Modern organizations are looking for ways to shape their environment of IT systems as part of their internal development so as to reduce the cost of use and to increase the performance at reasonable costs of ongoing management.

Until recently, virtually every company maintained systems in the form of a dedicated infrastructure. Then they began to use the virtualization of resources on an increasingly wider scale. A virtual environment enriched with some capabilities, especially regarding the management and accounting, has evolved into a private cloud, that is an environment used only within one organization or set of organizations of a single owner.

The main advantages of cloud computing based on the virtualization include:

  • the parallel use of physical server resources by multiple virtual machines, which results from the low probability that all parallel virtual servers will work at the same time using 100% of their potential;
  • an easy recovery of the whole system after a failure;
  • data location on shared disk resources, which prevents downtime of the applications during maintenance work on servers;
  • moving entire systems between data centers has become possible even over long distances;
  • systems have become completely replicable (copyable) in real time between data centers in remote locations;.
  • the configuration of connections for IT networks is simpler; the administrator can create complex, separate virtual environments; on one physical server, the servers accessible only from the internal network (e.g. ERP) of the company as well as those accessible mainly from the Internet (WWW) can be placed. This helps reduce the number of physical devices and wiring, which facilitates management;
  • accounting for declared or actually used resources.

Who needs IaaS

After the resources had been virtualized, new problems emerged that had not been taken into account when building the virtual environment, e.g. how to ensure proper cooling for so highly cumulative computing power. Most of them resulted from the insufficient infrastructure of corporate servers, including power supply, cooling, gas extinguishing, access control and so on.

Instead of investing in the expansion of their own data center, customers began to consider putting their resources into a professional data center (DC), i.e. using a collocation service. An external DC provides high availability standards, which are often impossible to achieve in the customers’ own server rooms, or costs of building and maintaining an infrastructure at a satisfactory level are disproportionately high compared to the achieved benefits.

Moving the IT infrastructure to an external DC also helps reduce the costs of operating the IT hardware. The specialized personnel of DC can support the customer in the basic operation of the infrastructure, and in the era of remote access, even a long distance between the hardware and the location of administrators ceases to be relevant.

However, the collocated hardware is ageing over time, becomes insufficient, unreliable, or is no longer covered by the manufacturer’s support. The company is faced with a choice: To continue investing in hardware or to use the Infrastructure as a Service model. A good idea may be to benefit from a hybrid cloud solution. The customer uses the infrastructure as a service solution, i.e. a piece of infrastructure leased in an external DC that the customer can manage fully remotely, called IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service).

Infrastructure as a Service

IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) is a model in which the customer receives a piece of the infrastructure. Available resources are measured using the number of virtual CPUs, the amount of RAM and disk capacity or other parameters. The service is accounted for depending on these settings. IaaS allows for full control of allocated resources, establishing the necessary number of servers and creating complex environments on their basis. In this approach, the customer does not bear the costs of purchasing the hardware that would be able to provide the required performance. It is a practical solution in many ways, ranging from lack of need to own a data center, through the possibility of remote work of many people from different locations, and ending with the high availability which can be offered only by a technologically advanced data center.

Fit the cloud to your business

Fitacloud is an IaaS service of BCC (now All for One Poland) provided in the cloud computing technology based on the organization and infrastructure of All for One Data Centers.

The service is provided based on the VMware solution, which has been selected due to a positive feedback and experience gathered by administrators and consultants. BCC has been using these solutions in All for One Data Centers and implementing them for their customers for many years. It meets all the objectives set when establishing IaaS.

The prerequisites for efficient operation of the service are a combination of competencies (qualified staff), hardware resources (suitable hardware) and tools (software) that are required for building a public cloud.

For the efficient provision of the service, it is necessary to build a bridge between the complicated processes that occur within the provider’s infrastructure and the customer who should receive an easy-to-use tool. With the portal available through WWW, even a person without advanced IT knowledge can easily manage available resources.

It is in line with these objectives that the Fitacloud platform has been created. It allows you to “fit the cloud" to your current needs – the selection of server power, disk capacity and RAM parameters as well as the estimation of the monthly costs of the service.

The offer is addressed to companies that are planning to use the cloud computing model to maintain all or part of the IT infrastructure or are looking for a provider of a secure managed hosting service for IT systems.

The basic functionality from the customer’s perspective is provided by www.fitacloud.com, a portal through which the customer can manage his cloud. The interface is clear and intuitive. It provides all the options to perform the necessary work. Via this interface, the customer can control the available resources and current consumption of his Virtual Data Center. The customer can also create users and assign them permissions depending on their role in the organization.

IaaS as a backup data center

A very important feature of IaaS is a virtual router that can provide a VPN site-to-site connection between data centers (of the customer and IaaS provider). The benefits of such a solution are enormous. For example, you can expand the functionality of your current environment with new services provided in another data center or create a backup data center based on IaaS and switch to it if the former is unavailable. The possibilities are many; basically, they provide unlimited flexibility and freedom in action. IaaS is a very good solution for creating a backup data center for those companies whose policy provides for using their own hardware and software infrastructure as the primary center.

IaaS at BCC (now All for One Poland)
Fitacloud is a BCC service of providing the customer with an IT infrastructure (computing power, disk space, a specific amount of memory) in the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) model. The service is performed in the cloud computing technology based on the organization and infrastructure of All for One Data Centers.
By selecting the Fitacloud service, customers benefit from:
– guaranteed system and data security – a duplicated infrastructure in independent DCs in two different locations
– scalability and efficiency of IT services – no barriers to the development of the IT infrastructure as their needs grow
– optimization of IT maintenance costs
– high availability parameters (over 99.98%)
– proactive monitoring – continuous supervision of the IT infrastructure by All for One Data Centers specialists
– continuous monitoring of the level of services (including independent audits)

Flexibility and security

Switching from the company’s own infrastructure to the infrastructure as a service delivered by specialized data centers provides tangible benefits to companies:

  • a flexibility in monthly fees – the customer pays only for what he has bought as part of a segment of the virtual infrastructure;
  • no need to maintain the staff responsible for the implementation and maintenance of the entire hardware and software platform;
  • transparent control of spending and easy planning of new solutions. The customer receives a list of prices of resources such as CPUs, RAM, disk space that he can shape freely to suit his needs;
  • if the customer has greater needs in a given month (e.g. related to the seasonal increase in sales and the related higher workload of business systems), it is sufficient for him to order additional parameters for the resources that are currently in use.

An important aspect of IaaS services is also security. This issue can have a very broad meaning; here we will focus on backups. Also in the case of IaaS, it is necessary to consider a backup strategy and to choose the right tools. Data centers have advanced central solutions. It is very important to know the scope of backups offered by a specific service. You have to take into account such aspects as the way in which backups are made, their storage time, the ability to restore to a point in time, integration with applications.

Fitacloud.com is a mature IaaS service. It has all the features necessary in this class. It has been built on the renowned VMware platform. The technological and organizational potential of All for One Data Centers and broad competencies of consultants and administrators supervising the infrastructure and taking care of its development are the biggest advantages.