Chapter 15. Cloud Architecture

This chapter covers the following exam topics:

1.0 Network Fundamentals

1.1 Explain the role and function of network components

1.1.g Servers

1.2 Describe the characteristics of network topology architectures

1.2.f On-premises and cloud

1.12 Explain virtualization fundamentals (virtual machines)

Cloud computing is an approach to offering IT services to customers. However, cloud computing is not a product, or a set of products, a protocol, or any single thing. So, while there are accepted descriptions and definitions of cloud computing today, it takes a broad knowledge of IT beyond networking to know whether a particular IT service is or is not worthy of being called a cloud computing service.

Cloud computing, or cloud, is an approach as to how to offer services to customers. For an IT service to be considered to be cloud computing, it should have these characteristics: It can be requested on-demand; it can dynamically scale (that is, it is elastic); it uses a pool of resources; it has a variety of network access options; and it can be measured and billed back to the user based on the amount used. Cloud computing relies on data centers that can be automated. For instance, to service requests, a cloud computing system will create virtual server instances—virtual machines (VMs)—and configure the settings on each VM to provide the requested service.

This chapter gives you a general idea of the cloud services and network architecture. To do that, this chapter begins with a discussion of server virtualization basics. The next section then discusses the big ideas in cloud computing, with the final section discussing the impact of public clouds on packet flows in enterprise networks.

“Do I Know This Already?” Quiz

Take the quiz (either here or use the PTP software) if you want to use the score to help you decide how much time to spend on this chapter. The letter answers are listed at the bottom of the page following the quiz. Appendix C, found both at the end of the book as well as on the companion website, includes both the answers and explanations. You can also find both answers and explanations in the PTP testing software.

Table 15-1 “Do I Know This Already?” Foundation Topics Section-to-Question Mapping

Foundation Topics Section

Questions

Server Virtualization

1, 2

Cloud Computing Concepts

3, 4

WAN Traffic Paths to Reach Cloud Services

5, 6

1. Three virtual machines run on one physical server. Which of the following server resources are commonly virtualized so each VM can use the required amount of that resource? (Choose three answers.)

  1. NIC

  2. RAM

  3. Power

  4. Hypervisor

  5. CPU

2. Eight virtual machines run on one physical server; the server has two physical Ethernet NICs. Which answer describes a method that allows all eight VMs to communicate?

  1. The VMs must share two IP addresses and coordinate to avoid using duplicate TCP or UDP ports.

  2. The hypervisor acts as an IP router using the NICs as routed IP interfaces.

  3. Each VM uses a virtual NIC that is mapped to a physical NIC.

  4. Each VM uses a virtual NIC that logically connects to a virtual switch.

3. Which of the following cloud services is most likely to be used for software development?

  1. IaaS

  2. PaaS

  3. SaaS

  4. SLBaaS

4. Which of the following cloud services is most likely to be purchased and then used to later install your own software applications?

  1. IaaS

  2. PaaS

  3. SaaS

  4. SLBaaS

5. An enterprise plans to start using a public cloud service and is considering different WAN options. The answers list four options under consideration. Which one option has the most issues if the company chooses one cloud provider but then later wants to change to use a different cloud provider instead?

  1. Using private WAN connections directly to the cloud provider

  2. Using an Internet connection without VPN

  3. Using an intercloud exchange

  4. Using an Internet connection with VPN

6. An enterprise plans to start using a public cloud service and is considering different WAN options. The answers list four options under consideration. Which options provide good security by keeping the data private while also providing good QoS services? (Choose two answers.)

  1. Using private WAN connections directly to the cloud provider

  2. Using an Internet connection without VPN

  3. Using an intercloud exchange

  4. Using an Internet connection with VPN

Answers to the “Do I Know This Already?” quiz:

1 A, B, E

2 D

3 B

4 A

5 A

6 A, C

Foundation Topics

Server Virtualization

When you think of a server, what comes to mind? Is it a desktop computer with a fast CPU? A desktop computer with lots of RAM? Is it hardware that would not sit upright on the floor but could be easily bolted into a rack in a data center? When you think of a server, do you not even think of hardware, but of the server operating system (OS), running somewhere as a virtual machine (VM)?

All those answers are accurate from one perspective or another, but in most every other discussion within the scope of the CCNA certification, we ignore those details. From the perspective of most CCNA discussions, a server is a place to run applications, with users connecting to those applications over the network. The book then represents the server with an icon that looks like a desktop computer (that is the standard Cisco icon for a server). This next topic breaks down some different perspectives on what it means to be a server and prepares us to then discuss cloud computing.

Cisco Server Hardware

Think about the form factor of servers for a moment—that is, the shape and size of the physical server. If you were to build a server of your own, what would it look like? How big, how wide, how tall, and so on? Even if you have never seen a device characterized as a server, consider these key facts:

No KVM: For most servers, there is no permanent user who sits near the server; all the users and administrators connect to the server over the network. As a result, there is no need for a permanent keyboard, video display, or mouse (collectively referred to as KVM).

Racks of servers in a data center: In the early years of servers, a server was any computer with relatively fast CPU, large amounts of RAM, and so on. Today, companies put many servers into one room—a data center—and one goal is to not waste space. So, making servers with a form factor that fits in a standard rack makes for more efficient use of the available space—especially when you do not expect people to be sitting in front of each server.

