Cloud Computing in Action - for Better Service and Better Life

Transcription

1 Cloud Computing in Action - for Better Service and Better Life Dr. P. T. Ho Deputy Director, Computer Centre The University of Hong Kong IET ICT Conference 2012, 14 September 2012, Hong Kong 1

2 2 Agenda (I) Context (HKU Computer Centre) (II) Strategy and Developments (III) Deployment (IV) Foreseen and Unexpected issues (V) Future of Cloud Computing as Public Utility

3 HKU Computer Centre HKU - founded 1911, 10 Faculties,~25000 students Computer Centre (ITS) - established in 1969 Provides wide varieties of Central IT Services to support the University community in learning, teaching, research and administration: , network, web & information services, IT security Learning Management System, learning environment, Research support HPC, Grid, Bioinformatics Administrative applications HR, Student Information, Finance, 3 3

4 4 (I) Strategy & Developments Cloud Strategy at HKU: Consolidation of disjointed IT resources Opportunities for cost/resource reduction Alignment with technology trends & standards Balancing benefits and risks Towards on-demand IT resources provisioning and true utility computing

5 5 (II) Deployment Status at HKU Past/Current Developments Server and Storage Virtualization Cloud Infrastructure in Service Phase Deployment at HKU Charging-basis VM Subscription Service Out-sourcing From Grid to Cloud for Research Computing Support Future Cloud Services Development at HKU

6 (II) Deployment: Virtualization Virtualization started in 2008: Consolidate physical servers to virtual servers & adopt storage virtualization for efficient disk capacity management Current situation of VM consolidation: > 400 virtual servers on 38 physical machines 364 physical servers saved as a result. 30TB disk storage saved by thin-provisioning. Substantial electricity power and space saved. 6

7 (II) Current Cloud Infrastructure A Reliable Linux/Windows/UNIX platform on Cloud Infrastructure Category X86-based Blade Servers Items (by mid-2012) Dell and HP blade servers (of total 36 servers), each has two sockets of Intel 6-core/4-core CPU with 64GB 128GB RAM UNIX-based Servers IBM servers (of total 2 servers), each has a Power7 8-cores CPU and 64GB RAM Virtualized Storage Network Hypervisor Technology Cloud Management Software HDS, HP and IBM SAN storage systems (total capacity of around 100TB, provisioned around 130TB) managed by IBM SVC storage virtualization Brocade, Dell & HP 10GbE/1GbE network switches VMWare Vsphere v5.0/v4.1 (x86 platform) IBM PowerVM (Unix platform) BMC Cloud LifeCycle Management v2.1 (CLM) 7

8 8 (II) Stages of Developments Deployment to internal major services Server Virtualization (IaaS, Started in 2008): Pilot test on some Web Servers, File Servers, Database Servers at the beginning Then massively deploy VM on most of the core services, including ERP Administrative, , E-learning systems, etc. All the new projects are deployed on VM by default Storage Virtualization (IaaS, Started in 2009): Virtualize heterogeneous SAN storages Good for online data migration across different brands and models of storage appliances Easy to enable data replication and data synchronization to remote site for disaster recovery

9 9 (II) Stages of Developments Deployment to departments Web Server VM (PaaS, Started in 2009): We offer Linux Web Server VM to replace departmental website servers (as a free opt-in option) A good solution to isolate system and security incidents of departmental web servers from other central web services 160+ departmental web server VM are deployed VM Subscription (IaaS, Started from 2011): Implemented a Cloud Management System with automatic workflow to provide self-service portal for HKU departments to subscribe VM with charge Flexible choices: Windows VM or Linux VM, with pre-configured Small/Medium/Large size VM platform

