Josep Blanquer, Sr. Systems Architect at RightScale, led this session at the RightScale User Conference 2010 in Santa Clara. Session Abstract: Deploying in multi-cloud environments involves much more than just choosing which cloud provider to use. It requires seamlessly deploying parts of a company's infrastructure across multiple clouds that function in concert while spanning infrastructure providers. In this session, you'll learn about the abstractions necessary to deliver portability and ease of management in a multi-cloud environment. Some important concepts to address include image management, template management, mixed deployments and data portability. We'll present examples of multi-cloud scenarios and describe the design principles to consider when architecting deployments that must span and migrate across different clouds and providers.

1. Think Multi-Cloud! Josep M. Blanquer Sr. Systems Architect

2. Outline What do I 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 Conclusions

3. What do I mean by cloud? Services vs. Cloud Types vs. Clouds A cloud is a physical entity behind an API endpoint Amazon Web Services is not a cloud It is a set of services: S3, CloudFront, SQS, SNS, EC2, … EC2 is not a cloud It is a type of cloud, defined by a public API Eucalyptus, Cloud.com are not a cloud They are the tools that allows to create them, following a cloud type EC2 East, EC2 AsiaPacific, my private cloud… are clouds They are instantiations of a cloud, providing a service API of a given type An availability zone is not a cloud, it’s part of one

4. Where is my cloud in the wild?

5. Where is my cloud in the wild? There might be just a few big cloud players …but there will be a myriad of clouds

6. Where are my clouds in RightScale? Dashboard example: AWS, Rackspace and several private clouds in one account A cloud is first registered with RightScale Public clouds like AWS, Rackspace are automatically added Private clouds are registered by admins. Once a cloud is registered, a user can start using it By providing its credentials to it. AWS uses same creds for all its clouds, that’s why this is only done once

7. 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 not about choosing one cloud provider, but multiple Current focus: cloud portability

8. Multi-cloud: benefits Redundancy, disaster recovery and geo-presence Leverage unique cloud-specific services when needed Leverage public cloud cost benefits (cheaper and/or infinite) Leverage existing investments: private cloud Move services with bursty, unpredictable apps to public cloud Private cloud for red-tape bound apps Support varying levels of security concerns

9. 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, ACLs, … Storage architectures differ: local/attachable disks, backup, snapshots, … Hypervisors and machine images differ Supported features differ Not just by cloud type, but by cloud instantiation or version …cost models, billing, reporting…etc They are truly different applications, with different semantics

10. How to think multi-cloud? “Akin to designing your application using several programming languages” Deploy using cloud-specifics, design using generic concepts Utilize unique features when needed, but don’t lock yourself in Have tools that translate your concepts to cloud-specific ones. Not just the API calls, but higher level concepts like backups, etc. Design for geographic dispersity Communicating and moving data across clouds can be expensive, slow Think of how to share data across Global storage, periodic backups, live replication, etc Know if you’re designing for HA or simply for portability Tightly coupled HA setups look much different than isolated subsystems

11. 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 ServerTemplate Image Server 1:N I 1:1 I I I I runnable abstraction software config runtime config cloud resources

12. (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 Backed by the same mirror service to provide frozen repositories They coexist in mixed deployment listings, same filters, columns… They can be tagged, and configured in the same way Can be very different beasts, but they are seamlessly integrated ServerTemplate Server 1:N I 1:1 I I I I MCI runnable abstraction software config runtime config cloud resources

13. Parenthesis: What are ServerTemplates? Configuring servers through bundling Images: Configuring servers with ServerTemplates: Custom MySQL 5.0.24 (CentOS 5.2) Custom MySQL 5.0.24 (CentOS 5.4) A set of configuration directives that will install and configure software on top of the base image 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 Base Image Very few and basic My ASP.net (windows 2008) – security update 8 SharePoint v4 (windows 2003) – 32bit SharePoint v4 (windows 2003) –64bit Win 2003 CentOS 5.2 Ubuntu 8.10 SharePoint v4.5 (windows 2003) –64bit CentOS 5.4 Win 2007 Ubuntu 9.10 …

14. Parenthesis: What are ServerTemplates? Anatomy of a Server Template Example Server Template: MySQL 5.0 RightScript/Recipe 6 Initialize slave … … operations operations RightScript/Recipe 6 Perform backup RightScript/Recipe N Start all services … … RightScript/Recipe 5 Setup DNS and IPs RightScript/Recipe 4 Restore last backup boot sequence boot sequence RightScript/Recipe 3 Configure/tune MySQL RightScript/Recipe 2 Install MySQL Server RightScript/Recipe 1 Install monitoring Base Image Right Image

15. (Multi-Cloud) Server Templates They are software configuration abstractions Bridging the gap between the starting point (a base Image) and a fully configured machine Abstract Cloud and Operating System differences Chef helps in that regard Gather a set of user defined, high-level Input values Can partially help in the sharing of data Allow configuring servers always in the same or equivalent way ServerTemplate Server 1:N I 1:1 I I I I MCI runnable abstraction software config runtime config cloud resources

16. 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 Equivalent images don’t have to be identical They are versionable and publishable Are associated to ServerTemplate A Server launch will pick the right image based on its cloud mapping MCIs also define other cloud variances like Instance types, kernel, etc… ServerTemplate Server 1:N I 1:1 I I I I MCI runnable abstraction software config runtime config cloud resources

17. Multi-Cloud Images: RightImages RightScale maintains such maps (MCI’s) for all public clouds Wait, what about images in my private cloud?

18. Demo: Servers, Templates and MCI’s Quick demo using the Rightscale Dashboard

19. Data locality and mobility A topic a bit further down the road A big hurdle to overcome Because clouds don’t share data: they are isolated How can our app share data across its clouds then? External globally accessible services: S3, CloudFiles, Akamai, Dropbox… Transferring data snapshots across. Big data = Long time. Can be unpractical, not good for fast failover scenarios. Maintaining online data replication across clouds. Good for local reads, difficult for multi-writes. Good for fast failover scenarios. Using an inherently replicated service, that is distributed It is possible to achieve multimaster and replication, but at the cost of more complex tech 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

20. Multi-Cloud Use Case: portability Test & dev US customers(production) EU customers(production) … US customers(beta)

21. Multi-Cloud Use Case: portability Scalable, powerful and redundant All-in-Ones Test & dev US customers(production) EU customers(production) … Rails MySQL Load balancer Scripts and recipes US customers(beta) Rails Front-End Rails All-in-One Rails App Server MySQL Templates Ubuntu 8.04 Multi-Cloud Image Less power and redundancy Servers

22. 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. Think different, again! Designing/deploying/managing in multi-cloud is different than single-cloud Multi-cloud is a step further towards fulfilling the cloud paradigm