As an example, Figure 15-1 shows a photo of server hardware from Cisco. While you might think of Cisco as a networking company, around 2010, Cisco expanded its product line into the server market, with the Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) product line. The photo shows a product from the UCS B-Series (Blade series) that uses a rack-mountable chassis, with slots for server blades. The product shown in the figure can be mounted in a rack—note the holes on the sides—with eight server blades (four on each side) mounted horizontally. It also has four power supplies at the bottom of the chassis.

Photograph of a B-series UCS server by Cisco is shown.

Figure 15-1 Cisco UCS Servers: B-Series (Blade)

No matter the form factor, server hardware today supplies some capacity of CPU chips, RAM, storage, and network interface cards (NIC). But you also have to think differently about the OS that runs on the server because of a tool called server virtualization.

Server Virtualization Basics

Think of a server—the hardware—as one computer. It can be one of the blades in Figure 15-1, a powerful computer you can buy at the local computer store…whatever. Traditionally, when you think of one server, that one server runs one OS. Inside, the hardware includes a CPU, some RAM, some kind of permanent storage (like disk drives), and one or more NICs. And that one OS can use all the hardware inside the server and then run one or more applications. Figure 15-2 shows those main ideas.

A schematic diagram represents the physical server model.

Figure 15-2 Physical Server Model: Physical Hardware, One OS, and Applications

With the physical server model shown in Figure 15-2, each physical server runs one OS, and that OS uses all the hardware in that one server. That was true of servers in the days before server virtualization.

Today, most companies instead create a virtualized data center. That means the company purchases server hardware, installs it in racks, and then treats all the CPU, RAM, and so on as capacity in the data center. Then, each OS instance is decoupled from the hardware and is therefore virtual (in contrast to physical). Each piece of hardware that we would formerly have thought of as a server runs multiple instances of an OS at the same time, with each virtual OS instance called a virtual machine, or VM.

A single physical host (server) often has more processing power than you need for one OS. Thinking about processors for a moment, modern server CPUs have multiple cores (processors) in a single CPU chip. Each core may also be able to run multiple threads with a feature called multithreading. So, when you read about a particular Intel processor with 8 cores and multithreading (typically two threads per core), that one CPU chip can execute 16 different programs concurrently. The hypervisor (introduced shortly) can then treat each available thread as a virtual CPU (vCPU) and give each VM a number of vCPUs, with 16 available in this example.

A VM—that is, an OS instance that is decoupled from the server hardware—still must execute on hardware. Each VM has configuration as to the minimum number of vCPUs it needs, minimum RAM, and so on. The virtualization system then starts each VM on some physical server so that enough physical server hardware capacity exists to support all the VMs running on that host. So, at any one point in time, each VM is running on a physical server, using a subset of the CPU, RAM, storage, and NICs on that server. Figure 15-3 shows a graphic of that concept, with four separate VMs running on one physical server.

Key Topic.
A schematic diagram represents the Virtual Machines on a physical server.

Figure 15-3 Four VMs Running on One Host; Hypervisor Manages the Hardware

To make server virtualization work, each physical server (called a host in the server virtualization world) uses a hypervisor. The hypervisor manages and allocates the host hardware (CPU, RAM, etc.) to each VM based on the settings for the VM. Each VM runs as if it is running on a self-contained physical server, with a specific number of virtual CPUs and NICs and a set amount of RAM and storage. For instance, if one VM happens to be configured to use four CPUs, with 8 GB of RAM, the hypervisor allocates the specific parts of the CPU and RAM that the VM actually uses.

To connect the marketplace to the big ideas discussed thus far, the following list includes a few of the vendors and product family names associated with virtualized data centers:

  • VMware vCenter

  • Microsoft HyperV

  • Citrix XenServer

  • Red Hat KVM

Beyond the hypervisor, companies like those in the list (and others) sell complete virtualization systems. These systems allow virtualization engineers to dynamically create VMs, start them, move them (manually and automatically) to different servers, and stop them. For instance, when hardware maintenance needs to be performed, the virtualization engineer can move the VMs to another host (often while running) so that the maintenance can be done.

Networking with Virtual Switches on a Virtualized Host

Server virtualization tools provide a wide variety of options for how to connect VMs to networks. This book does not attempt to discuss them all, but it can help to get some of the basics down before thinking more about cloud computing.

First, what does a physical server include for networking functions? Typically it has one or more NICs, maybe as slow as 1 Gbps, often 10 Gbps today, and maybe as fast as 40 Gbps.

Next, think about the VMs. Normally, an OS has one NIC, maybe more. To make the OS work as normal, each VM has (at least) one NIC, but for a VM, it is a virtual NIC. (For instance, in VMware’s virtualization systems, the VM’s virtual NIC goes by the name vNIC.)

Finally, the server must combine the ideas of the physical NICs with the vNICs used by the VMs into some kind of a network. Most often, each server uses some kind of an internal Ethernet switch concept, often called (you guessed it) a virtual switch, or vSwitch. Figure 15-4 shows an example, with four VMs, each with one vNIC. The physical server has two physical NICs. The vNICs and physical NICs connect internally to a virtual switch.

Key Topic.
A schematic diagram represents the connection between the physical switch with a host server through a virtual switch.

Figure 15-4 Basic Networking in a Virtualized Host with a Virtual Switch

Interestingly, the vSwitch can be supplied by the hypervisor vendor or by Cisco. For instance, Cisco offers the Nexus 1000VE virtual switch (which replaces the older and popular Nexus 1000V virtual switch). The Nexus 1000VE runs the NX-OS operating system found in some of the Cisco Nexus data center switch product line. Additionally, Cisco offers the Cisco ACI Virtual Edge, another virtual switch, this one following Cisco ACI networking as detailed in Chapter 16, “Introduction to Controller-Based Networking.

