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Think Multi-Cloud!

Josep M. BlanquerSr. Systems Architect

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Outline• What do I mean by a cloud?• What is multi-cloud and what’s different?• How does RightScale help?

• Servers and ServerArrays• Multi-Cloud Server Templates• Multi-Cloud Images• Data locality and mobility

• A multi-cloud example• Conclusions

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What do I mean by cloud?

• Services vs. Cloud Types vs. Clouds• A cloud is a physical entity behind an API endpoint

• Amazon Web Services is not a cloud• It is a set of services: S3, CloudFront, SQS, SNS, EC2, …

• EC2 is not a cloud• It is a type of cloud, defined by a public API

• Eucalyptus, Cloud.com are not a cloud• They are the tools that allows to create them, following a cloud type

• EC2 East, EC2 AsiaPacific, my private cloud… are clouds• They are instantiations of a cloud, providing a service API of a given type

• An availability zone is not a cloud, it’s part of one

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Where is my cloud in the wild?

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Where is my cloud in the wild?

There might be just a few big cloud players…but there will be a myriad of clouds

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Where are my clouds in RightScale?• Dashboard example:

• AWS, Rackspace and several private clouds in one account

• A cloud is first registered with RightScale• Public clouds like AWS, Rackspace are automatically added• Private clouds are registered by admins.

• Once a cloud is registered, a user can start using it• By providing its credentials to it.• AWS uses same creds for all its clouds, that’s why this is only done once

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What does multi-cloud mean?• It’s about deploying your application:

• Across different clouds• Spanning cloud providers (most likely with different API’s)• Utilizing private and public ones

• It’s about evolving your application to:• Incorporate new clouds as they appear• Or quickly moving servers to utilize leftover or new cloud capacity

• all seamlessly:• Without having to learn a new interface every time• Working together in an integrated manner

• It’s not about choosing one cloud provider, but multiple

• Current focus: cloud portability

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Multi-cloud: benefits

• Redundancy, disaster recovery and geo-presence• Leverage unique cloud-specific services when needed• Leverage public cloud cost benefits (cheaper and/or infinite)• Leverage existing investments: private cloud• Move services with bursty, unpredictable apps to public cloud• Private cloud for red-tape bound apps• Support varying levels of security concerns

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Multi-cloud: pain points• APIs differ

• Different sets of resources• Different formats and encodings• Several simultaneous versions for a single cloud

• Abstractions differ• Network architectures differ: VLANs, security groups, NAT, ACLs, …• Storage architectures differ: local/attachable disks, backup, snapshots, …

• Hypervisors and machine images differ• Supported features differ

• Not just by cloud type, but by cloud instantiation or version

• …cost models, billing, reporting…etc• They are truly different applications, with different semantics

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How to think multi-cloud? “Akin to designing your application using several programming languages”

• Deploy using cloud-specifics, design using generic concepts• Utilize unique features when needed, but don’t lock yourself in

• Have tools that translate your concepts to cloud-specific ones.• Not just the API calls, but higher level concepts like backups, etc.

• Design for geographic dispersity• Communicating and moving data across clouds can be expensive, slow

• Think of how to share data across• Global storage, periodic backups, live replication, etc

• Know if you’re designing for HA or simply for portability• Tightly coupled HA setups look much different than isolated subsystems

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How does RightScale help?• Unified Multi-Cloud UI and new API (in progress)

• Multi-Cloud Servers/Arrays• Multi-Cloud Server Templates• Multi-Cloud Images• Others in the pipeline

Server

runnable abstraction

ServerTemplate

software config runtime config

1:1 1:NI

II

II

cloud resources

Image

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(Multi-Cloud) Servers and Arrays• Servers and Arrays are runtime abstractions• All Servers look and smell similar, regardless of cloud:

• Can be started, stopped or run operational actions in the same way• Show monitoring data, and can configure alerts in the same way• Backed by the same mirror service to provide frozen repositories • They coexist in mixed deployment listings, same filters, columns…• They can be tagged, and configured in the same way

• Can be very different beasts, but they are seamlessly integrated

Server

runnable abstraction

ServerTemplate

software config runtime config

1:1 1:NI

II

II

cloud resources

MCI

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Parenthesis: What are ServerTemplates?

