Avoiding cloud lock-in

Avoiding Cloud Lock-in

Sebastien GoasguenGeek Speak Local October 23rd

Paris, France

Disclaimer

• I work for Citrix as a Cloud Computing Evangelist,

focused on Apache CloudStack

• Quite a few slides are from Mark Hinkle

• The Slides are in English because I would have

made too many grammatical mistakes in French

That’s what 14 years in the US do to you.

User concerns about moving to the cloud (from Rightscale, 2009)

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Outline

•Cloud Computing Definition

•Open Source, Open Standards Open APIs

•Cloud Standards

•Best practices for avoid cloud lock-in

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Google trends

•Cloud computing trending down, while “Big Data” is booming. Virtualization remains “constant”.

Start of “Clouds”

BigData on the Trigger

•Cloud Computing Going down to the “through of Disillusionment”

• “Big Data” on the Technology Trigger

NIST Definition of Cloud

•"cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.“ – NIST

NIST Service/Deployment Models

•Service Models:• IaaS (e.g EC2, rackspace)• PaaS (e.g GAE, Azure)• SaaS (e.g Gapps)

•Deployment model:• Private cloud• Public cloud• Hybrid cloud (Private than can use Public)

Deployment Models

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NIST Key Characteristics of Cloud•Elasticity

• Expands and Shrinks as needed• E.g Elastic Load Balancing, Elastic Map Reduce

•Measured Service• Utility Pricing. You pay for what you use• E.g $0.08 for one hour of small instance

•On-demand• You get it when you ask for it• E.g One api call and you get your machine, ~no

queue

•What ? Lock-In – Costs to switch cloud providers/vendors are

prohibitive

•How ?• Ability to build own private clouds (*aaS) with Open Source

Software• Ability to import/export data on-demand in non-proprietary

format• Availability of multiple providers with interoperable interfaces

• Open Source, Open Data, Open APIs

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Even vendors know that party is ending…

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Outline

•Cloud Computing Ontology

•Open Source, Open Standards Open APIs

•Cloud Standards

•Best practices for avoid cloud lock-in

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Open source•Consume on your terms, not

your vendors

•Transparency into features,

code, and process

•Vibrant user communities

•Multi-vendor Ecosystems

Apache Process•100% community driven•New ideas, decisions only taken on mailing lists.•Votes taken by community•Project led by Project Management Committee (PMC):

•http://www.apache.org/dev/pmc.html•http://incubator.apache.org/guides/committer.html

•Non committers get invited as committers:•http://community.apache.org/newcommitter.html

Apache Processes

Open data

•Utilize open formats

• Google’s Data Liberation Front -

http://www.dataliberation.org/

•Understand cost to (re)move data

•Test network between providers (transfer rates)• Or do you really want to Fedex your drives ?

•Look for Multi-Vendor Ecosystems

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Open APIs•Every cloud has an API but is it

copyrightable?

-- Oracle says so, Google says No!

•Defacto standard for IaaS is the Amazon API

•Cloud Abstractions can provide a “common

API”

•Abstractions keep your options open

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Why now ? Evolution of the Mashup Revolution

thanks to an API “explosion”

Software as a Service

API issues

CloudStack very extensive API

Open API, but really its own

Mapping from EC2 API to CloudStack API (but…not complete)

Similar situation with Opennebula and Openstack

API adapters to the rescue

Outline

•Cloud Computing Ontology

•Open Source, Open Standards Open APIs

•Cloud Standards

•Best practices for avoid cloud lock-in

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There’s nothing standard, about cloud standards.

Mark Hinkle –a.k.a The Boss -

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DMTF – OVF and CIMI

• OVF first official Cloud Standard

• Open Virtualization Appliance (OVA) single

file alternative, Virtual Box appliance.

• CIMI (Standard for Infrastructure

provisioning and configuration)

• Orange Labs has a CIMI implementation

called SIROCCO as well as a native CIMI

API in Java.

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OASIS TOSCA

• Topology and Orchestration Specification for

Cloud Applications (TOSCA)

• Portable deployment to any compliant cloud

• Smoother migration of existing applications

to the cloud

• Flexible bursting (consumer choice)

• Dynamic, multi-cloud provider applications

Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA)

• Cloud Data Management

Interface (CDMI)

• Tag your data with special meta

data

• Indicates to cloud storage

provider (backup, archive,

encryption, etc.)

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Official Cloud Standards•OVF (packaging of virtual appliances)

now an ANSI standard. Developed by DMTF

•OCCI (~EC2 spec), from OGF •Definition of Cloud from NIST now

accepted widely•cloud-standards.org brings together

main SDOs.

OCCI

OCCI implementation

How About the IETF ?

•IETF survey to identify “work items” in cloud standards (July 2012): • “This draft presents a survey of the industry work

items related to cloud activities. By conducting a comprehensive survey, work items in cloud standards can be determined. This will allow us to determine the IETF work that would be required to address the work items. Once these IETF work have been completed, seamless interoperability of cloud services can be realized.”

Related standards•HTTP(s)•JSON, It is based on a subset of the

JavaScript Programming Language, Standard ECMA-262 3rd Edition - December 1999

•OAuth and OPenID (for authentication and authorization)

•REST is not a standard, it’s an architectural sytle that gives guidelines on managing web resources

Open “Alliances”•Not standard organizations•Open Networking Foundation (Software

Defined Networking, maintains Openflow specification)

•Open Compute project (Former Facebook project, shares designs/guidelines for efficient data center)

•Open Data Center Alliance (User advocate)

Networking standards: OpenFlow

•Leading SDN protocol•Decouples control and data plane by giving a controller the ability to install flow rules on switches.•Hardware or software switches can use OpenFlow•Spec driven by ONF

•Google achieved 95% utilization of WAN backbone by using SDN

Outline

•Cloud Computing Ontology

•Open Source, Open Standards Open APIs

•Cloud Standards

•Best practices for avoiding cloud lock-in

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We have a long way to go to avoid cloud lock-in

• Nascent industry

• Lack of standards

• Evolving technologies

• Follow best practices

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Key tenants for avoiding cloud lock-in

•Easily replicable infrastructure

•Avoid proprietary cloud features

when possible

•Abstract APIs as much as practical

•Look for multiple vendor ecosystems

•Use open source software

Avoid SaaS Lock-In

•Know the consequences, SaaS has the most potential

for lock-in

•Unique apps will lock you in, no proxy for those

services

•Data should be free, export and back-up regularly

•Test to see if that data is transferrable to new services41

Avoiding PaaS lock-in

•Make sure programming models based on open standards

•Are there a variety of tools—IDEs, analytics, management,

etc.—available

•Do multiple vendors provide support and/or equivalent

hosted services

•Large, capable talent pool for the domain technology

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Avoid IaaS Lock-In

•Use API abstractions when possible

•Consider virtualization choices carefully

•Understand network considerations to migrate between

clouds

• Include other cloud providers in your cloud design plans

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Conclusions•Every type of infrastructure migration has some cost (time,

capital, usage)

•Interoperability/portability standards are evolving and

market-driven

•Good planning can mitigate lock-in risks

•Look at automation practices to keep pace with your

cloud. Look into Agile culture to build able to build and

deploy anywhere, anytime

Info

@sebgoa sebgoa on IRC freenodesebastien.goasguen@citrix.comhttp://slideshare.net/sebastiengoasguen