OpenStack at Scale: Lessons learned from HP Cloud

© Copyright 2013 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.

OpenStack at ScaleLessons learned building HP Cloud Services

Blake YeagerDirector of Product [email protected]


What is OpenStack?


What is OpenStack?

OpenStack is an open source cloud management platform, consisting of a

collection of open source projects developed and released together which when deployed

allow you to quickly stand up an infrastructure-as-a-service cloud.


A Brief History of OpenStack

• Launched by Rackspace & NASA at OSCON in Portland, July 2010

• Original projects: Compute, Image Management and Object Storage

• OpenStack has expanded to include 9 “Integrated” projects

• The OpenStack Foundation was created in 2012

• Community of over 200 companies and growing

• Currently working on “Havana”, the 8th major release


OpenStack’s Mission

The OpenStack Open Source Cloud Mission:To produce the ubiquitous Open Source Cloud Computing

platform that will meet the needs of public and private clouds regardless of size, by being simple to implement and massively

scalable

OpenStack’s Three Opens:Open Design Process

Open Development ModelOpen Community


The Projects of OpenStack (Havana Release)Integrated Projects• Compute (Nova)• Object Storage (Swift)• Image Management (Glance)• Identity Management

(Keystone)• Dashboard (Horizon)• Networking (Quantum)• Block Storage (Cinder)• Monitoring and Metering

(Ceilometer)• Orchestration (Heat)

Plus multiple library, infrastructure, documentation,

continuous integration and other supporting projects


The Projects of OpenStack (Havana Release)Incubated Projects• Ironic (Bare Metal Provisioning)• Red Dwarf (Relational Database)Related Projects• Triple O (OpenStack on

OpenStack)• Moniker (DNS-as-a-Service)• Marconi (Message Queuing)• Savanna (Hadoop Provisioning)• Murano (Windows

Orchestration)• Convection (Task System

Service)


OpenStack Releases

OpenStack uses a fixed time release cadence • First 2 releases where on a 3 month release cycle• OpenStack now uses a 6 month release cycle with releases in April

& October

Prior to each release a design summit is held for developers and the community• Community meets and to discuss priorities and work for the next

release

Release are named alphabetically• Normally named after a city or county in which the design summit

is held

AustinOct

2010

BexarJan

2011

CactusApr

2011

DiabloOct

2011

EssexApr

2012

FolsomOct

2012

GrizzlyApr

2013

Havana

Oct 2013

“I”Apr

2014


What does scale mean to IaaS providers?


What is scale? – The wrong questions to ask…

How many nodes

(hosts) does your cloud

have?

How many regions or

availability zones does your cloud

include?

How many instances (VMs) are running in

your cloud?


What is scale? – The wrong questions to ask…

How many nodes

(hosts) does your cloud

have?

How many regions or

availability zones does your cloud

include?

How many instances (VMs) are running in

your cloud?

These are all

questions

about size,

not scale


What is scale? – The right questions to ask…

How long does it take to create an instance in your cloud?

How many API requests per

second can your cloud handle?

How many instances (VMs) can you create concurrently in

your cloud?




Planning your OpenStack deployment


Per availability zone deployment model

AZ1 AZ2 AZ3

Region A

Nova, Glance, Cinder & Network



Swift

Keystone

Compute Nodes

Compute Nodes

Compute Nodes


Per availability zone deployment model

• Each control plane is fully isolated, good for

availability

• Control plane is easier to scale, good for scalability

• But, the overall user experience suffers…

• Images can’t be used in multiple availability zones

• Networks and IP addresses can span multiple

availability zones


Per region deployment model with host aggregates

AZ1 AZ2 AZ3

Region A

Swift

Keystone

Compute Nodes

Compute Nodes

Compute Nodes

Nova, Glance, Cinder & Network Control Plane

Host AggregateHost Aggregate Host Aggregate


Per region deployment model with cellsAZ1 AZ2 AZ3

Region A

Nova “Cell” Nova “Cell”Nova “Cell”

Swift

Keystone

Compute Nodes

Compute Nodes

Compute Nodes

Nova API “Cell”

Block, Glance & Network


Scaling the OpenStack control plane


The detailed architecture of OpenStack

*Image provided by Ken Pepple under the following license: CC BY-SA 3.0

http://ken.pepple.info/


http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


Areas where it is easy to horizontally scale






Areas to focus on for improved scalability






Glance’s role in starting new instances

1. A request for new instance is received and scheduled on a

compute node

2. The compute node checks if it has a local copy of the image

it needs

3. If it does not, the compute node requests the image from

Glance

4. Glance then streams the image to the compute node

The ability to create multiple instances concurrently is directly tied Glance’s ability to

stream the instances to the compute nodes starting the instances


Pre-caching popular images on compute nodes

• Allows for fastest instance startup

• Allows Glance to handle only custom or rare images

• Compute node cache should be actively managed


Other key areas for scalability

Nova Database The Nova Database is probably the single most critical component of

Nova for scalability, size this component wisely

Nova Compute NodesA compute node will only be able to create so many instances at a

time without destroying performance of existing instances


Other key areas for scalability

Network Pick your network deployment model very carefully, VLANs and even a flat networking model are very hard to scale, a good SDN solution

will go a long way

KeystoneThe number of API calls your service can handle is directly tied to the

number of authorization requests Keystone can handle


Deploying OpenStack at Scale


Triple O - “OpenStack on OpenStack”

Goal of the project is to deploy an OpenStack cloud using an OpenStack cloud

Requirements:

1. Basic server management – Nova2. Bare metal provisioning – Ironic3. Orchestration – Heat4. Image Management – Glance5. Configuration – Chef/Puppet/etc.


Thank you!

[email protected]@Blake_Yeager

Technology

OpenStack at Scale: Lessons learned from HP Cloud