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OpenStack & the Evolving Cloud EcosystemThe Cloud Has Changed. Ready for What’s Next?

Mark T. Voelker, OpenStack Architect

November 8, 2017

The Year Was 2010…

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A newly announced “cloud operating system” from Rackspace and NASA immediately stood out.(things moved pretty quickly from there…)

Why was this the right moment for OpenStack?

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There were (and are!) lots of other great clouds….And where is OpenStack going next?

• Chief OpenStack Architect @ VMware since 2014

• OpenStack Community: Interop WG Co-chair, OpenStack ATC & AUC, Former Puppet-OpenStack core dev, Triangle OpenStack Meetup founder, OpenStack Foundation Member #54

• OpenStack community member since 2011

• Unfortunately has no super powers at all other than ability to consume large quantities of donuts

“A computer nerd….is somebody who uses a computer in order to use a computer.”–Douglas Adams

Mark T. Voelker

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In 2010 we were already aware of how powerful this new “cloud” operating

model could be….

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Also: the world already had a lot of servers, and was well into the journey to virtualize them...

“…around 50 percent of x86 architecture server workloads [will be virtualized] by the end of 2012 [up from 16% in 2009]” --Gartner, 2009

“…by year-end 2010, enterprises with 100-999 employees will have a higher penetration of virtual machines deployed than the Global 500.” --Gartner, 2009

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Virtualization (& the networking, storage, etc advancements that came with it) had given us a lot of power.

If we could build on those investments and create an even more powerful cloud…that made a lot of sense!

Maybe even more important: the game was now all about going fast.

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More than just new tools: tearing down silos. Infrastructure at the speed of code.

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CapEx dollars could stretch further than ever!

Everyone wanted a crowd of talented developers. They’re available all over the world and there’s lots of them!

Developers are increasingly training with a relatively newly-accepted weapon in infrastructure: open source.

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But it turns out major technology transitions can be tough for organizational reasons.

• Rent vs buy? Actually a big change for budgeting models.

• 0% of CFO’s polled in 2010 thought giving everyone a credit card and letting them file expense reports for compute was a more awesome idea than an IT budget.

• Changing runbooks, tools, monitoring, lifecycle, and people’s technical skills adds up.

• Dismantling silos sometimes leads to friction even within strong organizations.

• Devs tend to specialize…just how big is that pool of specialized cloud-and-distributed-systems developers?

• “Software is eating the world” may be true, but it’s not a business plan.

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In major technology transitions, winning is rarely about using something new.

Success is about making the right transition to a new model.

So, it’s all about how you get there.

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And we picked up some awesome tools in the early 2010’s…

• SDN• ONF founded 2011• VXLAN & NVGRE drafts published early 2012

• Big Data• Hadoop widens adoption, Cloudera founded in 2007

and HortonWorks in 2011• Spark released in 2014

• Distributed systems• Zookeeper 1.0 in 1999• RAFT paper published in 2014

• Cloud• EC2 exits beta in 2008• Azure commercially available in 2010• CloudFoundry announced by VMware in 2011

• All this changed the datacenter:• East-West traffic eclipses North-South (return of CLOS

and leaf-spine networks)• Multi-tenancy• Much higher density, much more automation

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OpenStack gave us a way to incorporate both new and battle-tested tech together.

We could use familiar things and processes, as well as new tools and interfaces.

OpenStack’s integration engine helped us mortals make the transition to cloud.

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Truth time: why does VMware care?

We’re a software infrastructure company.Catching transitions is pretty much what we do.

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For us, OpenStack turned out to be hugely complimentary!

• Virtualization? • #1 hypervisor in the industry

• Storage?• Huge ecosystem of storage

providers with an HCL and loads of testing

• VMware vSAN• Network?

• NSX was one of earliest success stories for OpenStack networking.

• Just want the basics? DVS drivers too!

• Management• vROps, vRA, LogInsight, vRNI

• Billing• vRealize Business

• Ecosystem of third party tools• Massive number of existing workloads

Remember: it’s about transitions.

