"A little piece of advice. You see an Agent, you do what we do. Run. You run your a** off."
— Cypher, The Matrix

If you are evaluating Cloud Management Platforms (CMPs), make sure to consider whether the solution requires an agent on the VMs it manages.  This is important because your CMP should provide visibility and manageability across all servers, not just the ones it built itself.  CMPs that require an agent for full management greatly inhibit your ability to on-board previously-existing (aka “brownfield”) servers.  Consider the challenge of getting root/Administrator access to all VMs across all environments and installing software on them.  Also, test what happens when people provision VMs outside of the CMP by going straight to vCenter, AWS, etc.  Will the tool automatically discover and manage them, or will an administrator need to manually install agents first?  Also consider which OS versions the agent is supported on, how quickly new agent versions are released to support new OS versions, and what the upgrade process is for existing agents.

Inclusion of an agent makes a CMP more like a monitoring or configuration management system.  It blurs an important line between monitoring and operations.  Agent installation and inter-process communications also raise legitimate security concerns.  By contrast, a product designed as a manager-of-managers gets all the information it needs through the APIs of each virtualization system, public cloud, and configuration manager.   The CMP automatically discovers and manages VMs built with other tools in exactly the same way as servers it builds.  All systems are equal.

This was our design philosophy for CloudBolt.  We recognized that enterprise datacenters have a plethora of pre-existing interfaces and tools.  Rather than supplanting or requiring changes to existing operational standards, we complement and integrate with them.  Our approach enables IT architects to choose the best set of tools for each specific function.

I would go so far as to say that if a product uses agents, it is not a CMP.  A management ecosystem should be comprised of interchangeable parts and components that respect their boundaries, and integrate with each other over published, documented APIs.  Administrators should be able to swap out any particular monitoring (or backup, virtualization, or even CMP) solution for another as requirements change or better versions come along, all without affecting other functional areas.  This is central to CloudBolt's approach, and it’s one of the reasons it is consistently ranked highest amongst CMPs.

and see for yourself.

Today, Cisco announced its intent to acquire CliQr, for a reported $260M.  This acquisition validates the importance that Cloud Management Platforms (CMPs) play in enterprise IT shops, forming the foundation of a hybrid cloud strategy. 

What prompted this move on CliQr’s part?  Perhaps they were feeling the heat from the likes of CloudBolt and decided it was time to retreat to safety.  In head-to-head engagements, CloudBolt consistently beats CliQr (and all other solutions) in technical evaluations of hybrid cloud managers / CMPs.  This includes evaluations from individual enterprise companies that have done their own product bake-offs (such as GE, Williams-Sonoma, Blackboard, and Waste Management), industry awards such as the Modern Infrastructure Impact Award for best CMP, and a number of analyst and third-party comparisons.

People frequently remark on CloudBolt's unparalleled simplicity, flexibility, and extensibility.  They’re also impressed with the breadth and depth of our integration with virtualization technologies, public clouds, configuration managers (such as Puppet and Chef), and various technologies & tools including Infoblox, ServiceNow, Slack, HP OO, Docker, vRealize Orchestrator, and many others.

It's unclear what effect CliQr's acquisition will have on their product roadmap and current customers.  Much of the value of CMPs comes from vendor neutrality - their non-partisan ability to integrate with the vast range of IT systems from all vendors.  It will be interesting to see if CliQr will maintain this kind of neutrality.  Will they, for instance, invest in integration with technologies that are competitive to Cisco's offerings such as VMware's NSX?

In the meantime, CloudBolt will continue to lead the way in hybrid / multi-cloud management and to drive IT transformation forward.

A while back, I was working for a large storage company.  We had a marketing campaign called “Journey to the Cloud” where we advised enterprises about cloud computing – as we defined it.  For us, the cloud was all about storage.  Of course, for server vendors the cloud was all about servers.  Ditto for networks, services, or whatever else you were selling.  There was a lot of “cloud-washing” going on.  I knew we’d reached the Trough of Disillusionment when, as I got up to present to a prospect, they told me “if you have the word ‘cloud’ in your deck, you can leave now.”

