Implementing and Running Your Own Cloud Service

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1 Implementing and Running Your Own Cloud Service OnApp VS. Cloud Management Platforms (CMPs) currently focus on two markets: enterprise businesses and service providers. The following analysis will concentrate on implementation and use for service providers. Overview of Cloud Management Platforms Simply put, CMPs deliver an environment for providers and their respective customers. Customers can provision, monitor and manage virtual machines. They allow the service provider a means of metering usage and billing customers, as well as Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), allowing administrators to control user permissions and resource limits. Most CMPs provide a multi-cloud architecture that enables service providers to deploy public, private, hybrid and other types of clouds. All clouds and tasks are managed from one all-inclusive control panel. Key Considerations in Selecting a Cloud Management Platform Ease of Use An easy-to-use platform allows service providers to be up and running quickly, while an intuitive control panel provides all of the tools that they need to be successful. This results in fewer headaches and quick deployments, leaving more time to improve and maintain other services and operations. Moreover, decreasing time to market can significantly improve a service s market share. Features Competing with well-established services is not easy. Providing customers with easy-to-use features fundamentally improves the attractiveness of the service. With more options and more functionality, a robust feature offering gives providers the flexibility to design services that appeal to a wide variety of customers. Reliability & Security These two considerations are essential. It is crucial for any Cloud Management Platform to minimize downtime and keep the customers and the company s information safe. Automated failover and hot migration keep services up and running despite unforeseen issues, while VM firewalls and antisniff software keep sensitive information safe. Automation Improving profit margins is a process, hindered significantly by timeconsuming administrative tasks. Automating provisioning (customer self-service), VM management, cloud maintenance and billing can decrease the number of employees required to run your business. The result is a high level of efficiency and a smooth environment. Basic features that a Cloud Management Platform should have: VM provisioning and management (start, stop, reboot and clone) A customizable management dashboard with the ability to be rebranded A customer user-interface The ability to scale both vertically and horizontally Real-time usage metering Library of image templates Multi-language support API Easy integration with billing, monitoring systems Role-based access control Failover Pricing model flexibility (utility basis, plan basis, packages, etc.) 1

2 Getting to Know OnApp The OnApp Cloud was designed by former service providers with a unique goal in particular: to create a platform tailored specifically for providers, highlighting their direct needs and concerns as the building blocks for creating the product. As a result, OnApp provides a quick and easy-to-use, turnkey solution for many uses and users. The solution can be deployed quickly, and with little support intervention. OnApp s clients typically praise their platform s flexibility, as it does not impose specific provisioning or inflexible billing models. User permissions/limits are granular, allowing for high levels of customization. Customers are also offered access to many different cloud services (public, private, hybrid, VPS). Pricing structures are not restrictive, and can be fully customized to suit the needs of the customer. These pricing models include hourly, monthly, and tiered packages, and can also be modified with performance requirements and specified availability zones. OnApp has many other features, such as Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), Anycast DNS capabilities and a tremendously popular ipad/iphone application to supplement their CMP solution. OnApp s Federated Cloud is one of the most fascinating things about its service and will be detailed later on. Their implementation, business model, and 24/7 technical support show a clear commitment to help their customers be efficient and successful. OnApp provides comprehensive support, with a 15-minute SLA (average is an impressive 4 minutes). More importantly, OnApp support is provided at no additional cost. The free support includes implementation and support for significant upgrades; customers typically upgrade 2-3 times per year. OnApp s pricing model is simple, transparent and all-inclusive. This goes back to OnApp