14 DAY TRIAL // Customers looking to build private Clouds can access some insight from Microsoft. The “How Microsoft IT Developed a Private Cloud Infrastructure” Technical Case Study was published earlier this month on TechNet and is available free of charge. Using technologies such as Hyper-V, private cloud virtualization, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Storage area networks (SANs), Microsoft IT’s Cloud service is another example of dogfooding at the Redmond company.
Dogfooding is a term used to refer not only to Microsoft internal testing, but also to the company eating its own dog food / running its own products.
“Microsoft IT created an efficient, flexible Research and Development (R&D) facility that serves the development and test environments at Microsoft,” the company said.
“Learn how Microsoft IT leveraged the flexibility and density of the facility, along with the supporting network to develop a private cloud infrastructure that uses cutting edge technology to provide infrastructure as a service and support the needs of the internal businesses.”
While applauding the public Cloud as the Rome of all technology roads, Microsoft acknowledges that some customers might need more time than others to get there.
For them, a viable alternative to existing on-premises environments are private Clouds, meaning that they need to embrace virtualization.
According to the software giant, the MSIT Private Cloud implied the construction of a 34,000 square feet facility at Redmond Ridge.
“The flexibility of the facility and the network fabric infrastructure provided an ideal location to host the private cloud that MSIT developed to offer IaaS to the business. The design of the facility delivered high density and energy efficiency and the network infrastructure was designed to meet both current and future capacity requirements,” Microsoft said.
“Those capabilities helped MSIT successfully build and run the private cloud in a flexible, cost-effective, and efficient environment. Virtualization reduced operational overhead by reducing the required number of physical systems. Depending on the server role, the ratio of physical host to virtual machine can be as high as 8:1.”