Eduserv and the Cloud Who we are, what we do, what you can do
Matt Johnson
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Topics Eduservs Community Cloud Short history of Eduserv
Journey to the Cloud Building a Cloud platform Build your own
Cloud-based eco-system Questions welcome at any time!
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Short History of Eduserv
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A history of Eduserv in 3 slides (1/3) Started in 1988 as CHEST
& NISS at University of Bath Licensing negotiation &
gateway services (via Telnet) First UK academic web portal in 1994
Single sign-on service launched 1996
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A History of Eduserv in 3 slides (2/3) Became the independent
charity Eduserv in 1999 Core mission to promote the use of ICT in
education Primary hosting provider for Department of Education
Worked with Cabinet Office to implement UKonline
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A History of Eduserv in 3 slides (3/3) Year on year growth
since 2001 >3.5m registered users of Eduserv-based services
Returned more than 5m in grants to academia New datacentre for
education & the public sector
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Eduserv in 2012 Stable, trusted provider of services to
academia 127 staff (with around 5 further vacancies) turnover of
17.8m in 2010/11 Fully UK based, with no shareholder pressures
Developing new products and services Next generation of Identity
& Access Mgmt services Implementing Cloud services for
education &government
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Journey to the Cloud
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Eduservs journey to the Cloud Research into public cloud
services (early 2010) JISC FleSSR project (2010-2011) 30k grant,
partnership with University of Oxford UMF Cloud pilot (2011-2012)
1.3m HEFCE funded project Eduserv Community Cloud Infrastructure
(2012+) Delivering multiple cloud-based services for our
customers
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UMF Deliverables vCloud Compute
(https://vcloud.cloud.eduserv.org.uk/)https://vcloud.cloud.eduserv.org.uk/
VMware-based (vSphere 5 + vCloud Director 1.5) Being used
internally for education, government and 3 rd sector services
Currently in beta (with 30+ HE/FE organisations) File Storage
(https://storage.cloud.eduserv.org.uk/)https://storage.cloud.eduserv.org.uk/
Deliberately distinct from API-driven web storage (such as Amazon
S3) Delivered using standard storage protocols Initially WebDAV
SFTP, NFS and CIFS potential future protocols Launched in beta
during July
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What wasnt funded by UMF Multi-site deployments Currently
services are based only in Swindon (but has been designed to work
across multiple sites) Backups Pilot service places onus on
customers for backups Commercial network connectivity Currently
restricted to academic users only For lots of potential customers,
these are show-stoppers
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Next Step Community Cloud Infrastructure (CCI) CCI service will
build on UMF to deliver Dual site capability (Swindon and Slough)
DR functionality (automated site failover) Customer backups
Documentation to support IL0-2 accreditation Scheduled to launch
November 2012 Already have customers waiting to use the
service
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Building a Cloud platform
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Design Goals Community Cloud, not Public Cloud Already lots of
public cloud providers Need to differentiate on something other
than scale Quality Built using premium components Capable of being
redeployed for different architectures Security UK ownership and
location (US PATRIOT Act concerns) Auditability of assets and
processes
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Hardware - Network Network requirements 10 Gbps end-to-end
capability No single point of failure Scalability to >1,000
connected hosts *Lots* of VLAN partitioning Network choices Juniper
SRX gateway for firewall / intrusion detection Cisco Nexus 7k for
core switching Cisco Nexus 5k for distribution switching
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Hardware - Compute Compute requirements Highly scalable (to
>1,000 connected hosts) Memory density (limiting factor in
virtualisation) Vmware & Microsoft HCL Compute choices Cisco
Unified Compute System Blade-based infrastructure with 2 x CPUs,
power management 192 GB per blade capable (using 8 GB DIMM)
Diskless (for ease of management)
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Hardware - Storage Storage requirements Highly scalable
(multi-PB capable) Support for block and file-level storage Easy to
manage / support Storage choices EMC Isilon Storage Cluster NFS /
iSCSI node-based NAS platform Scalable to 14+ PB in a single
namespace Mix-and-match different performance/capacity nodes High
efficiency (90% usable space with N+2:1 protection)
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Cloud Platform Cloud platform requirements Compatibility within
Eduservs core markets (academic, government) Cost-effective to sell
and support Cloud platform choices Initial support for Vmwares
vCloud Director Builds on vSphere, highly used in the public /
academic sector High levels of existing skills at Eduserv
Complementary to public-cloud offers different types of
functionality
