RightScale Webinar: February 9, 2010 – In this Webinar, RightScale founder Thorsten von Eicken walks you through the differences between RightScale's ServerTemplate technology and machine images. During the live demonstration, see how ServerTemplates allow you to deploy agile, automated and predictable IT infrastructure in the cloud using RightScale. We also present research on how much time our customers have saved by utilizing this technology.
23. ServerTemplates Alternative Modular building block approach Configuration scripts (RightScripts) Chef cookbooks & recipes A ServerTemplate defines what goes onto a server Software configuration management Default server characteristics, e.g. EC2 instance type Monitoring & alert configuration It’s a template –> it can be instantiated many times Benefits ▬> Modular + Transparent + Dynamic
33. Demo – Dev/Test/Prod ServerTemplates alerts api servers web servers databases EC2 cloud load balancers daemons
34. Demo – Dev/Test/Prod ServerTemplates Production Staging Test Developer load bal apache apache app server app server app server api server all-in-one backgrnd backgrnd backgrnd database database database
42. Impact on Initial Deployment Human Capital “RightScale gave us the ability to get up and running quickly. It would have taken three to four times the man-hours to complete our initial deployment.” Mobile Platform Provider “Since we have been using RightScale as part of our solution, our new customer deployment time has gone from roughly a week to a day – a time savings of about 85%.” Internet Service Developer Initial Deployment Efficiency Gains 67-85% Cloud APIs or Consoles RightScale Time
43. Impact on Ongoing Maintenance “We would spend twice the time managing our cloud deployments without RightScale.” Research Institute "Starting with an existing deployment takes the time to deploy a new application to minutes, literally a reduction in cycle time.” Major pharmaceutical Human Capital Initial Deployment Ongoing Maintenance Efficiency Gains 67-85% Cloud APIs or Consoles Efficiency Gains 50-90% RightScale Time
47. Dynamically Configure with ServerTemplates Create agile, automated, and predictable IT infrastructure Dynamically configure servers at run-time Abstract role and behavior from cloud infrastructure Modular and variable-based for easy maintenance Launch predictable infrastructure Portable
48. Agile = automate and benefit! From boot to production on auto-pilot Across different stacks & different clouds Auto-failover, auto-restart, auto-scale “Deploy faster, better, and cheaper than your competitors” Agile Deployment
49. Next Generation Server Architecture “Cloud-ready” servers More than just running a bundled image Dynamic vs. static configuration Leverage one server model across different deployments Replicable design Complete lifecycle management … version control RightScale ServerTemplates
50. Base OS image plus the intelligence to run RightScripts Boot, Operational and Decommission Scripts Configure instances during boot time including installing software and passing environment variables Reconfiguration with Operational scripts Decommission scripts Library of RightScale and Partner Templates or create your own RightScale ServerTemplates
51. ServerTemplates to create a redundant MySQL database setup RightScripts: Launch a new Master from scratch and restore from S3 Launch a new Slave and start replication and backups to S3 Master died: promote Slave to Master and launch a new Slave Slave died: launch a new Slave Attach EBS volume and being snapshots Manager for MySQL
52. A Day in the Life of a Developer Needs to deploy his code to a set of running instances in the cloud so others can use it Create a deployment Make a change and re-deploy Oops—need to roll-back … versioning Clone the deployment Maintenance
Editor's Notes
Good morning and welcome to our webinar, Creating Agile and Automated IT Infrastructure in the CloudMy name is Betsy Zikakis, I’m the VP of marketing at RightScale. Before we get started we’d like to ask you a couple of questions. The results will help us calibrate our discussion to better meet your needs. 1. What is your experience using the cloud… (use standard poll)2. What has your experience been using machine images to configure servers? on a scale from 1 worst to 10 best… how easy has it been for you to:Create new machine imagesTroubleshoot problemsExecute routine maintenancePort machine images to alternative infrastructureThank you!
With me presenting today are: TvE, CTO and RightScale founder; as well as David Welch one of our Sales Engineers.We also Hunter Williams answering questions online. As we go through the webinar, please feel free to ask questions at any time. You can enter any questions into the questions panel at the bottom of the Go To Meeting control panel. For the ones that are applicable to a broad audience, we open them up for live discussion at the end.
