#cloudchat 24 Recap: Private Cloud Implementation Stories

If the attendance in our recent #cloudchat is any indication, there don't seem to be many folks with private cloud expertise.

This could be because the scale and necessity of private clouds is often at the enterprise level. For most, that can be a barrier to gaining valuable experience.

Fortunately, we have talented individuals at Rackspace who can assist with the most complex private cloud solutions, be it OpenStack, VMware or Microsoft. Many of them were on hand for our private cloud implementation #cloudchat, so read on:

Miss a #cloudchat? We have all the #cloudchat recaps here on the blog!

Joining us to discuss the topic was Rackspace’s private cloud gurus Eglė Sigler, Luke Huckaba and Kevin Jackson along with our Chief Evangelist John Engates. Also weighing in on this week’s #cloudchat was Carlson Wagonlit’s Vice President of DevOps Donnie Berkholz and University of Calagary’s Jeremy Foster. The group discussed the following questions:

• Q1: What kinds of results have you seen after implementing private cloud solutions?
• Q2: What’s the most successful private cloud project you’ve been a part of? What worked?
• Q3: When implementing private cloud have you found the migration and deployment phase to be particularly difficult or smooth? Why?
• Q4: What’s the biggest challenge you’ve faced while implementing or operating a private cloud? How did you overcome it?
• Q5: Share an example of how you dealt with an unexpected technical roadblock during a private cloud project.
• Q6: What’s the biggest tip you’d give to an IT team that’s just about to begin a major private cloud implementation?

When moving to private cloud, it’s important to do comprehensive planning as a critical part of your IT journey. If you plan properly, Kevin Jackson said, you’ll see exponential return on your results.

https://twitter.com/itarchitectkev/status/956573857338585089

https://twitter.com/itarchitectkev/status/956574366938140672

Donnie Berkholz advised against building a private cloud without having a strong use case. He said product groups must work hand-in-hand with the operations team to make sure the adoption of the private cloud will be a success.

https://twitter.com/dberkholz/status/956574493618548736

All of our participants have been part of successful private cloud implementations, but a story from John Engates bears repeating. After working on an implementation for a large bank, the results were outstanding: better experience for developers, auditors were satisfied and the time-to-market decreased.

https://twitter.com/jengates/status/956576541583998977

Jeremy Foster said the biggest challenge to implementing a private cloud was technical: trying to build one in parallel with the ongoing production environment.

https://twitter.com/j3r3myfoster/status/956580983804854272

However, John Engates felt that trying to change the company culture is more of a challenge. He felt that convincing people that they need this private cloud technology can be daunting. @Rackspace replied saying that often the “Layer 8” problems are the hardest to overcome.

https://twitter.com/jengates/status/956581377658499073

https://twitter.com/Rackspace/status/956581911920603136

https://twitter.com/jengates/status/956583344900333571

Check out our Twitter Moment below to see some of our favorite tweets from the chat. And be sure to join our next #cloudchat on Feb. 1. We’ll be discussing some of the challenges and strategies to host online video content. Hope to see you there!

https://twitter.com/i/moments/956989491578892289