Chapter 10. Extending WAP Capabilities with Partners' Solutions

In the first chapter, you learned about the extension capabilities of Windows Azure Pack which provides flexibilities to facilitate custom cloud service offerings. In this chapter, we will be discussing about a few available extensions for WAP developed by Microsoft's partners and third-party vendors.

Along with partners' solutions, we will also take a look at Microsoft Azure Stack—a future on-premises cloud solution by Microsoft and Windows Azure Pack updates.

We will be covering the following topics in this chapter:

• Microsoft Azure Stack

• Windows Azure Pack Updates

• Windows Azure Pack Partner Ecosystem

• Offer VMware with WAP – vConnect by Cloud Assert

• Konube Integrator – connect with public clouds

• Apprenda – Enterprise PaaS Solutions

• BlueStripe's Performance Center for WAP

• Usage and billing by Cloud Assert

• Cloud Cruiser for WAP

• Request Management by GridPro

• Odin – WAP APS packages

• Cisco ACI – an application centric infrastructure

• 5nine cloud...

Microsoft Azure Stack

At Ignite April 2015, Microsoft announced the future release of an on-premises cloud platform named Microsoft Azure Stack; Azure Stack isn't the next version to Azure Pack. It works on a different architecture and enables a consistent experience to the Azure preview portal of Microsoft's public cloud.

During Ignite, Brad Anderson, Microsoft's corporate vice president for cloud and enterprise said:

"You've told us you want Azure — all of Azure — in your data centers. Azure Stack … is literally us giving you all of Azure to run in your data centers."

Along with Azure consistency, Azure Stack is expected to deliver built-in hybrid capabilities with MS Azure, which aren't available in the case of WAP.

Azure Stack doesn't include System Center components as a core mandatory requirement for IaaS services. Resource providers will communicate directly with fabric components including Windows Servers and Hyper-V. Azure Stack is expected to deliver more Azure-like services including...

Windows Azure Pack updates

Microsoft continuously improves the Windows Azure Pack solution by adding new features and resolving issues since its first release. There is a per quarter update planned for WAP technologies, and usually, it is in line with System Center products updates that majorly include SCVMM and SPF. At the time of writing this book, the latest available update was Update rollup 8.

After Update rollup 4, enhancements and new features were added as per the feedback and suggestions received from customers and partners. If you want to submit an idea or suggestion for Windows Azure Pack features, go to https://feedback.azure.com/forums/255259-azure-pack. Windows Azure Pack is expected to support a future version of Windows Server and System Center in future updates.

The following KB article includes fixed issues and new enhancements added in Azure Pack updates respectively:

• WAP Update Rollup 1: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2924386

• WAP Update Rollup 2: http://support.microsoft...

Windows Azure Pack Partner Ecosystem

WAP, with its custom extension capabilities enables partner and third party vendors to develop solutions to add value in a WAP deployment. These solutions can include technologies from improving existing deployment to adding new features.

There are multiple solutions available today in the market to extend WAP capabilities; a few are the in-development phase. Partner solutions can be segregated under the following categories:

• Infrastructure: Infrastructure partners provide fabric components, such as server, storage, networks, and so on, to run the Windows Azure Pack management and the tenant's workload. Examples include infrastructure solutions for WAP from Nutanix and NetApp.

• Resource providers: These add new services to WAP cloud offering catalogues. Examples include VMware VM's offering via WAP by Cloud Assert's vConnect solution.

• Integration: These solutions are integrated with WAP deployment to provide insights, such as performance or service dashboards...

Offer VMware with WAP – vConnect by Cloud Assert

Windows Azure Pack can be used to offer virtual machines hosted on the VMware's server virtualization platform by leveraging vConnect by Cloud Assert. At the time of writing this book, VMware held the highest market share of the server virtualization market. vConnect helps organizations and service providers to use their existing VMware infrastructure to offer IaaS services to internal users and tenants.

vConnect offers tenants to provision and run virtual machines on VMware via VM templates. Provisioning configurations are defined at the VM templates level; parameters are defined by tenants in the self-service portal.

Along with virtual machines, vConnect also offers back up as a service by integrating with Veeam backup solutions.

vConnect offers the following capabilities while offering VMware via WAP:

• VMware vCenter integration with WAP

• Customized VM's templates for IaaS offerings

• VM snapshots support

• Backup using Veeam

• On-demand configuration...

Konube Integrator – connect with public clouds

Konube Integrator allows Windows Azure Pack users and tenants to connect to their public clouds subscriptions via the WAP portal to provision and manage their resources. This enables a hybrid cloud experience for tenants. Organizations and service providers can leverage Konube Integrator to offer an integrated and homogeneous experience to their end users.

