Standards in cloud computing are essential to its growth. Learn how to create a private cloud without being locked in to any one vendor. Abiquo uses OVF standards to help its customers create private clouds with multiple hypervisor technologies in the same cloud.

1. Unlock the Cloud
Building a Vendor Independent
Private Cloud
June 21, 2010
Cloud Computing Expo
Hilton Prague, Czech Republic

2. Introduction
Diego Parrilla
VP Product Management
diego.parrilla@abiquo.com
www.abiquo.com
twitter.com/abiquo

3. Agenda
1. Introducing Abiquo
2. The Cloud Dream and Virtualization 1.0
3. Vendor Lock-in
4. The Abiquo Vision
5. The Abiquo Enterprise Edition Architecture
6. The Concept of Virtual Devices
7. The Standards
8. Conclusions
9. Q&A

4. About Abiquo

5. About Abiquo
 Our Company
 Founded 2006 in Barcelona by Diego Mariño and Xavier
Fernández
 Our Team
 Pete Malcolm, CEO
 Trevor Chamberlain, VP Business Development
 Xavier Fernández, Founder and VP Engineering
 Helena Torras, VP Operations
 Diego Parrilla, VP Product Management
 Steve Soechtig, VP Global Sales
 Nick Wetton, VP Regional Sales

6. About Abiquo
 Our Technology
 Abiquo product development commenced early 2008
 First open source pre-release April 2009
 Over 15,000 downloads
 Formal 1.0.0 release February 2010
 Our Mission
Become a leading vendor of groundbreaking virtualization
management solutions, liberating both IT organizations and
the users they serve, while increasing business agility,
efficiency, and reducing cost.

7. The Cloud Dream
and
Virtualization 1.0

8. The Cloud Dream
Cloud Computing is the ideal solution for users & providers
 Cloud Users
 No upfront commitment, no CAPEX, only OPEX
 Pay-per-use, no long-term contracts
 Dynamic Scaling
 Physical location irrelevant
 Cloud Provider
 Higher ratio of servers per Sys Admin
 Higher efficiency
 Built on top of commoditized hardware

9. Virtualization 1.0 Issues
The Cloud created additional problems, including:
 High Provisioning Effort = IT Bottleneck
 Poor Capacity Planning and Utilization
 Vendor Lock-In
 Low-efficiency Virtual Server Sprawl
 Security and Compliance Concerns

10. The Cloud Nightmare
Examples of Common Problems:
“Our Cloud Provider SLA is not meeting our needs, but there is
no easy way to move our solution to another provider.”
“We had all of our project data stored virtually, but the hosting
provider corrupted it. How can we trust the cloud for future
projects?”
“I developed my solution on top of an existing platform, which
was sold to another company. Now I have 30 days to remove
all aspects of my solution and have no control over it.”
“There are new players in the Cloud Provider arena that we
might want to try, but it is impossible to transfer our servers and
data.”

11. Vendor Lock-In

12. What is Vendor Lock-in?
 Reliant on one vendor and cannot switch to another vendor
without substantial costs
 No alternative if the vendor fails or the product is no longer
viable
 Cloud Users risk being completely reliant on one vendor
 Cloud Providers are limited to customers that only want to use
the vendor they support
“#2 Obstacle for Adoption and Growth of Cloud Computing:
The degree of difficulty associated with moving an application from one
cloud provider to another, to your datacenter, or simply take your data
out of the cloud.”
Above the Clouds: A Berkeley View of Cloud Computing

13. Vendor Lock-in
Impacts on the Cloud User:
 Lock-in prevents three crucial benefits of cloud computing:
Portability
Interoperability
Federation

14. Infrastructure Lock-in
Impacts on the Cloud Vendor:
 Vendor lock-in does not allow you to change any of your
providers during the Platform’s lifetime.
 A Cloud Platform is composed of:
 Servers
 Storage Systems
 Networking devices
 Hypervisors
 Monitoring tools
 Cloud Management Software
 The lifespan of a Cloud Platform can last many years.

