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Private Cloud on Ubuntu OpenStack From POC to Production

CONTENTS 01 Introduction 03 What’s the fastest, easiest way to deploy Ubuntu OpenStack for production use? 04 How can I minimise cloud deployment risks? 06 How can I be sure that my cloud will deliver constant uptime for my mission-critical apps? 08 What is the best way to scale out my production cloud and add new workloads? 09 How can I manage and monitor my production cloudeffectively? 10 HowflexibleisOpenStackifIwanttocustomiseit? 11 Can I integrate an Ubuntu OpenStack production cloudwithmyexistingvirtualisedinfrastructure? 12 What are the organisational challenges I need to overcome to deploy a production cloud? 13 Nextsteps

Your Ubuntu OpenStack private cloud from POC to Production With Ubuntu OpenStack, you can deploy a cloud infrastructure on your laptop or on a small group of test machines to get your cloud strategy underway. However, the test environment is a lot smaller and a lot simpler than a production cloud, which means a proof of concept can only take you part of the way. To make the transition from an Ubuntu OpenStack POC to private cloud in production, you have to be fully prepared fortheorganisationalandtechnicalcomplexitythatacloudinfrastructure introduces to your organisation. Are you sure, forexample,thattheteamsthatcurrentlymanagenetwork,compute and storage resources are integrated enough to support a private cloud infrastructure? Can your proposed cloud architecture guarantee constant uptime for mission-critical IT services across a range of departments and locations? Do you have appropriate technical and end-user support in place?Andcanyouscaleandmanageyourcloudeffectively to support future requirements and business growth? Whilecomplexityisalwaysamajorchallengeinnew production cloud deployments, there are lots of measures you can take to ensure that your cloud strategy meets the needs of your business from day one. First of all, it’s worth consulting with technology partners, such as Canonical, who have deployed hundreds of private clouds, and encountered, and overcome, many of the possible pitfalls. In addition, you can benefitfrominnovativeUbuntucloudtoolsthatsimplifyclouddeployment, service orchestration, and other key processes. Finally, there’s enterprise support available from Canonical to help you ensure that your cloud services meet stringent SLAs for quality and performance.

FAQ 1: WHAT’S THE FASTEST, EASIEST WAY TO DEPLOY UBUNTU OPENSTACK FOR PRODUCTION USE? WhenyoutransitionfromaPOCtoproduction,complexityincreasesbyorders of magnitude. As the number of infrastructure elements, interrelationships andcloudservicesincreases,itbecomesmoredifficulttomanagethecloud and to understand the issues that typically impact performance.

As an additional challenge, the key elements of OpenStack, from the MySQL databasetothemessagequeueandcloudcontroller,canbecomplextodeploy and integrate. Failure to create the right relationships between cloud componentscanalsonegativelyaffecttheperformanceofyourcloud.

To ensure that all elements of your cloud infrastructure work together seamlessly and provide the performance you need, Canonical has created a reference architecture that helps you build a cloud based on industry best practices. To access this reference architecture, which has ensured success for hundreds of cloud deployments globally, please visit: www.ubuntu.com/cloud/cloud-tools/reference-architecture

Todeployyourcloudfaster,minimisedeploymentcomplexityandrisk, Canonicalhasalsodevelopedarangeofintuitive,efficientdeploymentandmanagement tools. Among these are:

MAAS Our hardware provisioning technology which is built into Ubuntu Server. This allows you to turn a collection of networked servers into a cluster on which you can deploy OpenStack quickly and simply. For more information, please visit: www.ubuntu.com/cloud/cloud-tools/maas

Juju Our service orchestration tool. This allows you to deploy resources and services in the cloud and establish relationships between them quickly and simply usingpre-written‘Jujucharms’,whichpackagealltheinformationneeded to deploy, provision and scale services. For more information, please visit: www.ubuntu.com/cloud/cloud-tools/juju

Therealcloud-buildingmagichappenswhenyouuseMAASandJujutogether to deploy an OpenStack cloud on a cluster of bare-metal servers. Once the physical servers are powered up and connected to the network, MAAS detects themandbeginstheinstallationofthebaseOS,beforehandingovertoJujutocompletetheirtransitionintoanOpenStackcloud.Aprocessyoumightexpect to take hours or days can be completed in a matter of minutes.