Konube Integrator supports the following connections to the public clouds subscription by users in their WAP portal:

• Microsoft Azure

• Amazon Web Services

• Rackspace

Rackspace connectivity is through OpenStack, enabling it to connect to other cloud providers based upon OpenStack.

Konube writes on their official website that Konube Integrator is built for all sizes of customers to solve hybrid and multi cloud challenges. If you are working with more than one cloud provider, be it your own cloud or a third-party cloud, you now have a solution to simplify your work flow. You can now deliver increased...

Apprenda – Enterprise PaaS solutions

Apprenda is the leading Enterprise PaaS powering the next generation of software-defined enterprises, disrupting industries and winning with software.

Apprenda integrates with Windows Azure Pack to enable complete PaaS capabilities for modern .NET and Java applications. Apprenda services can be offered to tenant developers to create and manage N-Tier, cloud-enabled .NET applications that incorporate WCF, and Windows services via the Windows Azure Pack tenant portal.

Apprenda PaaS service integration with WAP enables the following services, offering capabilities for service providers:

• It will integrate WAP and Apprenda to turn your datacenter into a self-service platform for IT professionals and developers

• It will drive some real hybrid cloud scenarios across multiple private, public, and hosted clouds

• It will accelerate the development of websites and custom apps

• We can use cloud-enabled existing apps without rewriting them

• It provides a single pane of glass...

BlueStripe's performance center for WAP

BlueStripe's performance center for Windows Azure Pack enables cloud administrators and tenants to perform end-to-end application monitoring and management using the WAP portal.

Performance center includes the following capabilities:

• Live performance dashboards for applications and application tiers

• Dynamic application and dependency maps visualizing the virtual infrastructure in use

• Tight integration into Windows Azure Pack workflow allowing for seamless movement from analysis to remediation

Performance center provider service provides flexibilities to define the level of capabilities available to tenants with WAP plans. Performance center architecture includes extensions for admin and tenant portals, BlueStripe Resource Provider, and FactFinder management servers.

A FactFinder management server is deployed as per subscription and can be used by the performance center to get statics from public clouds (MS Azure), any on-premises private cloud, or systems...

Usage and billing by Cloud Assert

Cloud Assert provides a chargeback solution for Windows Azure Pack, which can be used to manage usage and billing for tenants and internal customers.

Cloud Assert writes following on their official website for usage and billing solutions:

Usage and billing solution enables Windows Azure Pack administrators to configure pricing for more than 100 plus resources, maintain multiple Pricing Profiles, integrate with billing systems, and generate invoices automatically based on real usage from end users.

It supports multiple scenarios including the following:

• Plan Credits: This is similar to Azure. Users can have an overall credit of say X amount, and they are free to use any resource for this X amount. Excess usage is automatically billed based on utilization.

• Bundled Offers: This is similar to popular service provider offerings. Users buy a bundle of resources in advance, such as X CPU, Y DB Size, and Z websites. Only usage that exceeds these including unit credits...

Cloud Cruiser for WAP

Cloud Cruiser offers financial management solutions for Windows Azure Pack to manage financial aspects for service providers and organizations. Cloud Cruiser is available in two mediums:

• Cloud Cruiser Express

• Cloud Cruiser Premium

Cloud Cruiser writes the following on its official websites with respect to the capabilities offered by respective editions.

Cloud Cruiser Express for Windows Azure Pack offers the following:

• View your cloud costs directly from within the WAP portal

• Automate chargeback and cloud billing for your Windows Azure Pack computing environment

• Gain control of your cloud spending with tenant budgets and automated alert notifications

• Be up and running in under 10 minutes with a streamlined Cloud Cruiser Express installed right from the Windows Azure Pack installer

Upgrading to Cloud Cruiser Premium for Windows Azure Pack offers the following:

• Scale your financial management capabilities to support larger deployments including more VMs, databases, and website...

Request Management by GridPro

Request Management by GridPro allows Windows Azure Pack users to submit, track, and update incidents and requests for resources within Azure Pack. Request Management integrates with System Center Service Manager to provide these functionalities.

GridPro writes the following benefits of using Request Management for both organizations and service providers:

• Request Management and Service Management provisioning in a unified portal through Windows Azure Pack integration

• It enables users and tenants to submit, track and update incidents and requests

• It allows decision makers to approve requests, and it allows implementers to complete their tasks in the Windows Azure Pack portal

• It publishes new request offerings to users and tenants from the Service Manager 2012 Service Catalogue

• Service usage data collected can be used to monetize requests

• Enables hosters to offer higher value services built on Windows Azure Pack

• Usage data enables billing based on incidents and requests...

