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Posted to user@vcl.apache.org by Curtis <se...@gmail.com> on 2013/02/14 22:16:54 UTC
Blog post on how we are using OpenStack + VCL
Hi All,
I just put up a blog post on how we are using OpenStack and Apache VCL on
the Canadian OpenStack Users Group (CanStack) blog here:
http://blog.canstack.ca/2013/02/14/vcl-openstack-reference-architecture.html
Though I didn't put in much information about the OpenStack VLC module we
are using, but it's at least an idea of what we have in terms of hardware,
networking gear, and a few OpenStack tidbits for a small private cloud.
Thanks,
Curtis.
PS. If you see any errors let me know. :)
--
Twitter: @serverascode
Blog: serverascode.com
Re: Blog post on how we are using OpenStack + VCL
Posted by Josh Thompson <jo...@ncsu.edu>.
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> > My main interest with OpenStack (or any other private cloud solution) is
> > if it can provide resource sharing between multiple OpenStack private
> > clouds. Let's say I had the same configuration of VCL&OpenStack, could we
> > configure our both OpenStack private clouds to share resources if needed?
> > I.e. - I don't have available resources to create new reservations, could
> > those reservations be hosted in your private OpenStack cloud temporarily?
> > without end user get involved?
>
> I'm not sure what "bursting" capabilities VCL has, or what you could do to
> mimic that, but I would think what you're suggesting is doable. If our VCL
> project gets wider use it might be something we consider as well...bursting
> out to EC2 or Rackspace or something like that. But I haven't looked into
> how we might do that.
There's definitely been interest in making this happen. However, we've not
done much toward designing out how to make it work.
Josh
- --
- -------------------------------
Josh Thompson
VCL Developer
North Carolina State University
my GPG/PGP key can be found at pgp.mit.edu
All electronic mail messages in connection with State business which
are sent to or received by this account are subject to the NC Public
Records Law and may be disclosed to third parties.
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Re: Blog post on how we are using OpenStack + VCL
Posted by Curtis <se...@gmail.com>.
On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 7:16 AM, Dmitri Chebotarov <dc...@gmu.edu> wrote:
> Curtis, thank you.
>
> I still have few questions, if you don't mind… These probably the last on
> the subject :) thanks again.
> See below:
>
>
> On Tuesday, February 19, 2013 at 19:06 , Curtis wrote:
>
> > On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 6:51 AM, Dmitri Chebotarov <dchebota@gmu.edu(mailto:
> dchebota@gmu.edu)> wrote:
> > > Curtis,
> > >
> > > Thank you, interesting reading... I have few questions
> > >
> > > Do you see any benefits using VCL with OpenStack versus VCL's back-end
> (ESXi/KVM)?
> > > Is your OpenStack deployment configured to provide HA for VCL's VM
> computers?
> >
> >
> > Hi Dmitri,
> >
> > First, I am a big fan of OpenStack, so I'm probably biased. All those
> free t-shirts.... :)
> >
> > I think the first benefit is that we can eventually put our current VCL
> infrastructure into a larger cloud. Right now it's in its own cloud, but we
> are probably going to put it into a larger cloud that has more than one
> tenant, and doing that will be straightforward with OpenStack as the back
> end.
> This is interesting - definitely gives you better resource use in a large
> environment (but also brings up some ownership issues in an enterprise
> environment).
> By putting it in large cloud, do you mean physically move/join all compute
> nodes to a large OpenStack cloud (with VCL tenant as one of many others) or
> *bursting* into a different cloud when you run out of resource on VCL
> OpenStack cloud?
>
The former--making VCL a tenant in a much larger cloud instead of being the
only tenant in a small cloud. :)
>
> My main interest with OpenStack (or any other private cloud solution) is
> if it can provide resource sharing between multiple OpenStack private
> clouds. Let's say I had the same configuration of VCL&OpenStack, could we
> configure our both OpenStack private clouds to share resources if needed?
