Fundamentals of Cloud Computing: Infrastructure-as-a-Service

To have a public cloud or not to have a public cloud- that is the question.  Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) comes with many choices for the customer, and deciding whether or not to make virtualized data centers public or private, is one of the largest ones faced by government agencies.  In this clip from the Cloud Advisory Group’s webcast on IaaS, CTO Van Ristau provides some insight into determining your IaaS needs.

“It can be a unique situation, and probably for many people, it will be unique to your specific requirement,” continued Van. “So it is a little difficult to answer the question right off, whether it should be public or private, without really understanding what the end-user needs.” To obtain such an understanding of end-user requirements and functionality, things like bandwidth, risk management and security profiles are all important factors to consider when choosing an IaaS solution.

Any virtualized data center needs to be compliant with federal security requirements, which now include FISMA certification and accreditation for the system. “The maturation of cloud providers is giving way to a positive trend in terms of compliance to government oriented needs,” explained David Blankenhorn, DLT’s Chief Cloud Technologist.  “Service providers are continually acquiring certifications that are higher than some of the internal data centers.”

FedRAMP , an abbreviated process that is expected to be approved sometime this year, authorizes and continuously monitors IT services (such as IaaS) that are used by multiple federal departments and agencies. Typically these Infrastructure-as-a-Service facilities are achieving FISMA moderate status, which gives the program credibility and assures the agency that the solutions provider and software have been tested and meet government standards and criteria.

Learn more about DLT’s IaaS and virtualization solutions available with Red Hat!

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