Categoria: CLOUD – SERVICE PROVIDER

The service provider point of view

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VBR & Cloud Business Model – Part 2

In the previous article, I wrote a small pill about vCloud Director.

Today I’m going to expand the Business model that can be deployed through this great VMware technology.

Picture 1 shows the main components (VBR, Repository, Enterprise Manager and vCloud Director) mandatory to provide services.

As usual please refer to official guides to deploy correctly the Veeam technologies.

Picture 1

On the corners of the above picture, it’s possible to observe two funny images. The scope of those pictures is to show the services that the Serice Provider can sell: Managed, and un-managed.

Let’s start !!!!

a) Managed Service: Backup as a service on vCloud Director

In this scenario,  the service provider will install VBR components and it will take care of all the backup and restore activities.

The tenant will open a ticket to Service Provider for asking backup policies changes and for restore tasks.

b) Un-managed Service: Backup as a Service vCloud Director

Tasks and responsibilities:

SP administrator (backup for vDC):

        • Deploying the backup end architecture (VBR, Repository)
        • Defines templates for Backup jobs of the tenants (by selecting Repository and Quota) (picture 2)
        • If necessary apply schedule restrictions (picture 3)

Tenant Administrator (by Enterprise Manager):
Tenant through his vCD credentials can:

      • Create new backup jobs based on templates
      • Edit / Delete / Enable / Disable Jobs
      • Start, stop, restart jobs
      • View backup statistics
      • Restore VMs and vApps
      • Restore the VM guest files
      • Restore SQL Server and Oracle objects

Picture 2

Picture 3

That’s all for today folks.

The next article will show you all about licensing

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VBR & Cloud Business Model – Part 3

This article will cover the topic of license in VCSP scenarios.

Please refer to the official documentation to get more details on it.

The easiest way to explain the license model is by thinking of a basket.

a. What is present in the basket?
It is the container of the licenses. The licenses belong to the Service Provider.

b. What the Service Provider can do with licenses?
It can assign them to his customers (you can call them end-users or tenants).

c. Does the services consume different amounts of licenses?
The cost depends on the supplied service.

The example below will clarify the licensing method; the units I will use to explain the model are apples 🙂
(numbers written here are not real, contact the local Veeam sales representative to have a correct quote).

A Service Provider supplies three types of services to his customers;
DraaS, BaaS, RbcS(Remote Backup Copy Service)

Every single month the Service Provider buys 100 “apples” and put them into the basket.

Let’s suppose that:

1) DraaS consumes 10 apples for VM a month (VM/m)
2) BaaS 4 apples  VM/m
3) RbcS 6 apples VM/m
4) Every tenant has 5 VMs
5) Service Provider customers are: Green – White – Red
6) Green bought DraaS
7) White bought BaaS
8) Red bought RbcS

How can I measure the apple-eating?
With an easy math operation 🙂

Green = 5VM*DraaS = 50 apples
White = 5 VM*BaaS = 20 apples
Red=5VM*BbcS=30 apples

Total = 100 Apples

Note 1: If the Service Provider adds new customers or the present tenants more VMs the Service Provider license can be enlarged on-fly easily contacting the Veeam team.

But, if the license count it’s quite simple with few customers it can be more difficult with hundreds of them.

In aid of of the Service Provider Veeam released a  very useful and powerful software named  Veeam Service Provider Console (VSPC)

What are the common VSPC use cases?

1) Remote monitoring and management
2) Licensing engine and usage reporting
3) Billing
4) Integration and automation (RestFul API)
5) Multi-tenant serviceability

(To have more details please click here)

Picture 1 shows which services can be managed via VSPC.

Picture 1

Please remember that cloud connect is mandatory work with VCSP.

The official guide shows the requirements to work with it:

Note 2: The software provided by Veeam enables any partner to create his own cloud services. To example performing a backup service for workstations and laptops  of employees that working from home (a common scenario in these unlucky last months)

Note 3: To create a price list every single Service provider will have to add all costs of Infrastructure, Managing etc

That’s all for Cloud Modelling.