2. Cloud and virtualization technical architect with background in
the banking and service provider industry.
Specialize and great interest in:
Virtualisation - VMware vSphere, Citrix XenServer, KVM, Hyper-V.
Cloud orchestration – vCloud, OpenStack, CloudStack.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dagsonstebo
Blog: https://dsonstebo.wordpress.com
Github: https://github.com/dagsonstebo
Contact: dag@forseticonsulting.co.uk
The small print…
Any opinion or view expressed are my own and do not in any way reflect the
opinions or views of my present or previous employers or clients.
ABOUT ME
3. Why consider private cloud?
What are your options?
CloudStack
History
What is it and how does work?
Automation and builds:
Zero touch hypervisor builds
Automated CloudStack builds
CloudStack demo
Q&A
OVERVIEW
4. Why consider private / hybrid cloud options?
Choices:
Do nothing – stick with traditional IT:
Danger of shadow IT.
Lack of automation and orchestration means increased turnaround time.
Going fully public comes at a cost:
AWS: Windows t2.medum @ 2vCPU + 4GB RAM costs ~£500 / year
RackSpace: General purpose Windows @ 4GB RAM costs ~£1000 / year
Azure: A2 Windows @ 2vCPU + 3.5GB RAM costs ~£660 / year
Building own private clouds gives the benefit of quick self service,
automation and multi-tenancy within your own data centre.
PRIVATE CLOUDS
5. What are your choices?
VMware vCloud
OpenStack
CloudStack
Microsoft
A long list of others:
Flexiant
Eucalyptus
Joyent
OpenNebula
Nimbus
Abiquo
Etc….
Or – build your own……
BUILDING YOUR OWN CLOUD
6. Launched in May 2010 as Vmops, rebranded to Cloud.com.
Acquired by Citrix in July 2011. Donated to the Apache Software
Foundation in April 2012 and continue being developed as an open
source Apache Software Foundation project on the Apache License v2.
Citrix maintain their own commercial fork from the the open source
project, and have rebranded this Citrix CloudPlatform.
Citrix also developed the proprietary CloudPortal Business Manager to
provide a commercial front end for automated provisioning, billing,
metering and user management.
Version at time of writing:
Apache CloudStack 4.4.2 development version
Apache CloudStack 4.3.2 production version.
Citrix CloudPlatform 4.5.
CLOUDSTACK – A BACKGROUND
7. The list is long… http://cloudstack.apache.org/users.html
CLOUDSTACK USERS
8. WHAT ARE OUR BUILDING BLOCKS?
Cloud Components
Self service
front end
Cloud
orchestration:
Resource
management
back end
Hypervisor
backend
Storage:
hypervisor
storage and
object stores
Data center
network
Reporting /
billing /
chargeback
9. Features:
•User friendly web GUI to manage IaaS resources on demand
•Native API with optional compatibility with Amazon EC2 / S3 API
•Automatic management and orchestration of all hypervisor resources, storage and networking
•Full multi tenancy segregation
•User / domain / project management and accounting / billing
•Single management role (compared to OpenStack which need 8-10 service to deliver the same functionality)
Hypervisors:
•Citrix XenServer 5.x + 6.x as well as Xen Project
•VMware ESXi 5.0, 5.1, 5.5
•KVM
•W2K12 Hyper-V
•LXC (experimental)
•Bare metal
Storage:
•NFS
•iSCSI
•FC
•VMFS (vSphere)
•SMB/CIFS (Hyper-V)
CLOUDSTACK – FEATURES
10. Network segregation and SDN technologies:
•Basic L3 networks
•VLANs
•VXLANS
•Nicira NVP
•Midonet
•OVS – Open vSwitch
End user network offerings:
•Basic networking with security groups (similar to Amazon EC2), provides
guest isolation on L3 networks hosted on single flat L2 network.
•Advanced networking providing L2 tenant isolation using VLANs and SDN.
•Per client routing, DHCP, DNS, VPN, firewall, NAT, port forwarding, VPC
•Loadbalancer and firewall integration with physical F5 / Netscaler / Juniper
SRX
CLOUDSTACK – FEATURES
11. CloudStack management server(s)
MySQL server(s)
Hypervisors
Storage:
Primary storage for hypervisor clusters
Secondary storage for ISOs, templates and snapshots.
