Using Open Source Software to align IT Demands with Business Objectives

Isaac ChristoffersenContributor

isaac.christoffersen@incommon.us

Washington, DC23 June 2009

Data Center Feng Shui

Self-healing from power, network and system outages

Enabling active participation by consumers in demand response

Operating resiliently against physical and cyber attack

Providing data quality and integrity for 21st century needs

Accommodating all computation and storage options

Enabling new products, services, and markets

Optimizing assets and operating efficiently

An effective and efficient data center must be responsive to the needs of the organizations that it supports and it must be built with a dynamic infrastructure

Between 2000 and 2006, the amount of electricity consumed by U.S. data centers doubled, and it is projected to double again by 20111

• Performing technology refreshes on entire systems which negatively impacts both budget and schedule

• Entering into vendor driven licensing agreements that do not accommodate changing operational demands

• Staffing profiles that address the symptoms of these problems, not the root causes

• Embracing vendor driven architectures that treat a symptom but worsen the overall problem

• Approaching space, power and cooling capacities despite efficiency improvements

• Failing to handle the increasing data and growing user demands in a cost effective manner despite Moore's Law

• Failing to satisfy scalability, availability and agility targets even though they have been industry objectives for decades

• Budgeting for long term maintenance contracts on components whose value depreciates rapidly

1 Report to Congress on Server and Data Center Energy Efficiency, US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

The design and operation of today's data centers are based on decades old principles. Technological advances in the energy efficiency, server virtualization, networking, storage, software design and data management are not utilized to their full potential.

Case Study: Commercial Web Hosting Provider

Initial Condition• 1100+ Individual Servers• Commercial Management software• Rip-and-replace hardware upgrades• Static and dedicated server resources• Difficult to upgrade software versions

Resulting Condition• Reduced server footprint• Combination of open source and custom software• Improved ability to seamlessly integrate new

hardware and remove unused system components• Ability to expand and contract based upon the system

workload

SolutionAn environment that delivers dynamic provisioning of server, storage and network resources. (IAAS - Infrastructure as a Service)

Deployment of new Platforms to provision Web, Mail, FTP, PostGres and MySQL resources. (PAAS - Platform as a Service)

The client was facing a dramatic increase in licensing fees from a proprietary software solution. In addition, they needed to be better able to adapt to the industry's evolving service offerings.

Key Open Source TechnologiesPlatform• CentOS Enterprise Linux 5• Xen (Virtualization)X• GFS (Distributed File System)G Red Hat Cluster Services

JBoss Application Platform• High Availability Messaging

(JMS, SOAP)(• Broker-based architecture• Business RulesHyperic System-S wide monitoring of system

events and processes

Open Source Installation and Configuration Management

• Cobbler• Puppet

Core Software• Apache• Zimbra

Case Study: Department of Defense Client

Initial Condition• New research project with constantly evolving

infrastructure requirements. This made it difficult to provision the data center resources.

Resulting Condition• Operational, multi-tenant environment in 30 days.• Small footprint (1 rack)

• Oracle 11G RAC Data Grid• Cobbler and Satellite Deployment server• RHEL Service Grid

• Rapid provision of VMs based on pre-defined Cobbler profiles

• Windows, RHEL 4/5 and Oracle guest machines

SolutionAn environment that delivers dynamic provisioning of server, storage and network resources. (IAAS - Infrastructure as a Service)

Deployment of new Platforms to provision Oracle database resources. (PAAS - Platform as a Service)

The client needed a low cost development platform that could quickly adapt to changing mission needs. The platform had to be capable of provisioning data and compute resources as well as reclaim resources from completed development efforts.

Open Source Installation and Configuration Management

• Cobbler• Satellite Server

Middleware • Metamatrix Enterprise Data

Services• JBoss Enterprise Portal• Jetty Application Server• Apache Shindig

Key Open Source TechnologiesPlatform• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5• Xen (Virtualization)X• GFS (Distributed File System)G• Grid Management (Conga)G• Red Hat Cluster Services

Expertise Data Center Infrastructure Solutions• Server Virtualization (VMware, Xen, KVM)• Storage Virtualization (CLVM, GFS)• Grid Architecture• Service Virtualization (Red Hat Cluster Suite)• Infrastructure Monitoring and Management

(Hyperic, WatchTower)• Provisioning and Configuration Management

(Cobbler, Puppet, Satellite Server)

Systems Development Solutions• Enterprise Application Integration, Message-

Oriented Middleware and Service-Oriented Architectures

• Web and Application Server Configuration & Tuning (Apache, Tomcat, nGinx, JBoss)

• Software Engineering and Design (J2EE, UML)

Enterprise Network Solutions• Network Virtualization• Network Design and Optimization

Database Platform Solutions• Grid design, implementation and tuning• Database Virtualization (Metamatrix, DB Proxy)

Industry Recognition• Lead Architect and Lead Services

Architect from team that won Red Hat's Innovation Award for Superior Alternatives (2008)

• Author's of multiple presentations and whitepapers including the “Grid-enabled Services Infrastructure” that was presented at 2008's C4ISR Conference

• Members of multiple Open Source Advisory Boards

• Frequent speakers at National and International Open Source events

inCommon, Inc. was started to advocate the use of Open Source and Open Architecture solutions in the U.S. government market.

As part of this mission, we seek to educate individuals on the value of Virtual, Grid and SOA architectures based on Open Source and Open Architecture constructs.

We work with clients to efficiently and effectively accelerate systems delivery while maximizing existing resources whenever possible.