Practical Guide for Developing Enterprise Application on the Cloud

Nati Shalom

CTO

GigaSpaces Technologies

About GigaSpaces eXtreme Application Platform (XAP)

2,000+ Deployments2,000+ Deployments 100+ Direct Customers100+ Direct CustomersAmong Top 50 Cloud VendorsAmong Top 50 Cloud Vendors

2

“GigaSpaces exceeded our performance requirements and enabled us to build a flexible, cost-effective infrastructure”

“GigaSpaces has allowed us to greatly improve the scalability and performance of our trading platform”

“GigaSpaces has saved us significant time and cost”

Phil Ruhlman, CIO, Gallup

Julian Browne, Virgin Mobile

Geoff Buhn, Options Trading Technology Manager, SIG

2

A middleware platform enabling applications to run a distributed cluster as if it was a single machine

A middleware platform enabling applications to run a distributed cluster as if it was a single machine

Business motivation

• IT CAN’T KEEP UP WITH THE DEMANDS OF THE

BUSINESS

– Capacity planning is too difficult

– Time to market

– The business wants a quick and dirty way to prototype

– Cost saving

Source: Forrester March 09

The ideal world

The challenge with existing applications

Business tier

Back-upBack-up

Back-upBack-up

Load Balancer

Web Tier

Messaging

Data Tier

Challenges summary

• Adding additional resources dynamically

• No out-of-the-box infrastructure for J2EE

• Dealing with a lack of persistence

• Dealing with distributed programming models

• Having to think about the whole stack.  Not just the code.

• Using Memory Data Grids and Caching considerations

• Messaging

• Understanding configuration management tools

• Pricing and licensing

Source: Cloud Mailing List

How users deal with the current challenges

• Deploy multiple Web servers

• Deploy multiple load balancers

• Deploy several database servers.

• Another way of dealing with databases is to not use

them

Source Grig Gheorghiu blog:

Experiences deploying a large-scale infrastructure in Amazon EC2

•Requires a lot of effort in setting up the environment.

•Doesn’t cover all the challenges

Meeting the challenges

• Adding additional resources dynamically– Through virtualization of the middleware stack

• Dealing with a lack of persistence– Using IMDG as a front end to the database

• Dealing with distributed programming models – Use Remoting abstraction to simplify the distributed programming model

• Having to think about the whole stack.  Not just the code. – Use one common runtim and clustering across the entire stack

• Using Memory Data Grids and Caching considerations– Make IMDG pluggable and simple to integrate with

• Messaging – Use messaging over IMDG to enable seamless distribution of the messaging

• Understanding configuration management tools – Add built-in monitoring and management with the deployment– Automate deployment, scaling, fail-over to avoid minimal processes

• No out-of-the-box infrastructure for J2EE – Support JEE as a first class citizen

• Pricing and licensing– Elastic pricing (The Amazon model) - pay-per use, reserved instances (subscription, perpetual)

Expected result

Users

Load Balancer

Web Processing Units

BusinessProcessing Units

DBDBDBDB

Virtualize the Entire Application Stack

Solution Guidelines

• Avoid radical change, enabling a gradual process

• Choose an architecture supporting linear scalability

• Minimize vendor lock-in

– Enable application portability and freedom of choice of:

• cloud provider, web container, programming language, database

– Minimize API lock in:

• Use of standards

• API Abstractions – when standards are not available

• Future proof your application

- Don’t make decision today, but be ready to make one without major

effort

- Avoid long-term commitment – choose the right licensing model

Practical Steps

Val

ue

Effort

Web TierWeb Tier Remoting over IMDGRemoting over IMDG

Messaging over IMDG

Messaging over IMDG

IMDG as System

of Record

IMDG as System

of Record

ArchitectureOn-demand provisioning vs. static, peak-based

Parallel Processing vs. client-server

Partitioned virtualized servers vs. central server

Partitioned virtualized servers vs. central server

Savings

Examples

7 machines

(10 peak – 3 avg)

90 machines

(100 peak, 10 avg)6x machines 6x machines

Additional

Benefits

Self-healing

Basic caching

Auto deployment

Automatic failover

Map/Reduce

Async invocation

Location

transparency

Commodity HW

Low latency (in-

memory)

Fast& Consistent

response time.

