What does it takes to bring innovations like private clouds to small and medium enterprises? In the course of this talk we will present our experience in creating a self-service toolkit for creating a complete virtualization and cloud platform based on OpenNebula, as well as our experience gathered in tens of installations of all sizes. From scalable storage (with benchmarks!) to autonomic optimization, we will present what in our view is needed to bring private clouds to everyone, what components and additions we created to better solve our customers’ problems (from replacing industrial control systems to medium scale virtual desktop infrastructures), and why OpenNebula has been chosen over other competing cloud toolkits.

1. Making clouds:
turning OpenNebula into a product
Carlo Daffara, CloudWeavers

5. The Cloud extends the traditional advantages of“ ”
virtualization platforms to scale-out software. It is an
opportunity to rethink hardware deployment ...
…it does not means that all clouds need to be public

9. http: blippex.github.io updates 2013 09 23 why-we-moved-away-from-aws.html// / / / / /

12. Why OpenNebula?

13. Four major platforms:
•
CloudStack
•
Eucalyptus
•
OpenNebula
•
OpenStack
Lots of minor ones:
Proxmox, Ovirt, Ganeti, OpenQRM, Enomaly,
Archipel...

14. Let's debate first about what architecture
we are aiming for. OpenStack & Eucalyptus
are modeled and structured around
AWS EC2, that is the clear market leader in/
the public cloud market.

20. Service Manager database 8-core 2.66 gigahertz (GHz) CPU 8
gigabytes (GB) of RAM 80 GB of
available disk space RAID Level 1 or
Level 10 drive*
Service Manager management server 4-Core 2.66 GHz CPU 8 GB of RAM 10
GB of available disk space
Service Manager console 2-core 2.0 GHz CPU 4 GB of RAM 10
GB of available disk space
Data warehouse management server 4-Core 2.66 GHz CPU 8 GB of RAM 10
GB of available disk space
Data warehouse databases 8-core 2.66 GHz CPU 8 GB of RAM
400 GB of available disk space RAID
Level 1 or Level (1+0) drive
Self-Service Portal: Web Content
Server with SharePoint Web Parts
8-Core 2.66 GHz CPU 8-core, 16GB
RAM, 80 GB of available hard disk
space
http: technet.microsoft.com en-us library hh524328.aspx// / / /

26. CloudStack 3.22MLoc
Eucalyptus 1.43MLoc
OpenStack 1.67MLoc
OpenNebula 190KLoc

30. I O Access pattern/ I O Characteristics/ Typical Applications
Streaming Reads 100 Reads; Large contiguous requests; 1-64%
concurrent requests. May be threaded.
Media Servers ( ideo on-demand, etc.).V
irtual Tape Libraries ( TL), ApplicationV V
Servers
Streaming Writes 100 Writes; Large contiguous requests; 1-64%
concurrent requests. May be threaded.
Media Capture, TL, Medical Imaging,V
Archiving, Backup, ideo Surveillance,V
Reference Data
OLTP Typically 2KB 16KB request sizes; Read modify,–
write, verify operations resulting in 2 reads for
every write; Primarily random accesses. Large
number of concurrent requests. When running SQL
statements in parallel, Database will perform
typically large random I Os./
Databases (SAP, Oracle, SQL), Online
Transaction Servers
File Server Moderate distribution of request sizes from 4KB to
64KB, however 4KB and 64KB comprise 70 of%
requests; Primarily random; Generally 4 reads for
every write operation. Large number of concurrent
requests during peak operational periods.
File and Printer Servers, e-mail (Exchange,
Notes), Decision Support Systems
Web Server Wide distribution of request sizes from 512 bytes to
512KB; Primarily random accesses; Large number
of concurrent requests during peak operational
periods
Web Services, Blogs, RSS Feeds, Shopping
Carts, Search Engines, Storage Services
Workstations Primarily small to medium request sizes; 80%
sequential and 20 random; Generally 4 reads for%
every write operation. 1-4 concurrent requests.
Business Productivity, Scientific Engineering/
Applications
http: gerardnico.com wiki data storage input output access pattern// / / _ / _ _ _

32. Some additional tips for Windows:
•
K M badly interacts with Windows 7 8 clock drivers, causing high cpuV /
consumption. Use:
bcdedit /set {default} useplatformclock true
and
RAW = [ type= "KVM", data = "<clock offset='localtime'/>" ]
•
“Default cirrus GA driver unsuitable for Windows due to pathologicalV
performance issues in text mode”
This is not a problem in latest K M, however having vga std is betterV =
anyway
•
For Windows servers with lots of small files:
fsutil behaviour set disablelastaccess 1
(equivalent to noatime on linux)
fsutil behaviour set mftzone 2
(adds another 12.5 disk space to the MFT zone)%
•
Disable 8.3 namespace creation:
fsutil.exe behavior set disable8dot3 1
(huge boost for dirs, files with matching initial names)

33. Some useful additions:
GateOne (https: github.com liftoff GateOne// / / ) a very efficient web SSH
interface, similar to vncproxy. Works well added as a link in Sunstone.