The vSwitch shown in Figure 15-4 uses the same networking features you now know from your CCNA studies; in fact, one big motivation to use a vSwitch from Cisco is to use the same networking features, with the same configuration, as in the rest of the network. In particular:

  • Ports connected to VMs: The vSwitch can configure a port so that the VM will be in its own VLAN, or share the same VLAN with other VMs, or even use VLAN trunking to the VM itself.

  • Ports connected to physical NICs: The vSwitch uses the physical NICs in the server hardware so that the switch is adjacent to the external physical LAN switch. The vSwitch can (and likely does) use VLAN trunking.

  • Automated configuration: The configuration can be easily done from within the same virtualization software that controls the VMs. That programmability allows the virtualization software to move VMs between hosts (servers) and reprogram the vSwitches so that the VM has the same networking capabilities no matter where the VM is running.

The Physical Data Center Network

To pull these ideas together, next consider what happens with the physical network in a virtualized data center. Each host—that is, the physical host—needs a physical connection to the network. Looking again at Figure 15-4, that host, with two physical NICs, needs to connect those two physical NICs to a LAN switch in the data center.

Figure 15-5 shows the traditional cabling for a data center LAN. Each taller rectangle represents one rack inside a data center, with the tiny squares representing NIC ports, and the lines representing cables.

A figure shows the topology of the data center LAN with traditional cabling.

Figure 15-5 Traditional Data Center Top-of-Rack and End-of-Row Physical Switch Topology

Often, each host is cabled to two different switches in the top of the rack—called Top of Rack (ToR) switches—to provide redundant paths into the LAN. Each ToR switch acts as an access layer switch from a design perspective. Each ToR switch is then cabled to an End of Row (EoR) switch, which acts as a distribution switch and also connects to the rest of the network.

The design in Figure 15-5 uses a traditional data center cabling plan. Some data center technologies call for different topologies, in particular, Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI). ACI places the server and switch hardware into racks, but cables the switches with a different topology—a topology required for proper operation of the ACI fabric. Chapter 16 introduces ACI concepts.

Workflow with a Virtualized Data Center

So far, the first part of this chapter has described background information important to the upcoming discussions of cloud computing. Server virtualization has been a great improvement to the operations of many data centers, but virtualization alone does not create a cloud computing environment. Continuing the discussion of these fundamental technologies before discussing cloud computing, consider this example of a workflow through a virtualized (not cloud-based) data center.

Some of the IT staff, call them server or virtualization engineers or administrators, order and install new hosts (servers). They gather requirements, plan for the required capacity, shop for hardware, order it, and install the hardware. They play the role of long-time server administrators and engineers, but now they work with the virtualization tools as well.

For the virtualization parts of the effort, the virtualization engineers also install and customize the virtualization tools. Beyond the hypervisor on each host, many other useful tools help manage and control a virtualized data center. For instance, one tool might give the engineers a view of the data center as a whole, with all VMs running there, with the idea that one data center is just a lot of capacity to run VMs. Over time, the server/virtualization engineers add new physical servers to the data center and configure the virtualization systems to make use of the new physical servers and make sure it all works.

So far in this scenario, the work has been in preparation for providing services to some internal customer—a development team member, the operations staff, and so on. Now, a customer is requesting a “server.” In truth, the customer wants a VM (or many), with certain requirements: a specific number of vCPUs, a specific amount of RAM, and so on. The customer makes a request to the virtualization/server engineer to set up the VMs, as shown in Figure 15-6.

A figure shows the workflow of customers requesting the server engineers for setting Virtual Machines.

Figure 15-6 Traditional Workflow: Customer (Human) Asks Virtualization (Human) for Service

The figure emphasizes what happens after the customer makes a request, which flows something like this:

Step 1. The customer of the IT group, such as a developer or a member of the operations staff, wants some service, like a set of new VMs.

Step 2. The virtualization/server engineer reacts to the request from the customer. The server/virtualization engineer clicks away at the user interface, or if the number of VMs is large, she often runs a program called a script to more efficiently create the VMs.

Step 3. Regardless of whether the virtualization engineer clicked or used scripts, the virtualization software could then create a number of new VMs and start those on some hosts inside the data center.

The process shown in Figure 15-6 works great. However, that approach to providing services breaks some of the basic criteria of a cloud service. For instance, cloud computing requires self-service. For the workflow to be considered to be a cloud service, the process at step 2 should not require a human to service that request, but instead the request should be filled automatically. Want some new VMs in a cloud world? Click a user interface to ask for some new VMs, go get a cup of coffee, and your VMs will be set up and started, to your specification, in minutes.

Summarizing some of the key points about a virtualized data center made so far, which enable cloud computing:

  • The OS is decoupled from the hardware on which it runs, so that the OS, as a VM, can run on any server in a data center that has enough resources to run the VM.

  • The virtualization software can automatically start and move the VM between servers in the data center.

  • Data center networking includes virtual switches and virtual NICs within each host (server).

  • Data center networking can be programmed by the virtualization software, allowing new VMs to be configured, started, moved as needed, and stopped, with the networking details configured automatically.

Cloud Computing Services

Cloud computing is an approach to offering IT services. Cloud computing makes use of products such as the virtualization products but also uses products built specifically to enable cloud features. However, cloud computing is not just a set of products to be implemented; instead, it is a way of offering IT services. So, understanding what cloud computing is—and is not—takes a little work; this next topic introduces the basics.

