IT organization’s today are planning the move to Cloud Computing. I am sitting here and thinking we have run out of IPV4 address space so the future is IPv6. If IT-Organizations are doing all the planning to choose the right Cloud delivery models and the right Service Providers they might as well do the IPv6 assessment and planning at the same time.
- · The meticulous planning that Enteprises are going through for the Cloud are all the underlining components which are part of Cloud are they IPv6 ready as part of the assessment and analysis
o Infrastructure elements
o Operating Systems
o Web Services, Application and Databases
o Service Management Orchestration Tools
o Security and Risk Impact
o People and Process.
- · Are the providers that you choose for either IaaS/PaaS/SaaS are they capable of delivery IPv6 services across the stack as it will be an impact to business sooner than you expect.
- · Make sure as that infrastructure design and implementation of solutions like VBLOCK or FLEXPOD that the components are IPv6 ready along with network services like Firewalls, Load Balancers, IPS, VPN-GWs to name a few.
- · If the plan is to move the Applications/Middleware into the Cloud and future proofing it for Next Generation make sure that the Web/Middlware/Applications and Databases are v6 ready.
- · How do we educate out DC/Cloud Architects, Subject Matter Experts and IT Operations team to get ready for IPV6 when it comes as our systems are foolproof as we had done the due diligence earlier.
Yes the amount of changes that has to be done will be quite considerable but compared to the work that the teams are anyway doing for Strategy and Planning for the Cloud the efforts will be well worth it so the system is foolproof for IPv6.
It conclusion it would be a good idea to deploy a Proof of Concept virtual private cloud (vPC) which is IPv6 ready and see if there are any gaps and if so to close those gaps.