Fast-forward five years, and cloud computing appears to have reached the Slope of Enlightenment.  By nearly all measures, cloud adoption has increased.  Ask any CIO about their cloud strategy, and they’ll give you a well-rehearsed answer about how they’re exploiting cloud to increase agility and drive partnership with the business.  Then ask, “How are you enabling user self-service?”  Typical responses start with blank stares or visible shudders, followed by “oh, we don’t do that!”  They may say “we’re only using private cloud”, or they may mention OpenStack or containers.  If so, you should point out “If it isn’t self-service, it isn’t really a cloud.”

Defining Cloud Computing

When looking for a definition of cloud computing, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) version is widely cited as the authoritative source.  NIST lists five “essential characteristics” of cloud computing.  The operative word is ‘essential’; not suggested; not nice-to-have.  If a service doesn’t have all five, it’s not a cloud. These include:

• Broad network access
• Rapid elasticity
• Measured service
• Resource pooling
• On-demand self-service

 For the last of these, on-demand self-service, the cloud test is simple.  If users can request systems or applications and get them right away – without directly involving IT – they are getting on-demand self-service.  If they have to submit a ticket and wait for an intermediary to review and fulfill their request, it’s not a cloud.

Working With You or Around You

At this point, you may be told “we don’t offer self-service because our users don’t understand IT.  They need our help.”  There was a time when that reasoning may have worked.  The C-I-‘no’ of the recent past had the power to rule by fiat and ban anything that wasn’t explicitly on the IT approved list.  Users had no choice.  But times have changed.  Now, users can simply create an account with a public cloud service, swipe their credit card, and get what they want, when they want it.

As a result, companies are seeing a marked increase in so-called shadow IT – pockets of information technology that exist and are managed by users rather than by formal IT groups.  And while this may cause wailing and gnashing of teeth by everyone from security, to finance, to IT operations, it’s nearly impossible to stop.  The genie is out of the bottle.

Rather than trying to prevent or shut down rogue users, IT must take a different approach.  They need to ask their users “how can we help you?” rather than “how can we stop you?” 

“Be the cloud, Danny”

If you work in IT and want to stay relevant, you need to be as easy to work with as a cloud service provider.  Do that, and users won’t look for alternatives.  After all, they have their own jobs to do.

So how do you get started?  That’s where CloudBolt comes in.  We’re a cloud management platform that was designed from the start with the end-user in mind.  We enable systems administrators to establish standard configurations and to publish them to their users via an online service catalog.  Users get rapid access to capacity; IT maintains control and compliance.  Best of all, CloudBolt isn’t restricted to a single cloud vendor’s services and APIs.  We work with more than a dozen cloud providers, from private to public, as well as with a wide variety of configuration management and orchestration tools.  We even integrate with legacy, brownfield environments giving you a single place for managing existing as well as new deployments.

If simple and powerful cloud management sounds appealing, try it for yourself.  Just download the CloudBolt virtual appliance.  It’s free to use for lab environments.  Deployment and setup are fast and easy.  Before you know it, you’ll be providing real cloud services to your users.

“Inconceivable!” you say?  Think again.

If you’re like most IT shops, you have a place for testing out new products, technologies, and applications.  You may call it your lab, your skunkworks, or your Area 51.  (If you have a different name, share it in a reply to this post.)  Your lab is where you separate truth from hype.  It’s where you make sure things work in your environment, on your equipment, with your team.  CloudBolt’s powerful and intuitive cloud management platform makes a great addition to your lab.  Keep reading to find out why.  Or to get started right away, just

Gathering Clouds

Perhaps you’re just getting started with cloud computing, or maybe you’re testing out multiple clouds, public and private.  Either way, CloudBolt’s powerful and intuitive cloud management platform can help.  CloudBolt serves as a manager-of-managers to provide single-pane-of-glass visibility and control.  We integrate a wide range of virtualization, cloud, automation, and orchestration tools and technologies.