Networking:
Physical data centre networking
Logical traffic types across physical networks
HIGH LEVEL CLOUDSTACK BUILDING
BLOCKS
12. Clusters:
•XenServer pools
•ESXi clusters
•Sets of KVM hosts
•Hyper-V clusters
•Primary storage: NFS / iSCSI / FC SAN / SMB-CIFS
(Hyper-V) / VMFS (vSphere)
Pods:
•A rack or row of racks including one or more
clusters
Availability zones:
•Typically single data center or part of DC
•Contains one or more pods and zone wide
secondary storage
Regions:
•Collection of one or more AZ’s in close proximity
managed by one or more management servers
CLOUDSTACK HIERARCHY
Image courtesy of Apache.org
13. Virtual routers:
Handles routing for guest networks, routes between guest isolated
network and public network.
DHCP and DNS
VPN, firewall, NATing, and port forwarding
Secondary storage VM:
Handles export and import of templates, ISOs and snapshots
Console proxy VM:
Provides console access to guest VMs.
CLOUDSTACK SYSTEM VMS
14. Physical networks:
• Basic zone networking
• Advanced zone networking
Traffic types (tags):
• Guest: isolated VLAN or SDN networks.
• Management traffic
• Public: internet or internal intranet.
• Storage
Connecting to private LAN networks
• Client networks can be connected directly to e.g. enterprise LAN
networks.
CLOUDSTACK NETWORKS
16. What we’ll cover:
Automating hypervisor builds
Automating CloudStack build
Other things to consider:
Storage
Data centre networking and associated cost
Hardware choice – branded vs. white label kit
BUILDING HYPERVISORS AND
APACHE CLOUDSTACK
17. Why automate?
CD install ….
Fast and consistent builds.
Quick RTO in DR / BCM scenarios
Compensates for less technical teams with little time and bandwidth
Zero touch builds – why?
Minimal input to build cuts out error prone operations
Advance preparation
CMDB / inventory DB / source control CI integration
Scripting for hypervisors:
XenServer: relatively easy to create scripted installs due to full bash shell
ESXi: tricky due to low functionality ash shell
KVM: Linux build
Hyper-V: SCCM
AUTOMATING YOUR HYPERVISOR BUILD
18. Prerequisites:
PXE: DHCP + TFTP/FTP/HTTP infrastructure
Fully dynamic build scripts
Per host answer files
How do you detect individual hosts?
Known MAC addresses supplied by vendor prior to delivery allows for true
zero touch builds.
PXE menu host selection allows for single touch builds.
Puppet Razor was developed to do builds based on policies around
hardware detection.
Some examples:
https://github.com/dagsonstebo/Citrix-Xenserver-6.2-zero-touch-build-
scripts
https://github.com/dagsonstebo/VMware-ESXi-5.5-zero-touch-build-
scripts
ZERO TOUCH BUILDS
24. Management / MySQL server prerequisites:
•64-bit CentOS/RHEL 6.3+ or Ubuntu 12.04 preferred, 4 GB of memory, CPU cores
according to load, 250 GB of local disk minimum,500 GB recommended.
Configuration of RPM / DEB repositories.
Installation using yum / apt-get.
MySQL
•Can be installed on the same node as CloudStack management, or running separately.
•Configuration of CloudStack DB
Prepare the system VM template on secondary storage
HIGH LEVEL BUILD STEPS
25. Using Ansible:
https://github.com/dagsonstebo/CloudStack-Ansible-Playbook
All CloudStack installation steps in one Ansible playbook:
–tags=base: NTP, Selinux, CloudStack and EPEL yum repos
–tags=mysql: all MySQL and DB installation and configuration steps
–tags=csmanagement: installs and configures base CloudStack build
INSTALLING CLOUDSTACK USING
ANSIBLE
26. Base install is now complete – but needs configuration:
Regions, zones, pods and clusters
Primary and secondary storage
Network model – including network segregation mechanism
Public, private and guest network IP ranges, as well as VLAN / SDN
ranges
How?
Manually through the CloudStack GUI
Using CloudMonkey
Or again using Ansible – the following utilises CloudMonkey under
the bonnet:
https://github.com/dagsonstebo/CloudStack-Ansible-
Playbook/blob/master/cloudmonkey.yml
CLOUDSTACK CONFIGURATION
28. Expansion to further regions, zones, pods and clusters
Add portal:
Commercial offerings, e.g. Citrix CloudPlatform Business manager
or you write your own…
Configure reporting and billing
Increase resilience:
Add additional management servers
Configure MySQL master/slave or MySQL / Galera cluster
Integrate hardware load balancers:
Netscalers
Juniper SRX
F5
CLOUDSTACK – NEXT STEPS