Abicloud Technical Overview

Document ABICLOUD TECHNICAL OVERVIEW

DATE 28/04/2009

ABICLOUD TECHNICAL OVERVIEW

Page 2 of 17

1 Copyright Notice

© 2009 Soluciones Grid S.L. Copyright in this documentation belongs to Soluciones Gird

Sociedad Limitada. All rights are reserved. This documentation may not be reproduced in

whole or in part in any manner or form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by

electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this

documentation) other than in accordance with any applicable license agreement or with the

prior written consent of Soluciones Grid S.L. Any copies of this documentation must incorporate

this notice.

Abiquo, the Abiquo logo and Abicloud are trademarks of Soluciones Grid S.L.. Other

trademarks used may be owned by third parties.


Page 3 of 17

2 Index

1 COPYRIGHT NOTICE .......................................................................................................................................2

2 INDEX .................................................................................................................................................................3

3 OVERVIEW .........................................................................................................................................................4

3.1 INTRODUCING ABICLOUD.............................................................................................................................4

3.2 ABICLOUD PRODUCT VERSIONS.....................................................................................................................5

3.3 WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH ABICLOUD? .........................................................................................................6

3.4 INTRODUCING THIS MANUAL.........................................................................................................................6

3.5 GLOSSARY ....................................................................................................................................................7

4 THE ABICLOUD ARCHITECTURE .....................................................................................................................9

4.1 ABICLOUD PLATFORM LOGICAL OVERVIEW ..................................................................................................9

4.2 THE ABICLOUD PLATFORM PHYSICAL ARCHITECTURE ...................................................................................10

4.3 ABICLOUD SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS .........................................................................................................14

4.4 ABICLOUD HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS FOR TESTING DEPLOYMENTS.............................................................15

4.5 ABICLOUD HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS FOR PRODUCTION DEPLOYMENTS ...................................................15

5 OTHER RESOURCES ........................................................................................................................................17

5.1 COMMUNITY PORTAL..................................................................................................................................17

5.2 INFORMATION ONLINE .................................................................................................................................17

5.3 CONTACT ...................................................................................................................................................17


Page 4 of 17

3 Overview

3.1 Introducing AbiCloud

Abicloud is an open source infrastructure software for the creation and integral management

of Public & Private Clouds based on heterogeneous environments. The main aim of the project

is to offer users a tool with the capacity for scaling, management, automatic and immediate

provision of servers, storage, networks, virtual network devices as well as applications.

Nowadays companies have needs for different system architectures specific to a department

or work group.

Besides, there are companies with products which need to be scaled seasonally. Not being

able to attend to these requirements on demand in an adequate manner makes users feel

defrauded by a bad quality service and hence no longer use the product.

With AbiCloud, it is possible to provision the needs of these work groups for their environments

(development, tests, pre-production, production) immediately and instant de-provisioning

when no longer necessary. The infrastructure does not deplete but instead takes advantage of

its full capacity and reduces the value chain (provision problems), saves costs in space in the

data center, enhances electricity, number of persons dedicated to maintenance, etc.

With AbiCloud, small companies and start-ups can mount their own Private Cloud and obtain

all the benefits that they will attain with AbiCloud in a big company or in a Host Provider.


Page 5 of 17

3.2 Abicloud product versions

Abicloud comes in three different versions targeting different business needs:

• The community version of AbiCloud is distributed under a free software license; hence it

is possible to adjust to specific needs, for example Universities, ISVs, SaaS providers, etc.

AbiCloud community is a collection of online resources for all those that wish to take

advantage of open version. Registration is free and does not require any compromise

for its ownership.

• The enterprise version of AbiCloud is a set of premium modules on top of the community

version of AbiCloud that let companies to access to advanced features not targeted to

small companies or startups.

• The ISP/hosters version of AbiCloud is an extended version of the enterprise version of

AbiCloud that let companies to resell the AbiCloud platform to their customers.

The premium modules are licensed by number of CPUs in the Cloud Cluster. Please contact

with Abiquo representatives to get more details about the premium modules catalogue and

pricing options.

Third party

Soft/Hard

Core

Virtual LayerVirtual LayerVirtual Layer

Premium

EnterpriseEnterpriseEnterprise

ISP / HostingISP / HostingISP / Hosting

CommunityCommunityCommunity


Page 6 of 17

3.3 What can you do with AbiCloud?

Manage your physical infrastructure:

• Manage datacenters

• Manage Racks

• Manage Physicals Machines

• Manage Hypervisors

• Manage the state of your physical Machines vs. virtual infrastructure

Manage enterprises/users:

• Manage enterprises

• Manage users

• Control logged users

• Manage user profiles

Manage Virtual Images:

• Manage local repository

• Mange virtual images

• Define virtual images requirements.