Our cloud management platform lets you test a variety of configurations on the back-end while providing a consistent end-user front-end.  This can be very handy for vendor bakeoffs.  For example, you can spin up an Apache Tomcat environment in your own data center as well as in a public cloud provider based in, say, Singapore and compare provisioning time, system performance, and user experience.

Because CloudBolt coordinates each cloud integration, you don’t have to keep up with each vendor’s terminology, APIs, and quirks.  You just set up the initial integration for each provider and then lather, rinse, and repeat.  Instead of becoming locked into a particular vendor’s offerings, you can select the best environment for each workload.  We even discover and integrate with your existing deployments, and we stay in sync regardless of whether you make changes using CloudBolt or through vendor-specific tools.

Free, as in Beer

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CloudBolt is pleased to announce that our award winning cloud platform is now available for free for up to 25 VMs in non-production lab environments.  Why?  Because we’re confident in the value of our product.  We use it every day, and it enables us to be highly productive and cost-effective.  We believe it will do the same for you.

To get started, just go to our download page and click the link to 

Then fill out the license request and we’ll email you a free license that never expires.  System prerequisites and installation instructions are available on our documentation site. When you've finished installing CloudBolt, follow the Getting Started Guide and you’ll be up and running in minutes.  Contact us if you need any assistance.  To jumpstart your CloudBolt deployment, schedule a demo and we’ll walk you through the features that matter most to you.

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If you’re an IT administrator, there are good and bad ways to offer cloud services to your end users.  Get it right and your customers purr contentedly.  Get it wrong and you get a claw to the face.  Here’s what to watch for.

1.   Taking Too Long

(“Where the @%#$’s my server?”)

Been to a restaurant lately?  How do you feel if you can’t get a server?  The same applies to the IT end-users.  Do they want to wait weeks for servers?  No!

Why not let users serve themselves?  Better still, why not give them all they can eat?

 

2.   Being TOO Cloudy (Not being the broker)

Public clouds are very powerful tools that enable business agility.  But as a cloud consumer, you have an important choice to make.  If you choose to use a single cloud provider, you end up locked into their services and UI.  If you use multiple clouds, you must master multiple toolsets and UIs so that much of the agility is lost.

You can get the best of both worlds by deploying a Cloud Management Platform.  This makes you a services broker and allows you to leverage the power of hybrid cloud from a single UI.

3.   Making Manual Mistakes

                                

Fulfilling requests by hand takes time, which irritates the requestor.  Manual entry is also prone to fat fingering, resulting in VMs that are incorrectly provisioned.  The same goes for tracking costs.

Automating VM builds takes mistakes out of the picture.  Why provision systems by hand when a cloud management platform can do the job automatically, from a single UI?

4.   Leaving Money on the Table (or in the cushions)

 

To paraphrase management wisdom, you can’t charge for what you can’t measure.  Call it what you like – chargeback, showback, shameback – but you’re making a mistake if you don’t track your cloud costs.

Cloud management platforms can track costs for you and your users automatically.

5.   Losing Your Control

                         

You are asking for trouble if you can’t quickly and easily answer these 5 questions:

• Who owns the system?
• Where it is deployed?
• Why does it exist?
• How long does it need to exist?
• How much does it cost to run?

Just like a bank, you must have clear visibility of assets.

Be sure to choose management tools that enable you to answer these questions.

6.   Living Below the Clouds

 

The one who lives above the cloud, reigns.  Don’t lock yourself into one vendor.  Build a provider-agnostic environment that allows you to standardize IT, introduce new technologies, and transition between clouds without your end-users even knowing.

Make sure you’re able to choose the right cloud for each job.  One size does not fit all.

 

7.   Being the Worker Bee, Not the Queen Bee

 

The Queen Bee empowers her Worker Bees to do everything on their own. The same applies to IT admins and end users.  IT need to empower their end users to build and manage their own environments while still maintaining oversight of security, capacity, and performance.

By empowering end users, IT can save time and money.  And, most importantly, it makes IT an enabler rather than a barrier.

