CERN IT Department

CH-1211 Genève 23

Switzerlandwww.cern.ch/

it

The Agile Infrastructure ProjectPart 1: Configuration Management

Tim Bell

Gavin McCance

Agenda

• IT Context and Directions

• Principles and Status

• Timelines

• Issues and Decisions

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IT Technical Forum – 27 Jan 2012

Industry Context - Cloud

• Cloud computing models are now standardising– Facilities as a Service – such as Equinix, Safehost– Infrastructure as a Service - Amazon EC2, CVI or lxcloud– Platform as a Service - Microsoft Azure or CERN Web Services– Software as a Service – Salesforce, Google Mail, Service-Now, Indico

• Different customers want access to different layers– Both our users and the IT Service Managers

3

Applications

Platform

Infrastructure

Facilities

IT Technical Forum – 27 Jan 2012

Industry Context - DevOps

• DevOps community adopting tool chains with small tools interlinked for particular functions

4

CERN IT Internal Cloud ?

• Structure IT services as– Horizontal universal layers such as facilities,

infrastructure and platform built on cloud framework– Consolidate to reach sustainable support size– Vertical application software services built on platforms

• Self-Service request for IT resources– Clear tracking of customer allocations and usage

• Build using redundant platforms– Homogeneous hardware configurations pre-installed – Hardware maintenance in bulk– Virtualise everything unless Total Cost including

operations and lifecycle unjustified

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Expected Benefits

• Improved response time to new requests for both new infrastructure and applications built on our platforms

• Exploitation of remote data centre and business continuity• Optimisation of resource allocation such as scaling out, live

migration for repairs and overcommit• Reduced maintenance effort of legacy and unique tools• Community developed enhancements directly applicable in

our environment (e.g. IPv6) and recipes for implementation• Reduce ‘time to production’ of new staff due to existing

skills, good training and internet community documentation • Improved satisfaction of system administrator and service

manager, especially departing staff• Selectively replicable solutions to other sites without major

support load

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