A technical overview of EMC Hybrid Cloud Solution with VMware for Oracle This is the first in a 4-part series providing an overview on the different aspects of EMC’s Hybrid Cloud solution with VMware for Oracle. This first article introduces EMC Hybrid Cloud and then describes how an Oracle Database as a Service (Oracle DBaaS) solution can be implemented on EMC® Hybrid Cloud 2.5 with VMware. EMC Hybrid Cloud enables customers to build an enterprise-class, scalable, multitenant infrastructure that enables: - Complete management of the infrastructure service lifecycle
- On-demand access to and control of network bandwidth, servers, storage, and security
- Provisioning, monitoring, and management of the infrastructure services by the line-of-business end users, without IT administrator involvement
- Maximum asset utilization
- Access to application services, such as Oracle DBaaS, from a single platform for both business-critical and next-generation cloud applications
While many organizations have successfully introduced virtualization as a core technology within their data centers, the benefits of virtualization have largely been restricted to the IT infrastructure owners. End users, application developers, database administrators (DBAs), and business units within customer organizations have not yet fully experienced many of the benefits of virtualization, such as increased agility, mobility, and control. Transforming from the traditional IT model to an IaaS model involves overcoming the challenges of legacy infrastructure and processes, such as: - Inefficiency and inflexibility
- Slow, reactive responses to customer requests
- Inadequate visibility of the requested infrastructure cost
The difficulty in overcoming these challenges has given rise to public cloud providers who have built technology and business models specifically catering to the requirements of end-user agility and control. Many organizations are under pressure to provide these same service levels within the secure and compliant confines of the on-premises data center. As a result, IT departments need to create cost-effective alternatives to public cloud services, alternatives that do not compromise enterprise features such as data protection, disaster recovery (DR), and guaranteed service levels. These organizations must also manage a growing and fragmented database infrastructure. As well as supporting an increased number of production databases, DBA and development teams require multiple database environments to meet business needs such as developing and testing application features, reporting, and application troubleshooting. Traditional virtualized environments, while improving provisioning times compared to physical environments, have not delivered a mechanism to self-manage the application development lifecycle using the IaaS model. As IT organizations implement a hybrid cloud, they must consider the following factors: - Infrastructure must be quick to deploy so that business value can be recognized quickly.
- The hybrid cloud infrastructure and operations must be designed to reduce costs through higher utilization and higher staff productivity.
- Risk of downtime must be controlled through disciplined change control and careful management of component compatibility.
- Support agreements must be established for all elements of the solution.
- Software license compliance must be managed when deploying Oracle DBaaS.
Software Components Let’s now look at the EMC Hybrid Cloud components, and additional software, when integrated can be used to enable Oracle DBaaS. The below diagram also shows an optional OEM Cloud Control component often used for managing and monitoring the Oracle Database.
VMware vCloud Automation Center (vCAC) enables customized, self-service provisioning and lifecycle management of cloud services that comply with established business policies. vCAC provides a secure portal where authorized administrators, developers, and business users can request new IT services and manage existing computer resources from predefined user-specific menus. VMware vCloud Application Director (AppD) is an application operations solution designed specifically to help application teams to accelerate and automate the deployment and updates of applications across the cloud. It integrates directly with vCAC using the same configured authentication providers, for example, Active Directory through SSO. Although it is a separate component, AppD is licensed as part of the vCAC Enterprise Edition. VMware vCenter Orchestrator (vCO) is an IT process automation engine that helps automate the cloud and integrates the vCloud Suite with the rest of your management systems. vCenter Orchestrator enables administrators and architects to develop complex automation tasks in the workflow designer. vCO’s library of prebuilt activities, workflows, and plug-ins help accelerate the customization of vCAC’s standard capabilities. EMC Hybrid Cloud is extended using VMware vCloud Application Director (AppD) for the design and publishing of application services to VMware vCloud Automation Center (vCAC). VMware vCenter Orchestrator (vCO), which integrates with vCAC, is used to deliver process automation when interfacing with third-party systems during infrastructure as a service (IaaS) provisioning. Technology Solution EMC Hybrid Cloud integrates the best of EMC and VMware products and services, and empowers IT organizations to accelerate implementation and adoption of the hybrid cloud while enabling customer choice for the compute and networking infrastructure within the data center. The solution caters to both customers who want to make more extensive use of their existing infrastructure and to those who want to build out new infrastructures dedicated to the hybrid cloud. This solution extends the EMC Hybrid Cloud, adding a layer of model-based application provisioning through the integration of VMware vCloud Automation Center (vCAC) and VMware vCloud Application Director (AppD). We deliver Oracle Database as a Service (DBaaS) using a customizable self-service and lifecycle management framework, which provides a secure automated process for the database service user. EMC Hybrid Cloud is designed to deliver multi-tenancy and secure separation of resources required in a cloud environment. Cloud requires the ability to isolate resources and deliver secure access. EMC Hybrid Cloud is structured so that each tenant can be: - Logically separated using vCAC Business Groups. The Oracle Business Group is assigned dedicated compute, storage, and network resources for software license compliance.