From the just-completed discussions about virtualization, you already know one characteristic of a cloud service: it must allow self-service provisioning by the consumer of the service. That is, the consumer or customer of the service must be able to request the service and receive that service without the delay of waiting for a human to have time to work on it, consider the request, do the work, and so on.

To get a broader sense of what it means for a service to be a cloud service, examine this list of five criteria for a cloud computing service. The list is derived from the definition of cloud computing as put forth by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST):

Key Topic.

On-demand self-service: The IT consumer chooses when to start and stop using the service, without any direct interaction with the provider of the service.

Broad network access: The service must be available from many types of devices and over many types of networks (including the Internet).

Resource pooling: The provider creates a pool of resources (rather than dedicating specific servers for use only by certain consumers) and dynamically allocates resources from that pool for each new request from a consumer.

Rapid elasticity: To the consumer, the resource pool appears to be unlimited (that is, it expands quickly, so it is called elastic), and the requests for new service are filled quickly.

Measured service: The provider can measure the usage and report that usage to the consumer, both for transparency and for billing.

Keep this list of five criteria in mind while you work through the rest of the chapter. Later parts of the chapter will refer back to the list.

To further develop this definition, the next few pages look at two branches of the cloud universe—private cloud and public cloud—also with the goal of further explaining some of the points from the NIST definition.

Private Cloud (On-Premise)

Look back to the workflow example in Figure 15-6 with a virtualized data center. Now think about the five NIST criteria for cloud computing. If you break down the list versus the example around Figure 15-6, it seems like the workflow may meet at least some of these five NIST cloud criteria, and it does. In particular, as described so far in this chapter, a virtualized data center pools resources so they can be dynamically allocated. You could argue that a virtualized data center is elastic, in that the resource pool expands. However, the process may not be rapid because the workflow requires human checks, balances, and time before provisioning new services.

Private cloud creates a service, inside a company, to internal customers, that meets the five criteria from the NIST list. To create a private cloud, an enterprise often expands its IT tools (like virtualization tools), changes internal workflow processes, adds additional tools, and so on.

Note

The world of cloud computing has long used the terms private cloud and public cloud. In more recent years, you may also find references that instead use a different pair of terms for the same ideas, with on-premise meaning private cloud, and cloud meaning public cloud. Note that the one CCNA 200-301 exam topic that mentions cloud happens to use the newer pair of terms.

As some examples, consider what happens when an application developer at a company needs VMs to use when developing an application. With private cloud, the developer can request those VMs and those VMs automatically start and are available within minutes, with most of the time lag being the time to boot the VMs. If the developer wants many more VMs, he can assume that the private cloud will have enough capacity, and new requests are still serviced rapidly. And all parties should know that the IT group can measure the usage of the services for internal billing.

Focus on the self-service aspect of cloud for a moment. To make that happen, many cloud computing services use a cloud services catalog. That catalog exists for the user as a web application that lists anything that can be requested via the company’s cloud infrastructure. Before using a private cloud, developers and operators who needed new services (like new VMs) sent a change request asking the virtualization team to add VMs (see Figure 15-6). With private cloud, the (internal) consumers of IT services—developers, operators, and the like—can click to choose from the cloud services catalog. And if the request is for a new set of VMs, the VMs appear and are ready for use in minutes, without human interaction for that step, as seen at step 2 of Figure 15-7.

A figure shows the workflow of creating one Virtual Machine.

Figure 15-7 Basic Private Cloud Workflow to Create One VM

To make this process work, the cloud team has to add some tools and processes to its virtualized data center. For instance, it installs software to create the cloud services catalog, both with a user interface and with code that interfaces to the APIs of the virtualization systems. That services catalog software can react to consumer requests, using APIs into the virtualization software, to add, move, and create VMs, for instance. Also, the cloud team—composed of server, virtualization, network, and storage engineers—focuses on building the resource pool, testing and adding new services to the catalog, handling exceptions, and watching the reports (per the measured service requirement) to know when to add capacity to keep the resource pool ready to handle all requests.

Notably, with the cloud model, the cloud team no longer spends time handling individual requests for adding 10 VMs here, 50 there, with change requests from different groups.

Summarizing, with private cloud, you change your methods and tools to offer some of the same services. Private cloud is “private” in that one company owns the tools that create the cloud and employs the people who use the services. Even inside one company, using a cloud computing approach can improve the operational speed of deploying IT services.

Public Cloud

With a private cloud, the cloud provider and the cloud consumer are part of the same company. With public cloud, the reverse is true: a public cloud provider offers services, selling those services to consumers in other companies. In fact, if you think of Internet service providers and WAN service providers selling Internet and WAN services to many enterprises, the same general idea works here with public cloud providers selling their services to many enterprises.

The workflow in public cloud happens somewhat like private cloud when you start from the point of a consumer asking for some service (like a new VM). As shown on the right of Figure 15-8, at step 1, the consumer asks for the new service from the service catalog web page. At step 2, the virtualization tools react to the request to create the service. Once started, the services are available, but running in a data center that resides somewhere else in the world, and certainly not at the enterprise’s data center (step 3).

A figure shows the configuration of the public cloud provider on the internet.