being designed from a service provider perspective, by former service providers. Out of the box, OnApp Cloud is a broad and extensive service with everything you will need to get started quickly. The Cloud solution tracks usage of any resource your customers need, including RAM, vcpus, IOPS, IPs, primary disk and backup disk. It allows you to set different prices and pricing structures for those resources and even calculates billing values accordingly, all while storing customer payments. This is all part of a customizable and intuitive control panel. Getting to Know, originally a project by NASA, became a cloud computing movement in 2010 when several companies including Rackspace, AMD, Intel, Dell, and Cisco became involved. is free, open source cloud management software released under the Apache 2.0 License. has gained significant momentum through the backing of 150+ companies that are contributing to the project. It is meant to be highly customizable and configurable with the ability to provide different networking (VLAN, Flat, FlatDHCP) and storage (AOE, IET iscsi, LVM volume RBD, Sheepdog, Solaris iscsi HP SAN) options. Compute strives to be both hardware and hypervisor agnostic. is not seen as an easy, turnkey platform; it requires a high level of configuration and understanding because of the many components that must be stitched together. Out of the box, does not include many of the basic features of most CMPs. is best suited for knowledgeable, tech-savvy providers and operators that want to take the time to customize and configure their own solution. To that note, welcomes the integration of customized tools, whether it is third party applications or customers writing/integrating their own software. s recent Essex release focused on making the platform more stable and easier to use. After its Diablo release, many early adopters reported a considerable amount of bugs and instability. Compute (code-named Nova) was integrated with Dashboard (self-service portal) and Identity (authentication system) in the Essex release. The other components of besides Nova, Dashboard (code-named Horizon) and Identity (Keystone) are: Image Service (Glance) and Object Storage (Swift). Some analysts consider s code immature, while others point to its configurability and flexibility as the reason for the code being the way it is. is targeted at service providers with large amounts of resources at their disposal: a significant amount of capital and most importantly, technical expertise. In any case, timeto-market and costs are currently major concerns with. OnApp's cloud platform appeals to a wide range of service providers. Launched in mid-2010, OnApp Cloud has since been deployed by hundreds of service providers, including VPS.NET, GMO, TDC and Peer1 Hosting. 2

3 OnApp Cloud Spectator Implementing and Running Your own Cloud Service Out-of-the-Box Features The following chart shows the features that each solution comes with before any customization or integration. is hardly relevant in this comparison because it provides only the bare bones. emphasizes creativity and creation from scratch, while OnApp provides a strong feature offering out of the box. EASE OF USE FLEXIBILITY Implement in 1-2 Days x Integrated Load Balancing x User-Friendly Control Panel x Intelligent Deployment of VMs x Customer Self-Provisioning x Pre-Built Billing Integration x Image Library Amazon EC2 API Support x Diskless Boot for Hypervisors * x Usage Metering Presentation x Hypervisors Supported 3** 7 Multi-Cloud Environment x Vertical Autoscaling x Clone VMs Language Files Object Storage x Block Storage x Utility and Plan-Based Billing x CUSTOMIZABILITY Open-Source x Customizable Control Panel with Branding Open API SECURITY & RELIABILITY Firewall Configuration Role-Based Access Control VM Backup Automatic VM Failover x Track and Limit Resource Utilization SUPPORT Free Implementation Support x Free Tech Support x *Full functionality coming in OnApp Cloud v3 rolling out in July. **VMware will be supported in July. 3

4 Additional Services Available from OnApp Cloud Federation, CDN and DNS: OnApp s federated cloud concept is one of the most impressive aspects of its platform. OnApp sees its cloud platform as a common 'hub' for service providers that takes care of core aspects of the cloud service (provisioning, billing, failover, scaling, UI, permissions and so on), while enabling providers to add value to end users with specific applications, services, pricing models and support. Providers using the platform are connected by a global marketplace where they may act in the role of buyer, seller, or both. Buyers on the federated marketplace can expand their cloud services by purchasing capacity and other services from other members of the federation. This enables providers to compete