Conversing in the Cloud: Private Cloud vs. Virtualization

The cloud is among today’s technologies wherein definitions are somewhat cloudy as well, so to speak. There are many organizations that think that they are running a private cloud but the truth is there are only running a virtualized data center.

You might think that these two are just the same. However, try to dig deeper if you will realize that they are not.

When you speak of virtualization, it pertains to the software abstraction of the workloads from primary physical server hardware, often through a native hypervisor. This program allows the sharing of several operating systems of one hardware host.

Through virtualization, the applications and operating system as decoupled from the primary hardware then containerized in the virtual machine based on software to allow IT organizations in running several isolated workloads with different or same operating systems on a similar physical server. Virtualization decreases the number of required physical servers for handling several workloads to help you save business costs on floor space, power, cooling, and hardware.

Virtualization resembles the cloud due to the abstraction which allows IT to scale down, migrate, and spin up workloads across physical servers within minutes or seconds instead of weeks or days it took in physical world. By doing so, virtualization can deliver much of the scalability, automation, agility, flexibility, and business continuity users usually associate with the cloud. This marks the end of the similarity between private cloud and virtualization.

Private Cloud – Defined as Help Yourself

Private cloud is not a virtualized data center for one main reason – IT is in complete control and handles the whole process. Each time a user, department or business unit requires virtual resources, there is a need to go to IT to scale or provision them.

Self-service can best define private cloud. Private cloud or IT service offers users with a big pool of virtual resources that can be leveraged with no assistance. When a department requires a new application, this can provision the essential virtual resources through a rather simple self-service portal. Most of the time, it can just pick an application from service catalog, with the cloud provisioning all the important resources automatically. Once it needs more storage or processing resources, the user can just scale these on demand with no intervention from IT. Private cloud also integrates reporting and chargeback features which allow IT bill and track departments for resources that are used in the same pay as you go approach like public cloud.

There are also lots of agility benefits that private clouds can offer for departments and business users which used to wait months or weeks for IT resources required for the deployment of a service or application. Prior to the cloud, it posed serious issues, particularly in a changing and competitive business environment that depends on technology.

Obviously, private clouds have not gotten rid of all issues on resource allocation. With the rise of public cloud services, shadow IT is now challenging private clouds. This is where business users are working outside IT for breaking free from constraints of private cloud, and get more instant access to the cloud services with no involvement from private cloud or IT managed services.

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