This document discusses options for cloud deployment models for higher education and proposes community clouds as a solution. It summarizes a project called FleSSR that is piloting a hybrid private-community cloud service for research across multiple institutions. The document analyzes the costs of AWS S3 storage pricing and estimates costs for a potential community cloud storage infrastructure. It concludes that while AWS has economies of scale, a community cloud approach can provide specific requirements and flexible business models at comparable costs for academic storage needs.

1. Building on FleSSR Community Clouds for Higher Education Matt Johnson, Head of Research

2. Which Cloud model is best suited for HE?

3. The problem with “Pay-as-you-go” Clouds: Great for commercial services… Ad-supported websites, SaaS applications, etc.; On-demand Cloud pricing matched by increased site revenues; …Less so for “non-profit” services Sites likely to be information-based & non-revenue generating; Often funded by fixed budgets with limited flexibility; Variable Cloud pricing becomes an unacceptable risk

4. Which Cloud Deployment Model(s) for HE?

5. Which Cloud Service Models for HE? 1. Infrastructure as a Service Server provisioning Scalable storage Lower costs 2. Platform as a Service Bespoke development Research 3. Software as a Service Standard “utility” services Significant cost savings 4. Managed Services 24x7 Support Outsourced services All of the above!

6. A solution: Community Clouds Security Infrastructure is used only by like-minded organisations Server / storage infrastructure remains in UK borders Can integrate with the UK Access Federation Flexibility Pricing/service models tailored to academic requirements Shared investment in infrastructure and support Setup costs can be mitigated via trusted providers

7. The FleSSR Project

8. Flexible Services for the Support of Research Hybrid Private-Community Cloud pilot service Rapid innovation and prototyping approach Multiple use cases across institutions Will deliver both technical and business outputs Commenced September 2010, reports July 2011 Overview

9. FleSSR: Technical Architecture Eduserv STFC University of Reading University of Oxford Storage Pilot Compute Pilot

10. Prove the technical capability Hybrid Clouds do offer the required flexibility… …but it’s not all plain sailing! Prove the business case: Is there a demand for HE Community/Hybrid Clouds… …and are they economically viable? FleSSR: Initial findings

11. Why compete?

12. Public Cloud – Business considerations Data security Lingering doubts over Patriot Act / Safe Harbour laws No access for physical audits Commercial Lack of flexibility in procurement/payment models Lack of trust in longevity of commercial providers Service Levels Lack of flexibility and accountability Guarantees on availability, not durability

13. Public Cloud – Technical considerations Infrastructure Unknown segregation of customers within the Cloud “Hidden” costs such as I/O throughput and bandwidth Connectivity Network transfer can be expensive Lack of JANET connectivity

14. The Community Cloud approach To deliver a Cloud service focussed on education Customised service & pricing models Fully UK-based infrastructure To build on sector infrastructure JANET network, UK Access Federation Long-term planning and stability BUT… what about costs?

15. Storage Economics

16. AWS Simple Storage Service (S3) – key features 99.999999999% (“eleven 9’s”) durability Files are stored across 3 devices Copy-on-Write protection Regular analysis of stored data integrity 99.99% availability Clustered front-end API access Multiple availability zones

17. AWS S3 – assumed storage architecture Storage service Commodity mass storage servers no RAID within storage units Resilience derived from replicated copies of data Suggests that 30% of raw storage is usable ~90% storage efficiency per single storage device Data is stored across 3 separate devices (90% / 3) = 30%

18. AWS S3 – pricing model (February 2011) Amazon pricing model reflects its infrastructure costs: Data stored: disks, storage servers; Network usage: bandwidth and Internet transit; Requests: front-end web/API servers; Sliding-scale pricing Data stored: $0.14 p/GB to $0.055 p/GB Network usage: $0.15 p/GB to $0.08 p/GB Requests: $0.01 per 1,000 writes, $0.01 per 10,000 reads

19. AWS S3 – price example (for 1 TB of data) Assumes an upload of full dataset at start of year Includes updates (uploads) of 1% stored per month Includes usage (downloads) of 1% stored per month Assumes a 1 MB average file size Assumes EU (Dublin) datacentre Pricing calculated February 2011

20. AWS S3 – price example (for 1 TB of data) Data stored: $1,720 p/a Network usage: $130.56 p/a 1 TB upload of dataset: $102.36 1% of 1 TB (p/m) change: $28.20 p/a Request volumes: $11.32 p/a 1.12m writes: $11.20 0.12m reads: $0.12 TOTAL: $1,861.88 p/a (~ £1,160)

21. Possible FleSSR Cloud storage infrastructure Broadberry 4U Storage Server 95 TB “raw” storage for $30,000 (assume 3-year lifespan) Annual costs: $5,000 Power (PUE of 2.0): 35c per hour, $3,000 p/a Support costs: $2,000 p/a Three-year costs: $45,000 for 95 TB $160 per “raw” TB per year $530 per “usable” TB per year

22. Comparison of storage pricing

23. What’s not included in the FleSSR example? Overheads (firewalls, routers, security) Would be factored across storage and compute usage Shared services offer economies of scale Management software Amazon have invested significantly in this area… …but OpenStack Storage is OSS and production-ready Sales/marketing/training overheads When did you last speak to an AWS salesman?

24. Conclusions Amazon have a great business model… First-mover advantage, economies of scale, high margins …But there is a justified case for academic storage services Specific requirements and integration with existing HE services Potential for flexible business models Costs can be comparable with S3 We anticipate similar findings around compute services

25. Thank you! Matt Johnson Head of Research email: Matt.Johnson@eduserv.org.uk twitter: @mhj_work web: http://blog.eduserv.org.uk/ Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/eduserv/