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FAQ 2: HOW CAN I MINIMISE CLOUD DEPLOYMENT RISKS? For most organisations deploying an Ubuntu OpenStack private cloud, it’s the firsttime,andthislackofexperienceincreasesrisk.Inparticular,itcanbedifficulttoensurethatyourcloudarchitecturewillscaleeffectivelyanddelivertheexcellentservicelevelsyouneed.

To minimise risk, many organisations choose to work with Canonical, which has deployed many clouds in production. We can help you minimise risk for your own deployment in a number of ways.

First,ourJumpstartservicehelpsyoubuildasmalltestcloudinjustfivedaysifyouhaven’talreadydoneityourself.WithJumpstart,yougetthebenefitofCanonical’scloud-buildingexpertise,andyoucanplaywiththeenvironmenttoyour heart’s content before you make the leap to production. We also give you 30 days of support with Jumpstart to help you address any issues that come up. For more information on our Jumpstart service, please visit: www.ubuntu.com/cloud/cloud-tools/jumpstart

Ifyou’rereadytodeployyourcloudinproduction,weofferbespokeengagements to help you minimise risks. We help you architect, plan, deploy and manageyourproductioncloudeffectivelyfromdayone,andyoucanchoosetoadduptoayearofsupporttothepackage.Ourcloud-buildingexperiencemeansthat we can help you deploy and scale your cloud in the best possible way, and meet your end users’ service level requirements.

If you are planning to make the transition to production yourself, you can still benefitfromourUbuntuAdvantagesupportservice.Thisgivesyouphone-basedaccess to skilled Ubuntu engineers who played a key role in the development of OpenStack. Ubuntu Advantage comes in three sizes: small for clouds up to 100 physical servers, medium for 100 to 500, and large for clouds with more than 500. If you choose to subscribe to Ubuntu Advantage, you’ll also get access to our Landscape systems management and monitoring tool, which helps simplify management of your cloud infrastructure and instances. For more information, please visit: www.ubuntu.com/cloud/management

Ifyourcloudisextremelylarge,Canonicalcanhelpyoureducedeploymentriskbyproviding a dedicated service engineer (DSE) or technical account manager (TAM). Thesededicatedsupportengineersunderstandyourspecificenvironmentandgive you a single point of contact for any issues that arise. DSEs are dedicated to justonecustomer,whileTAMsaresharedbetweenasmallnumberofcustomersto reduce costs. For more information on DSEs, TAMs, and other UA components, please visit: www.ubuntu.com/management/ubuntu-advantage

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FAQ 3: HOW CAN I BE SURE THAT MY CLOUD WILL DELIVER CONSTANT UPTIME FOR MY MISSION-CRITICAL APPS? Cloud POCs typically have little or no redundancy built in, which means a failure in any part of the architecture can cause unplanned downtime to critical IT services.Tobuildaneffectiveproductioncloud,allsinglepointsoffailuremustbe designed out to ensure critical services are constantly available.

This concept, which is sometimes called ‘design for failure’, means doubling up allyourcloudinfrastructureelementsandservices,whichcanbeahighlycomplexproposition.Itisnecessary,forexample,toprovisiontherequiredcompute,network and storage resources, spin up servers, deploy services and stand-by services,andcreatecomplexrelationshipsbetweenthem.Doublingupresourcesand services in an ad hoc way, though, will increase demands on your IT team in termsofdeployment,configuration,managementandsupport.

