© Mach Technology Group Pty LtdABN 58 115 162 564ask@mach.com.au

Paul Pettigrew, CEO - 27th April 2011Offices & Data Centres: Brisbane | Noosa | Cooroy | USA

Integrated Managed Services“Next Generation” of full-service ICT solution outsourcing

Design Summit / ConferenceSanta Clara, California

Firstly….Thank you• Wish to acknowledge the contributions of the

community and the sponsoring organisations

• Hope that this presentation adds value to this conference – and helps this community through understanding of how this fabulous and innovative software is being taken to market by Australia’s leading next-generation technology solutions company 2

Believe OpenStack is on the cusp of being to Cloud what

Linux was/is to the OS

Scope of Presentation• Current Context

– About Mach Technology– Who is Paul Pettigrew? Why am I here?– Underlying Facilities Platform– How we define Cloud– Cloud Security Lessons

• Integrated Technology + Services Solution– Our “NG” Project’s Business Requirements– Integrated Solution Architecture– Rollout Strategy– Our “todo wish list” for OpenStack

• Conclusion & Questions3

4

Current Context

About Mach Technology• Founded in 2005 on rising wave of Open Source,

Linux and High Performance / Federated Grid Computing – to deliver outsourced solutions, smarter, better & at lower cost than proprietary

• Lines of business and deep expertise in:– Consulting & Project Management– Mach owned & operated Data Centres, Hosting and

Cloud (inc IaaS/PaaS/SaaS)– Service Desk – Technical Services– Onsite Field Services– 24/7 automated deep monitoring and self-healing– Turnkey outsourced ICT Managed Services 5

Who & Why am I here?• Loved technology and computing, since

wrote first program on a 1” thick pile of IBM cards in the early 80’s

• F/A-18 Instructor & Fighter Pilot, also on front line of modern computing introduction into Royal Australian Air Force

• Presenting is Mach’s way to make a contribution to the community and share our hard-learned knowledge

• To learn from the experts, and take knowledge back to Australia and pass onto others in our industry & clients

• Validate and improve our strategy 6

Underlying Facilities Platform & Data Centres

7

#1 Services: Shared nothing, federated HA, 4N

Since 2005 go-live, not a single second of down time

How we define “Cloud”• Elastic: resources are re-allocated, increased or decreased on demand

(typically instantly)• Multi-tenant: compute, storage and network resources are shared to deliver

multiple platform services per each hardware component and dynamically (re)allocated as required

• Thin Provisioning: compute, storage and network assets provided via virtualised, location independent, technology agnostic platforms (no vendor lock-in) – i.e. using real hardware resources only when required

• Over Subscription: compute, storage and network assets are over-allocated but pro-actively capacity managed to have physical provisioning occur in time for actual demand

8

plus• Automation: Extreme levels of automation: provisioning, monitoring, self-

healing, patching/updating & maintaining• Open: Portable sub-systems / no proprietary lock-in• Billing: Sophisticated presentation of data to enable “to the second” invoicing

Cloud Service Layers “X-as-a-Service”

9Servers Network Storage

Virtualisation Layer

Service Management (Billing, Metering, Accounts, Monitoring, etc)

Image Libraries

Inte

grat

ion

API

User Interface

Availability and Security

Resource Management

Dynamic Workload Management

Developer API

Servers Storage Network

Backup Firewall HA Monitoring

Administrator End User Console

Application Catalogue

Custom Templates

Operating Systems ISOs

Platforms

Applications

Directory Database Message Web Other

Application A Application B Application C Application D Application E

SaaS

PaaS

IaaS

Acknowledge: based on depiction produced by Cloud.com

Sample Customer Deployment Pattern

10

Cloud Security Lessons• Current bandwagon/marketing hype is not helping• Mach has government and large commercial clients acutely aware of the issues

– Mach has solved to date, without incident – but not in fashion that meets our future automation and multi-tenant objectives

• We must leverage “education” in market– E.g. “VLAN” accepted, but no understanding of what “OpenFlow” is and if it is

“secure”– Public Key cryptography “PKI” also known and trusted

• Storage must be addressed through unified security and identity management– Easy option for encryption of files, using PKI

• We must be able to answer the question “is my data safe, secure and private” in a single word = Yes!

• Goal: build upon the acceptance of the VLAN ID “tag” concept, and apply it across all IaaS aspects to create unified “security zones”– Networking: VLAN (and also OpenFlow)– Storage: encrypted files– Server: SSH / PKI based access already proven and trusted

11Can “Cloud Security” be as simple as PKI+VLAN per “security zone”?