Commodity db

vs. high-end

Step 1: Add Self Healing and Dynamic Scaling

• Dynamic scaling is the ability to:

– Increase (or decrease) your application’s capacity at will, on

the fly, and with no down-time

• Without code changes, use a standard JEE web app

• Self healing is the ability to:

– Automatically recover from failure conditions (AKA failover)

and restore the system to its previous state

Step 1: Add Self Healing and Dynamic Scaling

• Deploy the web application on to the GigaSpaces SLA

driven environment

• Integrate with a load balancer to enable dynamic update of

cluster state

Step 2: Add Auto Scaling Support

• Auto-scaling is the ability to:

• Automatically apply dynamic scaling based on SLA rules

(CPU/Memory utilization, requests/sec, etc)

• Use the GigaSpaces SLA driven environment to monitor the

application

– Web requests, CPU, memory, any other relevant stats

Step 2: Add Auto Scaling Support

• Use simple Java/Groovy code to trigger auto-scaling

– Deploy code as a reliable service in the GigaSpaces SLA

driven environment

– When the SLA is breached (e.g. average number of requests

per container crosses 100/Sec):

• Instruct the environment to increase the number of instances

Step 2: Add Auto Scaling Support

• Calculating average request rate (Groovy):

• Scaling up (Groovy):

Step 2: Add Auto Scaling Support

Deploying on the cloud using CCF4 XAP

ApplicationRepositoryApplicationRepository

MT Application ProvisioningMT Application Provisioning

IaaS Provider (EC2, GoGrid, VMWhere, Citrix,..)

App AApp A App BApp B

Application Deployment Configuration

Application Deployment Configuration

2)Deploy2)Deploy

1)Install1)InstallProvisionProvision

3)Manage3)Manage

Application Deployment Configuration

<cloud-config>

<cloud-name>my-app</cloud-name>

<gsc-numof-machines>10</gsc-numof-machines>

<gsc-per-machine>1</gsc-per-machine>

<alternate-s3-source-dir>myapplicationfiles</..>

<gigaspaces-version-id>662ga3100ct233</…>

<processing-units>

<processing-unit>

<name>$CPD/myApp.war</name>

<deploy-options/>

</processing-unit>

</processing-units>

</cloud-config>

Amount of machines to start initially

Amount of machines to start initially

Application To deploy

Application To deploy

Application RepositoryApplication Repository

GigaSpaces Cloud Customers

• Large UK Telco Company

– Deploying discrete stand alone services in the Cloud

– More cost effective; easier to outsource; enabled by secure service interface

• Large Global Telco Company

– Deploying carrier grade VOIP service to the Cloud

– New SaaS business model; New revenue stream

• Global Media Company

– Using the Cloud to process events for innovative new TV programme

– Cloud makes concept cost effective

• Financial Services Start-up

– Using the Cloud for a trading exchange

– Cloud lowers barrier to entry and makes proposition possible

• Online Gaming Company

– Using the Cloud for testing and scaling

– Able to test large scale user support early / easy on cloud, hard otherwise

• Enterprise applications can run on the cloud today:

– No need to re-write your application

– Preventing lock-in to specific cloud provider

– Enabling seamless portability between your local

environment to cloud environment 

• Choose simple applications first

– Avoid dealing with complex security issues

– Application with Clear path to ROI (Fluctuating load,

large scale testing, DR,..)

Key Takeaways

GigaSpaces XAP 7.0 (EA):GigaSpaces XAP 7.0 (EA):http://

www.gigaspaces.com/wiki/display/RN/GigaSpaces+7.0.0+Early+Acces

GigaSpaces XAP Product Overview:GigaSpaces XAP Product Overview:http://www.gigaspaces.com/wiki/display/XAP7/Concepts http://www.gigaspaces.com/wiki/display/XAP7/Concepts

GigaSpaces XAP for Web Applications: GigaSpaces XAP for Web Applications: http://www.gigaspaces.com/wiki/display/XAP66/Scaling+Your+Web+Applicationhttp://www.gigaspaces.com/wiki/display/XAP66/Scaling+Your+Web+Application

Try It Today on the Cloud Try It Today on the Cloud http://www.gigaspaces.com/mycloud http://www.gigaspaces.com/mycloud

http://www.gigaspaces.com/mycloud-stg http://www.gigaspaces.com/mycloud-stg