How to create a Private Cloud?

In the next couple of posts, I would like to describe the current trends around Cloud Computing and how you can actually set up a Private Cloud environment.

First of all, it is important to clarify some terms which are used in the Cloud Computing context. Cloud Computing is used in many cases as a marketing buzzword and this causes a lot of confusion because everybody has another picture about cloud computing.

In this post (and in my opinion also in general) the term Cloud Computing represents an approach how a highly flexible, scalable and completely automated infrastructure can be build up in a data center. This is mainly achieved by virtualizing and automating the completely infrastructure. Additionally, cloud computing is about how this infrastructure can be made available as a self-service for end-users.

If you follow the advertisements around Cloud Computing you realize that it is more and more used for all web applications and web services which provide central storage for data and enable accessibility for a variety of devices, like laptops, tablets, mobile phones and TVs. The TelekomCloud or iCloud from Apple are examples for central data storages but they do not necessarily have a dynamic Cloud infrastructure to serve these services.

In the following posts I am going to explain how you can build up a private cloud based on Microsoft's System Center 2012 components.

- Post 1: How to create a Cloud?
- Post 2: Cloud Terminology
- Post 3: Cloud Provider
- ...