Figure 15-8 Public Cloud Provider in the Internet

Of course, the consumer is in a different network than the cloud provider with cloud computing, which brings up the issue of how to connect to a cloud provider. Cloud providers support multiple network options. They each connect to the Internet so that apps and users inside the consumer’s network can communicate with the apps that the consumer runs in the cloud provider’s network. However, one of the five NIST criteria for cloud computing is broad network access, so cloud providers offer different networking options as well, including virtual private network (VPN) and private wide-area network (WAN) connections between consumers and the cloud.

Cloud and the “As a Service” Model

So what do you get with cloud computing? So far, this chapter has just shown a VM as a service. With cloud computing, there are a variety of services, and three stand out as the most common seen in the market today.

First, a quick word about some upcoming terminology. The cloud computing world works on a services model. Instead of buying (consuming) hardware, buying or licensing software, installing it yourself, and so on, the consumer receives some service from the provider. But that idea, receiving a service, is more abstract than the idea of buying a server and installing a particular software package. So with cloud computing, instead of keeping the discussion so generic, the industry uses a variety of terms that end in “as a Service.” And each “-aaS” term has a different meaning.

This next topic explains those three most common cloud services: Infrastructure as a Service, Software as a Service, and Platform as a Service.

Infrastructure as a Service

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) may be the easiest of the cloud computing services to understand for most people. For perspective, think about any time you have shopped for a computer. You thought about the OS to run (the latest Microsoft OS, or Linux, or macOS if shopping for a Mac). You compared prices based on the CPU and its speed, how much RAM the computer had, the size of the disk drive, and so on.

IaaS offers a similar idea, but the consumer receives the use of a VM. You specify the amount of hardware performance/capacity to allocate to the VM (number of virtual CPUs, amount of RAM, and so on), as shown in Figure 15-9. You can even pick an OS to use. Once selected, the cloud provider starts the VM, which boots the chosen OS.

Note

In the virtualization and cloud world, starting a VM is often called spinning up a VM or instantiating a VM.

Key Topic.
A figure shows the architecture of Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) concept.

Figure 15-9 IaaS Concept

The provider also gives the consumer details about the VM so the consumer can connect to the OS’s user interface, install more software, and customize settings. For example, imagine that the consumer wants to run a particular application on the server. If that customer wanted to use Microsoft Exchange as an email server, she would then need to connect to the VM and install Exchange.

Figure 15-10 shows a web page from Amazon Web Services (AWS), a public cloud provider, from which you could create a VM as part of its IaaS service. The screenshot shows that the user selected a small VM called “micro.” If you look closely at the text, you may be able to read the heading and numbers to see that this particular VM has one vCPU and 1 GB of RAM.

A screenshot of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) webpage is shown.

Figure 15-10 AWS Screenshot—Set Up VM with Different CPU/RAM/OS

Software as a Service

With Software as a Service (SaaS), the consumer receives a service with working software. The cloud provider may use VMs, possibly many VMs, to create the service, but those are hidden from the consumer. The cloud provider licenses, installs, and supports whatever software is required. The cloud provider then monitors performance of the application. However, the consumer chooses to use the application, signs up for the service, and starts using the application—no further installation work required. Figure 15-11 shows these main concepts.

Key Topic.
A figure represents the concept of Software as a Service (SaaS). There are three layers - hardware layer(bottom), OS layer (middle), and Application layer (top). The top layer is highlighted and marks 1 - user picks. The middle and bottom layers mark 2 - OS, the hardware is hidden.

Figure 15-11 SaaS Concept

Many of you have probably used or at least heard of many public SaaS offerings. File storage services like Apple iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox, and Box are all SaaS offerings. Most online email offerings can be considered SaaS services today. As another example, Microsoft offers its Exchange email server software as a service, so you can have private email services but offered as a service, along with all the other features included with Exchange—without having to license, install, and maintain the Exchange software on some VMs.

(Development) Platform as a Service

Platform as a Service (PaaS) is a development platform, prebuilt as a service. A PaaS service is like IaaS in some ways. Both supply the consumer with one or more VMs, with a configurable amount of CPU, RAM, and other resources.

The key difference between PaaS and IaaS is that PaaS includes many more software tools beyond the basic OS. Those tools are useful to a software developer during the software development process. Once the development process is complete, and the application has been rolled out in production, those tools are not needed on the servers running the application. So the development tools are particular to the work done when developing.

A PaaS offering includes a set of development tools, and each PaaS offering has a different combination of tools. PaaS VMs often include an integrated development environment (IDE), which is a set of related tools that enables the developer to write and test code easily. PaaS VMs include continuous integration tools that allow the developer to update code and have that code automatically tested and integrated into a larger software project. Examples include Google’s App Engine PaaS offering (https://cloud.google.com/appengine), the Eclipse integrated development environment (see www.eclipse.org), and the Jenkins continuous integration and automation tool (see https://jenkins.io).

The primary reasons to choose one PaaS service over another, or to choose a PaaS solution instead of IaaS, is the mix of development tools. If you do not have experience as a developer, it can be difficult to tell whether one PaaS service might be better. You can still make some choices about sizing the PaaS VMs, similar to IaaS tools when setting up some PaaS services, as shown in Figure 15-12, but the developer tools included are the key to a PaaS service.

Key Topic.
A figure represents the concept of Platform as a Service (PaaS). PaaS consists of three layers - hardware layer(bottom), OS layer (middle), and Development Environment and tools Platform (top). The top layer marks the primary factor.