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Integrated Technology +

Services Solution

Elevator Pitches• “Bill to the second, on demand”• “Australia’s first Next Generation, IPv6 XaaS Cloud

Hosting Solutions”• “Consulting, Services, XaaS, Onsite – Unified

Platform”• “Price per VM = others’ price per website”• “Single bill, single sign-on”• “Metal + Virtualisation”• “Quad Data Centres, redundant highly available

deployment”

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Business Requirements• Vision: next-generation of full ICT service outsourcing• Principles:

– 100% free libre Open Source; commodity hardware– Mach value-adds through SI and staff service excellence– Flexible, to accommodate waves of innovation over next 5 years– Extreme levels of automation and self-healing– No real technical skill required to enact subscriptions– Moderate technical skill required to provision and maintain platform– Scale out “just-in-time” per sales/revenue– Multi-DC, federated architecture– IPv6

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Our first line-up

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Unified Storage Layer

Storage Node Storage Node Storage Node ... + N

Management/Storage Network Layer

Compute LayerHW Compute

Node

KVM Compute

Node

otherVMCompute

Node ... + N

Applications Layer

SaaS ... + NPlesk DNS

*

Virtual Network LayerVM FW

Appliance ... + NHW FW Appliance

Management Layer

Candidate Technologies

*OpenSolaris/ZFSiSCSI, NFS & CIFS

*Non-routed 10GE switching network

*KVM, Xen, ESX, OpenVZ, Physical

*Plesk, Alfresco, OpenERP, etc

*pfSense, m0n0wall, IPCop, BGP, DNS

*OpenQRM, Zabbix, OTRS::ITSM,

389Directory Server OpenERP, Drupal,

Magento

Provisioning & Resource

Tracking

Monitoring & Alerting Billing

Website & Online

Purchasing

Customer Access

Service Management

Bespoke/ Other

Integrated Architecture• Issue with first line-up? Too much SI• Have progressed with aspects knew would be right

(Phase 1)• Fundamental: Integration of Billing Engine,

Identity Management, Ticketing and Provisioning• Knew from experience that IaaS solution must be

simplified and integrated across Storage + Compute + Network

• Held off over past year for technology to emerge…and then we discovered OpenStack…

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OpenStack makes it simple

17

Use Cases• Mach is not in the business of competing

with massive scale, constrained product parameters Cloud hosting

• Our value is leveraging emerging technologies in a thrifty + high quality fashion, to deliver a total solution

• Must accommodate both “metal” &/or “virtual”

• Security Lessons must be addressed• Able to abstract to 5x Use Cases…

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Scenario 1: Single VM• Single VM connected to the internal network for storage access and the

external network for WAN• Should be able to talk L2 to management system, storage nodes and

WAN gateway, but nothing else (VM1 and VM2 cannot see each other)• Should be the default for all new VMs

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Inte

rnal

Net

wor

k External Netw

ork

Storage nodes and

managementVM1 WAN

Gateway

L2 Zone

VM2

Scenario 2: Multiple VMs• Multiple VMs connected to the internal network for storage access and the

external network for WAN, all in the same security zone• Like scenario 1, but the VMs in the same zone should be able to talk L2 to each

other (VMs 1,2 and 3 can communicate, but cannot talk to VM4)• This is for customers with multiple VMs that need to communicate at L2 (they

can already communicate at L3 via the WAN Gateway)

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Inte

rnal

Net

wor

k External Netw

ork

Storage nodes and

management

VM1

WAN Gateway

L2 Zone

VM4

VM2

VM3

Scenario 3: VSD• Single or multiple VMs connected to the internal network for storage

access and the external network for WAN, with a VSD in the same security zone

• All access to the VMs from the WAN filtered (bridged or routed modes supported) by VSD, VMs cannot talk to WAN gateway directly

21

Inte

rnal

Net

wor

k External Netw

ork

Storage nodes and

management

VM1

WAN Gateway

L2 Zone

VM4

VM2

VM3

VSD

Scenario 4: Physical FW• Single or multiple VMs connected to the internal network for storage

access and the external network for WAN, with a physical FW (i.e. Cisco ASA device) in the same security zone

• All access to the VMs from the WAN filtered by FW device, VMs cannot talk L2 to WAN gateway directly

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Inte

rnal

Net

wor

k External Netw

ork

Storage nodes and

management

VM1

WAN Gateway

L2 Zone

VM4

VM2

VM3

Phys. FW

Scenario 5: Dedicated Metal• To support customer requests for non-virtualised, physical

server OS deployment (i.e. Linux/Windows running on metal) – “dedicated metal machines” (DMM)

• We want them to be configured the same as all compute nodes such that they can easily be managed in the same way and converted DMM<->VM– Any solution that gets these servers onto the virtual switching

fabric so we can control their L2 in the same way requires repatching when a DMM becomes a VM host or vice versa

