The names have been changed to protect the guilty. You KNOW who you are. 😉 And in 2014, we’ll aid and abet some of our dear customers by releasing Microsoft case studies, live videos, media quotes, blog interviews, and much more. In the interim, I, Dr. Cloud, perched high above THE Cloud where the view of all within is most advantageous, do now share these anecdotal meanderings of unreal things that real people are doing every single day in THE Cloud.
Company A: Tippy Toe Your Way In
Synopsis: spin up virtual datacenter, virtual firewall, virtual server, establish p2p VPN, replicate AD
Signing up for a dinManage account is FREE on dinCloud’s website. I personally wanted a java app that would scan your back pocket the minute you hit our website and charge your credit card, but Walid my VP of Engineering & Development said “no”. Ah, those open source guys, always giving away stuff for FREE! Nonetheless, once into the system, your next choice must be made wisely. The most popular choice is to “tippy toe your way in” meaning buy 1 Microsoft Windows server. This spins up your virtual private datacenter (VPDC) which is a virtual environment front ended by a Brocade/Vyatta virtual firewall appliance. The Vyatta firewall connects your virtual LAN network and future resources that will spin up there, to the Internet and also via point-to-point (P2P) IPSEC VPN to your existing HQ/infrastructure. All of this is configurable in dinManage at https://shop.www.dincloud.com/ after you login. The Vyatta virtual firewall usually peers with your onsite physical firewall from any vendor that supports IPSEC VPNs (most do). Next, have your Microsoft Windows Server in the Cloud join your existing windows domain as an AD server/domain controller. I call this basic disaster recovery (DR) because you’ve now protected your valuable AD information/identity store (user accounts, settings, permissions, etc.) as well as established the initial connectivity you need to spin up additional new resources, then manage, migrate and interact with them in your new found Cloud. A virtual private datacenter hosted by dinCloud is wildly different than the competition! Click this link to find out why:http://www.dincloud.com/virtual-datacenters/
Company B: Arm & A Leg
Synopsis: spin up virtual datacenter, virtual firewall, virtual server, establish p2p VPN, replicate AD, virtual servers, virtual desktops
Same as Company A above but you’ve chosen to host various key servers with us and augment your environment with virtual desktops. We have a lot of customers who we help move their DNS and email to the Cloud (often Office 365 which we can resell to you) and then put AD, web, app and other services into the Cloud. Sometimes they use the virtual desktops for a large chunk of users and sometimes they just make sure the virtual desktop image template is always updated to their latest corporate standards so they can spin up hundreds of virtual desktops if disaster strikes their corporate HQ. In other instances, the virtual desktops are used for 3rd party contractors, overseas software developers, and others where a full remote access VPN connection to your network may not be desirable and containment of intellectual property and corporate data is essential.
Company C: Fully Body Dive In
Synopsis: spin up virtual datacenter, virtual firewall, virtual server, establish p2p VPN, replicate AD, virtual desktops, virtual servers, cloud storage, dinTransport, multi-tenant or dedicated infrastructure
Many customers, particularly < 500 employees run their entire infrastructure with multiple offices around the world – all from the Cloud. They find that it’s a faster way for their business to get to market, realize significant cost savings, keep up with regulatory compliance’s ever changing demands, plus it’s often a huge relief for their one IT staffer. To get started, these companies sign up for an account, buy their first server which initiates the creation of their virtual private datacenter & virtual firewall, get their P2P IPSEC VPN established back to HQ, replicate their Microsoft Active Directory (AD) from HQ to their cloud server, then spin up virtual desktops. Over the next week these customers often Fedex their virtualized server images (vmware, hyper-v, kvm) or replicate those images over the wire to dinCloud. Soon, these servers go online too and dinStorage D3 is used to back them up, plus provide access to unstructured file shares and much more. Large customers >500 seats or many offices >5 typically want dinTransport for private full mesh MPLS w/QoS to all their sites etc. In this scenarios, P2P VPN becomes their backup link to the Cloud. Depending on personal preferences or regulatory interpretations, some customers opt for dedicated infrastructure in our Cloud. This infrastructure can be as granular as you need it to be to achieve a dedicated server, dedicated storage, digitally locked rack, or even a separate cage environment.
Company D: Cloning Is Cool
Synopsis: spin up virtual datacenter, virtual firewall, virtual server, establish p2p VPN, replicate AD, virtual desktops, virtual servers, cloud storage, dinTransport, multi-site backup and/or replication
This is basically disaster recovery which seeks to mirror your infrastructure at different geographic locations.
We have a few options here.
#1 Cold Standby. You backup your physical or virtual servers at your site or the ones you have in our Cloud to dinStorage D3 sites (where we offer them worldwide) and these can be restored at any time either to your local site or to our Cloud. For example you may be hosting with us in Los Angeles but copy/backup everything to Chicago using VEEAM, Commvault, Symantec, or other tools.
#2 Warm Standby. We migrate your cloud hosted resources with us from a local storage pool to a multi-site storage pool which automatically replicates everything between datacenters (for examples LAX/Los Angeles & CHI/Chicago). This can be done for dinServer, dinHVD, dinDaaS, and dinStorage D3. You pay for storage costs only. If your primary infrastructure dies then we can spin you up at the alternate site. It takes some time to browse the cloud storage for your virtual images and mount them but this takes us hours not days.
#3 Hot Standby. Using VEEAM or other tools your servers are replicated to one of our other datacenters and kept synchronized in real-time. Depending on the tool, this may require a dedicated environment (virtualization host, management platform etc.) A design planning session is required for this service as other considerations around DNS etc. must be accounted for.
Company E: Ala Carte
Synopsis: dinStorage D3, dinTransport, dinDaaS home edition
These are the 3 products you can purchase which do not spin up a virtual private datacenter thus triggering the cost of a virtual firewall and the other peripheral resources required to isolate & secure your virtual environment in a dedicated or multi-tenant cloud. As such, these products can be purchased standalone or “ala carte” on their own merits.
dinStorageD3 is fully compatible with Amazon D3 storage and thousands of applications support it. Leveraging these free and paid for 3rd party applications, it’s possible to use this storage as a mapped drive on your PC, remote access on mobile devices to saved files, as a backup target for popular backup software from software publishers such as VEEAM, Commvault, Symantec, and others.
dinTransport is our circuit and bandwidth portfolio which offers private & full mesh MPLS circuits, SIP trunks, analog/PRI voice connections, IP Cloud Hosted phones (Cisco, Avaya), and direct Internet Access circuits at up to 1gbps speeds anywhere in the United States via our NNI carrier-to-carrier gateways which allow us to provide you connectivity via: AT&T, XO, Sprint, Windstream/Paetec, Megapath/Covad, Time Warner, Cogent, Level3 and many others. This can be used as connectivity to your virtual private datacenter at dinCloud or ala carte to connect all your corporate sites together. The full mesh capabilities and 1gbps speeds can become vital when you inevitably outgrow P2P VPN which is then configured to be an automatic failover mechanism for dinTransport – you can never be too safe.
dinDaaS home edition is our cost effective feature limited solution for home users who want a Windows and Linux (coming soon) desktop connected to the Internet 24x7x365 that they can leverage from anywhere.
Just Ask, We’re Here To Help! 🙂
I hope you found the above information helpful, but please reach out to us to answer further questions or even kick off a full blown design meeting to explore how to “get there” in the Cloud. Email me anytime mchase at www.dincloud.com ! —/\/\ike Chase EVP/CTO/dinCloud.com
For more information on our Cloud Solutions, please visit our Products page or request information to speak with a cloud specialist.