Figure 15-12 PaaS Concept

WAN Traffic Paths to Reach Cloud Services

This final major section of the chapter focuses on WAN options for public cloud, and the pros and cons of each. This section ignores private cloud for the most part, because using a private cloud—which is internal to an enterprise—has much less of an impact on an enterprise WAN compared to public cloud. With public cloud, the cloud services exist on the other side of some WAN connection as compared to the consumer of the services, so network engineers must think about how to best build a WAN when using public cloud services.

Enterprise WAN Connections to Public Cloud

Using the Internet to communicate between the enterprise and a public cloud provider is easy and convenient. However, it also has some negatives. This first section describes the basics and points out the issues, which then leads to some of the reasons why using other WAN connections may be preferred.

Accessing Public Cloud Services Using the Internet

Imagine an enterprise that operates its network without cloud. All the applications it uses to run its business run on servers in a data center inside the enterprise. The OS instances where those applications run can be hosted directly on physical servers or on VMs in a virtualized data center, but all the servers exist somewhere inside the enterprise.

Now imagine that the IT staff starts moving some of those applications out to a public cloud service. How do the users of the application (inside the enterprise) get to the user interface of the application (which runs at the public cloud provider’s data center)? The Internet, of course. Both the enterprise and the cloud provider connect to the Internet, so using the Internet is the easy and convenient choice.

Now consider a common workflow to move an internal application to now run on the public cloud, for the purpose of making a couple of important points. First, Figure 15-13 shows the example. The cloud provider’s services catalog can be reached by enterprise personnel, over the Internet, as shown at step 1. After choosing the desired services—for instance, some VMs for an IaaS service—the cloud provider (step 2) instantiates the VMs. Then, not shown as a step in the figure, the VMs are customized to now run the app that was formerly running inside the enterprise’s data center.

A figure shows the configuration of the public cloud service access using the internet.

Figure 15-13 Accessing a Public Cloud Service Using the Internet

At this point, the new app is running in the cloud, and those services will require network bandwidth. In particular, step 3 shows users communicating with the applications, just as would happen with any other application. Additionally, most apps send much more data than just the data between the application and the end user. For instance, you might move an app to the public cloud, but you might keep authentication services on an internal server because those are used by a large number of applications—some internal and some hosted in the public cloud. So at step 4, any application communication between VMs hosted in the cloud to/from VMs hosted inside the enterprise also needs to take place.

Pros and Cons with Connecting to Public Cloud with Internet

Using the Internet to connect from the enterprise to the public cloud has several advantages. The most obvious advantage is that all companies and cloud providers already have Internet connections, so getting started using public cloud services is easy. Using the Internet works particularly well with SaaS services and a distributed workforce. For instance, maybe your sales division uses a SaaS customer contact app. Often, salespeople do not sit inside the enterprise network most of the work day. They likely connect to the Internet and use a VPN to connect to the enterprise. For apps hosted on the public cloud, with this user base, it makes perfect sense to use the Internet.

While that was just one example, the following list summarizes some good reasons to use the Internet as the WAN connection to a public cloud service:

Agility: An enterprise can get started using public cloud without having to wait to order a private WAN connection to the cloud provider because cloud providers support Internet connectivity.

Migration: An enterprise can switch its workload from one cloud provider to another more easily because cloud providers all connect to the Internet.

Distributed users: The enterprise’s users are distributed and connect to the Internet with their devices (as in the sales SaaS app example).

Using the Internet as the WAN connectivity to a public cloud is both a blessing and a curse in some ways. Using the Internet can help you get started with public cloud and to get working quickly, but it also means that you do not have to do any planning before deploying a public cloud service. With a little planning, a network engineer can see some of the negatives of using the Internet—the same negatives when using the Internet for other purposes—which then might make you want to use alternative WAN connections. Those negatives for using the Internet for public cloud access are

Key Topic.

Security: The Internet is less secure than private WAN connections in that a “man in the middle” can attempt to read the contents of data that passes to/from the public cloud.

Capacity: Moving an internal application to the public cloud increases network traffic, so the question of whether the enterprise’s Internet links can handle the additional load needs to be considered.

Quality of Service (QoS): The Internet does not provide QoS, whereas private WANs can. Using the Internet may result in a worse user experience than desired because of higher delay (latency), jitter, and packet loss.

No WAN SLA: ISPs typically will not provide a service-level agreement (SLA) for WAN performance and availability to all destinations of a network. WAN service providers are much more likely to offer performance and availability SLAs.

This list of concerns does not mean that an enterprise cannot use the Internet to access its public cloud services. It does mean that it should consider the pros and cons of each WAN option.

Private WAN and Internet VPN Access to Public Cloud

The NIST definition for cloud computing lists broad network access as one of the five main criteria. In the case of public cloud, that often means supporting a variety of WAN connections, including the most common enterprise WAN technologies. Basically, an enterprise can connect to a public cloud provider with WAN technologies discussed in this book. For the sake of discussion, Figure 15-14 breaks it down into two broad categories.

A figure shows the connection between the routers of enterprise and public cloud providers. The first set of routers is connected through private WAN by cloud network and the second set is connected through a VPN tunnel by the internet.

Figure 15-14 Using Private WAN to a Public Cloud: Security, QoS, Capacity, Reporting

To create a VPN tunnel between the enterprise and the cloud provider, you can use the same VPN features discussed earlier in Chapter 14, “WAN Architecture.” The cloud provider can offer a VPN service—that is, the cloud side of the VPN tunnel is implemented by the cloud provider—and the enterprise configures the matching VPN service on one of its own routers. Or the enterprise can use its own router inside the cloud provider’s network—a virtual router, running as a VM—and configure VPN services on that router. In fact, Cisco makes the Cloud Services Router (CSR) to do exactly that: to be a router, but a router that runs as a VM in a cloud service, controlled by the cloud consumer, to do various functions that routers do, including terminating VPNs. (Also, by running a virtual router as a VM and managing the configuration internally, the enterprise might save some of the cost of using a similar service offered by the cloud provider.)