in markets they would otherwise not be able to reach, and is particularly significant for smaller players, who can use the federation to globalize their offering. If a provider is located in the US and wants to sell infrastructure in Japan, they can obtain unused infrastructure in Japan through OnApp s Marketplace and be able to provide cloud services to clients in Japan in just a couple of minutes. This sort of reseller mentality encourages expansion and marketability. Sellers on the marketplace can monetize their unused infrastructure and capitalize on their specialisms (for example, in applications or specific industries) by selling to other providers through the marketplace. OnApp acts as a broker in these relationships to make the process of federation simple and transparent for all participants. Providers using the OnApp platform are connected by a global marketplace where they may act in the role of buyer, seller, or both. Buyers on the federated marketplace can expand their cloud services by purchasing capacity and other services from other members of the federation. This enables providers to compete in markets they would otherwise not be able to reach, and is particularly significant for smaller players, who can use the federation to globalize their offering. OnApp s CDN platform is the first example of this federated model at work. Service providers can use OnApp CDN to monetize unused infrastructure, and to extend their cloud presence globally through OnApp's federated CDN marketplace. This offers a way for providers to create new service areas and revenue streams without additional capital expenditure on infrastructure. OnApp CDN currently has more than 80 locations available for providers to subscribe to, on demand, and appears to still be growing. OnApp s CDN uses a global Anycast DNS service that OnApp hosts at datacenters around the world. This service is responsible for routing end user content requests to the CDN's most appropriate point of presence for delivering that content, based on the user's location and the availability of each location in the CDN. An interesting benefit of this for providers using OnApp Cloud is that they can also use this capability to manage DNS for their hosting clients. These tools are available through the OnApp Control Panel at no additional cost. Storage: OnApp s storage offering, currently in beta, integrates with OnApp Cloud and provides fast, reliable and, most of all, affordable enterprise-class storage at no additional cost. OnApp s solution solves common problems in the industry: lack of scalability and performance for low-cost SANs, as well as the complexity and lack of reliability of open source offerings. Built on commodity hardware, OnApp s Storage product provides levels of scalability and efficiency that are difficult to find in today s market. The modular design of this offering allows providers to add additional storage capacity without having to rebuild the whole SAN. Also, no centralized disk management system means no single point of failure, signaling reliability. OnApp s Smart Disk Technology makes your SAN a smart, self-managing unit, capable of making decisions about data synchronization, load balancing, and moving content around efficiently. OnApp s solution solves common problems in the industry: lack of scalability and performance for low-cost SANs, as well as the complexity and lack of reliability of open source offerings. 4

5 Implementing Cloud Management Platforms Minimum Required Hardware OnApp 1 x OnApp Controller Server 8GB RAM (16GB+ Recommended) Dual or Quad Core 2Ghz+ 100GB RAID 1 2 x 1GB NIC 2 x Hypervisors 8GB+ RAM Quad Core 2Ghz+ 30GB HD (SSD recommended) 3 x 1GB NIC (4 recommended) 1 x Data Store 1TB block storage iscsi, AoE or Fiber it can even be on a shared SAN 1 x Backup Store 2TB+ NAS Alternatively, a large HD can be used on the Controller Server Cloud Controller Node 12GB RAM 64-bit x86 CPU (32-bit will work) 30GB (SATA, SAS or SSD) 1 x 1GB NIC (2 recommended) Compute Nodes 32GB RAM (2GB OK for test) 64-bit x86 CPU (must be same architecture as controller) 30GB SATA 2 x 1GB NIC Data Store: could be included in Controller Node 2TB RAID 1 Backup Store not Included in Requirements Required Software OnApp Platform: OnApp Cloud OS: CentOS 5 Hypervisor: Xen, KVM or VMWare VSPP 3.0 Billing Software Platform: OS: is available for all major Linux distributions. Hypervisor: XCP, XenServer, KVM, ESX, ESXi, LXC, QEMU LDAP Open Source Monitoring Software Metering & Billing Software Implementation Time Frame OnApp 1 to 2 days 1 Week for out-of-the-box implementation using Crowbar (very limited functionality) 2-6 months for a complete solution with the basic features listed on page 1 (timeframe depends on complexity of implementation) 5