- Physically separated in its own “resource pod”. Oracle is restricted to a dedicated vSphere HA/DRS cluster with its own servers, network, and storage resources.
VMware vCenter Orchestrator (vCO) integrates with vCAC to enable process automation when interfacing with third-party systems during machine provisioning. Using AppD accelerates and automates the deployment of Oracle Database as a Service (DBaaS) for both business units and developers. Combined with vCAC and vCO, it delivers a self-service lifecycle management framework to provide a secure, controlled, customizable, and repeatable process for the database service user. By adding AppD to the EMC Hybrid Cloud framework, database and development teams can enjoy the following benefits: - Utilizing a reusable repository of services, databases, and applications that use standard configuration properties to meet strict requirements for IT compliance
- Deploying and promoting the same application blueprint to and between different cloud providers and target virtual machine template configurations
- Using existing SQL, shell scripting, and coding skills when building out complex Application Blueprints for deployment
- Modeling virtual machine templates, services, and application components such as scripts, objects and binaries. This is particularly useful for application architects and designers who can build deployment blueprints with a drag-and-drop interface to combine services and automate deployments of multi-tier applications.
Further details on the EMC Hybrid Cloud Solution can be found in the attached EMC Hybrid Cloud Solution Overview. Provisioning Oracle DBaaS on EMC Hybrid Cloud Now with the above background in mind, it’s time to describe the structure and software requirements of EMC Hybrid Cloud that are used to enable an Oracle DBaaS solution. The Oracle DBaaS solution has been built and validated on a number of iterations and configurations of the EMC Hybrid Cloud solution. The underlying physical environment is abstracted from the application layer by virtual and software-defined components. The below diagram is representative of the EMC Hybrid Cloud environments where AppD was deployed.
As mentioned, AppD integrates directly with vCAC and uses the vCAC-configured Business Groups and authentication providers, that is, Active Directory through SSO. When vCAC is registered with AppD, the Business Groups are synchronized. In this solution, the vCAC Business Group, “Oracle-Business-Group”, is registered as an AppD Cloud Provider. The Tenant Resource Pod used by the Oracle Business Group is a dedicated vSphere ESXi HA cluster with its own compute, storage, and network resources. This improves service availability, and software license compliance is ensured by restricting where the virtual machines and software are running or installed. The vCAC Service Catalog shows only the appropriate Oracle Database services published from AppD and allows only operations available to end users based on their role within the business. An NFS share can be used to serve the Oracle Database binaries and any custom scripts or component files required. In different EMC Hybrid Cloud environments, this NFS share has been provided by: - A virtual machine within the Oracle Tenant Resource Pod
- EMC Isilon® scale-out NAS storage
- EMC VNX unified storage
Conclusion EMC Hybrid Cloud enables customers, using the best of EMC and VMware products and services, to build an enterprise-class, scalable, multitenant platform for complete infrastructure service lifecycle management. The solution delivers on the following principles: - Automation and self-service provisioning
- Multitenancy and secure separation
- Workload-optimized storage
- Elasticity and service assurance
- Operational monitoring and management
- Metering and chargeback
Use of modular add-on components, such as AppD and vCO, enables Oracle DBaaS to be deployed in a dedicated business group running on EMC Hybrid Cloud. The key findings of this solution are as follows: - Designing EMC Hybrid Cloud with a dedicated Tenant Resource Pod for Oracle DBaaS improves management of Oracle licensing compliance.
- vCO enables process automation throughout the machine provisioning lifecycle in vCAC from build to disposal.
- Using AppD, DBAs and application architects can quickly build and publish blueprints with a drag-and-drop interface to automate the deployment of simple and multitier applications.
- Application developers and service users can provision an Oracle Database directly from the vCAC Service Catalog.
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