Manage Virtual Infrastructure:

• Each enterprise has its virtual infrastructure

• Manage virtual data Centers

• Manage virtual Appliances

3.4 Introducing This Manual

This manual introduces the basic concepts to help you understand the requirements for a

simple Cloud. It highlights the key features.

Note: You can find a quick introduction to the product in the document ‘AbiCloud Quick Start’.

You can find more information about the product in the community portal:

http://community.abiquo.com


Page 7 of 17

3.5 Glossary

Please read this list before continuing with the document, no matter if you are a newbie or an

expert it will help to clarify some “nebulous” terms:

Cloud User

An enterprise user with privileges to create virtual Appliances and manage them

Data center

A data center is the physical infrastructure of a cloud provider. A cloud provider can be private

(a datacenter of a big company) or public (a hosting company)

Enterprise

The entity that agglutinates the virtual cloud infrastructure of a company. An enterprise can

create virtual datacenters, virtual Appliance, etc. This enterprise virtual infrastructure can be

isolated from other enterprise clouds.

Enterprise Cloud Admin

The enterprise user with the most privileges who manages the private cloud of the enterprise

and adds new Cloud users to its cloud infrastructure

Hypervisor

The virtualization technology installed on each Physical Machine that permits the creation of

virtual Machines

Node

The node is one of the components of the appliance (One virtual Image). For example 1

apache server is a node of the myWebSite Appliance

Physical Machine

A server on the data center

Rack

The physical box that contains physical machines

SysAdmin


Page 8 of 17

It's the user role that will be able to manage the virtual and physical infrastructure of the data

center and customize it to offer the cloud functionalities to enterprises

Virtual Appliance

The main object of AbiCloud. A virtual appliance is based on the OVF standard and it's the

component that defines a complex system (Virtual Images, network, storage, etc.). For

example, myWebSite can be an appliance composed of 1 load balancer, 2 apache servers

and 1 MySQL server.

Virtual Data Center

An abstract object to define a logical group of virtual appliances.

OVF

Open Virtualization Format (OVF) is an open standard for packaging and distributing virtual

appliances or more generally software to be run in virtual machines. Abicloud is based in OVF

in order to benefit the interoperability between cloud providers and facilitate the integration

between different virtualization technologies.


Page 9 of 17

4 The AbiCloud architecture

4.1 AbiCloud Platform logical overview

AbiCloud Platform is developed in a modular point of view in order to try to improve the

scalability of the system. This picture tries to show the block diagram of the infrastructure.

The AbiCloud project will be showing and improving the document in order to know the detail

of each module. Although, let's introduce them:

• abiCloud_Server: Contains the global business logic of the cloud platform and interacts

with the database. It's designed in JAVA and it's important to maintain and improve the

architecture in order to assure that you can create a multiple abicloud_Server in the

same architecture.

• abiCloud_WS: It's the virtual factory of the platform. Interacts with different virtualization

technologies in order to manage VM. The plug-in manager allows to create plug-ins for

each technology.

o vBox --> It's open a first release with VirtualBox in order to allow people to test

AbiCloud in a desktop environment.

o XEN, KVM (Libvirt plug-in) --> Coming soon.

o VMware --> Working but not open yet.

o Others (xVM, Hyper-V, etc.) --> We want to offer a plug-in for each technology.


Page 10 of 17

• abiCloud_VMS (Virtual Monitor System): It's the component developed to monitor the

virtual infrastructure in order to know the events or states that are happening in the

cloud. The main idea is to update the VM states on user interface and generate log files

in order to feed third parties applications like a billing system. This component is in

developing and testing stage of its first release

• AbiCloud Appliance Manager: This component allows the management, distribution

and scalability of the repository, allowing the import of appliances that they are outside

the cloud platform. This component is in developing and testing stage of its first release

• AbiCloud Storage management: This component is in definition stage and will be

released on Q2'09 and will be the facade to integrate any storage system to the cloud

platform, in order to assign volumes to each company.

• The abiCloud_client it's the RIA web application developed in FLEX that allows user to

manage their private cloud wherever and whenever.

• The OPEN API it's an important component that Abiquo has decide to define with the

open Source Community in order to create an acceptable facade for the external

connection or federation of third party clouds.

For each component and new components that it should appear, AbiCloud project will expose

in this Wiki the technical information and developer guides in order to facilitate the contribution

of developers.