> I.e. - I don't have available resources to create new reservations, could
> those reservations be hosted in your private OpenStack cloud temporarily?
> without end user get involved?
> >
>
I'm not sure what "bursting" capabilities VCL has, or what you could do to
mimic that, but I would think what you're suggesting is doable. If our VCL
project gets wider use it might be something we consider as well...bursting
out to EC2 or Rackspace or something like that. But I haven't looked into
how we might do that.
> >
> > I think the image management systems, glance, is also beneficial. It's
> kinda hacked into VCL right now, but glance is a powerful image management
> system, including image metadata. Also, either it can now or will be able
> to store and use images from object storage such as swift.
> >
> > Those are the major things I can think of right now. IMHO, as IaaS
> becomes more prevalent, fewer and fewer organizations will run separate
> virtualization clusters for VCL, and will manage servers via an API from a
> much larger cloud.
> >
> > As far as HA--no, not really, we just have one cloud controller, so
> single nova database, etc. Is that what you mean?
> By HA I meant if there is any redundancy on KVM/VMs side of OpenStack,
> i.e. if one of your KVM hosts went offline would VMs restart automatically
> on another host? Can you move VMs between hosts on OpenStack side?
>
No, one of the things I like about our use of VCL is that the virtual
machines are totally stateless, ie. there is no user data on them. So if a
compute node dies, then they will lose their current reservation, but can
just make a new one. We are not using shared storage of any kind in our VCL
environment. In fact, the next version of our cloud will be based on
striped SSDs so that we can overcommit on stateless vms.
Thanks,
Curtis.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Curtis.
> >
> > >
> > >
> > > On Feb 14, 2013, at 16:16 , Curtis <serverascode@gmail.com (mailto:
> serverascode@gmail.com)> wrote:
> > >
> > > > Hi All,
> > > >
> > > > I just put up a blog post on how we are using OpenStack and Apache
> VCL on the Canadian OpenStack Users Group (CanStack) blog here:
> > > >
> > > >
> http://blog.canstack.ca/2013/02/14/vcl-openstack-reference-architecture.html
> > > >
> > > > Though I didn't put in much information about the OpenStack VLC
> module we are using, but it's at least an idea of what we have in terms of
> hardware, networking gear, and a few OpenStack tidbits for a small private
> cloud.
> > > >
> > > > Thanks,
> > > > Curtis.
> > > >
> > > > PS. If you see any errors let me know. :)
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > Twitter: @serverascode
> > > > Blog: serverascode.com (http://serverascode.com)
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Thank you,
> > >
> > > Dmitri Chebotarov
> > > VCL Sys Eng, Engineering & Architectural Support, TSD - Ent Servers &
> Messaging
> > > 223 Aquia Building, Ffx, MSN: 1B5
> > > Phone: (703) 993-6175 (tel:%28703%29%20993-6175) | Fax: (703) 993-3404(tel:%28703%29%20993-3404)
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Twitter: @serverascode
> > Blog: serverascode.com (http://serverascode.com)
>
>
>
>
--
Twitter: @serverascode
Blog: serverascode.com
Re: Blog post on how we are using OpenStack + VCL
Posted by Dmitri Chebotarov <dc...@gmu.edu>.
Curtis, thank you.
I still have few questions, if you don't mind… These probably the last on the subject :) thanks again.
See below:
On Tuesday, February 19, 2013 at 19:06 , Curtis wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 6:51 AM, Dmitri Chebotarov <dchebota@gmu.edu (mailto:dchebota@gmu.edu)> wrote:
> > Curtis,
> >
> > Thank you, interesting reading... I have few questions
> >
> > Do you see any benefits using VCL with OpenStack versus VCL's back-end (ESXi/KVM)?
> > Is your OpenStack deployment configured to provide HA for VCL's VM computers?
