Hosted Private Clouds
Extraordinary helps you through your private cloud migration.
At Extraordinary, we are specialists in designing, building and integrating in the cloud. We recommend, plan and manage your migration process for you.
A private cloud offers the same capabilities as a Public Cloud such as pooled resources, self-service, elasticity and pay-as-you-use, although to a somewhat lesser extent, but is also provides you with more control and more room for customisation. With a private cloud, your organisation benefits from physical isolation, meaning that your environment is more secure and that there are no ‘noisy neighbours’ using your allocated resources through cloud bursting when you need them most.
What is a Private Cloud?
A private cloud is a model of cloud computing designed for the sole use of your organisation. As with a public cloud, computing power is available as a service through a virtualised environment using underlying physical resources. However, in a private cloud, your organisation is the only one to have access to the pooled resources, hence a higher level of control, customisation, security and privacy.
Typical characteristics of private cloud hosting include the ring fencing of the cloud so that only one organisation can operate within that cloud, and higher levels of network security.
A private cloud usually includes the following components:
- Dedicated Servers
- Virtualisation Hypervisors
- Virtualisation/Cloud Management System
- Storage - single or pair of SANs (failover features)
- Firewall(s) - single or pair
- Local Network
- Load Balancers (physical, virtual or software)
- Backup Software or Service
- Management and Monitoring
- Dual Site Solutions - Replication between two sites
Physical resources can be hosted either internally or externally, and can be accessed across private lines or encrypted connections through public networks.
To a certain extent, a basic private cloud is essentially virtualised dedicated servers pooled together.
Private Cloud Benefits
Greater control and bespoke design
Your private cloud will only be accessible by your organisation which means that Extraordinary will be able to configure and manage it according to your company needs. This higher level of control makes it easier to customise your environment and benefit from a truly bespoke cloud solution.
A Private Cloud powered by VMWare technology is configured to fulfil your business’s exact hosting needs. Those needs may include specific storage requirements, specific security design or the implementation of tailored resource management. As each VMware Private Cloud is designed from the ground up, there is special provision for growth and your business’s changing needs.
Increased security and privacy
Although public clouds offer a certain level of security, your private cloud can be build using a comprehensive set of techniques to ensure that your operations are kept out of reach of potential intruders. These techniques include electronic separation and isolation technologies such as firewalls, VPNs and encryption. The combination of those techniques works towards the ring fencing of your private cloud for increased security and privacy. Because resources are shared, it is difficult to obtain the same level of security in a multi-tenant environment.
Cost saving
A private cloud model is not as cost effective as a public cloud model as it offers smaller economies of scale. However, through a private cloud model, an organisation can ensure that resources are directly and flexibly allocated to individual departments or business functions according to their needs. Compared to traditional LANs, computing resources are used in a more efficient manner which minimises investment in unused capacity.
Energy efficiency
Better use of computer resources helps reduce your organisation’s carbon footprint.
Improved reliability
In a virtualised environment, the network is more resilient in the event of a physical infrastructure failure since virtual partitions can pull their resource from unaffected servers. Also, for private clouds hosted with third parties, the organisation benefits from the highly secure physical infrastructure of the data centre where the private cloud is physically hosted.
Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery
Our managed Business Continuity (BC) and Disaster Recovery (DR) service allows you to rest assured that your business critical data is safely stored, backed up or replicated. Learn more about BC
Cloud bursting
Should your system be affected by sudden spikes in demand, you have the possibility to use cloud bursting. Through this service, Extraordinary can switch selected non-sensitive functions to a public cloud in order in order to free up space for sensitive functions that need to remain in a private cloud.
To go further, your organisation can adopt a Hybrid Cloud strategy where Private Clouds are integrated with Public Clouds. The Hybrid Cloud model allows for maximum efficiency with automated allocation of functions according to their sensitivity.
Integration with dedicated servers
Where intensive resources are required, dedicated servers can be integrated into the VMWare Private Cloud. This is useful in the case where large databases require dedicated hardware to perform optimally.
By providing additional security, a private cloud is the perfect solution for businesses dealing with highly sensitive data while still being able to benefit from cloud advantages such as pooled resources, self-service, elasticity and pay-as-you-use.
