Cloud Native Data Center as the Future of Modern Infrastructure [webinar]
What is a cloud native data center? With the recent announcement of Mirantis Flow, our new data center-as-a-service solution, there’s been a lot of talk about this concept of a cloud native data center and the impact it will have on the future of cloud native infrastructure.
Below, you will find a complete definition from Mirantis Field CTO Shaun O’Meara along with a detailed explanation of Mirantis Flow. Interested in watching the rest? Access the full webinar on demand.
Transcript
Defining the Cloud Native Data Center
Nick Chase: You want to talk real quick about what a cloud native data center is?
Shaun O'Meara: We can do that. Ultimately, a cloud native data center is a full-staffed data center where that data center is no longer bound to a physical building necessarily.
Nick Chase: Okay. And I know you'll get more into it later, so I just wanted to kind of set that level before you go forward.
Shaun O'Meara: Yeah, it's a very good point. Ultimately, it's saying that the data center is no longer to be seen as a single provider or a single building, but the idea that we can run our microservices applications, our cloud native applications, whether they're Kubernetes or VMs, where we need them. So whether containers or VMs, and what we're offering to achieve this is all based on a Kubernetes platform.
So, self-service, on demand, complete Kubernetes-as-a-service. The idea is here again we create that thin layer using Kubernetes, allowing you to deploy a consistent, cohesive Kubernetes platform across any provider, whether it's bare metal in your data center, a private cloud, or a public cloud service. We're including built-in monitoring, logging, and alerting capabilities. Provide that visibility. Provide that single pane of glass. Part of our offering we're including deployment and onboarding to make it easy so you can get started. And really importantly, we handle the operations. We do 24-7 proactive operations and support so that you can either just enjoy your life and focus on putting applications down, and not have to deal with the complexity. We also own that open source.
Guaranteed Outcomes
Shaun O'Meara: So just to put this in perspective of what we are providing holistically, and this is across all of those providers that I showed earlier. I'm going to show another diagram in a second.
Nick Chase: And remember, everyone, we will handle this for you, so don't let your eyes bleed.
Shaun O'Meara: Yeah. I know this is quite a complex diagram, but ultimately, everything in blue – I think it's blue – is handled by Mirantis. And what's important is we're providing that Kubernetes layer, the virtualization, the containerization layer across all of these infrastructure choices.
So what are our key guarantees that we're offering as part of this? Firstly, as I mentioned, the rapid deployment. We'll deploy within 48 hours of the hardware being verified or onto the cloud platform of your choice. We will reduce the overhead for operating that infrastructure. So we'll take over the overhead through a combination of fully automated and integrated lifecycle management combined with our ops care offering for visibility, and with ops care plus, we can even do that full management for you.
We are providing and offering as part of Mirantis Flow a kickstart to help you with that process of understanding how to onboard your workloads or migrate those workloads. Many people are running workloads on legacy systems, they have a plan that they need to enact to get them into public cloud. They're probably still trying to get the cloud offering just to work for them, and now they've got to deal with a complex layer of migrating applications. It will help you then to put the guidelines in place to make that happen.
And what's important to us as part of this offering? Because we're offering the full Mirantis stack, we can also offer you virtual machines in your data center and containers on the same infrastructure, offering you a complete solution right out from inside your data center out into the public cloud.
How are we doing this? The core of the offering is based around Mirantis Container Cloud. Container Cloud allows us to cover all of these different providers, so all of these cloud providers, so Azure, AWS, Equinix Metal, VMware, OpenStack, and then bare metal in your data center, we can orchestrate your existing bare metal infrastructure, allowing you to continue to use that infrastructure and then we can layer that up either with OpenStack or Kubernetes on bare metal utilizing Mirantis Kubernetes Engine. Right now we can cover a lot of different use cases. With k0s coming into Container Cloud shortly, we can start to also cover more of the edge use cases and more interesting use cases.
Combined with Lens for the overall visibility of the entire solution, Lens is your single entry point to all of this. StackLight provides for the logging, monitoring, and alerting and also provides for connections with OpsCare solutions. If we have all of that information, we can respond appropriately and be proactive about the management. And then we've got some add-ons like Mirantis Secure Registry, which allows you to create a very strong secure software supply chain where you can ensure that only workloads you approved and that have been validated are running in your environment.
How are we operating all of this? Sorry, Nick, you wanted to say something?
Nick Chase: No, no, no, I was just going to say, okay, so how are we going to do this? Go ahead.
Delivering the Cloud Native Data Center
Shaun O'Meara: All right. So how are we operating all of this? We're delivering it through two choices. We've got our OpsCare and our OpsCare Plus support offerings. Both include support for scaling out your environment, the design and the deployment of the initial environment, the lifecycle management, so everything you need to do to keep that environment up and alive, patching, upgrades all included as part of the software and the support solution. And then the operations component, we offer two flavors where you can operate your environment through the automated tools but we’ll act as your first line, handling the alerts and the escalations, or we can even just operate that environment entirely for you, and all you need to do is worry about your workload.
It's a proactive support model. It includes the logging and monitoring. We are offering it, as I said, 24 by 7. We offer different SLA options, and there's a deployment validation agreement for your environment that we will help you get everything up and running within 48 hours.
Nick Chase: 48 hours? So let's just – so now normally people are used to this taking how long?
Shaun O'Meara: Weeks to months.
Nick Chase: That's why I want to make sure we're talking about actually 48 hours it will be up and running, and how long until the first workload is on there?
Shaun O'Meara: So you'll be able to put that first workload within 48 hours. Our promise is to start working with you to get your first workloads on there by the end of that week.
Nick Chase: That is fast. That is very fast.
Maintaining Cloud Choice
Shaun O'Meara: And we're able to achieve this through a combination of our software offerings, so what Container Cloud offers as being the core of Container Cloud goes on in little or no time. As soon as that hardware's available to us and we've done the basic setup of the environment, Container Cloud goes in and everything else comes from there. Everything else stems from there through a completely self-service for Kubernetes clusters. So once the infrastructure's in place and has been validated, all you need to do to get a Kubernetes cluster is pick your provider, click the button, and within minutes, you've got Kubernetes clusters on all those providers, and you've got that – I'll go back to this diagram – you've got that central point, that Container Cloud, where you have visibility and a view of your entire environment, where all your resources are, how big your clusters are, and you can scale and manage them from there.
Nick Chase: And we're talking about clusters on any of these providers.
Shaun O'Meara: Correct.
Nick Chase: So not just pick one.
Shaun O'Meara: No, pick any of them. Or all of them.
Nick Chase: So you can have something on AWS and something on Equinix Metal and, you know, still keep your VMware and all of that.
Shaun O'Meara: Yep, and have a consistent setup across all of them. So at the end of the day, when I have a cluster, when I build a cluster on top of Equinix Metal and consume their bare metal solution, and I have another cluster running on top of AWS and EC2, from an application point of view, those clusters are the same. They have the same internal mechanism, the same workings, the same SSO - all the rules are the same so that I can move my application around and just take advantage of the resources underneath them or use resources that are more proximal to what I'm trying to achieve.
Nick Chase: And so I don't need to - say – have a certification in the AWS API.
Shaun O'Meara: Correct.
Learn More About Mirantis Flow
If you would like to continue watching, access the full on demand webinar here.
For additional information on Mirantis Flow, download the datasheet or contact us today to start saving.