Here’s what we have planned for you today… After a quick introduction to RightScale, Thorsten will talk about what it takes to really achieve the benefits of cloud computing, then contrast using machine images to achieve those benefits versus using Server Templates. David Welch will show us two demonstrations through the talk and I’ll wrap up at the end by showing you some of the results from our recent study on what kinds of quantifiable benefits our customers are achieving. For the remainder of the time, we’ll open it up for a live Q&A.
For those of you who don’t know RightScale, we have been helping customers manage their cloud deployments for over 3 years. Today, we have more than 20,000 users and have launched over 800,000 servers in the cloud. Our customersvary in size and industry – from large multi-national media, insurance and pharmaceutical companies, to online gaming and Web2.0 startups. RightScale is available on demand, so you don’t need to purchase any software, and we have a trained professional services team ready to help you learn more about RightScale and cloud computing, architect and deploy your applications, and help you when you encounter problems.
For our customers, the cloud starts with RightScale.Our Platform helps them deploy and manage their applications in the cloud by providing a layer of abstraction from the underlying cloud infrastructure. The RightScale Platform operates with an ever-growing list of public cloud infrastructure providers including Amazon and Rackspace and public or private clouds built with Eucalyptus or Vmware’svCloud Express. The platformoffers a fast on-ramp with proven, cloud-ready solutions; improves productivity and agility by delivering management tools and automation; and it offers complete transparency and user administration to keep you in control at all times. If you need to migrate to a different cloud for any reason, RightScale ensures your applications are portable.
scalable server arrayoperational flexibilitydynamic configuration -> servers fit into deploymenttest&dev flexibilityshow 3 different configurations of same building blocksshow diffshow upgrade
audit entrieshistoryversion control
Because of these tremendous productivity gains we are finding that Systems administrators can manage unprecedented numbers of servers. We even have one customer’s systems administrator who manages an entire deployment in his spare time. He manages 185 or so servers a couple of hours 3 evenings a week. If something goes wrong during the day, he gets alerted by RightScale, logs in, fixes the problem and then returns to his day job. Another customer scales weekly to support over 35 million users. It takes the systems administrator a total of 2 hours per week to manage this process. With that, we will transition to the Q&A section of the webinar…
RightScale’s ServerTemplates innovate beyond “machine images,” providing dynamic configuration at run-time – no more post-launch configuration! When a server is launched using a ServerTemplate it automatically configures itself in the context of a deployment running on a specific cloud. It automatically obtains the needed IP addresses, gets the address of and access to storage, checks in with load balancers, submits monitoring data, and collaborates with other servers in the deployment. While some of what our ServerTemplates can do could be programmed into a machine image, RightScale ServerTemplates are designed to do it automatically – no more developing or maintaining custom machine images.To do this, we have designed our ServerTemplates to include:A Base Machine Image which is stripped down to the barest level - the operating system and some hooks to RightScale. RightScale maintains images for each OS and cloud combination. You just select the appropriate combination for your app. Second, Cloud Configurations configure all the cloud specific resources required such as the instance size, storage required, security group, and IP address. Again RightScale maintains these configurations for each cloud. You just need to select the appropriate options.Because of this layer of abstraction, you worry about the server’s role and function, not the underlying cloud-specific infrastructure. The server’s role and function is determined by a series of scripts which you add that can be executed when the server boots, as it is running, or when the server is decommissioned. You select or write the scripts to load the application software, libraries, data … whatever is needed. You can leverage our libraries of ServerTemplates or write your own. They can be written in a number of common scripting languages (shell, bash, perl, ruby, python) or you can use Chef cookbooks and recipes. ServerTemplates are modular and variable-based - all the scripts, executables, and variables are stored outside the template. This makes maintenance much easier; you just need to make one change and it is automatically reflected in all ServerTemplates that use that script, executable, or variable value. This also enables automation. As deployments change, servers reconfigure themselves and new servers launch in the context of the current deployment. We’ll talk more about this on the next slide. ServerTemplates launch servers with the same configuration every time, so you are assured that you get the same predictable result. Finally, because the underlying cloud infrastructure is abstracted from the role and function of the server, ServerTemplates are portable across cloud infrastructure providers.