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Lots of things to think about Customer services DNS, DHCP,
SMTP, AD, VPN, NTP, SSH, RDP Self service support v Managed
services Management services Monitoring, Alerting, Reporting,
Billing Orchestration, automation, backup, firewall,
load-balancing, IDS Multi-site implementation Automated v manual
failover capabilities Management plane resilience
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Biggest challenges to Cloud Pricing model Getting the balance
right between covering costs and remaining competitive
Understanding average / peak usage, usage profiles, growth trends,
etc Intrusion Detection / Prevention How much is the supplier
responsible for customer services Balancing autonomy against a
requirement to retain network whitelisting Requires different
mind-set for architects Encouraging people think Cloud design,
rather than Legacy design Doesnt often work with current generation
of enterprise applications
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Build your own Cloud eco-system
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In less than 2 hours, you will have Generic email address with
ActiveSync capabilities Fully manageable DNS with own domain name
Personalised email address using own domain name Website / Intranet
/ Wiki / Document Management services Cloud compute, database,
network and monitoring services Cloud storage and synchronisation
between computers And all for the price of a domain registration
(2.40 per year)
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1. Register a (generic) email address Lots of free webmail
services Using MS Outlook.com ActiveSync services Clean interface
Time taken: 2 mins [email protected]
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2. Register a domain name Lots of services Using 123-reg
UK-based Cheap (2.39 for.info) Time taken 5 mins (to register) 5
mins (to configure) Up to 12 hours (to propagate)
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3. Register for Name-server hosting Using Point SaaS DNS
hosting UK-based service Free (for 5 domains) Time taken 5 mins (to
register)
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4. Configure NS records 123-reg control panel Use Point NS
servers dns1.pointhq.com Point control panel Allocate domain name
Auto-add Google Apps Time taken 5 mins (to configure) 2 hours (to
propagate)
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5. Check DNS configuration From command line Nslookup From the
web DNS Stuff, Pingdom Check NS records MX records Time taken 1
min
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6. Personalised Email ([email protected]) Fewer choices
Google Apps MS Office365 Multi-step registration Register details
Validate identity, DNS Configure Google App Services Time taken 30
mins
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7. Google Apps Google Apps Familiar Gmail interface ActiveSync
integration Powerful Drive integration Paid and free options Up to
10 users for free Time taken 30+ mins
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8. Cloud IaaS, PaaS, SaaS Lots of cloud services Few offer free
service Amazon Web Services Original & biggest cloud provider
Free tier (for one year) Registration is straightforward Requires
credit card Mobile validation Time taken 10 mins to register
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9. Amazon Web Services Wide range of services EC2 - compute S3
- storage RDS / DynamoDB database SNS - notifications CloudWatch
monitoring and lots more Well documented Check out the Kindle
library
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10. Microsoft WebSiteSpark MS Web Development Aimed at SMEs /
individuals Free for 3 years Range of services Free licences
(Visual Studio, etc) Free access to Azure PaaS Hosting support Time
taken 15 mins to register
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11. Cloud Storage & Synchronisation Hugely competitive Free
tiers with bonus storage Inter-machine syncing Market leaders
DropBox (2 GB) SugarSync (5 GB) Google Drive (5 GB) MS SkyDrive (7
GB) Time taken 5 mins to register
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Other useful Cloud apps Pivotal Tracker Agile PM Google
Analytics Web Analytics Wordpress.com Blogging Kindle reading
(& docs) Pingdom web monitoring Evernote online notebook
Pastie.org online clipboard TryStack.org OpenStack sandbox
JotForm.com online web forms Moonfruit.com hosted CMS Heroku.com
Ruby hosting
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Useful Links MS Outlook:
http://www.outlook.com/http://www.outlook.com/ Point DNS:
http://www.pointhq.com/http://www.pointhq.com/ 123-Reg:
http://www.123-reg.co.uk/http://www.123-reg.co.uk/ Google Apps:
http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/enterprise/apps/business/pricing.htmlhttp://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/enterprise/apps/business/pricing.html
AWS: http://aws.amazon.com/freehttp://aws.amazon.com/free MS
WebSiteSpark:
http://www.microsoft.com/web/websitespark/support.aspxhttp://www.microsoft.com/web/websitespark/support.aspx
Dropbox: http://ww.dropbox.comhttp://ww.dropbox.com SugarSync:
http://www.sugarsync.com/http://www.sugarsync.com/ Google Drive:
http://drive.google.com/http://drive.google.com/ MS SkyDrive:
http://skydrive.live.com/http://skydrive.live.com/
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Where to find out more Education Cloud support site:
http://support.cloud.eduserv.org.uk/ Website:
http://www.eduserv.org.uk/hosting/cloud-computing/