How to Think Multi-Cloud

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How to Think Multi-Cloud

December 8, 2010

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Your Panel Today

Presenting:• Michael Crandell, CEO Twitter: @michaelcrandell• Josep M. Blanquer, Sr. Systems Architect

Q&A:• John Newton, Account Manager

Please use the questions window to ask questions anytime!

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Agenda

• What do we mean by a cloud?• What is multi-cloud and what’s different?• How does RightScale help?

• Servers and ServerArrays• Multi-Cloud Server Templates• Multi-Cloud Images• Data locality and mobility

• A multi-cloud example and demo• Conclusions / Q&A

Please use the questions window to ask questions anytime!

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What do we mean by cloud?

• A cloud is a physical data center entity behind an API endpoint

• What do you mean by that?• Amazon Web Services is not a cloud• EC2 is not a cloud• Eucalyptus, Cloud.com are not a cloud• EC2 East, EC2 AsiaPacific, my private cloud… are clouds• An availability zone is not a cloud, it’s part of one• Think of a cloud as a “resource pool” accessed via API

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Where is my cloud in the wild?

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Where is my cloud in the wild?

There might be just a few big cloud players…but there will be a myriad of clouds

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Where are my clouds in RightScale?• Dashboard example:

• AWS, Rackspace and several private clouds in one account

• A cloud is first registered with RightScale• Once a cloud is registered, a user can start using it

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What does multi-cloud mean?• It’s about deploying your application:

• Across different clouds• Spanning cloud providers (most likely with different API’s)• Utilizing private and public ones

• It’s about evolving your application to:• Incorporate new clouds as they appear• Or quickly moving servers to utilize leftover or new cloud capacity

• All seamlessly:• Without having to learn a new interface every time• Working together in an integrated manner

• It’s about using multiple cloud providers, not choosing one

• Current focus: cloud portability

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Multi-cloud: benefits

• Redundancy for disaster recovery and business continuity• Geo-location for latency and/or policy compliance• Leverage unique cloud-specific services when needed• Leverage public cloud cost benefits (cheaper and/or infinite)• Leverage existing data centers: private cloud• Move services with bursty, unpredictable apps to public cloud• Private cloud for apps with regulatory compliance reqs• Support varying levels of security concerns

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Multi-cloud: pain points• APIs differ

• Different sets of resources• Different formats and encodings• Several simultaneous versions for a single cloud

• Abstractions differ• Network architectures differ: VLANs, security groups, NAT, IPs, ACLs, …• Storage architectures differ: local/attachable disks, backup, snapshots, …

• Hypervisors and machine images differ• Supported features differ• …cost models, billing, reporting…etc

• They are truly different applications, with different semantics

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How to think multi-cloud?

“Akin to designing your application using several programming languages”

• Deploy using cloud-specifics, design using generic concepts• Have tools that translate your concepts to cloud-specific ones.• Design for geographic dispersion• Think of how to share data across• Know if you’re designing for HA or simply for portability

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How does RightScale help?• Unified Multi-Cloud UI and new API (in progress)

• Multi-Cloud Servers/Arrays• Multi-Cloud Server Templates• Multi-Cloud Images• Others in the pipeline

Server

runnable abstraction

ServerTemplate

software config runtime config

1:1 1:NI

II

II

cloud resources

Image

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(Multi-Cloud) Servers and Arrays• Servers and Arrays are runtime abstractions• All Servers look and smell similar, regardless of cloud:

• Can be started, stopped or run operational actions in the same way• Show monitoring data, and can configure alerts in the same way• They coexist in mixed deployment listings, same filters, columns…• They can support abstractions that some clouds don’t support• …

• Can be very different beasts, but they are seamlessly integrated

Server


ServerTemplate


1:1 1:NI

II

II

cloud resources

MCI

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Parenthesis: What are ServerTemplates?