10 10 (II) VM Subscription from the Cloud Charging Model (for HKU departments): We provides x86-based Windows or Linux VM subscription Two Choices for Windows: Windows 2003 (32-bit) & Windows 2008 (64-bit) Subscription period can be 6-month or 1-year period Pre-defined small, medium or large size VM package are offered Additional CPU, RAM and disk can be requested with additional charging cost A portion of the involved hardware cost, management software cost and operational cost are included at the VM subscription cost OS License cost are also included Reference Prices for 64-bit Linux VM 6-month subscription cost: Small (1 x 2GHz vcpu / 2GB RAM / 50GB Disk): HK$2,900 Medium (2 x 2GHz vcpu / 4GB RAM / 100GB Disk): HK$3,900 Large (4 x 2GHz vcpu / 8GB RAM / 200GB Disk): HK$5,900

11 11 (II) VM Subscription from the Cloud The Automated Cloud Management System Portal: Self-service portal interface to make new request Multiple Level Approval workflows engine to streamline the administrative work

12 12 (II) Outsourced Service in Public Cloud Out-Sourcing (SaaS): Starting from early 2012, the new Alumni and new Student are already out-sourced to Google Gmail Will continue the feasibility study to out-source HKU staff E- mail to either Google Gmail or Microsoft Office 365 Data Centre Out-Sourcing (private cloud held in public service): Starting from 2011, part of the ITS hardware equipment are relocated to the outsourced Data Centre Server Room provide by external ISP Company It is located outside the HKU Campus, it serves part of the disaster recovery service.

13 13 (II) Research Computing Moving to Cloud A trend to shift from Grid Computing to Cloud Computing in Research Computing Grid Computing: You adapt your application to the infrastructure Cloud Computing: You adapt the infrastructure to your application - Quoted from Philip Papadopoulos UCSD PRAGMA Pacific Rim Applications and Grid Middleware Assembly: an International Research Computing Collaboration Community and Pioneer of Grid/Cloud Computing in Scientific Computing areas HKU is one of PRAGMA Member Institute since 2009 HKU is one of the site enabled with PRAGMA Grid/Cloud

14 14 (II) Research Computing Moving to Cloud

15 15 (II) Research Computing Moving to Cloud Geogrid Applications as a driver of PRAGMA Cloud Development

16 16 (II) Moving Research Computing to Cloud Develop GeoGrid Execution Pools across PRAGMA sites Deploy Scientific VMs across resources in the PRAGMA cloud, but Networking is difficult and Data is vitally important

17 17 (II) Research Computing Moving to Cloud HKU Department of Computer Science (CS) research project - a P2P Cloud enable live VM migration over WAN Wide-Area Network Virtualization Technique for Virtual Private Cloud (WavNet): Dr. CL Wang et al.

18 18 (II) Research Computing Moving to Cloud 北 京 高 能 物 理 所 IHEP, Beijing 日 本 产 业 技 术 综 合 研 究 所 (AIST, Japan) SDSC, San Diego 深 圳 先 进 院 (SIAT) 中 央 研 究 院 (Sinica, Taiwan) 静 宜 大 学 (Providence University) 香 港 大 学 (HKU) Experiments of WavNet on VM live migration at Pacific Rim by Dr. CL Wang Et al.

19 (II) Research Computing Moving to Cloud BetterLife 2.0: Personalized recommendation service on Cloud by Dr. CL Wang et al. Send user ID, barcode, and GPS location, timestamp accuracy Locations of convenient stores in Hong Kong based on social closeness of 103 users using Elgg Social Networking Engine. 19

20 20 (II) Continuing Development Enhancement of HKU Cloud Infrastructure: Expand the Cloud Server/Storage Infrastructures from existing HKU main campus RRS building Server Room to the New Centennial Campus Server Room Target to form an Active-Active DataCentre across 2 sites Greatly improve the service reliability with online VM migration across two separated active sites Enhancement of Cloud Management System: Provide automated Software-as-a-Service workflow Provide automated Generic Request Services (such as Rack Space rental service, Sharepoint Site Collection rental service)

21 21 (II) Continuing Development New Cloud Services Cloud Printing: Print-at-anywhere solution from desktop PC, notebook, and mobile tablet/phone devices VDI: Pilot deploy Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) to the existing communal PC laboratories. Deliver both the persistent and sharing virtual desktops to University communities Explore user-friendly Cloud Storage for HKU communities, target for cross platform solution for data synchronization and backup More development and support of Mobile Device Applications

22 22 (III) Foreseen and Unexpected issues (of the private cloud services at HKU) Foreseen Issues: Security issues Pros: i. The prepared PAAS VM templates are already configured with OS hardening procedures and host-based firewall policies, our clients pay less effort to apply OS basic security measures. ii. Isolated VM reduce the impact of infected system to each others.

