Building an IaaS cloud

www.flexiant.com© 2012 Flexiant Ltd

Building an IaaS Public Cloud

Alex BlighCOO & CTO, Flexiant Ltd

1


The Philosophy of Cloud

2


! Driven by economics! Key points:

! Cost Effective: More cost-effective than a custom deployment

! Utility: Provided on a utility basis (PAYG?)! Commodity: Provisioned at scale! Universality: Homogenous service components! Multitenancy: More than one user of the same

resources! aBstraction: Virtual resources abstracted from

from physical resources! Elasticity: Rapid provision/deprovision! Reliability: Build for failure

Cloud phenotypes

3


Types of cloud

4

Elastic compute &

storage provided over the internet

A software application

provided over the internet SaaS

PaaS

IaaS

Position in stack

Ease of end user useFlexibility

A development

framework provided over the internet


Use cases: IaaS, PaaS, SaaS! SaaS

! Capture maximum amount of value stack! Least flexible

! PaaS! Rapidly build new applications without

worrying about how the back end works! Application redesign costs $$$

! IaaS! Ease of transition for existing applications! But still has problems (particularly with

databases)

5


How to build an IaaS cloud

6


IaaS cloud-building myth #1

7

Iaas ≡ Virtualisation



7

Iaas ≡ VirtualisationX


Typical IaaS stack

8

NetworkCompute Storage

Resource Orchestration

Business Logic

User Interface



9

If I get the technology right,I’ve done



9

If I get the technology right,I’ve doneX


Billing & Product Management

10


But they turn this ...

11


... into this

12


Key considerations! Non-technical:

! Routes to market! Channels! Branding! Products! Metering! Billing! Collection

! Technical:! Hardware (compute, storage, network)! Orchestration software stack! Hypervisor! Images

13


Abuse

14


Ways to build an IaaS cloud! Software

! Build it yourself from scratch, e.g.:! Amazon! Rackspace

! Use an open-source toolkit, plus lots of bespoke development work, e.g.:! Openstack

! Buy an off-the-shelf product, e.g.:! Flexiant! Abiquo! OnApp

! Hardware! COTS (Dell, SuperMicro etc.)! Appliance (vBlock, UCS, Nutanix)

15


The End

16

Technology

Building an IaaS cloud