6 Total Cost of Ownership in 3 Years For more information, please see TCO Methodology on page Cores, 1 Cloud OnApp OnApp OnApp CMP License $6,960 - $6,960 - $6,960 - Metering & Billing $2,000 $14,000 $2,000 $7,000 $2,000 $7,000 Implementation Support - $150, Technical Support - $60,000 - $60,000 - $60,000 Upgrade Support - $90,000 - $90,000 - $90,000 Total: $8,960 $314,000 $8,960 $157,000 $8,960 $157,000 OnApp Total: $26,880 Total: $628, Cores, 1 Cloud OnApp OnApp OnApp CMP License $25,200 - $25,200 - $25,200 - Metering & Billing $3,000 $17,000 $3,000 $10,000 $3,000 $10,000 Implementation Support - $200, Technical Support - $60,000 - $60,000 - $60,000 Upgrades - $120,000 - $120,000 - $120,000 Total: $28,200 $397,000 $28,200 $190,000 $28,200 $190,000 OnApp Total: $84,600 Total: $777, Cores, 2 Clouds OnApp OnApp OnApp CMP License $55,622 - $55,622 - $55,622 - Metering & Billing $5,000 $22,000 $5,000 $15,000 $5,000 $15,000 Implementation Support - $250, Technical Support - $66,000 - $66,000 - $66,000 Upgrades - $150,000 - $150,000 - $150,000 Total: $60,622 $488,000 $60,622 $231,000 $60,622 $231,000 OnApp Total: $181,866 Total: $950,000 1,000 Cores, 3 Clouds OnApp OnApp OnApp CMP License (20% discount) $87,360 - $87,360 - $87,360 - Metering & Billing $8,000 $31,000 $8,000 $24,000 $8,000 $24,000 Implementation Support - $350, Technical Support - $75,000 - $75,000 - $75,000 Upgrades - $210,000 - $210,000 - $210,000 Total: $95,360 $666,000 $95,360 $309,000 $95,360 $309,000 OnApp Total: $286,080 Total: $1,284,000 10,000 Cores, 20 Clouds OnApp OnApp OnApp CMP License (30% discount) $602,280 - $602,280 - $602,280 - Metering & Billing $8,000 $113,000 $8,000 $106,000 $8,000 $106,000 Implementation Support - $500, Technical Support - $240,000 - $240,000 - $240,000 Upgrades - $300,000 - $300,000 - $300,000 Total: $610,280 $1,153,000 $610,280 $646,000 $610,280 $646,000 OnApp Total: $1,830,840 Total: $2,445,000 6

7 Conclusion OnApp is the best choice for providers because it delivers an all-in-one solution with features such as flexible user management, metering calculations, billing flexibility, autoscaling and load balancing. OnApp was built specifically for the service provider market, and it shows. OnApp is the best choice for providers because it delivers an all-in-one solution with features such as flexible user management, metering calculations, billing flexibility, autoscaling and load balancing. The feature offering does not complicate running a provider business, however, because of OnApp s focus on ease of use. OnApp is best suited for service providers looking to get to market quickly, control their costs and see a return on investment as soon as possible. OnApp s strengths also lie in the area of price, ease of use and speed to market. As the TCO analysis shows, OnApp is the less expensive choice for most deployments. OnApp gives its customers every chance to be successful through its different services like the OnApp Marketplace and its free support. OnApp s new storage functionality provides another potential revenue stream without any additional cost. Implementing OnApp is easy and fast; you can have your business running within one to two days. OnApp s support team also helps you through the implementation process to make sure everything is smooth, at no additional cost. OnApp is a well-tested and mature solution that has been implemented by many reputable service providers. Maintaining a high level of service and profitability is much easier with OnApp. As the movement matures, implementation costs may come down, different flavors of may be brought to market, and more open source software that helps build out functionality may materialize. OnApp Cloud and are very different from each other, and thus, cater to different markets. is more favorable for service providers looking to initiate extremely large deployments with a 100% customizable solution. This is not to say OnApp isn t highly customizable because it is, but has the advantage of being an open source solution so anything is possible. is very basic in nature, allowing for this extensive configuration, but at the cost of a much longer and more involved deployment process, sacrificing time and resources. is seen as production ready by some and not even close by others; opinions on are highly variable. It seems that this product is a much better fit for enterprises than service providers. Out of the box, is essentially a private cloud that can be implemented using Dell s Crowbar for about $9,000-$10,000. can be deployed on any type of hardware, using almost any type of hypervisor. As previously mentioned, implementing and running for service providers is much more complicated, leading to high costs for implementation and support. As the movement matures, implementation costs may come down, different flavors of may be brought to market, and more open source software that helps build out functionality may materialize. In its current state, makes more sense for enterprises than service providers, while OnApp operates as a complete and comprehensive solution built specifically for service providers. In its current state, makes more sense for enterprises than service providers, while OnApp operates as a complete and comprehensive solution built specifically for service providers. 7

