Architectures for open and scalable clouds
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The document discusses architectural principles for creating open and scalable cloud infrastructures, emphasizing tenets such as avoiding vendor lock-in, simplifying designs, and prioritizing security. It outlines various patterns, including loose coupling, scale-out strategies, and the importance of open APIs, hardware, and software within cloud environments. The report also critiques traditional enterprise practices, advocating for generic servers and flat networking to enhance efficiency and scalability in cloud operations.
Architectures for open and scalable clouds
- 1. Architectures for open and scalable clouds February 14, 2012 Randy Bias, CTO & Co-founder CCA - NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License - Usage OK, no modifications, full attribution
- 2. Our Perspective on Cloud Computing It came from the large Internet players. 2
- 3. A Story of Two Clouds 3
- 4. A Story of Two Clouds 4
- 5. Tenets of Open & Scalable Clouds 1. Avoid vendor lock-in like bubonic plague • See also Open Cloud Initiative (opencloudinitiative.org) 2. Simplicity scales, complexity fails • 10x bigger == 100x more complex 3. TCO matters; measuring ROI is critical to success 4. Security is paramount ... but different 5. Risk acceptance over risk mitigation 6. Agility & iteration over big bang 5
- 6. This is a BIG Topic • What I am covering today is patterns in: • Hardware and software • Networking, storage, and compute • NOT covered today: • Cloud operations • Infrastructure software engineering • Measuring success through operational excellence • Security 6
- 7. Open Clouds (briefly) 7
- 8. A Word on ‘Open’ 8
- 9. Here we go ... • Elements: • Open APIs & protocols • Open hardware • Open networking • Open source software (OSS) • Combined with: • Architectural patterns, best practices, & de facto standards • Operational excellence 9
- 10. Open APIs & Protocols 10
- 11. Open Hardware 11
- 12. Open Networking Published Networking Blueprints 12
- 13. Open Source Software Open Cloud OS 13
- 14. Open & Scalable Cloud Patterns 14
- 15. Threads • Small failure domains are less impacting • Loose-coupling minimizes cascade failures • Scale-out over scale-up with exceptions • More AND cheaper • State synchronization is dangerous (remember CAP) • Everything has an API • Automation ONLY works w/ homogeneity & modularity • Lowest common denominator (LCD) services (LBaaS vs F5aaS) • People are the number one source of failures 15
- 16. Pattern: Loose coupling Synchronous, blocking calls mean cascading failures. Async, non-block calls mean failure in isolation. 16
- 17. Pattern: Open source software Excessive software taxation is the past. You can always fork. Black boxes create lock-in. 17
- 18. Pattern: Uptime in software - self management Hardware fails. Software fails. People fail. Only software can measure itself & respond to failure in near real-time. Applications designed for 99.999% uptime can run anywhere 18
- 19. Pattern: Scale-out, not UP You name them and when they get Scale Up: (Virtual*) sick, you nurse Servers are like pets them back to health garfield.company.com attrib: Bill Baker, Distinguished Engineer, Microsoft * added by yours truly ... 19
- 20. Pattern: Scale-out, not UP You name them and when they get Scale Up: (Virtual*) sick, you nurse Servers are like pets them back to health garfield.company.com You number them Scale Out: (Virtual*) and when they get Servers are like cattle sick, you shoot them web001.company.com attrib: Bill Baker, Distinguished Engineer, Microsoft * added by yours truly ... 19
- 21. Pattern: Buy from ODMs ODMs operate their businesses on 3-10% margins. AMZN, GOOG, and Facebook buy direct without a middleman. Only a few enterprise vendors are pivoting to compete. 20
- 22. Pattern: Less enterprise “value” in x86 servers Generic servers rule. Full stop. Nothing is better because nothing else is *generic*. “... a data center full of vanity free servers ... more efficient ... less expensive to build and run ... “ - OCP 21
- 23. Pattern: Flat Networking The largest cloud operators all run layer-3 routed, flat networks with no VLANs. Cloud-ready apps don’t need or want VLANs. Enterprise apps can be supported on open clouds using Software-defined Networking (SDN) 22
- 24. Pattern: Software-defined Networking (SDN) • x86 server is the new Linecard • network switch is the new ASIC “Network Virtualization” • VXLAN (or NVGRE) is the new Chassis • SDN Controller is the new SUP Engine 23
- 25. Pattern: Flat Networking + SDNs Flat + SDN co-exist Internet & thrive together VM VM Availability Zone VM VM VPC VM Gateway Virtual L2 Network 1 2 VM VM Standard VM VM VPC Virtual Private Security Security Cloud Group Group Networking Physical Node 24
- 26. Pattern: RAIS instead of HA pairs/clusters • Redundant arrays of inexpensive services (RAIS) • Load balanced • No state sharing • On failure, connections are lost, but failures are rare • Ridiculously simple & scalable • Most things retry anyway • Hardware failures are in-frequent & impact subset of traffic • (N-F)/N, where N = total, F = failed • Cascade failures are unlikely and failure domains are small 25
- 27. Service array (RAIS) example: Public IP Backbone Routers Blocks OSPF Route Announcements RAIS (NAT, LB, VPN) Cloud Access Switches API Return Traffic (default or source NAT) Cloud Control Plane AZ (Spine) Switches 26
- 28. Pattern: Lots of inexpensive 1RU Switches Simple spine-and-leaf flat routed network Rack 1 Rack 2 Rack 3 1RU: 6K-30K VMs / AZ 27
- 29. Pattern: Lots of inexpensive 1RU Switches Simple spine-and-leaf flat routed network Multiple Multiple Multiple Rack 1 Rack 2 Rack 3 Racks2 Rack Racks2 Rack Racks2 Rack Rack 1 Rack 1 Rack 1 1RU: 6K-30K VMs / AZ Modular: 40K-200K VMs / AZ 27
- 30. Pattern: Direct-attached Storage (DAS) Cloud-ready apps DAS is the smallest failure manage their own domain possible with data replication. reasonable storage I/O. SAN == massive failure SSDs will be the great domain. equalizer. 28
- 31. Pattern: Elastic Block Device Services EBS/EBD is a crutch for poorly written apps. Bigger failure domains (AWS outage anyone?), complex, sets high expectations Sometimes you need a crutch. When you do, overbuild the network, and make sure you have a smart scheduler. 29
- 32. Pattern: More Servers == More Storage I/O >1M writes/second, triple- redundancy w/ Cassandra on AWS Linear scale-out == linear costs for performance 30
- 33. Pattern: Hypervisors are a commodity Cloud end-users want OS of choice, not HVs. Level up! Managing iron is for mainframe operators. Hypervisor of the future is open source, easily modifiable, & extensible. 31
- 34. Open Cloud System Simply Scaled Production Ready randyb@cloudscaling.com @randybias 32