You can find more information about the product in the community portal:


4.2 The AbiCloud platform physical architecture

There are several ways in which AbiCloud Platform can be deployed in your datacenters. Here,

three different scenarios are shown, starting from two basic layouts for the community version

and then showing a more advanced layout for AbiCloud with the Virtual Storage and Network

premium models.

4.2.1 Scenario 1 – Internal Private Cloud

This example demonstrates how to setup an Internal Private Cloud. An Internal Private Cloud is

a cloud that cannot be accessed from the Internet directly. In order to allow access to the

Private Cloud from internet you should consider our premium Network module or Scenario 2. It’s

also possible to configure the firewall to perform Network Addresses Translations (NATs) to one


Page 11 of 17

or more public IPs to private IPs of the Cloud Cluster. It’s out of the scope of this document to

explain how to perform this operation.

In the example below, we have defined three different networks:

• The Management Network is the one to connect the AbiCloud Server components to

the Cloud Cluster. Every single physical machine of the Cloud Cluster should have a

dedicated Network Interface Controller (NIC) for this network. Management,

monitoring, images deployment traffic will use this network. Size this network to the size

of your Cloud Cluster plus your AbiCloud servers.

• The Cloud Cluster Network is the one to connect the Virtual Images of the Cloud. Every

single physical machine of the Cloud Cluster should have at least a dedicated Network

Interface Controller (NIC) for this network. Application and Services delivery traffic will

use this network. Size this network to the size of the number of Virtual Machines that

could handle your Cloud Cluster. Normally, it can be from 4 to 20 times the number of

physical servers (depends on the hardware available).

• The Public Network is the one to access the internet from the Cloud Cluster. In this

scenario we have configured the network in such a way that virtual machines can

access the internet. The servers in the Management network can access the internet

too.

This configuration can be a good start for companies, universities, SaaS providers that want to

test the platform instead of a traditional dedicated hosting. In order to deploy a complete


Page 12 of 17

Cloud Computing platform, contact Abiquo for assistance on what premium modules you

would need.

4.2.2 Scenario 2 – Simple Public Cloud

This example demonstrates how to setup a Simple Public Cloud. The Virtual Machines of the

Cloud can be accessed from Internet directly. In order to allow access to a Public Cloud from

internet keeping your data secured in a Private Cloud you should consider our premium

Network module. The firewall should be configured to allow or deny traffic to the Cloud Cluster,

relying on the capabilities of the operating systems running in the virtual images to access or

deny the access to the network ports. It’s out of the scope of this document to explain how to

perform this operation.

In the example below, we have defined two different networks:





of your Cloud Cluster plus your AbiCloud servers.

• The Public Network is the one to access the internet from the Cloud Cluster. The Cloud

Cluster network becomes the Public Network In this scenario. We have configured the

network in such a way that virtual machines have one or more public IPs assigned. All

virtual machines are visible from internet by default.


Page 13 of 17

This configuration can be a good start for ISPs that wants to test the platform as an alternative

to Virtual Private Servers (VPS). In order to deploy a complete Cloud Computing platform,

contact Abiquo for assistance on what premium modules you would need and how to plan the

deployment of the platform.

4.2.3 Scenario 3 – Private/Public Cloud with Virtual Storage

This example demonstrates how to setup a Private/Public Cloud with support for Virtual Storage

and Networking premium module. This setup allows to mix Public IPs and Private IPs individually

on each virtual machine, plus access to a Tier-0 and Tier-1 Virtual Storage system built to

provide fast access to data repositories (relational databases for instance).

In the example below, we have defined four different networks:





of your Cloud Cluster plus your AbiCloud servers. Notice that the Virtual Storage iSCSI

server is part of this network.

• The Cloud Cluster Network is the one to connect the Virtual Images of the Cloud. Every

single physical machine of the Cloud Cluster should have at least a dedicated Network

Interface Controller (NIC) for this network. Application and Services delivery traffic will

use this network. Size this network to the size of the number of Virtual Machines that

could handle your Cloud Cluster. Normally, it can be from 4 to 20 times the number of

physical servers (depends on the hardware available).

• The Public Network is the one to access the internet from/to the Cloud Cluster. In this

scenario we have configured the network in such a way that virtual machines can have

a public IP bonded to their service NICs.

• The Storage Network is a network specialized in data traffic between the Cloud Cluster

and the iSCSI Storage. It’s a very demanding network in terms of speed and latency.


Page 14 of 17

This configuration can be the first step for ISPs and companies that want to deploy a complete

Cloud Computing platform. Contact Abiquo for assistance on what premium modules you

would need and how to plan the deployment of the platform.