• The solution is to gateway the DMM L2 through a box that is on the virtual switching fabric – see next slide

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• Dedicated metal machines repatched to gateway through a Linux GW that places them on virtual switching fabric

• The physical switch is configured with every port in it’s own port-based VLAN, with the Linux GW port in every VLAN

• Supporting the feature will guarantee we can meet specialist/dedicated requirements of our large customers

Scenario 5: DMM Patching

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DMM

Linux GW

Physical Switch

DMM

DMM

Virtual Switch

What was left?• Identity

– Issue is that every subsystem has its own identity/auth solution

– Critical that a centralised, multi-tenant, multi-subsystems platform exist

• Billing– Basic subscription billing for a rudimentary

Cloud hosting product stack easy– As an outsourcer, must support single invoice

• Subscription + Fixed Price or T&M + Known & Ad Hoc

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Identity Management• Closely integrated with the Billing Engine is the idea of

Identity Management• Needs to map all of our Accounts, all of their Users and all

of the access control for which users can access which Subscriptions

• Billing can use this information for generation of XaaSbilling data

• Ticketing can use this information for linking Tickets to associated Subscription procured– E.g. Add a note “article” to a ticket for 15mins worked on “Hosted

Exchange” for Account “ABC”

• Provisioning can use this information for access control to systems/applications

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Centralised Directory (389 HA)• Clustered 389 Directory Server for centralised

authentication, account and billing metadata– Multi-master replication of directory writes– Many active nodes for directory reads (authentications

etc)– Support multiple customers in directory hierarchy– Easily add new attributes for billing and account/profile

metadata to be used in other applications– Support SSL authentications over the Internet– Provide password and account metadata

synchronisation for Active Directory

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Billing Architecture

28

Med

iatio

n Pr

oces

s

Billing Engine (jBilling)

PBASDNS

Plesk

VZ

OTRSWork

Orders

Timesheet

Tickets

SaaSPaaS

OpenStack

Identity Management 

(389)

Billing Data

Mach API

Integrate

Integrate

Integrate

Integrate

Single InvoiceSingle Invoice

SaaS

Storage

VMs

Identity Data

Website Shopping Cart Bill Presentment & Payment

Ticket Presentment

In-house Management

Tools

Happy Customers

Networking

Rollout Plan• Phase 1 – Alignment & Initial Steps• Phase 2 – Trial Remaining Pieces• Phase 3 – BETA Launch• Phase 4 – “New Normal”

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Phase 1 – Alignment / Initial Steps• Phase 1 – Alignment / Initial Steps

– Mediawiki for all doco, smart URL linking access from other systems (1,944 articles, 15,708 edits/updates)

– Zabbix for 24/7 monitoring & (initial) self-healing via federated HA platform (578 hosts; 17573 data items; 6325 smart trigger calculations; 5592 automated tests performed per minute)

– OTRS::ITSM for ITILv3 Service Management (2,700 tickets per month)

– Bacula for backup & recovery independent of cloud platform (42,689 backups, 0.53TB delta per day across 546 volumes)

– 389 Directory Server Cluster, deployed federated HA (~3000 customers)

– BETA: KVM based platforms for Linux/Windows/BSD/Solaris (15 hosts, 55 VMs)

30Completed & working perfectly :-)

Phase 2 – Trial Remaining Pieces

• Phase 2 – Trial Remaining Pieces–OpenStack– IPv6–Billing: Jbilling–Unified web

portal platform (Drupal)–OpenFlow &

Open vSwich

31Photo:

R&D rig, 4x compute + 2x Storage

Phase 3 – BETA Launch• Phase 3 – BETA Launch

– Phase 1 + 2 aspects completed– Across 2x DC’s (only) to prove distributed/federated

solution– Limited (spin-off brand) launch to prove in marketplace

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Phase 4 – New Normal• Phase 4 – New Normal (no longer

“Next Generation”)– New sales onto new platform– Migrate old services

–Complete 6-9mths• Risks addressed in Phases 2/3 before the

company goes “all in”

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OpenStack Wishlist• CAVEAT: very happy to be corrected if these points are already

addressed• Unified security zone across compute + storage + network, for each

cloud/domain– Spans multiple DC’s (low WAN comms)– Multiple clouds per account– Encryption of storage objects (files, VM disk images, etc)

• Billing units and metering– Billing platform must not need to know detailed technical operation– Abstract to universal “billing unit”, price book applied in billing platform– Bill “on demand” to the second

• Class of service – abstracted as a high level concept, then given technical meaning and billing alignment, e.g.:– Single– Cold/offline DR failover– Hot/live HA failover

• Extreme automation, especially in management of platform and patching burden– An integrated and supported toolchain 34

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Conclusion & Questions