34. M ray (https: github.com coriolis vmxray): a pure javascript MV X // / / V
explorer, allows to enter inside of an image, view and extract files.

35. Some additional tools:
LibGuestFS (http: libguestfs.org// /) the swiss army knife of M images. AllowsV
for copy in and out of a M, file operations, mount guest filesystem on host,V
Windows registry editing...
S3QL (http: code.google.com p s3ql// / / /) a FUSE filesystem that mounts and
operates on Amazon S3, Google storage and OpenStack-compatible storage.
Supports compression, encryption and deduplication. Quite useful if you want
to move images to-from Amazon or Google.
IPOP (http: www.grid-appliance.org wiki index.php IPOP// / / / ) IPOP (IP over P2P)
is an open-source research development project that provides a decentralized,/
distributed overlay virtual network. It allows users to easily deploy PNsV
across multiple domains, and is used in applications including virtual private
clusters for cloud grid computing./
Only thin features added directly to the platform...“ ”

38. We use Ms to provide additional features:V
Guacamole (http: sourceforge.net projects guacamole// / / /) exceptional
gateway that turns RDP into HTML5. Allows for pure web-based access to
Windows desktops from everywhere:
Other examples: Zenoss for agentless monitoring (or Hyperic for agent-based
monitors), backup tools like OpenDedup...

39. A special note on DI:V
Jerry Chen of Mware is generally credited with coining the term DI whichV “V ”
led to the redefinition of an entire industry. Mware had 10,400 employees.V
Of that group, about one-third of them use DI-based virtual desktops as theirV
primary production work desktops. About 1,000 of them use a thin-client
device as their only corporate-issued client device.
First problem: Microsoft licensing.
“dedicating an entire Remote Desktop virtual server to just one single user is
cheaper than most DI scenarios and gives users the same benefits, namelyV
having their own Desktop M where they can do what they want. This single‘ ’ V ‘
user terminal server scenario is with about 475 per user (6 years) not only’ – $
60 cheaper, but less complicated and legally more safe than standard MS%
DI licensing. Decoding the Microsoft DI Licensing Arcanum, LoginV " V
Consulting

42. A useful trick: on hook RUNNING increase the readahead of the rotative“ ”
medium (blockdev --setra 2048 or higher); you can reduce the boot time of
a Windows7 machine by 35 . You time it to return to much lower values%
after a predetermined interval.

43. Apps are moving to be pure webapps, no client installation needed so“ ” –
you can skip Windows. Having the M ready to use also facilitates theV
adoption of new tools, and lots of experimentation. Locally hosted Ms thatV
export a web application are becoming the norm, and you can remote the
remaining Windows apps through RDP, so you are actually free to build your
desktop as you like.
Royal Academy of Engineering, The future of computing , 2012“ ”

45. We have our own thin desktop based on Linux called EveryDesk (
http://sourceforge.net/projects/everydesk/) that requires just 90MB
of ram per desktop, or for the more daring users:

46. ..you can use ChromeOS from Google. There is an unofficial build for 86X
and x86 64 available daily here (_ http://chromium.arnoldthebat.co.uk/)
that runs perfectly within OpenNebula. You create the images as
non-persistent, and destroy them later on.
Bt using a WB cache and snapshots to create the non-persistent images you
end up with most of the pages already in cache, so boot is nearly
instantaneous. Write are small and sparse, so you are basically CPU-bound
and can run reasonably well 10-15 ChromeOS desktops per core.

47. 38 , 5W, no moving part. Use Android aSPICE as a client+Autostart$

48. The MTBF of a standard PC is 30,000 hours or 3.4 years; for every 10c
temperature increase, MTBF is cut in half. Since in many pc closet the“ ”
temperature is 10 to 20 degrees higher, we assume a MTBF of 1yr.
4pc cloud: 4 failures yr, Ms on failed node are down for 5-10 mins - 20/ V >
to 40 min year, 99.99 assuming available power/ %
Availability per day per month per year
99.999% 00:00:00.4 00:00:26 00:05:15
99.99% 00:00:08 00:04:22 00:52:35
99.9% 00:01:26 00:43:49 08:45:56
99% 00:14:23 07:18:17 87:39:29

49. Thanks!
Carlo Daffara
carlo.daffara@cloudweavers.eu
Twitter: cdaffara