Odin – WAP APS packages

As Odin writes on their official website, Windows Azure Pack APS package provides complete support for Windows Azure Pack, enabling service providers to offer Windows Azure services based on their infrastructure. This APS package reduces the time to market to offer Windows Azure Pack services by automating billing, provisioning, and customer management.

When you deploy the Windows Azure Pack APS package with Service Automation, you will get a complete set of business capabilities as follows:

• Storefront integration

• Automated ordering and provisioning

• Customer self-service control panels

• Billing and service plan management

• Resource reporting and tracking

• Full reseller and white-label capability

• Ability to customize workflow to drive business processes with the greatest efficiency

To learn more about Odin's solution for Windows Azure Pack, go through http://www.odin.com/products/automation/services-and-applications/windows-azure-package/.

Cisco ACI – application centric infrastructure

Cisco ACI is designed to provide datacenter fabric to applications as per application requirements and business policies. ACI facilitates this in an application-centric way by enabling application-centric policies to host applications infrastructure such as VMs and networks on fabric.

Cisco integrates its ACI application policy framework with Microsoft technologies including Hyper, SCVMM, and Azure Pack. While it is integrated with WAP, ACI provides a self-service experience to tenants to choose policies for their networking requirements.

ACI enables this by developing an ACI custom resource provider and extensions for Windows Azure Pack.

The ACI architecture for enabling this solution involves the following components:

• Windows Azure Pack Solution (UR 5 or higher) with ACI resource provider's and extensions

• SCVMM logical networks

• Cisco APIC agent for Hyper-V—installed on all Hyper-V hosts

• WAP plans and subscriptions including ACI services

Along with...

5nine cloud security

5nine cloud security for Windows Azure Pack enables service providers to offer customer Security as a Service. It enables tenants to manage firewall configurations and protect their virtual machines running Windows or Linux

5nine adds two major capabilities for Windows Azure Pack including Virtual firewall and IDS (Intrusion detection system). These capabilities are delivered without installing agents inside virtual machines. Agentless solution ensures no performance hit on virtual machines.

5nine integrates with the virtual switch on Hyper-V to enable these capabilities. See the following links to learn more about 5nine cloud security for Windows Azure Pack:

http://www.5nine.com/5nine-security-for-hyper-v-product.aspx#Azure

http://www.5nine.com/Docs/5nine_wap_extension_overview_en.pdf

http://www.5nine.com/Docs/5nineCloudSecurityAzurePack_Guide.pdf.

Team access control for WAP

Team access, controlled by Terawe, is a scoped access control (similar to RBAC) solution for Windows Azure Pack. Team access control enables scoped quota management and access control that enables administrators and team managers and members to use resources in a controlled yet flexible way. To learn more about team access control for WAP, go through http://www.terawe.com/tac4wapack.

Nutanix hyper-converged infrastructure for WAP clouds

Nutanix, a leader in the hyper-convergence market, has conducted functional testing for WAP workloads to their Web Scale virtual computing platform. To access reference architecture for running Windows Azure Pack cloud on Nutanix platform, go through http://go.nutanix.com/microsoft-private-cloud-windows-azure-pack.html.

A NetApp storage for Microsoft Clouds

The NetApp storage solution integrates with Microsoft Cloud OS, scaling from private to public clouds to accelerate deployment of cloud-based datacenter infrastructure, applications, and services. To learn more about NetApp solution for Microsoft cloud platforms, go through http://www.netapp.com/us/solutions/cloud/microsoft-cloud/index.aspx.

Summary

In this chapter, we discussed about Microsoft Azure Stack next platform by Microsoft for building clouds on-premise. You learned about the Windows Azure Pack updates system.

We covered the Windows Azure Pack Partner Ecosystem and discussed the offerings of solutions developed by partners to extend Windows Azure Pack capabilities.

With this chapter, our journey of building clouds with Windows Azure Pack has come to an end. In this book, you learned how to plan, implement, manage, and experience a cloud solution built using Microsoft technologies. If you did your own lab implementation following the course of the book, then by now, you must be ready with an enterprise class cloud offering IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS services.

Learning is a never ending process in this changing IT world.

I recommend http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/20689.the-azure-pack-wiki-wapack.aspx to keep updated on Windows Azure Pack.

I recommend http://blogs.technet.com/b/privatecloud/ to keep updated...