Architecting a Microsoft Private Cloud

The first part of a four-part article series titled Architecting a Microsoft Private Cloud, by myself and my colleague Adam Fazio (@adamfazio) has been published in TechNet Magazine here:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/hh127072.aspx

Microsoft Services has designed, built and implemented a Private Cloud/IaaS reference implementation using Windows Server, Hyper-V and System Center. Our goal throughout this four-part series will be to show how you can integrate and deploy each of the component products as a solution while providing the essential cloud attributes such as elasticity, resource pooling and self-service.

In this first article, we’ll define Private Cloud/IaaS, describe the cloud attributes and datacenter design principles used as requirements, then detail the reference architecture created to meet those requirements. In parts two and three, we’ll describe the detailed design of the reference architecture, each of the layers and products contained within, as well as the process and workflow automation. Finally, in part four we’ll describe the deployment automation created using the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit and Hydration Framework for consistent and repeatable implementations.

For more information about the architecture, see the Hyper-V Cloud Deployment Guides here (also co-authored by Adam and I) and the MCS Datacenter Services Solution here. Stay tuned for the remaining three articles...