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It wasn’t hard to see the potential power here.

It also helped us discover all kinds of new things that we didn’t think we could do

before.

OpenStack helped us integrate it all.

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Let’s add that all up. What’s good:

FastDevelopers

Smooth transitions

Open Source

Open source cloud helps devs go fast & organizations make smooth transitions.

(There’s your hockey stick growth curve for OpenStack, folks.)

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So that’s how we got here…

Let’s talk about what’s happening next.

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This year I’ve logged over 170,000 miles traveling to four continents and talking to hundreds of people working with OpenStack.

I see two use cases for OpenStack picking up more steam than any others:

• IaaS supporting container orchestration systems

• Telco/NFV applications

Important note: other use cases are also appearing, and “traditional” ones are growing too!

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Changes are being made throughout the OpenStack

ecosystem as a direct result of these.

THIS.IS.EXCITING.

OpenStack is now much more mature and widely adopted than it was years ago.

It’s also incredibly flexible and powerful.

So what I consider to be a natural (and encouraging!) thing is now happening…

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OpenStack is specializing to address new use cases.

(without leaving existing ones behind)

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“Given time, every sufficiently good and flexible platform trends toward specialization.”

Consider Linux: it’s in your servers, your phone, your seatback entertainment unit, your nuclear submarine,

your router, and your factory robots.

(but different spins for different usecases)

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If you’re going to specialize, don’t do it halfway.(You want a new armored suit, not just a different helmet.)

That means you need the whole ecosystem involved.

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What kinds of changes? Just a few examples:

Things changing in code:• Extended EPA support• VLAN-aware VM’s• Cells v2 & placement API• PCI weighter• Improved SR-IOV support (such as egress QoS rules

for SR-IOV)• Improvements to Ironic and Magnum

Foundation initiatives:• Focus on composable infrastructure and improved

support for standalone services• Vertical interoperability programs• OpenDev conference• New and growing SIGs and cross-participation in

adjacent communities like ONAP, OPNFV, Kubernetes

Vendor ecosystem:• Deployment options from HA to compact• Migration of existing workloads• N+2 upgrades and longer support cycles• Hitless upgrades

How We Do Upgrades: Blue-Green Upgrade Pattern

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Load Balancer

• Zero dataplane downtime throughout.• Allows new control plane to be tested before going live• Very fast rollback• Allows for root causing of problems since both planes can be kept in event of failure• Skipping releases? No problem. Doesn’t depend on n-1 or n-2 compatibility in control plane components.• Eases addition of new components/decomposition since green plane is “just a new deploy”.

• Leverages existing deployment codepath == less complexity.

Mitaka Control Plane Ocata Control Plane

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We’ve still got work to do.

• Service chaining

• More scalability (up as well as down)

• Maturation of newer features

• Easier composition of infrastructure—run just the services you want

• Vertical interop programs

• Bugs sometimes happen

• Docs sometimes don’t happen

• Building the use cases, sharing what works

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We can be even more powerful with a few good friends!

• Many OpenStack community members work in other communities too.

• SIGs help bring our communities together.

• OPNFV, Kubernetes have developed/are developing standards programs similar to OpenStack Powered.

• Continued outreach will be important for OpenStack going forward.

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“Engineering is science spike with art and stirred with a dollar sign.”

Laser focused on cutting costs? Don’t.• Focus on delivering

value instead.• The CapEx fallacy• Get the transitions right.

Worried about ecosystem changes? Don’t be.• A good ecosystem is one

where bets are made.• Not all succeed.• It’s ok if some players

consolidate or exit.• There are zero

successful tech ecosystems where this hasn’t happened.

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If we look even further out: more changes coming in the infrastructure space!

• SD-WAN?• Unikernels?• AI and machine learning?• New security stuff?

And more of the same:• Keep the core stable• Keep the options compsoable• Flexibility is key

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Thank you.Let’s get to work!

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Any questions?