(Jack Wallen, TechRepublic) If you’re planning to set up a cloud, be forewarned: The process could turn out to be time consuming, complicated, and expensive. Jack Wallen shares his cloud deployment experiences.

Are you thinking about setting up a cloud for deployment in your business or enterprise? Have you planned it out yet? If so, how far have you gotten with it? If you haven’t begun the setup process, check out this list of things to consider before you start deploying that cloud. It might confirm your belief that you’re on the right track — but it could persuade you otherwise.

1. Time is always an issue
2. Hardware needs are huge
3. The process is difficult
4. Network speed can be a pain
5. Cost is a deal breaker
6. Image(s) is(are) everything
7. Reliability will bring you down
8. Security is not on duty
9. It’s not environmentally sound
10. Platform agnosticism is not a religion

Around two years ago the Axigen Mail Server began the Cluster Support Era with the final touches being added to the SMTP, POP3, IMAP and Webmail proxy services. Back in the day, our main concern was the Red Hat Clustering Suite included in the RHEL5 Linux distribution, developed and maintained by Red Hat, because it was (and still is) one of the most widespread clustering solutions, and also has a free of charge alternative built into CentOS.
  
However, now that the product has evolved and the product’s exposure to the market has grown considerably, a variety of clustering alternatives have to be supported to meet the demands and requirements of our customers. The year 2009 was very productive from the clustering integration standpoint, as the team had amassed quite a lot of knowledge of incalculable value.

The Veritas Cluster Server version 5.0

Few are the experts in the IT&C industry that have not heard of the Symantec Veritas Cluster suite. It is one of the most advanced and reliable solutions on the market, partly because it has a lot of history behind it. Like most mature products, it has been polished to a great extent and the usability of the product is much higher than its younger counterparts. Nevertheless, for anyone that has not had any contact with the VCS suite before, the shocking ease of use and degree of automation embedded in the product will be a very pleasant surprise.
   
Like most failover cluster packages, Veritas uses the basic building blocks of the “movable system services”. The cluster is made up of a bunch of systems, called nodes, some resources (like storage devices, IPs, shares and service instances), some zones and some rules by which service migration from one computer to another is governed.

Normally, the cluster installation should take some time, even for the more experienced users that do the preparation phase flawlessly. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that it is not the case with VCS5. Within a little under one hour, the entire cluster had been installed and ready to go, on my four cluster nodes, leaving me with the only the task of configuring it. The installation itself is pretty seamless, as the automatic installation wizard does its job without generating issues.

Another feature of the installer I also enjoy is the environment pre-check process that enables you to see whether you overlooked any details during your cluster preparation phase. This feature is also available in the Windows 2003 and 2008 failover cluster suite and is a welcome addition anytime; RHCS, however, is missing this functionality.

To continue to read this whitepaper, please visit: Axigen Integration with Veritas Cluster Server 5.0. Additionally, we invite you to join our free, live webinar on Cluster Computing vs. Cloud Computing to gain a comprehensive insight on the benefits, challenges or opportunities these technologies present for businesses.

Lately, there has been a lot of buzz about the brand new cloud computing paradigm. Supposedly, through this type of cloud resource, you would get the same performance and user experience levels as with classic systems. Some companies have moved word and spreadsheet processors online, while others plan to allow users to play HD quality games on demand, over the Internet – all striving to move from regular desktop related applications onto the Web.

Cloud computing yields a series of palpable benefits such as a lower TCO for both service providers and their customers, while also attempting to overcome the main concerns of privacy and security advocates in the IT industry.

This white paper aims to compare the older, industry-proven technology used in clustering systems today and the new trend in information technology – cloud computing, and to answer some of the questions revolving around these topics.

Will the Cloud Replace the Cluster?
This is surely the most obvious question of all when it comes down to analyzing the future development of the situation. However, it is one of the most interesting as well, because cloud-type resources are actually served by what is called a decentralized cluster.

This article focuses on the integration between the AXIGEN messaging solution and the eDirectory Services product developed by Novell. The actual level of interaction between the solutions is limited to the user authentication process. Specifically, by following the steps described herein, you will be able to allow the authentication process, that AXIGEN usually performs using the internal database, to be outsourced into eDirectory. This simplifies credential management and ensures password consistency across multiple applications and network services.

AXIGEN Configuration
Prior to proceeding with the AXIGEN / eDirectory Services authentication configuration, you need to enable the LDAP interface for the Novell eDirectory service. Please consult the eDirectory user manual provided by the product vendor on how to achieve this if not already enabled.

Before the AXIGEN server can authenticate account credentials using eDirectory, you need to create an LDAP connector suited for this process:

• Log in with an administrative user that has sufficient privileges in the AXIGEN WebAdmin interface;
• Go to the LDAP Connectors tab in the Clustering Setup context;
• Add a new LDAP connector or edit an already existing one;
• Enter the IP / Hostname and Port values that reflect the eDirectory configuration;
• Specify the server type as OpenLDAP, as it closely resembles the eDirectory setup;
• Select the Use anonymous bind radio button;
• Enter the Account base DN value. Should look similar to dc=novell, dc=local;
• Leave the other options unchanged (should be set to default if already modified) and save the new configuration.

In today’s business environments, we often hear the term ‘high-availability’. Whether a hardware or software solution, we aim for redundancy at all levels, so as to maximize the availability of mission-critical services and operations.


1. Introduction
This white paper discusses a high-availability solution for the AXIGEN Mail Server, using the Heartbeat package with DRBD.

AXIGEN is a proprietary messaging solution while both Heartbeat and DRBD are open source software released under the GNU Public License (GPL). These software packages can be used together to build scalable and highly available integrated cluster messaging applications on the Linux operating system.

In today’s fast paced world, the importance of having an e-mail service needs no further explanation. We all use it on a daily basis, relying on it to keep in touch with the surrounding world. However, when the throughput of information becomes so great that a simple system cannot keep up with it, new methods must be deployed to cope with the growing requirements of networks and their users. Clusters fill up the gap between the need for faster, more powerful systems, and the safety, reliability and easy management of the already existing networks.