>
>
> Hi Dmitri,
>
> First, I am a big fan of OpenStack, so I'm probably biased. All those free t-shirts.... :)
>
> I think the first benefit is that we can eventually put our current VCL infrastructure into a larger cloud. Right now it's in its own cloud, but we are probably going to put it into a larger cloud that has more than one tenant, and doing that will be straightforward with OpenStack as the back end.
This is interesting - definitely gives you better resource use in a large environment (but also brings up some ownership issues in an enterprise environment).
By putting it in large cloud, do you mean physically move/join all compute nodes to a large OpenStack cloud (with VCL tenant as one of many others) or *bursting* into a different cloud when you run out of resource on VCL OpenStack cloud?
My main interest with OpenStack (or any other private cloud solution) is if it can provide resource sharing between multiple OpenStack private clouds. Let's say I had the same configuration of VCL&OpenStack, could we configure our both OpenStack private clouds to share resources if needed? I.e. - I don't have available resources to create new reservations, could those reservations be hosted in your private OpenStack cloud temporarily? without end user get involved?
>
>
> I think the image management systems, glance, is also beneficial. It's kinda hacked into VCL right now, but glance is a powerful image management system, including image metadata. Also, either it can now or will be able to store and use images from object storage such as swift.
>
> Those are the major things I can think of right now. IMHO, as IaaS becomes more prevalent, fewer and fewer organizations will run separate virtualization clusters for VCL, and will manage servers via an API from a much larger cloud.
>
> As far as HA--no, not really, we just have one cloud controller, so single nova database, etc. Is that what you mean?
By HA I meant if there is any redundancy on KVM/VMs side of OpenStack, i.e. if one of your KVM hosts went offline would VMs restart automatically on another host? Can you move VMs between hosts on OpenStack side?
>
> Thanks,
> Curtis.
>
> >
> >
> > On Feb 14, 2013, at 16:16 , Curtis <serverascode@gmail.com (mailto:serverascode@gmail.com)> wrote:
> >
> > > Hi All,
> > >
> > > I just put up a blog post on how we are using OpenStack and Apache VCL on the Canadian OpenStack Users Group (CanStack) blog here:
> > >
> > > http://blog.canstack.ca/2013/02/14/vcl-openstack-reference-architecture.html
> > >
> > > Though I didn't put in much information about the OpenStack VLC module we are using, but it's at least an idea of what we have in terms of hardware, networking gear, and a few OpenStack tidbits for a small private cloud.
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > > Curtis.
> > >
> > > PS. If you see any errors let me know. :)
> > >
> > > --
> > > Twitter: @serverascode
> > > Blog: serverascode.com (http://serverascode.com)
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Thank you,
> >
> > Dmitri Chebotarov
> > VCL Sys Eng, Engineering & Architectural Support, TSD - Ent Servers & Messaging
> > 223 Aquia Building, Ffx, MSN: 1B5
> > Phone: (703) 993-6175 (tel:%28703%29%20993-6175) | Fax: (703) 993-3404 (tel:%28703%29%20993-3404)
>
>
>
>
> --
> Twitter: @serverascode
> Blog: serverascode.com (http://serverascode.com)
Re: Blog post on how we are using OpenStack + VCL
Posted by Curtis <se...@gmail.com>.
On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 6:51 AM, Dmitri Chebotarov <dc...@gmu.edu> wrote:
> Curtis,
>
> Thank you, interesting reading... I have few questions
>
> Do you see any benefits using VCL with OpenStack versus VCL's back-end
> (ESXi/KVM)?
> Is your OpenStack deployment configured to provide HA for VCL's VM
> computers?
>
Hi Dmitri,
First, I am a big fan of OpenStack, so I'm probably biased. All those free
t-shirts.... :)
I think the first benefit is that we can eventually put our current VCL
infrastructure into a larger cloud. Right now it's in its own cloud, but
we are probably going to put it into a larger cloud that has more than one
tenant, and doing that will be straightforward with OpenStack as the back
end.
