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Fujitsu’s Cloud Service K5 and NetApp’s Data Fabric

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October 2016

By Tech ONTAP Staff

 

At NetApp Insight® Las Vegas 2016, we sat down with Barry Malyon, Fujitsu's CTO for Cloud Services. Fujitsu, a premium sponsor at this year's conference, described its Fujitsu Cloud Service K5 during its keynote session.

 

In our discussion with Barry, he noted that K5 is available in the United Kingdom and Japan, with delivery in the United States expected by spring 2017. He also highlighted a few features of K5 that help make this Fujitsu cloud-service offering so compelling. These features include the use of Fujitsu's MetaArc platform, K5's integration with OpenStack, the various deployment modes available for K5 installations, and the overarching management and orchestration role played by Fujitsu Cloud Services Manager. Barry then shared how the Cloud Service K5 uses NetApp's Data Fabric as a key component in its foundation.

 

A Smart Path to Hybrid IT

 

Before jumping straight into K5, it is important to know a little bit about MetaArc, Fujitsu's digital business platform. MetaArc is Fujitsu's gateway that lets customers transform their environments into a hybrid IT landscape. This landscape can include a mix of cloud services, centrally managed, right alongside the customer's on-premises and traditional IT environment.

 

K5 is Fujitsu's OpenStack cloud. It is also the underpinning of MetaArc. Powered by NetApp's Data Fabric, Cloud Service K5 is a global cloud that is available around the world 24/7. As Barry explained, one of K5's key differentiators is that it provides a choice of four different deployment modes: public cloud, virtual private hosted, dedicated, and dedicated on the premises.

 

 

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There is also a fifth deployment mode, integrated with the Fujitsu PRIMEFLEX family, that also uses OpenStack for Cloud. PRIMEFLEX deployments are fully configured-and-tested rack solutions with exactly the same architecture as that of K5.

 

Cloud Service Management Across Both Public and Private Clouds

 

When it comes to intercloud management and orchestration, K5 uses a cloud management platform called Fujitsu Cloud Service Manager (FCSM). Within the FCSM management layer, customers can manage and orchestrate across hyperscale clouds as well as Fujitsu's private clouds. FCSM enables all of these resources to be pulled into a single, global portal for the customer.

 

As Barry explained, "Within that FCSM layer, there's a marketplace or catalog of services and blueprints we can provide for the customer. When we deploy K5, part of the up-front consulting is to work with the customer to do those initial blueprints and images. Then, through the lifecycle, the customer can create blueprints and images and put them into their particular marketplace. Or, we can do that for them as part of the managed service."

 

Using FCSM, customers have the ability to orchestrate and manage workloads across different K5 deployments. For example, a customer might have a private dedicated version of K5 in their data center. Through the portal, they would then also be able to orchestrate and manage workloads on public clouds in the region where they reside or in one of the other available regions. Customers can perform their application testing and DevOps on the public version of K5. Then they can move it, easily and seamlessly, across to their private version of K5. Doing so is possible because the architecture is exactly the same on both sides.

 

Because of K5's data portability, customers won't have to perform DevOps on the public version, then have to retest that application on a different infrastructure when moving it into production.

 

 

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The NetApp Connection

According to Barry, "From a NetApp perspective, an absolutely crucial key to the success of the K5 platform is that we're using NetApp within it. It's all the same architecture, which makes it universal since it's all built on ONTAP and the Data Fabric from NetApp [using NetApp FAS and ONTAP® Cloud]."

 

The implementation of Fujitsu's Cloud Service K5 has exactly the type of architecture that NetApp envisioned for the Data Fabric: a hybrid cloud in which all of the data management capabilities within it are consistent, connected, and form a coherent, integrated, and compatible system. In essence, the fabric joins on-premises equipment with numerous public clouds. Congratulations go to Barry and the entire Fujitsu cloud team for incorporating this vision in their offering for their customers.

 

Before we wrapped up our interview, we asked Barry what he liked most about coming to NetApp Insight. He said, "The favorite part for me in coming here is the ability to network. We're a huge partner with NetApp. I talk to a number of NetApp people on the phone on a daily basis and also other partners that work with NetApp. So, it's a great opportunity to do the networking and meet up with people face to face."

 

We agree wholeheartedly!

 

 

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