Success with an enterprise cloud architecture begins with connecting and managing all cloud environments across the organization, especially since many businesses use multiple cloud service providers. Unified cloud management tools can simplify the setup and maintenance of these complex multicloud environments.
What Is Cloud Management?
A consolidated management interface for all cloud workloads is key to cloud management. These dashboards offer more policy control, greater automation, and the ability to log and manage information more easily with single sign-on access.
Cloud management platforms from vendors like Microsoft, Red Hat, SUSE OpenStack, VMware, and Google Cloud give you visibility into your hybrid cloud, offering a single view of all your workloads. These platforms make it easier to monitor costs, move workloads dynamically between clouds, and automate and spin up resources as needed.
Cloud Orchestration
Cloud automation and orchestration are key steps toward an efficient, cloud-ready data center built on software-defined architecture. Orchestration can reduce costs and increase efficiency through intelligent, automated resource allocation across your compute, storage, and network infrastructure. These virtual resources mean fewer human touch points and fast, more efficient service deployment.
Cloud computing and orchestration platforms can also support microservices architecture via cloud containers. With container technology, developers can use OS-level virtualization to deliver software in packages. Besides being more lightweight than virtual machines, container-based architecture is incredibly flexible and portable. Developers can work on just a single portion of an application without impacting any other part, leading to fast iterations, and smoother updates.
Docker Containers
Docker is a popular container runtime that standardizes the packaging format for a wide range of applications for container-based virtualization. Docker Enterprise* is an enterprise-class container platform for building, managing, and helping secure applications. Docker Enterprise integrates Intel® Software Guard Extensions (Intel® SGX) to provide validation before running a container image. In addition, Intel releases unparalleled container configuration for specific images, leading to improved performance with Docker containers.
Kubernetes* - Containers Orchestration
Kubernetes is the leading open source system for automating how containerized applications are deployed, scaled, and managed. It can be used as an orchestration system for Docker containers. It includes features like the Kubernetes Cloud Controller Manager, which facilitates integration with cloud providers, and the CPU Manager, which helps optimize workload placement.
Intel’s early contributions to Kubernetes helped extend capabilities by shaping the requirements for device plugins, address limitations for high-bandwidth, low-latency workloads, and enable new features for networking applications. Today, we continue to collaborate with the Kubernetes community to deliver performance and more security for cloud-native workloads and ease the developer experience. As part of these efforts, we label core Intel® CPU functionalities, such as Intel® Deep Learning Boost (Intel® DL Boost) and Intel® Advanced Vector Extensions 512 (Intel® AVX-512), so that developers can more easily use their choice of instruction sets in a Kubernetes environment. Plug-ins for other resources, such as memory and storage, are also available.
Cloud management tools for orchestration, automation, and workload placement help you get the most from a hybrid multicloud environment.
Workload Optimization
Almost any workload can run in the cloud with the right strategy, but placing and fine-tuning your workloads can be a challenge. Many cloud management platforms include workload optimization tools that help you use resources most efficiently. This may involve moving applications to the cluster that can meet your performance and cost requirements. Intel works with software vendors and cloud service providers to expose Intel® platform technologies, such as Intel® Deep Learning Boost (Intel® DL Boost) and Intel® Optane™ DC persistent memory, through software stack integration. This can help you further optimize workloads, such as machine and deep learning applications.
Cloud Security
Security governance is a major concern for all organizations, and cloud security has its own set of considerations. Because opening a door from your on-premise environment to a public cloud expands your potential attack surface, your cloud security strategy should involve protection, detection, and correction.
Security strategies should begin at the hardware platform level. Hardware-enabled security capabilities directly on the silicon help protect every layer of the compute stack: hardware, firmware, operating systems, applications, and networks in the cloud.
- 2nd Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors deliver hardware-enhanced threat detection through Intel® Threat Detection Technology (Intel® TDT).
- Intel® Security Libraries for Data Centers (Intel® SecL - DC) are the building blocks of a variety of security usage models and layers that can be rooted in hardware-based capabilities.
- Boot protections come from a hardware root of trust implemented in key technologies such as Intel® Trusted Execution Technology (Intel® TXT), Boot Guard, or Intel® Platform Firmware Resilience (Intel® PFR) technology.
- Runtime protections are provided by Intel encryption acceleration technologies when data is at rest, in transit, or in use. Intel® AES New Instructions (Intel® AES-NI) accelerates encryption for maximum performance, Intel® Software Guard Extensions (Intel® SGX) protect data while in use, and Intel® QuickAssist Technology (Intel® QAT) offloads encryption from the CPU for the most demanding workloads.
Intel® Processors and Cloud Management
Intel® processors and software are the foundation of a portfolio of solutions that help data centers move to software Defined Infrastructure (SDI) and dynamic, policy-based, on-demand services.
Beyond workload-optimized silicon for software Defined Infrastructure (SDI)-based data centers, Intel also offers platform and software capabilities that help support performance monitoring and API management. Intel®-based platforms expose telemetry data so that automation tools and application software can make better decisions about provisioning, resource allocation, service tiering, and quality-of-service levels.
- Intel contributes to open source cloud management software such as Kubernetes, OpenStack, and Red Hat OpenShift.
- Intel® Resource Director Technology (Intel® RDT) provides orchestration and automation capabilities to manage shared platform resources dynamically across computing, networking, and storage.
- Intel® Trusted Execution Technology (Intel® TXT) measures and verifies that virtual servers boot into “known good states,” helping enable security automation and compliance monitoring.
- Intel® Cloud Integrity Technology (Intel® CIT) works with the OpenStack* platform to ensure that cloud applications run on trusted servers and virtual machines whose configurations have not been altered.
Click here to learn more about Trusted Infrastructure, a suite of platform security technologies built into Intel silicon.