8 TCO Methodology The following will outline the assumptions, methods and strategies used in the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) measurements for OnApp and. It should be noted that the following core assumptions played a critical role in the overall calculation. 1. Hardware costs are equal 2. Estimates are calculated on the basis of what would be needed for a full service provider solution 3. Estimates assume there is no in-house expertise on and all support is outsourced 4. Only 1 controller 5. Only nodes are scaled up 6. No cost for operating systems or hypervisors OnApp CMP License The cost of the CMP license is highly variable, initiating incentives for larger deployments. OnApp prices for deployments above 200 cores are based on a two year committed deal. Additionally, customers with large deployments (over 1,000 cores) are assumed to be resellers and are provided a discount. These discounts increase with the size of the deployment. Metering & Billing Since OnApp s platform already provides metering, third party billing software is the only additional component needed for full service capabilities. Cost for this software was calculated by using the pricing structure of one of OnApp s partners, which includes a base rate and a variable rate that is based on the number of customers invoiced. There is an option that allows the provider to pay a high base rate with no variable rate, which becomes more economical with a large amount of customers. For the TCO calculation, we assumed 4 VMs per core and 2 VMs per customer. OnApp s implementation, technical support and upgrades are free, which is the biggest reason why OnApp s TCO is much more attractive. The total price estimates for OnApp are represented dually by the CMP license and billing software license. CMP License is open-source software, and doesn t require the purchase of a license. This is an important distinction. Open LDAP & Open Monitoring Since there are currently open source software offerings for these capabilities, no costs were assumed. Metering & Billing Research of leading providers for metering and billing software has shown that an additional charge is necessary for the installation of an billing system, leading to an inflated initial rate. Beyond the implementation after the first year, the billing rate is dually conceived: a fixed base along with a variable rate that factors in a percentage of the provider s revenue. Any increases in revenue result in a higher price. The assumptions used in this calculation include an 80% usage of capacity (leaving 20% for reserve), presumed by average resource pricing from the cloud industry according to Cloud Spectator s Pricing Report. Implementation Support With no in-house expertise, significant implementation charges are required in the first year, a direct result of the basic nature of. These costs are for turning into a complete solution for service providers that can rival OnApp s offering. Through research of leading companies providing implementation support, we concluded that as deployments increase in size, complexity also increases. As a result, implementation costs are higher with large deployments to supplement the technical complexity. These costs are exclusive to the first year of the deployment. requires an extensive amount of configuration and time to create a complete solution for service providers, which is the reason for the high implementation costs. Technical Support Market research shows that support is typically billed at a fixed rate up to a certain amount of resources, and increases with larger deployment sizes. Upgrades produces two new versions every year. This analysis assumes that providers upgrade after every new version releases. Research of companies providing upgrade support has led to the assumption that pricing for upgrades is about 30% of the original implementation cost per upgrade (60% per year). The Essex release provides an upgrade path for the next version of (Folsom), which decreases costs because a provider would not have to start clean with a new version. Upgrades can still be very expensive because of the amount of labor involved time frames can be anywhere from one week to three months. Although these costs are extremely expensive in the analysis, the estimates are conservative. 8