Leveraging VMware Technology to Build an

Enterprise Grade OpenStack Cloud

It’s Not Always About KVM!

Justin Giardina & Julien Anguenot

OpenStack Summit Atlanta

May 15th, 2014

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solutions

Agenda

• Use cases

• VMware benefits

• OpenStack + VMware

• A developer’s take

Who are we?

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Justin Giardina ( @jgiardina )

• CTO @ iland

• Open Source, Cisco, and VMware admin for many years

• Network geek at heart

• Cisco Champion, vExpert, Technical Advisory Boards

• Currently in charge of global cloud footprint and technical operations

at iland

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Julien Anguenot ( @anguenot )

• Director of Software Engineering @ iland

• Python and Java veteran developer

• Open source and open standards advocate

• Currently building a cloud management platform, API

and frontend for the iland cloud aiming at connecting

VMware and OpenStack services

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iland: cloud experts with years of experience

18 7 7Years delivering

IT Services

Years cloud

& disaster recovery

expertise

ISO 27001 &

SSAE16 global

data centers

The Forrester Wave™: Disaster-

Recovery-As-A-Service Providers

(January 2014)

Cloud-Based Disaster Recovery

Report (March 2012)

IaaS Best of Breed Award

VMworld 2013

VMware & OpenStack

Use cases, technology, terminology

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Religious Debate – No Thanks!

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OpenStack on VMware Use Cases

• Why it is interesting for us

– Cloud Provider, SLA’s, Global footprint

– Internal operations, Staffing, Efficiency

• Leveraging investment in existing infrastructure

– Don’t eliminate what you have

– Use existing architectures and knowledge

• Let developers be developers

– Provide services that they are used to – SDK/API/ETC

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Benefits of Using vSphere for an Enterprise• History, SLA, Support

– VMware recognition in data center space

– Support of verticals and compliance, i.e. Health Care and PCI

• Operations

– Scale, diagnostics, performance, troubleshooting

• DRS, HA, SDRS, SIOC, OPS, Log Insight

– Enterprise grade features for uptime, performance, and management

• Fully software-defined network stack

– NSX, vCNS, vSwitch

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vSphere Basic Topology

vCenter is the centralized management point for underlying

resources and metrics

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iland Pod Design

Repeatable, multi-purpose, pod design

Core components (vCenter, ESXi, Cisco UCS, Etc.)

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iland ECS Pod Topology

Centralized point for add-on services

Services considered “clients” of centralized architecture

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Iland

Pod

DRaaS

vCloud

Portal

Openstack

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OpenStack Integration with vSphereCeilometer Integration

VMware and community support and VOVA

Icehouse updates, Multiple Linux distro support

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Mapping to OpenStack Relationships (Some loosely, this

does not mean these are all integrated)

VMware SSO / VMware Inventory Service Keystone

vCenter Server / ESXi Nova

vCNS / NSX Neutron

vCloud Director Horizon

vCenter / vCops / vChargeback Ceilometer

vCloud Catalogs and Templates Glance

vCenter / VM Virtual Disks (VMDK) Cinder

vCAC / vCO / vFabric Heat

Not Native (yet) - DBaaS Trove

Not Native (yet) Object Storage Swift

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VMware & OpenStack

A developer’s take

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VMware stack offering same benefits to

developers?

Programming the VMware stack

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First Impression• VMware programming was new to me until beginning of 2013

• Acronyms are confusing (vX, vStuff, vBlah, etc.)

• Therefore documentation is hard to find

• Java w/ VMware fist-class citizen– Religious debate again

• Non homogenous API (acquisition of products, different API types, SDKs, etc.)

• XML and old style object model based API (vSphere for instance)

• Programming API is not an industry standard

• Very few developers out there interested in programming the VMware stack– AWS preferred although extremely complicated and proprietary

– Enterprise-limited developer community

• Developer sandbox & staging for infrastructure are complicated and time consuming to setup and maintain but are critical for developers: Justin’s profile required

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First Impression is Not Always the Right One

• VMware technology is mature, stable, robust and full-featured

• API / SDK are well documented, covering the whole stack and easy to leverage from Java based applications

• API compatibility is fantastic

• Release cycle for major products is long enough to anticipate change on legacy applications.

• Beta program of VMware interesting for partners to give feedback as well as anticipate changes

• Applications built against VMware stack works extremely well. If well implemented, of course

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Leverage the VMware APIs: Iland cloud ECS portal

Cloud management and monitoring portal leveraging vCloud Director,

vSphere, vShield Manager. Billing, alerts, VMware specifics (tools, VDC)

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VMware + OpenStack

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What We Like About OpenStack

• Open and (to become) one of the standard API for the cloud

• ReST API are modern, consistent across components

• Abstracting low level stack to developers

• Interoperability w/ 3rd party applications

• Pluggable!

• Not vendor-specific

• Programming language and tooling agnostic (exit the religious debate)

• Documentation: Python is the documentation?

• Culture & Community!

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Anticipated Challenges

• Resource pool vs instance-based models

• VMware vApp & OpenStack

• Neutron plugin for VCNS (In progress)

• Ceilometer: vSphere / vShield Manager

• Gradually migrating our own proprietary API to

OpenStack + extensions

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OpenStack

vCloud API

Iland API

Iland ECS portal

Developers

vShield API

vSphere API

Iland platform

Frontend

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OpenStack @ iland Cloud (1/2)

• No Horizon frontend for end-users (iland admins only).

ECS portal integration

• Support of OpenStack in addition to vCloud Director

abstracted out by our cloud management portal and API

• Provide tooling for developers against the iland cloud

– Saltstack, Ubuntu JuJu, etc.

• Contributing code to OpenStack if / when it makes sense

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OpenStack @ iland Cloud (2/2)

• In addition to infrastructure, processes, teams, etc. ECS

platform to support vCloud and OpenStack: evolution

versus revolution

• VMware backend and low level integration to remain the

same

• Building an enterprise grade OpenStack offering

powered by VMware and developer friendly

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Thank You!

Justin Giardina – jg@iland.com @jgiardina

Julien Anguenot – ja@iland.com @anguenot

iland @ilandcloud - iland is hiring!

Presentation and helpful links online:

http://tinyurl.com/ilandatl2014

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Helpful links (1/2)

• vCenter Server

http://www.vmware.com/products/vcenter-server

Programming Resources https://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/sdk_pubs.html

• vCloud Director

http://www.vmware.com/products/vcloud-director

Programming Resources https://developercenter.vmware.com/web/sdk/5.5.0/vcloud-java

• vCNS (vCloud Networking and Security)

http://www.vmware.com/products/vcloud-network-security

Programming Resources https://www.vmware.com/pdf/vshield_55_api.pdf

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Helpful links (2/2)• VMware NSX

http://www.vmware.com/products/nsx

Programming Resources http://www.vmware.com/products/nsx/resources

• vCenter Operations Manager

http://www.vmware.com/products/vcenter-operations-manager

Programming Resources https://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/vcops-pubs.html

• vCenter Log Insight

http://www.vmware.com/products/vcenter-log-insight

Programming Resources https://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/log-insight-pubs.html

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