To help you build a high-availability cloud, while minimising manual administration,youcanuseJuju,whichmakesitfasterandsimplertodeploycloud services, double them up to ensure redundancy, and create the required relationshipsforeffectivefailoverbetweenthem.Inaddition,ourLandscapesystems management and monitoring tool gives you a way to monitor all the instances and services in your cloud, and manage multiple servers and machinesquicklywithafewclicksofthemouse,helpingyousignificantlyreducemanagement overheads.

Finally, but equally importantly, Ubuntu OpenStack infrastructure provides innovative features to ensure that your cloud services remain constantly available. These include the ‘node evacuation’ feature, which keeps your cloud running normally if a component should fail or to move workloads to other nodes whilst maintenance is performed.

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FAQ 4: WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO SCALE OUT MY PRODUCTION CLOUD AND ADD NEW WORKLOADS? Cloud-based apps can have a number of layers: typically a front-end load balancer, a middleware web engine, and a back-end database. In some cloud environments, it’s necessary to write custom scripts to deploy each of these elements, and more code to create the required relationships between them.

WithJujuhowever,theprocessofdeployingapplications(workloads)inthecloudandscalingoutexistingresourcesandservices,becomesfareasier.

Toachievethis,Jujupullsalltheinformationneededtodeployandorchestrateservicesinthecloudfrompre-writtenJujucharms.Thesecontainalltheinformation needed on how best to deploy the software or service you want, without you having to read any manuals on the constituent parts of your app or service. Once you’ve deployed all the elements needed for your service, you canuseJujutoaddrelationshipsbetweenthem.Inotherwords,there’sonecommand to spin up the front-end load balancer, another for the middleware, another for the database layer, and another to link them together the right way.

By automating service deployment and orchestration, Canonical estimates that Jujucondensestypicaldeploymenttimesforanappbyafactoroften,fromhourstojustminutes.JujualsoeliminatestheneedtobuildandmaintainalibraryofinstancesfordifferentUbuntuinstancesandcloudservices,andservesasdocumentation for all services deployed in the cloud.

FAQ 5: HOW CAN I MANAGE AND MONITOR MY PRODUCTION CLOUD EFFECTIVELY? In a traditional datacentre environment, it’s usually quite clear what hardware is supporting what applications, which makes the environment easier to manage. In the cloud, however, an application could be running on virtualised machines onanynumberofphysicaldevices,whichbringsspecificmanagementchallenges,especially as the number of instances and services deployed in the cloud is constantly changing.

To increase visibility and control of Ubuntu OpenStack private production clouds, Canonical has developed our Landscape systems management and monitoring tool. This allows administrators to manage and update individual virtual machines or multiple machines centrally, through a single, intuitive management console.

Every time a new instance is deployed in the cloud, it is registered in Landscape. This makes it simple to see how virtual machines are performing and where applicationsandservicesarerunning,withoutexcessivemanualadministration.For more information on Landscape, please visit: www.ubuntu.com/management

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FAQ 6: HOW FLEXIBLE IS OPENSTACK IF I WANT TO CUSTOMISE IT? The whole point about Ubuntu OpenStack clouds is that they are open. This means you are never tied in to a particular technology or vendor. However, if you want to swap out an element of OpenStack for an alternative technology, forexample,theobjectstorageenvironmentortheauthenticationmechanism, it requires some additional planning and resources.

Manycustomers,forexample,choosetoreplacetheSWIFTobjectstoragecomponentofOpenStackwithCeph,whichoffersamorefeature-richexperience,andsomewanttopointOpenStacktotheirexistingplatform (EMCorother).Atthesametime,othercustomersprefertousetheirexistingvirtualised server environment as their cloud hypervisor, instead of KVM, the most common OpenStack hypervisor.

AnothercommonchangepeoplemakeistoauthenticatethroughtheirexistingMicrosoft Active Directory. It is relatively fast and simple to integrate Active Directory with Keystone, OpenStack’s standard authentication engine.

