Specifications

1 Executive Summary
Cloud computing is quickly becoming the platform of choice for users and businesses that
want to reduce operating expenses and be able to scale resources rapidly. There are several
other advantages of moving resources to the cloud such as eased automation, flexibility,
mobility, resiliency, and redundancy.
Even though cloud computing is in the early stages, there are different types of cloud
solutions available to businesses today. Private clouds allow businesses to take advantage of
cloud technologies while remaining on a private network. Public clouds allow businesses to
make resources available to external consumers. In addition to that, using a public cloud
reduces the need to evaluate new hardware, deploy the infrastructure or support it. Hybrid
clouds allow the best of both public and private cloud computing models because it allows
reallocation of traffic to public cloud providers based on a spike in traffic.
Cloud computing provides several different services such as Infrastructure as a Service
(Iaas), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS). These standards are
defined by NIST (National Institute for Standards and Technology)
i
and are discussed in detail
within this paper.
Red Hat Cloud Foundations (RHCF) provide the software infrastructure required to build
public, private and hybrid clouds by utilizing open source technologies that are available
today. Some of the key technologies that RHCF utilizes are Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL),
Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) which serves as the foundation of the virtualized
hosts and Messaging, Realtime and Grid (MRG) which provides a framework for distributing
workloads in a high speed, efficient manner. RHCF also utilizes Red Hat Network Satellite
technologies to manage parts of the infrastructure and components of the JBoss suite as a
middleware platform used for scaling applications. RHCF utilizes many other technologies
that are going to be discussed in greater detail in the following sections.
The next evolution of cloud technologies is Red Hat CloudForms. Red Hat CloudForms
provides advanced features such as Self Service, Resource Abstraction and pooling, creation
and management of images, and complete Application and Life Cycle Management. These
capabilities are additive to current products that provide full cloud functionality and
capabilities.
This paper takes all the required Red Hat Cloud Foundation technologies and presents best
practices for tying them together. The entire cloud stack is covered from the Red Hat
Enterprise Linux operating system to the applications that scale on top of it.
www.redhat.com 6
Figure 1.1: CloudForms