15. The Abiquo Vision

16. Vision

17. Our Vision
To build a product that enables Cloud Providers to:
 Choose their infrastructure, including:
 Servers
 Hypervisors
 Open-source and proprietary solutions
 Storage Array Networks
 Networking devices
 Provide elasticity
 Leverage existing systems and resources
 Mix different technologies and make them interoperable

18. Our Vision
Cloud Users should be able to:
 Import existing Standard (gold) images
 Use any infrastructure of their choice
 Manage Global Resources from one dashboard
 Manage the platform using different types of APIs
 Portability
 Interoperability
 Federation

19. The Abiquo Solution

20. The Abiquo Solution
Revolutionary Cloud Management
 Vendor independent
 Supports ESX, ESXi, Xen, Xen Server, KVM, Hyper-V
 Virtual-to-virtual (V2V) conversion between all hypervisors
 Enterprise class
 Standards-based
 Policy-driven
 Multi-tenancy delegated control
 Manages private and public clouds

21. The Abiquo Solution
Background information
 Developed in Java, C (Cloud Nodes) and Flex (interface)
 MySQL as the database backend
 Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
 Abiquo Enterprise Edition codebase extends the Abiquo
Community Edition
 Standards:
 OVF
 WS-Management / CIM resources
 Stateless architecture (horizontal scalability)

22. The Abiquo Solution
Use of standards and APIs effectively
overcomes lock-in and achieves:
Portability Federation
Interoperability

23. The Abiquo EE Architecture

24. The Abiquo EE Architecure

25. Infrastructure Interfaces

26. Multiple Technologies, Same DC
 Abiquo can manage multiple virtualization technologies in the
same Data Center
 New technology can be added or removed at any time
 Any change in the Infrastructure does not impact the Cloud
Services Layer or the Cloud Interfaces Layer

27. Datacenter Deployment
A basic deployment is composed of:
multi-datacenter deployment is composed of:
A Datacenter Abstraction Layer
 >1 Datacenter Abstraction Layers
A Cloud Services Layer
 A Cloud Services Layer (always)
A Cloud Interfaces Layer
 A Cloud Interfaces Layer (always)
Cloud Interfaces Layer Cloud Interfaces
Cloud Services Layer Cloud Services
Remote Remote Remote Remote
Services Services Services Services

28. Single Datacenter Deployment

29. Multi Datacenter Deployment

30. Infrastructure Vendor Lock-in
Problem Abiquo Alternative
 Unique provider for long-term contracts  Choose the technology based on your
own criteria
 Existing contracts with providers, but new  Choose from a list of existing plugins, or
Cloud Platforms does not support them. develop a custom-made plugin for the
product.
 End-of-Lifecycle products  Migrate existing products with the new V2V
features
 Cannot define different Quality of services  Different technologies can be mixed in a
depending on the underlying hardware. single datacenter.
 Propietary solutions  Based on the opensource version, Abiquo
Community Edition
 SOA oriented, REST interfaces

31. Open Clouds are
Standards-Based

32. The Open Cloud Manifesto
Principles of an Open Cloud
1. Open collaboration
2. No platform vendor lock-in
3. Use and adopt existing standards
4. Promote innovation
5. Customer-driven
6. Collaboration to prevent open-source effort overlap

33. Open Clouds
Required Features
 Portability: move a cloud solution (apps, data, network,
config)to other Cloud Platform than the one that it was
created
 Interoperability: use the services of more than one Cloud
Platform
 Federation: Cloud Platforms can talk to each
other to offer interoperability or transparency

34. The Abiquo Architecture (revisited)
Background Information
 Developed in Java, C (Cloud Nodes) and Flex (interface)
 MySQL as the database backend
 Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
 Abiquo Enterprise Edition codebase extends the Abiquo
Community Edition
 Standards:
 OVF
 WS-Management / CIM resources
 API based on vCloud 0.9 (beta)
 Stateless architecture (horizontal scalability)

35. The Abiquo Solution
Use of standards effectively overcomes lock-in
and achieves:
Portability Federation
Interoperability

36. Portability via OVF
Open Virtualization Format (OVF) enables people to move a cloud
solution (apps, data, network, config) from one Cloud Platform to
another.
 Packaging and distributing virtual appliances
 Software to be run in virtual machines
 Not tied to any particular hypervisor or processor architecture
 An OVF Package contains one or more virtual systems
 Can be deployed to several virtual machines
 Supported by DMTF
OVF is the only open standard getting traction in the industry and
community

37. OVF Use Case
 Virtual Machine(s) Cloud
running in Cloud Provider
“A”
Provider “A”
OVF
 The user packages
the Virtual Machine in
OVF Format
 The user moves the
OVF Package to Cloud
Cloud Provider “B” Provider
“B”

38. Q&A