While substituting OpenStack standard technologies for alternative components currentlyrequiresminimalmanualeffort,Canonicalisbusydevelopinganewinstaller that will automate the process completely. You’ll be able to choose to deployOpenStackonUbuntuwiththespecifictechnologiesyouwant–anddeployyourcustomisedcloudinfrastructurewithjustafewclicks.

FAQ 7: CAN I INTEGRATE AN UBUNTU OPENSTACK PRODUCTION CLOUD WITH MY EXISTING VIRTUALISED INFRASTRUCTURE? A lot of customers ask whether they can deploy an Ubuntu OpenStack cloud alongsidetheirexistingproprietarycloudorvirtualisedserverinfrastructure.There are many reasons for wanting to do this, from increasing available capacity or compute resources without additional software licensing fees, to maximisingreturnsonexistinginvestmentsinvirtualinfrastructure.Forsomecustomers,itcanalsobethefirststepformigratingtoend-to-endopen-sourcecloud infrastructure.

Because Ubuntu OpenStack cloud infrastructure is built on open-source technologies and compatible with established standards such as Amazon EC2 and OpenStack APIs, it can work alongside an array of other cloud infrastructure. This gives you the freedom to move between cloud providers, or create a ‘hybrid cloud’ to push private workloads out to public clouds on demand.

If you want to integrate your new Ubuntu OpenStack production cloud with yourexistingvirtualisedinfrastructure,thisisalsopossible.Forexample,Canonical along with VMware has developed new features that support seamless integration of Ubuntu OpenStack cloud infrastructure with VMware. This will allow Ubuntu OpenStack to use VMware technology servers as their compute platform.

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FAQ 8: WHAT ARE THE ORGANISATIONAL CHALLENGES I NEED TO OVERCOME TO DEPLOY A PRODUCTION CLOUD? Cloud deployments are fraught with organisational and political issues. For example,differenttechnicalteamsthatmanagenetworks,computeresourcesand storage must work together seamlessly, irrespective of their location. What’s more, the technical team must be able to demonstrate that cloud-based systems comply with the required corporate policies and security standards, whichismuchmoredifficultwithworkloadsdistributedacrossmultiplephysicalmachines and locations.

Overcomingthesechallengesrequiresorganisationstocarefullymapexistingprocesses and required changes, and conduct thorough risk assessments. In addition, cloud builders must carefully evaluate security requirements, and use OpenStack to create the required physical and logical divisions between internal and public-facing systems, and sensitive systems and data in distinct departments,suchasfinanceandaccounting.

BecauseCanonicalhasawealthofexperienceinclouddeployment,wecan helpourcustomersarchitectcloudsthatmeetspecificsecurityrequirements. In addition, we can provide support for process re-engineering and training to ensure that all members of the technical team are able to support the new cloudenvironmentandenduserseffectively.

Nextsteps Thecomplexityofdeployingafull-featuredUbuntu OpenStack production private cloud is not to be underestimated. However, success can be achieved by mitigatingcomplexityandriskwhereverpossible,minimisingmanual administration, and ensuring that clouds can deliverexcellentservicelevelsatscale.WhileUbuntutools suchasMAASandJujucanhelptominimisedeploymentcomplexity,there’snosubstituteforexperience.That’s why we recommend that you work with Canonical to ensure that you cloud meets service level requirements from the earliest days of deployment. If you would like more information about any of the subjectsdiscussedinthispaper,orifyouwouldliketo consult with Canonical to ensure the success of your cloud strategy as you move to production, please contact us at www.ubuntu.com/cloud/contact-us

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© Canonical Limited 2013. Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Canonical and their associated logos are the registered trademarks of Canonical Limited. All other trademarks are the properties of their respective owners. Any information referred to in this document may change without notice and Canonical will not be held responsible for any such changes.Canonical Limited, Registered in England and Wales. Registered Office: One Circular Road, Douglas, Isle of Man IM1 1SB Company number: 110334C - VAT number: GB 003 2322 47