Running OpenStack on Amazon AWS

Alex Fishman,Ravello Systems

Twitter: @ravellosystems

04/12/2023 2

Agenda

• OpenStack for developers • Trying out different OpenStack vendors/flavors/configurations

• Bringing the gap between OpenStack and public clouds

• Demo of OpenStack on Amazon AWS• Use cases

Ravello Systems, Inc.

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OpenStack is a cool platform but…

• Time consuming to install and try• Requires dedicated hardware that is not always available• Many different versions and flavors, can be hard to choose from

• Network configuration is complicated

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Deploying OpenStack dev/test environments

• Local dev environments– Flexible for development– Easy to setup and tweak– Not nearly powerful enough to run multi node setups 

• In a lab– Powerful hardware– Limited resources– Time consuming– Costly

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So why not using public cloud?

• Unlimited compute resources• Spinning new VMs is quick and easy• Pay as you go: much more economical for short term usage than dedicated hardware

Amazon AWS,Google GCE,Rackspace Cloud,…

Amazon AWS,Google GCE,Rackspace Cloud,…

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But…

• Compute nodes require dedicated hypervisor support

• Only trivial network configuration is available

• Replicating multi node OpenStack applications is hard 

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Nevertheless…

There are attempts to utilize a public cloud• Devstack– Can be deployed on a single VM– Slow because of Qemu

• NanoStack, Osones– Multi node but inflexible configuration/feature wise– Slow because of Qemu

So? We cannot deploy custom OpenStack environments on a 

public cloud?

Yes you can!

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Bridging the gap

• Nested virtualization• Overlay network• Saving & replicating of complex environments

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The evolution of virtualization

x86

OS

x86

Hypervisor

x86

Hypervisor

OS

1:1 physical server virtualization nested virtualization

app app

OS

app

OS

app

OS

app

HVX

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HVX: Nested virtualization

x86

Hypervisor

OS

app

OS

app

HVX

• Built from the ground up to be nested • Binary Translation with direct execution• Supports 32 and 64-bit guest OSs

– Windows, Linux, Solaris x86, Android x86 … 

• Can run VMware and KVM guests unmodified on any public cloud - AWS, Google, … 

Introducing N^2 (nested-nested) virtualization

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VT/SVM implementation in HVX

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Hypervisor

OS

nested virtualization

app

OS

app

HVX

x86

Hypervisor

OS

app

OS

app

HVX VT

Hypervisor

nested^2 virtualization

• HVX can expose VT enabled virtual hardware 

• Can now run hypervisors like KVM, VMware ESXi, Hyper-V etc. in the cloud

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Overlay network

• Software defined network (SDN) • Runs on top of cloud provider L3 network

• Define any L2/L3 configuration

• Supports multicast, broadcast, VLANs, PXE boot, etc. HVX

web

OS

HVX

app

OS

HVX

db

OS

app

OS

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Sample OpenStack architecture in the cloud

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Hypervisor

Linux

NovaHorizonGlance

HVX

Cloud VM

x86

Hypervisor

Linux

Neutron

HVX

Cloud VM

x86

Hypervisor

Linux

HVX VT

VM

KVM Compute

VM

Linux

VM

KVM Compute

VM

Controller node Neutron node

x86

Hypervisor

HVX

Compute node 1

Cloud VM Cloud VM

Compute node 2

VT

Demo

Multi-node OpenStack/KVMrunning on AWS

Use-cases

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Use-cases for developer community

• Multi-node system testing environments

• Test environments for complex features (e.g. HA, networking, …) 

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Use-cases for OpenStack ISVs

• Development and test environments for downstream hardening and QA testing 

• SE (System Engineer) led customer demos 

• Professional Services led customer PoCs 

• Partner and end-user training environments

• On-line free trial demos

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Use-cases for Enterprises

• PoC/Evaluate multiple OpenStack vendors without allocating any incremental hardware– Include proper scale and system testing

• Staging environments for OpenStack upgrades 

• Test environments for OpenStack eco-system products 

Thank YouQ&A