virtualization and cloud - a "pro" infrastructure for everyone

Virtualization and Cloud: a “PRO”

infrastructure for everyone.

Luca Bonmassar, BetterSoftware 2011

Monday, 27 June 2011

BetterSoftware ‘11

Luca Bonmassar

Passionate about Tech

Favorite topics: Cloud, Virtualization, NoSQL

Enterprise / startup experience



Cloud - Agenda

Avoiding “the fog”

Cloud what?

Cloud why?

Cloud when?

Building on AWS Cloud



1. Cloud what?



It’s not about the product

You have the biggest idea ever: a brand new pizza type!

You have spent time designing, implementing and testing your new pizza™

But now you need a place to sell it



Build your own pizza place!



Build your own pizza place

Upfront decisions:

How big?

How many tables?

Where?

Time and money if you change your mind



What about renting?



Renting in Cloud mall

In the Cloud mall you can rent by square meters

If:

you need more, you get more

you need less, you give it back



2. Cloud why?



Move from Capex to Opex



eCommerce Website

0

400000

800000

1200000

1600000

Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

Traffic



Over provisioning

0

400000

800000

1200000

1600000


Traffic Provisioning



Under provisioning

0

400000

800000

1200000

1600000





AutoScale(TM)

0

400000

800000

1200000

1600000





From Capex to Opex

No need for approval to buy any new computational resources

“Pay as you go” model



Ready to succeed?



“Breakup notifier” - launch

0

50

100

150

200

Sat Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun

Traffic



The TechCrunch effect

0

75000

150000

225000

300000

Fri Sat Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu

Traffic



3. Cloud when?



Enterprise

Circumvent IT department

Pay as you go - no budget approval

No provisioning

Cons: sensitive data?



Startup / Pet project

Defeat TechCrunch effect

No money (but glory)

No operations team



Building on AWS



Amazon Web Services

“The most mature, flexible and complete infrastructure platform” -- Jeff Bezos (CEO, Amazon.com)


BetterSoftware ‘11Storage

Frontend

Messaging

Backend BackendAutoScale

Monitoring

AWS WebApp Architecture



Network Components

Load Balancers

Firewalls

Elastic IPs

Route 53

Virtual Private Cloud



Computing: EC2

Virtual Machines

Different memory/cpu resources

Run public or custom OS images

When turned off, changes are lost (volatile)

Pay what you use (time and bandwidth)



Bonus Track: EC2 + LXC

Run Virtual Machines into Virtual Machines

LXC (Linux Containers)

UML (UserMode Linux)

FreeBSD jails



Storage: EBS

Network storage volumes

Customizable size

Data stored in snapshots

Data is automatically replicated

Pay per allocated GB



Storage: S3

Key/value object storage

Rest API to manipulate the repository (web access to objects)

S3FS

Slower, more reliable

Pay per allocated GB and usage (data transfer)



Storage: RDS

Relational Database Service

A managed MySQL/Oracle instance in the Cloud

Different cpu/mem resources

Pay what you use (bandwidth and time)



Storage: SimpleDB

The NoSQL alternative

A managed NoSQL instance in the Cloud

Custom API to manipulate the data set

Pay what you use (bandwidth and time)



Messaging: SNS

Simple Notification Service

A notification infrastructure in the Cloud

Publish/Subscribe protocol

Http/Mail/SQS notifications

Pay what you use (requests, notification and bandwidth)



Messaging: SQS

Simple Queue Service

A message queue infrastructure in the Cloud

Communications between EC2 instances

Enable the “worker queue” paradigm

Pay what you use (bandwidth and API requests)



Monitoring: CloudWatchMonitor AWS resources

EC2 instances

EBS volumes

RDS databases

Load Balancers

...

Set alarms

View graphs and statistics

Pay per number of alarms and metrics monitored



Monitoring: AutoScale

Monitor instances and take scalability decisions

Scale out EC2 instances when demand increases

Shed unneeded EC2 instances when demand subsides (save $$$)

Enable “elasticity”

Free of charge


BetterSoftware ‘11Storage

Frontend

Messaging

Backend BackendAutoScale

Monitoring

Putting it all together



Failures

Cloud is not immune to failures

Cloud Apps should be designed with failure in mind (distributed components app)

Take advantages of:

Availability Zones

Multiple Regions



One more thing: API!All services are manageable through a Web Console

But all AWS services have exposed APIs

You can (for example):

Allocate, start, control, terminate EC2 instances

Allocate/attach/deallocate EBS partitions

Allocate/start/stop databases

Create/Read/Update/Destroy S3 objects

Change IPs

Monitor components

...



Predicting costs

Amazon Simple Monthly Calculator (google it!)

Given some assumptions, how much will I pay?



Keep costs low

Use a mix of reserved instances vs. On-Demand instances

Undersize your storage and processing power

Monitor process activities (e.g. you pay for the bandwidth)

Use AutoScale



Conclusions

Cloud is a very good place to host your application and data

Very flexible, leaves to others the pain of operations

Easy to migrate to Cloud in steps (subscribing one service at a time)

Your application is ready to scale with your business



Thanks! Questions?

[email protected]

linkedin.com/in/lucabonmassar

twitter.com/lucabonmassar


mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

virtualization and cloud - a "pro" infrastructure for everyone

Technology

bettersoftware 11monday

cloud mall

pay

cloud

time

pizza

building

renting