TNWiki Article Spotlight–Reference Architecture for Private Cloud
There are a number of different types of articles you’ll find on the TechNet wiki. Some examples include:
Survival guides – Organized collections of links to content that will help you get done what you need to do
Troubleshooting posts – Typically “one-off” posts on how to troubleshoot a particular error condition
How-To guides – Posts on how to accomplish a particular task; again, typically one-off
While one-off content is great, wouldn’t it be exceptional if we could create “sites within a site” on the TechNet wiki? After all, the wiki is just a web site where anyone can add pages and edit pages. It seems that it would be a great place to put a web site!
With that in mind, the Server and Cloud Information Experience Solutions Team (John Dawson, Bill Loeffler and Tom Shinder) decided to use the TechNet wiki to host a large body of related content on Private Cloud Architecture. We refer to the collective content as the Reference Architecture for Private Cloud. The Reference Architecture for Private Cloud set include the following documents (at this time):
Overview of Private Cloud Architecture Private Cloud Technical Overview
What is Infrastructure as a Service?
Private Cloud Reference Model
Private Cloud Principles, Patterns and Concepts
Private Cloud Planning Guide for Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
Private Cloud Planning Guide for Service Delivery
Private Cloud Planning Guide for Operations
Private Cloud Planning Guide for Systems Management
Cloud Computing Security Architecture
The great thing about the TechNet wiki is that it’s the ideal development platform for collaborative content, especially content that covers fast moving targets where things are changing quickly. Private Cloud is a relatively new concept, and new ideas and approaches are being introduced to the subject at a rapid pace. Our team wants to make sure that we provide thought leadership in this area and we know that our perspective isn’t the only one. The wiki allows anyone interested in Private Cloud architecture to update and improve the articles as new developments arrive.
Of course, at some point we need to make this information official. After the content meets a certain “quality bar” we’ll “version” it and put a note in the article that “edit number XXX is the official version X”. Then over time, as the content is updated, we’ll repeat the process. This is a very low overhead approach and enables a high degree of collaboration and diversity of opinion – just what you need when it comes to architectural guidance. After versioning, we’ll make the content available in other form factors, such as Word .docs and PDF files.
The wiki also part of our social networking and community engagement efforts. If you’re interested in private cloud architecture and enjoy social networking, then check out our other social venues, which you can find at the bottom of this article.
I hope you like the Reference Architecture of Private Cloud and please feel free to add your insights to the content. This is really a unique collection of architectural information that will help you understand the core concepts, principles and patterns that drive a private cloud and it will make it very clear to you that private cloud is very different from how you run your traditional datacenter today, and also very different from a highly virtualized datacenter.
Looking forward to collaborating with all of you on this content!
Thanks!
Tom
Tom
Tom Shinder
tomsh@microsoft.com
Principal Knowledge Engineer, SCD iX Solutions Group
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/tshinder
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tshinder
