Giles Sirett of ShapeBlue talks through the use-cases for Apache CloudStack powered clouds. Presented at the Geneva Cloudstack workshop 24 April 2014 hosted by Exoscale
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The business Use-Case’s for building clouds with Apache CloudStack
1. @ShapeBlue
The business Use-Case’s for
building clouds with Apache
CloudStack
Giles Sirett
CEO, ShapeBlue
Giles.sirett@shapeblue.com
Twitter: @ShapeBlue
2. @ShapeBlue
Who am I ?
CEO of ShapeBlue
Been working with ACS since late 2011
PMC member & Committer Apache CloudStack
Chairman – European CloudStack user group
Technical enough to be dangerous (recovering developer)
I’m a business guy
3. @ShapeBlue
“ShapeBlue are expert builders of public &
private clouds. They are the leading independent
global CloudStack / CloudPlatform integrator &
consultancy”
About ShapeBlue
9. @ShapeBlue
CloudStack Background
• Open source Infrastructure-as-a-Service platform, under
ASL 2.0 license
• A vibrant and growing community in ASF
– Developed since 2008 by Cloud.com
– Acquired by Citrix in 2011
– Donated to Apache April 2012
– Became top level AF project March 2013
• A proven cloud platform
19. @ShapeBlue
Organisations are virtualised = cap/op ex
savings
However, operationally often still manual
Still often a service ticket to provision
new resources
Long delivery times
Relatively high operational costs
Relies on specialist skills
Margin for human error
On-demand self-service is a driver
20. @ShapeBlue
Make the most of a global compute estate
Resources dynamically assigned according
to demand
Workloads can be averaged: across
departments, across Geos, across times of
day, days of month,etc
By pooling resources, reduces the reliance
on local capacity planning
Abstracts physical resources
Resource pooling is a driver
21. @ShapeBlue
The The XaaS model allows
accurate cost measurement
Compute
Storage
Network
etc
Internal chargeback model much
simpler
“Shadow IT” can be removed
Measured service is a driver
29. @ShapeBlue
Use Case 3 of 4 – “AWS Insourcing”
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
usage
usage
Known demand
30. @ShapeBlue
I realise that AWS is costing too much for my known demand
I need to know my tooling will work
I need to use the same API
I still want to burst to AWS
I don’t want to get into a massive/complicated project
Use Case 3 of 4 – “AWS insourcing”
32. @ShapeBlue
In 2013/14, we are seeing enterprises
doing one of the following:
adopt public cloud
build private cloud
align with public clouds
(technology, process, standards)
CloudStack has a unique position in the
enterprise…
Use Case 4/4 – Enterprise adoption
33. @ShapeBlue
“The car was not a problem. I just lost both wheels."
Failure happens – Get used to it
36. @ShapeBlue
Cloud era workloads
Applications designed for
failure
Applications designed for
massive scale
Scale by “scaling out”
(horizontally)
How can an enterprise benefit
from both models ?
Cloud Era workloads
38. @ShapeBlue
Collaborative environment for:
all things CloudStack/ CloudPlatform
Related tech: CloudPortal
BM, CloudBridge, ecosystem
products, hypervisors, storage, etc
Technical deep-dives, issues & best practice
Case studies & ideas
To showcase complementary technologies
Find us on LinkedIn: “CloudStack European User
Group”
The European CloudStack User Group
End of day So we’ll start gentlyHopefully something for everyonePlease bear with me if seems obvious to you.Bear with my english accent and phrases/terminologyBasics and more advanced ideasPaul AngusEngineering and Science degreesCloudStack 2.13
Lead in with monkey joke about gartner
Do it as a quizSome people add on “must be on internet”
Across nearly all of our metrics
In this cloud era we are toldDespite how much engineering you do it will failSebastien Buemi escapes 200mph crash unhurt in ShanghaiSwiss, youngApril 2010
Cloud : modern, expects things to go wrong…if things get busy, he just sorts it out himeselfTraditional: We don’t like this guy, but he wont go away. relies on his staff, expects everything to work. If things get busy, its somebody elses problem
Design Phase – some tips from experienceRedundancy & resilience – again some thoughts on building redundancy and resilience into the infrastructureAutomation – some examples of automation in the building of a cs architecture.Finanally a ‘word’ on documentation.
Storage, networking, overall architects technical and managerialEverything is interconnected and feels like everything relies on everything elseSomeone chipping in can be invaluable – particularly if they have past experience.
Simple Architecture exampleFollowed by a Not so Simple exampleHorizontal Scale, but still a long way from a Production System
Multiple CloudStack Servers – same or remote locationsMySQL Servers – Master Slave, or ClusteredSecondary Storage – Lots and Lots of it, at least 2x Zones Primary CapacityXen, KVM Clusters + Pri Storage – 8TB max so Multiple VolumesvSphere Clusters with vCenterBare Metal or Local Storage HyperVisors for High I/O workloadsHorizontal Scale
Storage, networking, overall architects technical and managerialEverything is interconnected and feels like everything relies on everything elseSomeone chipping in can be invaluable – particularly if they have past experience.
One that gets everyone:Switchsupports 4096 VLANs - but not at the same time.Gotchas…[add more]
Private clouds – you have your current usage to judgePublic clouds harder to predict – is guided by offerings.
Performance and / or capacityStorageNetworkNetwork (to storage) is often the limiting factor as jump to 10 Gbe is large(Although LACP in XenServer 6.1 and ESXi 5.1 will help to mitigate this)Not much point being able to run VMs per host if only 1Gb/s link Not much point to 256GB RAM with a single quad core processor unless a specific workload.
Lack of reference architectures currently
I’ll look at the major CloudStack management elements – CSMan MySQLAnd then look at considerations if you’ve virtualised your management farm
How do we achieve that…>
Automation can come in multiple formsChef & Puppet – enterprise grade automation – works for in-house use (required infrastructure makes it less useful for SIs)KickStart and Python – enables to learn one language and stick to it, requires the interpreter to be installed, but Python is Shell scripts don’t have to be fancy – have to learn awk & sed – have to learn the different languages.API calls
Write configuration file. Conscious decision to limit the number of files required.Self contained (requires hypervisor installation files)Look at some elements of the file >
19-20
17-18
Take your pickOnly way to remember what you did,only way for others to replicateRun scripts from scratch impossible to update code and separately make changes