To make a private Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) VPN or Ethernet WAN connection, the enterprise needs to work with the cloud provider and the WAN provider. Because cloud providers connect to many customers with private WAN connections, they often have published set instructions to follow. In the most basic form, with MPLS, the enterprise and the cloud provider connect to the same MPLS provider, with the MPLS provider connecting the enterprise and cloud sites. The same basic process happens with Ethernet WAN services, with one or more Ethernet Virtual Connections (EVCs) created between the public WAN and the enterprise.

Note

Often, the server/virtualization engineers will dictate whether the WAN connection needs to support Layer 2 or Layer 3 connectivity, depending on other factors.

Private WAN connections also require some physical planning. Each of the larger public cloud providers has a number of large data centers spread around the planet and with prebuilt connection points into the major WAN services to aid the creation of private WAN connections to customers. An enterprise might then look at the cloud provider’s documentation and work with that provider to choose the best place to install the private WAN connection. (Those larger public cloud companies include Amazon Web Services, Google Compute Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Rackspace, if you would like to look at their websites for information about their locations.)

Pros and Cons of Connecting to Cloud with Private WANs

Private WANs overcome some of the issues of using the Internet without VPN, so working through those issues, consider some of the different WAN options.

First, considering the issue of security, all the private options, including adding a VPN to the existing Internet connection, improve security significantly. An Internet VPN would encrypt the data to keep it private. Private WAN connections with MPLS and Ethernet have traditionally been considered secure without encryption, but companies are sometimes encrypting data sent over private WAN connections as well to make the network more secure.

Regarding QoS, using an Internet VPN solution still fails to provide QoS because the Internet does not provide QoS. WAN services like MPLS VPN and Ethernet WANs can. As discussed in Chapter 11, “Quality of Service (QoS),” WAN providers will look at the QoS markings for frames/packets sent by the customer and apply QoS tools to the traffic as it passes through the service provider’s network.

Finally, as for the capacity issue, the concern of planning network capacity exists no matter what type of WAN is used. Any plan to migrate an app away from an internal data center to instead be hosted as a public cloud provider requires extra thought and planning.

Several negatives exist for using a private WAN, as you might expect. Installing the new private WAN connections takes time, delaying when a company gets started in cloud computing. Private WANs typically cost more than using the Internet. If using a WAN connection to one cloud provider (instead of using the Internet), then migrating to a new cloud provider can require another round of private WAN installation, again delaying work projects. Using the Internet (with or without VPN) would make that migration much easier, but as shown in the next section, a strong compromise solution exists as well.

Intercloud Exchanges

Public cloud computing also introduces a whole new level of competition because a cloud consumer can move his workload from one cloud provider to another. Moving the workload takes some effort, for a variety of reasons beyond the scope of this book. (Suffice it to say that most cloud providers differ in the detail of how they implement services.) But enterprises can and do migrate their workload from one cloud provider to another, choosing a new company for a variety of reasons, including looking for a less expensive cloud provider.

Now focus on the networking connections again. The main negative with using a private WAN for the cloud is that it adds another barrier to migrating to a new public cloud provider. One solution adds easier migration to the use of a private WAN through a cloud service called an intercloud exchange (or simply an intercloud).

Generically, the term intercloud exchange has come to be known as a company that creates a private network as a service. First, an intercloud exchange connects to multiple cloud providers on one side. On the other side, the intercloud connects to cloud consumers. Figure 15-15 shows the idea.

A network diagram of a connection of permanent private WAN to an Intercloud exchange is shown.

Figure 15-15 Permanent Private WAN Connection to an Intercloud Exchange

Once connected, the cloud consumer can be configured to communicate with one public cloud provider today, to specific cloud provider sites. Later, if the consumer wants to migrate to use another cloud provider, the consumer keeps the same private WAN links to the intercloud exchange and asks the provider to reconfigure to set up new private WAN connections to the new cloud provider.

As for pros and cons, with an intercloud exchange, you get the same benefits as when connecting with a private WAN connection to a public cloud, but with the additional pro of easier migration to a new cloud provider. The main con is that using an intercloud exchange introduces another company into the mix.

Summarizing the Pros and Cons of Public Cloud WAN Options

Table 15-2 summarizes some of these key pros and cons for the public WAN options for cloud computing, for study and reference.

Key Topic.

Table 15-2 Comparison of Public Cloud WAN Options

 

Internet

Internet VPN

MPLS VPN

Ethernet WAN

Intercloud Exchange

Makes data private

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Supports QoS

No

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Requires capacity planning

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Eases migration to a new provider

Yes

Yes

No

No

Yes

Speeds initial installation

Yes

Yes

No

No

No

A Scenario: Branch Offices and the Public Cloud

So far in this major section about WAN design with public cloud, the enterprise has been shown as one entity, but most enterprise WANs have many sites. Those distributed enterprise sites impact some parts of WAN design for public cloud. The next discussion of WAN design issues with public cloud works through a scenario that shows an enterprise with a typical central site and branch office.

The example used in this section is a common one: the movement away from internal email servers, supported directly by the IT staff, to email delivered as a SaaS offering. Focus on the impact of the enterprise’s remote sites like branch offices.