At Microsoft Ignite 2015, 72 percent of IT professionals polled said cloud usage and cost tracking are essential for business management. When not in conflict with other departments, many administrators struggle with efficiently tracking resource usage and costs. This issue was too clear with a major networking vendor. Their administrators spent countless hours each month manually tracking resource consumption. Since this method was prone to human error, the vendor deployed CloudBolt to automate their reporting process. Doing so allowed them to improve the accuracy of cloud usage and cost tracking across five hypervisors and public clouds.

In addition to manual cost tracking, some administrators also manually control resource distribution. Due to limited IT resources, a leading data storage provider’s administrators are afraid of end-users spinning up VMs from a self-service IT portal. The concern came from the idea that administrators would be unable to control how many VMs end-users provisioned. In response to this concern, CloudBolt allows administrators to set quotas that prevent end-users from running over their allotted resources. CloudBolt also allows administrators to set thresholds that alert them when resources are reaching max capacity.

Taking an automated approach lightens administrators’ workload, allowing them to be more productive in areas that were previously neglected. So, whether a company needs to improve the provisioning process, measuring or controlling of IT resource consumption, they should consider deploying a self-service portal. Fortune 500 companies, educational institutions, government agencies and even the City of London have recognized the need for automated self-service tools, and they all chose CloudBolt as the solution.

CloudBolt has been recognized for its market leading time to value. With that in mind, simply submit a download request and test it out at any time.

There is a war among the clouds, the public and private providers are fighting to see who will reign supreme.  Public vs Private, Public vs Public, and Private vs Private. It is chess match to see which vendor(s) will capture the largest share of the market.  This non-stop battle has made it  more challenging for the customer, the normal people, to make the best choice.

Large companies have ruled the land for years: VMware, Red Hat, and others have their stake in the ground. In recent years AWS, GCE, OpenStack and Azure have established control and are now eating away the edges of the market; corrupting the business models of traditional vendors. In a market that is redefining itself every year, how do you make the right choice? First you have to look at the state of the clouds:

Public

The public clouds are simple and easy to use. Public cloud’s destiny is manifested by pushing at our most basic needs: gain control, lower costs, increase speed, and deliver simplicity. However, public providers don’t want you to know how much you will owe them until after the fact, post billing. You don’t get locked in, but clearly the goal is to be the stickiest product that you use with their growing toolset.  The on-premise security you need might not be provided by a public cloud which creates a need for a private cloud with the ability to move between the clouds.

Private

The private/internal cloud providers will reel you in continually attack your budgets with their ever expanding set of services. Layering in so many different tools from their “suites” that you are never quite sure which tools you are using, which tools you have bought, or which you are being charged for. Be wary, these vendors lock customers in at the root level of your infrastructure to the point where you’ll have no choice, but to renew, renew, and renew. There are so many varying levels of integration between these tools that it becomes complex and hard to manage, forcing you to buy professional services. More professional services means more money, and the vicious cycle continues.

So who is the right choice?

The answer is a hybrid approach. For various reasons, maybe it is cost or security or ease of use or vendor lock-in, you will come to use a variety of these tools and they will continue to challenge one another. They will have tunnel vision with one goal in mind: how can we lock our customers in with an vendor specific set of products.  This makes none of them fit to rule the throne, so whose turn is it?

It is time for “choice” to be your weapon. Come above the clouds to be the broker, the king of clouds and give yourself the choice. Enough is enough with vendors ruling you! Take control of the clouds and manage them. Claim your place on the throne by putting the power of the clouds in the hands of your people so they can manage their own IT resources without getting caught up in the fog of vendor war.

So you want to sit on the throne?

To lay claim to the throne is to be the “broker of clouds” above the fray.  End users must be happy, if they aren’t happy you will know and hear about it. Users are ok with paying an IT team to be their broker as long as resources are delivered quickly and correctly. Users care that the job is done, not how you do it. Private and Public clouds have become a commodity, it is time to make the delivery of this commodity readily available. Waiting hours, days or weeks to get commodity resources is no longer sufficient.