I think the image management systems, glance, is also beneficial. It's
kinda hacked into VCL right now, but glance is a powerful image management
system, including image metadata. Also, either it can now or will be able
to store and use images from object storage such as swift.
Those are the major things I can think of right now. IMHO, as IaaS becomes
more prevalent, fewer and fewer organizations will run separate
virtualization clusters for VCL, and will manage servers via an API from a
much larger cloud.
As far as HA--no, not really, we just have one cloud controller, so single
nova database, etc. Is that what you mean?
Thanks,
Curtis.
>
>
> On Feb 14, 2013, at 16:16 , Curtis <se...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hi All,
> >
> > I just put up a blog post on how we are using OpenStack and Apache VCL
> on the Canadian OpenStack Users Group (CanStack) blog here:
> >
> >
> http://blog.canstack.ca/2013/02/14/vcl-openstack-reference-architecture.html
> >
> > Though I didn't put in much information about the OpenStack VLC module
> we are using, but it's at least an idea of what we have in terms of
> hardware, networking gear, and a few OpenStack tidbits for a small private
> cloud.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Curtis.
> >
> > PS. If you see any errors let me know. :)
> >
> > --
> > Twitter: @serverascode
> > Blog: serverascode.com
>
>
>
> --
> Thank you,
>
> Dmitri Chebotarov
> VCL Sys Eng, Engineering & Architectural Support, TSD - Ent Servers &
> Messaging
> 223 Aquia Building, Ffx, MSN: 1B5
> Phone: (703) 993-6175 | Fax: (703) 993-3404
>
>
>
>
--
Twitter: @serverascode
Blog: serverascode.com
Re: Blog post on how we are using OpenStack + VCL
Posted by Dmitri Chebotarov <dc...@gmu.edu>.
Curtis,
Thank you, interesting reading... I have few questions
Do you see any benefits using VCL with OpenStack versus VCL's back-end (ESXi/KVM)?
Is your OpenStack deployment configured to provide HA for VCL's VM computers?
On Feb 14, 2013, at 16:16 , Curtis <se...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I just put up a blog post on how we are using OpenStack and Apache VCL on the Canadian OpenStack Users Group (CanStack) blog here:
>
> http://blog.canstack.ca/2013/02/14/vcl-openstack-reference-architecture.html
>
> Though I didn't put in much information about the OpenStack VLC module we are using, but it's at least an idea of what we have in terms of hardware, networking gear, and a few OpenStack tidbits for a small private cloud.
>
> Thanks,
> Curtis.
>
> PS. If you see any errors let me know. :)
>
> --
> Twitter: @serverascode
> Blog: serverascode.com
--
Thank you,
Dmitri Chebotarov
VCL Sys Eng, Engineering & Architectural Support, TSD - Ent Servers & Messaging
223 Aquia Building, Ffx, MSN: 1B5
Phone: (703) 993-6175 | Fax: (703) 993-3404
Re: Blog post on how we are using OpenStack + VCL
Posted by Josh Thompson <jo...@ncsu.edu>.
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Hash: SHA1
Curtis,
Great write-up! Thanks for sharing. It's always great to hear about how
people are using VCL.
Josh
On Thursday, February 14, 2013 2:16:54 PM Curtis wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I just put up a blog post on how we are using OpenStack and Apache VCL on
> the Canadian OpenStack Users Group (CanStack) blog here:
>
> http://blog.canstack.ca/2013/02/14/vcl-openstack-reference-architecture.html
>
> Though I didn't put in much information about the OpenStack VLC module we
> are using, but it's at least an idea of what we have in terms of hardware,
> networking gear, and a few OpenStack tidbits for a small private cloud.
>
> Thanks,
> Curtis.
>
> PS. If you see any errors let me know. :)
- --
- -------------------------------
Josh Thompson
VCL Developer
North Carolina State University
my GPG/PGP key can be found at pgp.mit.edu
All electronic mail messages in connection with State business which
are sent to or received by this account are subject to the NC Public
Records Law and may be disclosed to third parties.
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