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Private Cloud Project

Forrest Stroud
Last Updated May 24, 2021 7:52 am

Companies initiate private cloud projects to enable their IT infrastructure to become more capable of quickly adapting to continually evolving business needs and requirements. Private cloud projects can also be connected to public clouds to create hybrid clouds.

Unlike a public cloud, a private cloud project remains within the corporate firewall and under the control on the company’s IT department. As a result, a private cloud provides more control over the company’s data, and it ensures security — albeit with greater potential risk for data loss due to natural disaster.

Launching a private cloud project involves analyzing the need for a private cloud, formulating a plan for how to create a private cloud, developing cloud policies for access and security, deploying and testing the private cloud infrastructure, and training employees and partners on the cloud computing project.

Private Cloud Project Strategy

To create a private cloud project strategy, a company will first need to identify which of its business practices can be made more efficient than before, as well as which repetitive manual tasks can be automated via the successful launch of a cloud computing project.

By creating a private cloud strategy, the resulting cloud will be able to deliver automatic, scalable server virtualization, providing the benefits of automated provision of resources and the optimal use of hardware within the IT infrastructure.

Building a Private Cloud

With the idea of building a private cloud a daunting proposition for many companies, the best advice for how to build a private cloud is to start small and then continue to grow the cloud computing project over time.

In terms of specifics for how to set up a private cloud, a company needs to:

  • Research the need and benefits for building a private cloud, particularly in respect to selecting a public or hybrid cloud instead of a private cloud
  • Analyze and ensure the proper processes and policies are in place to successfully build a secure private cloud
  • Research and acquire the private cloud infrastructure and cloud-enabling software that will be used, such as OpenStack, CloudStack, Eucalyptus, etc.
  • Ensure the hypervisor(s) that will manage the virtual machines and virtualized storage are available or can be purchased and installed
  • Develop and test the private cloud project in a non mission-critical environment
  • Train IT staff on how to manage the private cloud and employees and partners on how to access and use the cloud