IAAS: How we use our own network

While we often promote the ways our customers benefit from using our product, this space provides the ability to share how we, Sunesys, benefit from using our own product. This example comes from the recent move of our virtual servers into the cloud by running them on an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IAAS) across our own network.

IAAS is a cloud service that leverages the multi-tenant scalability of virtualization products like VMWare and Citrix. It offers virtual co-location, hardware-on-demand, image level disaster recovery, metered usage, and many features that IT departments simply can’t do on their own. With the IAAS model, your internal IT staff is freed of hardware and facility support, allowing them to focus on business-line applications and the end user experience. Although there are some well known IAAS providers where you can build a virtual server and connect to it over the Internet within minutes, we chose a different route.

We evaluated these providers and were impressed with the scale and simplicity of their service. But they were lacking one important element – the feeling of being “on-network”. We needed seamless integration with our network so that we could maintain performance, reliability, and security. There are no assurances of this when traversing the Internet. What if we could connect to IAAS over a private circuit? Well, in fact we could. Many IAAS providers will work with you to connect a private circuit into their virtual cloud. These providers are setting up shop in regional data centers, POPs, and COs to get closer to their customers. One of these providers, Xtium in Valley Forge, was already on our fiber network.

Sunesys and Xtium designed a 1GB fiber circuit that extended the Sunesys LAN onto a dedicated VLAN and VRF at Xtium. Then, late on a Friday night we slid our VMs over to Xtium. We didn’t even need to change IP addresses. The VMs came right up, still essentially “on-network”, yet fully leveraging the cloud. Best of all, our users didn’t even realize it happened.