Migrating Traffic Flows When Migrating to Email SaaS

First, think of the traffic flow inside an enterprise before SaaS, when the company buys servers, licenses email server software, installs the hardware and software in an internal data center, and so on. The company may have hundreds or thousands of remote sites, like the branch office shown in Figure 15-16. To check email, an employee at the branch office sends packets back and forth with the email server at the central site, as shown.

A network diagram depicts the traffic flow of email services in private WAN between a branch office and the central site.

Figure 15-16 Traffic Flow: Private WAN, Enterprise Implements Email Services

The company then looks at the many different costs for email in this old model versus the new SaaS model. For instance, Microsoft Exchange is a very popular software package to build those enterprise email servers. Microsoft, a major player in the public cloud space with its Microsoft Azure service, offers Exchange as a SaaS service. (During the writing of this book, this particular service could be found as part of Office 365 or as “Exchange Online.”) So the enterprise considers the options and chooses to migrate an email SaaS offering.

Once migrated, the email servers run in the cloud, but as a SaaS service. The enterprise IT staff, who are the customers of the SaaS service, do not have to manage the servers. Just to circle back to some big ideas, with a SaaS service, the consumer does not worry about installing VMs, sizing them, installing Exchange or some other email server software, and so on. The consumer receives email service in this case. The company does have to do some migration work to move existing email, contacts, and so on, but once completed, all users now communicate with email servers that run in the cloud as a SaaS service.

Now think about that enterprise branch office user, and the traffic flows shown in Figure 15-17, when a branch user sends or receives an email. For instance, think of an email with a large attachment, just to make the impact more dramatic. If the enterprise design connects branches to the central sites only, this is the net effect on WAN traffic:

  • No reduction in private WAN traffic at all occurs because all the branch office email traffic flows to/from the central site.

  • One hundred percent of the email traffic (even internal emails) that flows to/from branches now also flows over the Internet connection, consuming the bandwidth of the enterprise’s Internet links.

A network diagram shows the traffic flow during branch office user sending and receiving a mail.

Figure 15-17 Traffic Flow: Private WAN, Enterprise Implements Email Services

Just to make the point, imagine two users at the same branch office. They can see each other across the room. One wants to share a file with the other, but the most convenient way they know to share a file is to email the file as an attachment. So one of them sends an email to the other, attaching the 20-MB file to the email. Before using SaaS, with an email server at the central site, that email and file would flow over the private WAN, to the email server, and then back to the second user’s email client. With this new design, that email with the 20-MB attachment would flow over the private WAN, then over the Internet to the email server, and then back again over the Internet and over the private WAN when the second user downloads her email.

Branch Offices with Internet and Private WAN

For enterprises that place their Internet connections primarily at the central sites, this public cloud model can cause problems like the one just described. One way to deal with this particular challenge is to plan the right capacity for the Internet links; another is to plan capacity for some private WAN connections to the public cloud. Another option exists as well: redesign the enterprise WAN to a small degree, and consider placing direct Internet connections at the branch offices. Then all Internet traffic, including the email traffic to the new SaaS service, could be sent directly, and not consume the private WAN bandwidth or the central site Internet link bandwidth, as shown in Figure 15-18.

A network diagram shows the connection between the branch office and a public cloud using the internet.

Figure 15-18 Connecting Branches Directly to the Internet for Public Cloud Traffic

The design in Figure 15-18 has several advantages. The traffic flows much more directly. It does not waste the WAN bandwidth for the central site. And broadband Internet connections are relatively inexpensive today compared to private WAN connections.

However, when the per-branch Internet connections are added for the first time, the new Internet links create security concerns. One of the reasons an enterprise might use only a few Internet links, located at a central site, is to focus the security efforts at those links. Using an Internet connection at each branch changes that approach. But many enterprises not only use the Internet at each site but also rely on it as their only WAN connection, as shown with Internet VPNs back in Chapter 14.

Chapter Review

One key to doing well on the exams is to perform repetitive spaced review sessions. Review this chapter’s material using either the tools in the book or interactive tools for the same material found on the book’s companion website. Refer to the “Your Study Plan” element for more details. Table 15-3 outlines the key review elements and where you can find them. To better track your study progress, record when you completed these activities in the second column.

Table 15-3 Chapter Review Tracking

Review Element

Review Date(s)

Resource Used

Review key topics

 

Book, website

Review key terms

 

Book, website

Answer DIKTA questions

 

Book, PTP

Review memory tables

 

Book, website

Review All the Key Topics

Key Topic.

Table 15-4 Key Topics for Chapter 15

Key Topic Element

Description

Page Number

Figure 15-3

Organization of applications, on a VM, on an OS, with a hypervisor allocating and managing the host hardware

332

Figure 15-4

Virtual switch concept

333

List

Definition of cloud computing (paraphrased) based on the NIST standard

337

Figure 15-9

Organization and concepts for an IaaS service

340

Figure 15-11

Organization and concepts for a SaaS service

341

Figure 15-12

Organization and concepts for a PaaS service

342

List

Cons for using the Internet to access public WAN services

344

Table 15-2

Summary of pros and cons with different public cloud WAN access options

347

Key Terms You Should Know

Unified Computing System (UCS)

virtual machine

virtual CPU (vCPU)

hypervisor

Host (context: DC)

virtual NIC (vNIC)

virtual switch (vSwitch)

on-demand self-service

resource pooling

rapid elasticity

cloud services catalog

public cloud

private cloud

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Software as a Service (SaaS)

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