23 23 (III) Foreseen and Unexpected issues Foreseen Issues: Security issues Cons: i. Some clients may not have sufficient skills to maintain preconfigured security policies ii. iii. iv. Some subscribed VMs may become the targets for external professional hackers In case of DDoS attack on specific VM, it may cause excessive network bandwidth that may affect other VMs Some clients may hire software house to develop web applications on the subscribed VM. The self-developed applications, webpages or databases by clients may have security holes or issues.

24 24 (III) Foreseen and Unexpected issues Foreseen Issues: Monitoring & Utilization Pros: i. We can capture the system utilization at VM level to monitor for any over-utilize or under-utilize situations. ii. Cons: Strictly enforce charging scheme to prevent the underutilize and over-subscription situation. i. Client may not like their data and applications are being monitored

25 25 (III) Foreseen and Unexpected issues Unexpected Issues: Resources Management Pros: Flexible to scale-up IT resources rapidly under unexpected loading or at urgent situation Cons: i. Client seldom do capacity planning or sizing ii. iii. iv. Client seldom do stress test before service production Clients wants paying less and doing much more than the capacity subscribed (reality vs expectation) Some subscribed VM may be involved in unexpected incidents without prior notice. We may spend extra administrative efforts on follow-up issues.

26 26 (III) Foreseen and Unexpected issues Unexpected Issues: Others How to handle data restore request from client about the backup version of several months or years ago? How to charge for the data restore request? Any compensation to client in case of service outage such as server outage? Network outage? Or data leakage? Or other possible lost? How to compensate the client? Money? Service time? Others? Cloud Service Provider have to define them at Terms and Condition, Policies and Service Level Agreement (SLA) documents carefully

27 27 (IV) Vision to become Computing Utility Resource capacity & Scalability to match loading demand Small pool => Slow to scale up but smaller wastage Large pool => Quick to scale up but bigger wastage Can it be scale-up and maintain QoS at all levels? Hardware: CPU, RAM, Disk Capacity, Network Bandwidth, Load Sharing, Security, etc. Software: Databases, Licenses, Application Servers & Logic, Data Integrity, Workflow Backup/Recovery: Backup Capacity, Backup Window, Recovery time Any performance degradation? KPI to measure?

28 28 (IV) Vision to become Computing Utility Standardization Moving toward Standardization for interoperability and dynamic consumption of computing resource Private Cloud can easily adapt to Public Cloud Service Provider with standards to subscribe IT resources Many players in Cloud Standards: (a long way to go) The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) Cloud Standards Customer Council Open Cloud Consortium (OCC) Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) Open Grid Forum (OGF)

29 29 (IV) Vision to become Computing Utility Standards to inter-operate and communicate IEEE SA P2302: Draft Standard for Intercloud Interoperability and Federation DMTF Open Cloud Standards Incubator: Defining an architecture guide, virtualization management specification and specific protocols for clouds to communicate. Some Public Cloud Service Providers are using their existing formats: Amazon EC2, Microsoft Azure, etc. Move toward to standards with public acceptance to avoid Cloud Service Provider locking-in issue

30 30 (IV) Vision to become Computing Utility Can common models & standards & be established to define how Cloud Computing should work, like power systems? Can spare capacity be planned and provided like power utility with the following concepts? load flow study & control spinning & non-spinning reserve of capacity provision transmission dynamics & stability control

31 31 Thank you!