When you look at what is preventing private and public clouds from being readily available, you see the following issues: complexity of multiple UIs, slow provisioning, IT overwhelmed with tickets, inability to track costs between clouds, and VM sprawl. IT is spending so much time servicing complexity that they can’t service their users. Solution? Simplicity.

Simplicity is the Vaccine for Complexity

Kings and Queens can’t do it on their own, they need an ally. A tool that reigns above the clouds; a Cloud Delivery Platform that provides you the nimbleness, flexibility, and agility that you need.  Give users a simple intuitive interface that eliminates multiple UIs and gives users the single portal that spans the entirety of your realm of clouds. If you are truly going to lead your users, public, and private clouds, then for every resource you need to know: Who owns it, What is it doing, Where is it, When does it expire, Why does it exist, and How much does it cost. CloudBolt is a vendor agnostic tool that is worthy of the title “Hand of the King/Queen.”

Conclusion

By this point if you’ve read this far you must be somewhat interested. Reach out, schedule a demo, and see how a cloud delivery platform like CloudBolt will put you on the path to the throne and bring the convenience of the clouds to all of your users.

The 2015 OpenStack summit in Vancouver is only a week away!  Are you attending?

CloudBolt's CTO (Bernard Sanders) will be in attendance and is currently setting up meetings with folks who are interested in learning how CloudBolt works seemlessly with OpenStack public and private clouds to provide self-service IT.

If you are interested in learning more about CloudBolt and/or setting up a discussion with Bernard while he's in Vancouver please let us know.  You can reach us at info@cloudbolt.io.  

 

 

The advent of DevOps in Corporate IT has dramatically increased the value that Configuration Management (lately, also known as CM and/or Configuration Automation/Data Center Automation tools) provided in a complex data center environment. Popular examples include Ansible, Puppet, and Chef. Whether your IT organization has implemented an end-to-end DevOps model, or you’re interested in implementing one, the unification of Cloud Management and Data Center Automation is a great way to ensure that your DevOps teams get the most out of IT-provided and supported services and resources.

At the core of highly productive and agile DevOps teams is the rapid access to required resources, and the ability to control what is deployed where. Long wait times for resource provisioning will not just delay release and product, but also likely anger your team. On the other hand, granting the DevOps team unfettered access to on-prem virt and public cloud resources is a capacity planning and potential financial disaster just waiting to happen.

As DevOps automates more of the application management and provisioning process with tooling (Related posting: Why Manual Provisioning Workflows Don't Work Anymore), it becomes more critical to effectively integrate CM with the actual infrastructure. Providing end users and developers alike with access to DevOps work product becomes more complex and challenging.  

DevOps and Cloud Management go together like peanut butter and jelly. Each makes the other more awesome. (Image Credit: Shutterstock)

So how does an IT organization achieve maximum value from the time and cost investment in these CM tools? By tightly integrating Cloud Management with their entire stack of CM tools.

Advantages

Using a cloud manager such as CloudBolt to integrate CM with the infrastructure provides immediate value.  By deploying both tools, IT can provide DevOps with: 

1. Controlled access to required infrastructure, including networks, storage, and public cloud environments.
2. A single API and UI capable of front-ending numerous providers, which means when IT changes cloud providers, DevOps doesn’t need to re-tool scripts and automations.
3. Fully automated provisioning and management for real-time resource access. 

CloudBolt allows IT to natively configure and import application and configuration definitions as well as automations directly from your CM tool of choice. End users can then select the desired components, and deploy them onto appropriately sized system or systems in any environment.

IT organizations can put into place hard divisions between critical environments—such that only certain users and groups can deploy systems, services, and applications into specific environments. For instance, CloudBolt will prevent a developer from deploying a test app onto a system that has access to a production network and production data.

Results

Customers that have implemented CloudBolt also are able to chose from one or more CM tools based on capabilities of a specific tool. Does one team prefer Puppet over Chef? Each team can be presented with a discrite slice of underlying infrastructure that makes use of their preferred CM tool(s).

