Ahead Builds $5 Million Lab to Demo Hybrid Cloud.
Data center specialist Ahead today announced a $5 million expansion of its multi-site in-house cloud lab to educate clients on the virtualization, storage, cloud, and network technologies shaping the next-generation data center. The new hybrid-cloud lab in Ahead’s Chicago headquarters features a multi-vendor infrastructure that makes it possible to compare competing technologies side by side as well as demonstrate the precise combination of solutions appropriate to a client’s needs.
The lab’s aggregation of virtualization, storage, compute, and network technologies allows Ahead to illustrate the integration points between different layers of the data center stack. This capability – critical for understanding the benefits of next-generation data center infrastructure – offers a key advantage over the typical strategy of test-driving components through individual vendors’ labs.
In addition, the lab gives Ahead engineers hands-on experience with the newest technologies to aid in planning and implementing data center transformation projects. This firsthand experience, along with continual updates to the lab infrastructure as new solutions become available, will help ensure successful project design and deployment for Ahead clients.
“With this new lab we have deployed a highly virtualized data center with built-in self-service automation,” said Eric Kaplan, VP of Engineering at Ahead. “We can now quickly show clients the tight levels of orchestration, multi-tenancy, and self-service required to build an optimized cloud service.”
Solutions that can be demonstrated in the new Ahead lab include:
- Cloud infrastructure automation that allows internal users to request public or private cloud resources through a self-service portal, obtain approval, and be billed for usage.
- Hybrid cloud bursting, enabling internal cloud operations to burst to public clouds to address fluctuating business needs.
- Rapid virtual desktop provisioning, providing a simple and repeatable method to grow a virtual desktop environment.
- Scale-out storage, a new category of storage system that makes it possible to expand storage capacity without adding costly IT overhead.
- Integrated backup, recovery, and replication for a virtualized infrastructure, enabling increased virtual density and operational flexibility while also reducing cost.
- Dual-core data center with non-disruptive data mobility, simplifying multi-site networking configurations while delivering transparent mobility and increasing availability across data centers.
The lab complements Ahead’s strategy of determining clients’ business requirements and delivering a 12- to 24-month infrastructure roadmap designed to help businesses take advantage of new IT capabilities.
The expanded Ahead lab includes virtualization, compute, network, storage, backup/replication, and orchestration/management technologies from EMC, Citrix, VMware, HP, Cisco, Breaking Point, NetApp, Tintri, Symantec, CommVault, Veeam, DynamicOps, and others.