Custom MySQL 5.0.24 (CentOS 5.2)

Custom MySQL 5.0.24 (CentOS 5.4)

MySQL 5.0.36 (CentOS 5.4)

MySQL 5.0.36 (Ubuntu 8.10)

MySQL 5.0.36 (Ubuntu 8.10) 64bit

Frontend Apache 1.3 (Ubuntu 8.10)

Frontend Apache 2.0 (Ubuntu 9.10) - patched

CMS v1.0 (CentOS 5.4)

CMS v1.1 (CentOS 5.4)

My ASP appserver (windows 2008)

My ASP.net (windows 2008) – security update 1

My ASP.net (windows 2008) – security update 8

SharePoint v4 (windows 2003) – 32bit

SharePoint v4 (windows 2003) –64bit

SharePoint v4.5 (windows 2003) –64bit

…

Configuring serversthrough bundling Images:

A set of configuration directives that will install

and configure software on top of the base image

Configuring serverswith ServerTemplates:

CentOS 5.2

CentOS 5.4

Ubuntu 8.10

Ubuntu 9.10

Win 2003

Win 2007

Base ImageVery few and basic

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Parenthesis: What are ServerTemplates?Anatomy of a

Server TemplateExample Server Template:

MySQL 5.0

RightScript/Recipe N

RightScript/Recipe 5





…

boo

t se

que

nce



ope

ratio

ns

…

Base Image

Start all services

Setup DNS and IPs

Restore last backup

Configure/tune MySQL

Install MySQL Server

Install monitoring

…

boo

t se

que

nce

Perform backup

Initialize slave

ope

ratio

ns

…

Right Image

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(Multi-Cloud) Server Templates• They are software configuration abstractions

• Bridge the gap between the starting point (a base Image) and a fully configured machine

• Abstract Cloud and Operating System differences• Gather a set of user defined, high-level Input values• Can partially help in the sharing of data• Are versionable and publishable• Allow configuring servers always in the same or equivalent way

Server


ServerTemplate


1:1 1:NI

II

II

cloud resources

MCI

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Multi-Cloud Images (MCI)• MCI’s abstract a set of requirements in a cloud image

• Example: A CentOS 5.4 Image

• Provide an equivalency map of base images across clouds• CentOS 5.4 Image is ‘ami-feff’ in EC2 East, and ‘1234’ in Rackspace

• They are versionable and publishable• Are associated to ServerTemplates

Server


ServerTemplate


1:1 1:NI

II

II

cloud resources

MCI

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Multi-Cloud Images: RightImages• RightScale maintains such maps (MCI’s) for all public clouds

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Data locality and mobility• A topic a bit further down the road• A big hurdle to overcome: clouds are isolated• How can our app share data across its clouds then?

• External globally accessible services.• Transferring data snapshots across. • Maintaining online data replication across clouds. • Using an inherently replicated service, that is distributed.

• Keeping track of your moving data• Where’s the latest? What’s my lineage? how do I manage my datasets?...• We’re thinking about useful multi-cloud abstractions to help with all that

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Multi-Cloud Use Case: portability

US customers(production)

EU customers(production)

US customers(beta)

Test & dev

…

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Multi-Cloud Use Case: portability

US customers(production)

EU customers(production)

US customers(beta)

Test & dev

…

Load balancer PHP MySQLScripts

and recipes

MySQLPHP

Front-EndRails

All-in-OnePHP

App Server

Templates

Multi-CloudImage

CentOS 5.4

All-in-Ones

Less powerand redundancy

Scalable, powerfuland redundant

Servers

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Multi-Cloud Use Case: Demo

Live Demo

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Thinking multi-cloud: summary• Work with generic abstractions (deploy using cloud-specifics)

• Take advantage of each specific cloud’s strengths• Avoid lock in.

• Use or build generic templates:• support multiple OSes, and cloud types (not just clouds)

• Keep a good and clean mapping of Images • Maintain just a few and use them across your server templates

• Know your data:• Where is it, and what access patterns you’re using• Keep track of where it is, and how it moves.

• Start with portability, then move to HA-distributed setups• Think different, again!

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Technology

How to Think Multi-Cloud