4.3 AbiCloud software requirements

The Management platform runs inside a Tomcat Server that uses a MySQL database as the

persistent storage of information. The platform has been tested in other configurations (Oracle

databases), but the recommended database Server is MySQL 5.5:

• Sun JDK 6.0

• Tomcat 6.X

• MySQL 5.5

The automatic installer of AbiCloud includes Tomcat 6.x and MySQL 5.5 in the default

installation. So, if you download the binaries and run the installer the unique requirement is Sun

JDK 6.0.

The community version of AbiCloud only supports VirtualBox (2.1.0, 2.1.2 or 2.1.4, latest versions

are not tested) installed on each cloud node. Remember that AbiCloud is prepared to support

many virtualization technologies using a plug-in infrastructure. Abiquo has decided to start

offering the VirtualBox plug-in in the first release, because it has an easy installation process and


Page 15 of 17

the user doesn't needs special hardware infrastructure. Follow the instructions in the VirtualBox

site to install the software on each node.

The Management interface has been developed with Adobe FLEX. This technology needs an

Adobe Flash Player >9.0 to work. It has been successfully tested with Mozilla Firefox in several

flavors of Linux, Mac OSX and Microsoft Windows. Also, it has been tested in Windows

environments with Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.

4.4 AbiCloud hardware requirements for testing deployments

For testing deployments almost any x86 hardware is valid. The minimum requirements are.

4.4.1 AbiCloud platform servers

• 1 x x86 32 Bit 1.6Ghz processor

• 1 x 1GB memory

• 1 x 100Mb Ethernet port

• 100Gb Hard Disk space

4.4.2 AbiCloud Cloud Cluster servers

• 1 x x86 32 Bit 1.6Ghz processor. Recommended with Virtualizacion Technology (VT or

AMD-V).

• 1 x 1GB memory

• 1 x 100Mb Ethernet port

• 100Gb Hard Disk space

Obviously the better hardware on the Cloud Cluster servers, the better.

4.5 AbiCloud hardware requirements for Production deployments

For Enterprise and ISPs deployment, you should consider first class hardware to deliver the best

Quality of Service. The following configurations or very similar should be considered. Contact

Abiquo if you need help sizing your system.

4.5.1 AbiCloud platform servers

• AMD Opteron Model 1218 dual core processor (2.6GHz/1MB),

• 2 x 1GB unbuffered ECC single rank DDR2-667 memory

• Service Processor, 4x 10/100/1000 Ethernet ports, 6x USB 2.0 ports, 1x I/O riser card with 2x


Page 16 of 17

• 2 x XRB-ST1CE500G7K-SU 500GB 7.2K RPM SATA HDD

• 1 x X5294A-Z-SU X2100M2/X2200M2:DVD-ROM drive

4.5.2 AbiCloud Cloud Cluster servers

• 2 x Quad Core Intel Xeon E5405 (12MB L2, 2.00GHz,

• 1333MHz FSB, 80W) 16GB (4x 4GB, 667MHz Fully-buffered DIMM), No HDD, no DVD, 1x

PSU, ILOM,

• 4x 10/100/1000 Ethernet ports, 5x USB 2.0 ports, 1x 16-lane PCI-Express slot, no power

cord, order

• 2 x XRBSS1CE146G15KZSU Int Disk 146GB 15K SAS HDD

4.5.3 AbiCloud Cloud Storage servers

Contact Abiquo for detailed information about the requirements for Tier-1 & Tier 2 virtual

storage capabilities in your cloud.

4.5.4 AbiCloud Cloud Network devices

Contact Abiquo for detailed information about the requirements for Virtual Switching and Load

Balancing capabilities in your cloud.


Page 17 of 17

5 Other Resources

5.1 Community Portal

This guide is intended to get you up and running, and to introduce some of the functionality

available in AbiCloud. If you need more information about the product, or modify the

AbiCloud core to adapt it to your needs, you should visit the Community Portal of Abiquo:


Bugs, enhancements and change request can be entered through the JIRA Bug tracking

system. Registration is free and open to all users:

http://jira.abiquo.com

If you need to share your thoughts, help request or meet other members of the community, join

the channel #abiquo of the irc.freenode.net IRC network.

There are also two mailing lists available to developers:

http://lists.abiquo.com/mailman/listinfo/abicloud-devel: Mail list for abiCloud developers.

http://lists.abiquo.com/mailman/listinfo/abicloud-commits: Mail list for receive commits

information of abiCloud.

5.2 Information online

Product information can be found at:

http://www.abiquo.com/en/products/abicloud

5.3 Contact

Partnerships: [email protected]

Media and Public Relations: [email protected]

Community: [email protected]

Careers: [email protected]

Others: [email protected]