Custom MySQL 5.0.24 (CentOS 5.2)

Custom MySQL 5.0.24 (CentOS 5.4)

MySQL 5.0.36 (CentOS 5.4)

MySQL 5.0.36 (Ubuntu 8.10)

MySQL 5.0.36 (Ubuntu 8.10) 64bit

Frontend Apache 1.3 (Ubuntu 8.10)

Frontend Apache 2.0 (Ubuntu 9.10) - patched

CMS v1.0 (CentOS 5.4)

CMS v1.1 (CentOS 5.4)

My ASP appserver (windows 2008)

My ASP.net (windows 2008) – security update 1

My ASP.net (windows 2008) – security update 8

SharePoint v4 (windows 2003) – 32bit

SharePoint v4 (windows 2003) –64bit

SharePoint v4.5 (windows 2003) –64bit

…

Configuring serversthrough bundling Images:

A set of configuration directives that will install

and configure software on top of the base image

Configuring serverswith ServerTemplates:

CentOS 5.2

CentOS 5.4

Ubuntu 8.10

Ubuntu 9.10

Win 2003

Win 2007

Base ImageVery few and basic

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Parenthesis: What are ServerTemplates?Anatomy of a

Server TemplateExample Server Template:

MySQL 5.0

RightScript/Recipe N

RightScript/Recipe 5

RightScript/Recipe 4

RightScript/Recipe 3

RightScript/Recipe 2

RightScript/Recipe 1

…

boo

t se

que

nce

RightScript/Recipe 6

RightScript/Recipe 6

ope

ratio

ns

…

Base Image

Start all services

Setup DNS and IPs

Restore last backup

Configure/tune MySQL

Install MySQL Server

Install monitoring

…

boo

t se

que

nce

Perform backup

Initialize slave

ope

ratio

ns

…

Right Image

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(Multi-Cloud) Server Templates• They are software configuration abstractions

• Bridging the gap between the starting point (a base Image) and a fully configured machine

• Abstract Cloud and Operating System differences• Chef helps in that regard

• Gather a set of user defined, high-level Input values• Can partially help in the sharing of data• Allow configuring servers always in the same or equivalent way

Server

runnable abstraction

ServerTemplate

software config runtime config

1:1 1:NI

II

II

cloud resources

MCI

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Multi-Cloud Images (MCI)• MCI’s abstract a set of requirements in a cloud image

• Example: A CentOS 5.4 Image

• Provide an equivalency map of base images across clouds• CentOS 5.4 Image is ‘ami-feff’ in EC2 East, and ‘1234’ in Rackspace• Equivalent images don’t have to be identical

• They are versionable and publishable• Are associated to ServerTemplate

• A Server launch will pick the right image based on its cloud mapping• MCIs also define other cloud variances like Instance types, kernel, etc…

Server

runnable abstraction

ServerTemplate

software config runtime config

1:1 1:NI

II

II

cloud resources

MCI

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Multi-Cloud Images: RightImages• RightScale maintains such maps (MCI’s) for all public clouds

• Wait, what about images in my private cloud?

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Demo: Servers, Templates and MCI’s• Quick demo using the Rightscale Dashboard

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Data locality and mobility• A topic a bit further down the road• A big hurdle to overcome

• Because clouds don’t share data: they are isolated

• How can our app share data across its clouds then?• External globally accessible services:

• S3, CloudFiles, Akamai, Dropbox…

• Transferring data snapshots across. • Big data = Long time. Can be unpractical, not good for fast failover scenarios.

• Maintaining online data replication across clouds. • Good for local reads, difficult for multi-writes. Good for fast failover scenarios.

• Using an inherently replicated service, that is distributed• It is possible to achieve multimaster and replication, but at the cost of more complex tech

• Keeping track of your moving data• Where’s the latest? What’s my lineage? how do I manage my datasets?...• We’re thinking about useful multi-cloud abstractions to help with all that

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Multi-Cloud Use Case: portability

US customers(production)

EU customers(production)

US customers(beta)

Test & dev

…

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Multi-Cloud Use Case: portability

US customers(production)

EU customers(production)

US customers(beta)

Test & dev

…

Load balancer Rails MySQLScripts

and recipes

MySQLRails

Front-EndRails

All-in-OneRails

App Server

Templates

Multi-CloudImage

Ubuntu 8.04

All-in-Ones

Less powerand redundancy

Scalable, powerfuland redundant

Servers

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Thinking multi-cloud: summary• Work with generic abstractions (deploy using cloud-specifics)

• Take advantage of each specific cloud’s strengths• Avoid lock in.

• Use or build generic templates:• support multiple OSes, and cloud types (not just clouds)

• Keep a good and clean mapping of Images • Maintain just a few and use them across your server templates

• Know your data:• Where is it, and what access patterns you’re using• Keep track of where it is, and how it moves.

• Think different, again!• Designing/deploying/managing in multi-cloud is different than single-cloud• Multi-cloud is a step further towards fulfilling the cloud paradigm

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