Red Hat being the biggest.

Managing Hadoop Clusters in Microsoft Azure

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 Manage Hadoop clusters in HDInsight using the Azure portal

I was following up on a Microsoft Azure blog post revealing a new customer preview – Spark for Azure HDInsight.  This was very interesting to me and I wanted to check it out.  As a Microsoft Partner, I have access to Azure as on of the many benefits.  After completing the cluster installation, I found the below article by Jonathan Gao at GitHub very helpful with the initial configuration.  He made configuring the Hadoop clusters, easy to complete.  I was also able to learn something new about managing my account as well.

 

For additional information, try reviewing these other resources.

 

Enterprises Virtualization Change

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Are Enterprises Changing Directions? • The Virtualization Practice

This is an interesting read by Edward Haletky at the Virtualization Practice.  Take some time and check out what he had to say back in March on the state of virutalization at the enterprise level.

 

Are Enterprises Changing Directions? * The Virtualization Practice

Here are some other links at the site for a deeper dive.

Business Agility | Cloud Computing | Virtualization Security

 

Windows Server 2012 R2 Failover Clustering

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Considering Failover Clustering For Your Environment

I recently had the opportunity to assist with the deployment of SQL Server 2012 in a failover cluster on vSphere 5.5.  I have to admit, the vSphere tasks had not changed since I deployed a file service cluster on Server 2008 R2 last year.  You’ll be happy to know that the VMware setup document was straight forward and easy to follow.  This experience reminded me of the article I wrote back in Sept of last year (Clusters for Service Consolidation).  In the article, I proposed the use of Microsoft Cluster Services (MSCS) as method of consolidating services in the datacenter.  A cluster could have multiple roles configured.  This could open the door to a more available datacenter at an infrastructure level.  However, the one thing I did want to expose here, is that there is a definite improvement in the failover cluster service in Server 2012 R2.  The storage/quorum issues experienced with 2008 R2 failover clustering are not an issue with 2012 R2.  This is significant, since the 2008 R2 cluster experienced loss of quorum due to storage problems, while the 2012 R2 cluster on the same storage didn’t skip a beat.  I was very impressed with the new performance and would recommend seriously considering MSCS as a major player in your datacenter.  Before you start your project though, I recommend taking the time to read the documentation before you make the first click.  I know how hard that can be sometimes, but you’ll be glad you did.  Below are a few more resources to learn more about the new features and prepare for your deployment.

 What’s New in Failover Clustering in Windows Server

Microsoft Clustering with VMware vSphere Design Guide

Migration Paths for Migrating to a Failover Cluster Running Windows Server 2012 R2

Deploy highly scalable tenant network infrastructure for hosting providers

Microsoft Infrastructure as a Service Compute Foundations

Clusters for Service Consolidation

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Using Microsoft Cluster Services to Consolidate Your Infrastructure

As I mentioned in a previous post, Failover Clustering Overview | Windows Server 2008 R2, the idea of using Microsoft Cluster Services (MSCS) to host multiple services seemed quite viable as HA solution.  For many companies that use Microsoft server products as the foundation of their infrastructure, there could be great benefit in consolidating their services into clusters.  The benefits could include ease of upgrade and patching using the rolling upgrade method, as well as ability to scale the solution as the business grows.  Services such as DHCP, Exchange, SQL Server, and File Services could be consolidated into one or multiple clusters.  Architected with disaster recovery in mind, services could be failed over to a cluster in another site.  That could help to knock out two problems with one solution.  To give you an idea of what I am talking about, please review this TechNet article – How A Cluster Server Works.  The article is a little dated but the information is so good that I had to add it to the mix.  Please let me know what you think, and if you have any questions.  I would be happy to share my thoughts.

How A Cluster Server Works

Failover Clustering Overview | Windows Server 2008 R2

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Late last year, I began working on a migration project to move a single Windows Sever file service to a two node failover cluster using Windows Server 2008 R2. The configuration was implemented in a VMware vShpere 4.1 tenant datacenter.  I was not able to use Windows Server 2012 because vSphere 4.1 doesn’t support it.  It has been a few months since the completion of the project, and I have had some time to reflect on the outcome.

The project was very successful. VMware provides a cluster setup document that was not overly complicated to follow. I was even able to integrate our existing Tivoli Storage Manager backup client into the solution with great ease. Now that the project is complete, I am envisioning how clusters might be scaled to simplify the management of an entire environment. Consider using Microsoft Cluster Services (MSCS) to power all of your higher level services, such as DHCP, File and Print, SQL Server, Exchange Server, DFS and other cluster aware applications. Could it be possible to setup say a ten node cluster to support all of your important business and LAN services?  Of course, if you needed more servers, adding additional ones would not be impossible.

In the coming weeks I would like to investigate this possibility.   First to determine if it’s feasible, and second, is it practical. It’s an exciting opportunity from my perspective, and I hope some of you might think so as well.

Failover Clustering Overview

What’s New in Failover Clusters in Windows Server 2008 R2

Microsoft Cluster Service (MSCS) support on ESXi/ESX (1004617)

 

Severalnines – Configurator for MySQL Cluster

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For the past few months I have been working with the MySQL Cluster product.  I have to admit, it’s not an easy hill to climb.  When I initially started working to setup a cluster, I associated it with many of the other clustered solutions I had worked with.  However, there were some basic differences that I had to get used to.  MySQL Cluster doesn’t use shared storage and it’s designed based on three separate node types.  Each of which, could run on a single server.  I had to get used to that.  Once I began to understand those two basic concepts, things went much better.  It’s easy to get a cluster of two separate servers up and running, but then comes special considerations for your specific data needs.  I was trying to import a database from a single MySQL instance into the new cluster.  The definite key word here is “trying”.  As a result of searching on the Internet for all the different errors I encountered, I found a company call Severalnines.  This company is awesome when it comes to MySQL.  They provide a site they call a “Configurator”.  By using this site, I was able to get so much closer to the goal.  I recommend checking this company out, but definitely check out the configurator site if you’re just starting to work with MySQL Cluster.  You’ll save a lot of time.

 

Severalnines – Configurator for MySQL Cluster.

Public, Private & Hybrid Cloud Explained | Visual.ly

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Understand What Cloud Technology Is All About

If you are having a hard time with understanding the Cloud, please take a moment and review this excellent infographic by Sam Turner on Visual.ly.  I wass really impressed with the way Public, Private and Hybrid Cloud was explained with such definition.  At Paraklesys, we endeavor to help our customers by pointing them in the right direction when it come to choosing a cloud provider.

Public, Private & Hybrid Cloud Explained | Visual.ly.