The result is clear: more effective DevOps teams that spend less time dealing accessing resources, and more time getting their work done. IT is happy because CloudBolt enables them to improve governance of entire enterprise IT environments, and finally offers IT the ability to alter underlying infrastructure technology choices in ways that are fully abstracted from end users. By using a single CloudBolt API to access and deploy resources, DevOps isn’t disrupted when IT alters underlying infrastructure technology.

Interested? You can be up and running with CloudBolt today. All you need is access to a Virt Manager or a Cloud Platform, and less than 30 minutes.

 

It's been a little while since I've blogged about the cool things that we're doing in C2, Beyond doubling our customer count since 1 March, we are also thrilled to be  a 2014 Gartner Cool Vendor in Cloud Management. This announcement has led to even more interesting in our amazing unified IT management and self-service IT platform. Follow that up with an upcoming GigaOM Structure participation, and it’s even more clear that we’re gaining significant traction across the industry.

Throughout all of these exciting developments, our engineering team continues to innovate C2. They're constantly adding new capabilities and features that we know will help IT organizations change the way they work with and communicate to the business they support.

What's new in CloudBolt C2

Since the release of C2 v4.4.1, we've produced two additional releases, capped by the 19 May release of C2 v4.4.3. We've focused on adding capabilities that will empower IT organizations to provide end users with greater levels of controlled access to and management of IT resources and applications, all in a manner that enables the IT organization full control over governance, as well as cost transparency.

By focusing on lifecycle management, we’ve created more valuable touch points in C2 that enable IT organizations to more effectively unify multiple environments, easing the management burden that often increases and complexity grows. Of course an offshoot of simplifying complex environments is that it frees IT staff to focus on value-added tasks, such as developing new offerings to the business.

Orchestration, Modeling, and Customization

Complex environments typically have workflows that require numerous custom parameters and actions based on the values of those parameters.  C2 can now associate flows with server parameters, such that the changing of a parameter will result in a flow execution. Additionally, parameters can now have cost values assigned to them.  The result is that administrators can expose a parameter—let’s use “Enable Monitoring” as an example—and execute a workflow to actually enable or disable monitoring when the parameters is changed.  Also, when the parameter is enabled, C2 will add an additional charge to the showback reporting for that instance or application.

We’ve also made the creation and maintenance of parameters cleaner and easier in our intuitive user interface.

Configuration Management

Quickly integrating Configuration Management tools to enable IT organizations to automate application installation and maintenance is a reason many customers deploy C2.  Despite our integrations already being leaps-and-bounds easier to use than other vendors, we’ve added additional improvements to this core capability, too.  We’ve tightened up both our Puppet Labs and Enterprise Chef connectors, including key enterprise capabilities present in both those tools. We’ve added improvements that will aide organizations that have a high rate of VM and application churn, as well as some UI updates that make it easier to manage application lifecycles.

Want to see how easy this is? I challenge you to install an additional application on an existing stack using another tool.  And then try the same thing with CloudBolt C2.

API

Our API v2 was build by developers that interface with other vendors’ APIs on a daily basis, so you can imagine that we know a thing or two about how to build a great API. Since C2 v4.4.1, we’ve added more capabilities to the v2 API, and C2 now ships with several example CLI scripts that will be useful to any developer interested in programmatic access to C2’s extensive capabilities.

Provisioning and Lifecycle Updates

We’ve been listening to our customers that are tired of managing multiple Windows templates for each required instance disk size.  C2 can now auto-extend the primary windows disk when you select a larger storage size in an order form.

Users can now request additional disk space not just at provisioning, but at any point in the VM’s lifecycle, and that disk can be thin, thick, or eager-zero provisioned.

Challenged by vCenter’s lack of customization support for CentOS? C2 will automatically solve that problem, too—CentOS VMware customizations through C2 will now work properly like they used to on previous versions of vCenter.

Have other ideas that will make your life easier?  We’re always listening.

Unified IT Management. Today.

If you’re looking at Cloud Management Platforms because you have an active project underway, or if you’re just kicking the tires, the time is right to consider CloudBolt C2. We’re constantly working to lower the barrier of entry to enterprise software to levels previously unseen. CloudBolt C2 is cloud, made easy.

 to get started, or . And let us know what you think!