CloudOpen Europe 2014

Avoiding the 1000 Dollar VM in your first cloud

#whoami

Name: Tim Mackey

Current roles: XenServer Community Manager and Evangelist; occasional coder

Cool things I’ve done • Designed laser communication systems

• Early designer of retail self-checkout machines

• Embedded special relativity algorithms into industrial control system

Find me • Twitter: @XenServerArmy

• SlideShare: slideshare.net/TimMackey

Clouds are cool

Agility • Ease of provisioning w/o hardware latency

• Remove IT as a service delivery critical path

• Manage complete infrastructure, regardless of

scale

Lower operational expenses • Consistent application and service deployment

• Drive reduced capital requirements

• Visibility into user and line of business usage

Why we want a cloud – the reality

Agility • Ease of provisioning w/o hardware latency

• Remove IT as a service delivery critical path

• Manage complete infrastructure, regardless of

scale

Lower operational expenses • Consistent application and service deployment

• Drive reduced capital requirements

• Visibility into user and line of business usage

Our boss bought the hype!!!

Why we want a cloud – the reality

Agility • Ease of provisioning w/o hardware latency

• Remove IT as a service delivery critical path

• Manage complete infrastructure, regardless of

scale

Lower operational expenses • Consistent application and service deployment

• Drive reduced capital requirements

• Visibility into user and line of business usage

Our boss bought the hype …

… but doesn’t want to look like an idiot

Today’s realities versus tomorrow’s norms

IT is a large capital expense

Work only happens in the office

IT does support and maintenance

Calling the helpdesk

IT is a monthly operating expense

Work happens wherever you are

IT drives strategic initiatives

On-demand, self-service IT

IT Today IT Tomorrow

Enterprise datacenter Cloud

• Architected for 100s of hosts

• Scale-up (server clusters)

• Applications assume reliability

• IT Management-centric

• Proprietary vendor stack

• Architected for 1000s of hosts

• Scale-out (multi-site server farms)

• Applications assume failure

• Autonomic [1:1,000’s]

• Open, value-added stack

Competing paradigms

Service Offerings

Clearly define what you want to offer • What types of applications

• Who has access, and who owns them

• What type of access

Define how templates need to be managed • Operating system support

• Patching requirements

Define expectations around compliance and availability • Who owns backup and monitoring

Define tenancy requirements

Department data local to department • Where is the application data stored

Data and service isolation • VM migration and host HA

• Network services

Encryption of PII/PCI • Where do keys live when data location unknown

• Need encryption designed for the cloud

Showback to stakeholders • More than just usage, compliance and audits

Let’s build a cloud ….

Where to start …

Deliver something easy • Web services are a perfect start

• With experience grow the install base

Pay for what you need • Use free hypervisors

• Use free orchestration services

Succeed early • Remember your success is tied to happy boss

Enterprise system assumptions

Redundant networking • LACP or bonding

• Stacked switches

• Additional NICs

High performance storage • iSCSI/ Fiber Channel

• Multiple paths

High density systems management • Blade servers

• Data center wide operations managment

Let’s get some shiny new gear …. … because you can’t just reuse what you’ve got

Redundant, independent networks • Management, storage, VM traffic 6 NICs

High performance storage • 10 Gbps links for storage and VM traffic

• 1 Gbps for management traffic

Compute simplification • Blade based servers

• Network fabric for network management

VM specification • 2 vCPU, 8GB RAM, 40GB shared disk

The BOM

Total hardware cost: 293 242 USD

Component Cost

HP BladeSystem Enclosure w/Flex 10 Interconnects 70 210 USD

Compute blades (14x BL460c, dual socket, 128GB) 157 536 USD

Cisco Nexus switches (2x5548UP) 36 620 USD

HP MSA Storage (24 drives/RAID 5/900GB) 28 876 USD

1222 USD per VM 3086 USD for equivalent physical server

Did you build a cloud?

Cost • Did we just refresh some hardware?

• Have we improved anything?

• Is this just “business as usual”?

Capabilities • Are we more agile?

• Can we take advantage of new paradigms?

• Is this easier to manage?

Scalability and failure

Fact • Cloud providers have outages

• Networks go down

• Usage varies

Assertion • Is failure a form of scalability?

• Can we leverage this in our design?

• Is our paradigm correct?

Attack the storage paradigm

Shared storage growth and provisioning time

1,000

500

VMs

Cost, AU 100 200

500

VMs

Provisioning efficiency

AU – arbitrary units

Combined efficiency and storage evolution

Redesign

1,000

500

VMs

100 200 Cost, AU

VMs

1,000

500

Cost, AU 100 200

? Alternatives

AU – arbitrary units

Redesign

Efficiency and pod storage

1,000

500

VMs

100 200 Cost, AU

POD #1

POD #2

POD #3 1,000

500

VMs

100 200 Cost, AU

AU – arbitrary units

No redesign

What about local storage?

1,000

500

VMs

Cost, AU 100 200

50

VMs

Provisioning efficiency

AU – arbitrary units

POD

trend

Traditional

trend

Cost-Performance Trends

Shared Storage Local Storage

1,000

500

VMs

Cost, AU 100 200

1,000

500

VMs

100 200 Cost, AU

Local storage

Performance

trend

Local storage

trend

Understanding relationship between VM density and IO

Plan B

The power of local storage

Our IO requirements • 300-400 IOPs per blade

• 3-4 SAS 10K disks, or SSD MLC

Our storage requirements • 700-900 GB per blade

Options • Storage blade (per pod)

• Local storage per blade

• Change to pizza boxes

Let’s get some shiny new gear …. … because you can’t just reuse what you’ve got

Redundant, independent networks • Management, VM traffic 4 NICs

No shared storage • 10 Gbps links for VM traffic

• 1 Gbps for management traffic

Compute • Rack based servers

VM specification • 2 vCPU, 8GB RAM, 40GB shared disk

The BOM

Total hardware cost: 127 490 USD

Component Cost

Dell R630 (dual socket, 128GB, 4x300GB SAS 10k) 98 880 USD

Cisco Nexus switches (2x3064X) 28 610 USD

531 USD per VM 56% savings over “enterprise best practices”

83% savings over physical server

Understanding what you want to accomplish

Public clouds are people carriers and minibuses

YOUR cloud should be a race car • Optimize it for your needs

Don’t rent what you can own cheaper • Cloud operator doesn’t care about your success

• Optimized applications might be key

Ensure you have backup plans • Usage can and does spike

• Outages can and do happen

vs.

Virtualization infrastructure choices

Hypervisor defined by service offerings • Don’t select hypervisor based on “standards”

• Understand true costs of virtualization

• Multiple hypervisors are “OK”

• Bare metal can be a hypervisor

To “Pool” resources or not • Is there a real requirement for pooled resources

• Can the cloud management solution do better?

• Real cost of shared storage

Primary storage defined by hypervisor

The ROI of a private cloud OpEx vs CapEx

EC2 costs (US/East) • m3.large (Linux) on-demand: 1352 USD per year

• m3.large (Linux) 3yr reserved: 1609 USD for three years

• m3.large (RHEL) 3 yr reserved: 3348 USD for three years

Your cloud costs • 115 130 USD depreciated over 3 years: 183 USD per VM per year

• Operational costs vary

Become a service provider to your business • Provide on demand services, which scale with the business

• Through business understanding, retain operational control of IT

• Simplify compliance monitoring

Tying it all Together

1. Define success criteria

2. Evaluate current best practices

3. Select a topology which works

4. Decide on storage options

5. Define supported configurations

6. Select preferred hypervisor(s)

7. Build your Cloud

WORK BETTER. LIVE BETTER.