WHITE PAPER: PAN Cloud Director Technical Overview

Transcription

1 WHITE PAPER: PAN Cloud Director Technical Overview July 2015

2 1. Introduction PAN Cloud Director (PCD) is a comprehensive cloud management solution that lets both, IT organizations and service providers design, request, provision, protect and manage IT as a service. It is used to build both private and hybrid clouds that contain virtual and public cloud computing resources so users can match their application requirements to the right resource. PAN Cloud Director will improve IT operations ability to quickly deploy the right computing resources whether it is a single server for development and test or a three tiered application with many servers, networking protocols and security policies for a mission critical application. PCD accomplishes this with its powerful provisioning engine, a flexible catalog system and a self-service portal letting IT personnel quickly and reliably present ready to use resources to end users. And, the PAN Cloud Director environment is quick and easy to install, in many cases deployment in just a day. With the flexibility to present resources based on VMware and Microsoft hypervisors as well as Amazon AWS resources simultaneously, PCD is able to build the most efficient and cost effective solution for the workload requirements. PAN Cloud Director orchestration isn t limited to the typical infrastructure components (servers, storage and networks), with its support of services as catalog items services such as Backup or Disaster Recovery can be as simple to deploy as selecting a catalog item. Managing IT budgets and costs are necessary for any operation. Enterprises are always under pressure to understand costs and usage to enable them to plan budgets allocate resources and analyze business operations. For service providers, detailed cost management, customer billing and payment plans are needed to operate their cloud businesses. PAN Cloud Direct includes powerful features for usage tracking, cost management; pricing and customer invoicing that can be used by enterprises and service providers to efficiently manage their IT budgets. In fact service providers will be able to benefit from unique capabilities that support multi-tier channel business models. Many service providers sell through distributors and resellers who then deliver cloud computing services to end user clients. PCD includes instant pricing, quote generation and simple margin/profit allocation features making client price management accurate and simple whether to a reseller or end-user. PAN Cloud Director Technical Overview 2

3 2. Software architecture PAN Cloud Director is a three-tier Java application which is installed onto a Red Hat Linux host and supports high availability configurations to ensure access to your cloud is available at all times. The redundancy configuration can be either redundant physical servers each with Red Hat Linux utilizing supported availability technology such as clustering or as a VMware virtual server with a Red Hat Linux server utilizing HA features of VMware for availability. PCD Software includes all software components required for the PCD environment except the host server operating system (Red Hat Linux). Once installed, PCD administrators are able to build a database of resources for a cloud catalog and interface with hypervisors and public clouds hosting the compute resources to be offered through the PCD self-service portal. LOGICAL VIEW A logical view of PAN Cloud Director looks like the following figure. Resources from virtual or public clouds can be imported into the PCD environment and placed in a service catalog called the Content Management System (CMS), a PostgreSQL database. PCD communicates with each resource environment through their API. Using a drag and drop designer these resources are used to create IT environments that can be automatically provisioned into workload solutions. A comprehensive monitoring system ensures that administrators can easily manage these services, and the billing engine ensures that resources can be billed or charged back on a usage basis. PAN Cloud Director Software Components PAN Cloud Director Technical Overview 3

4 3. PAN Cloud Director Resources PAN Cloud Director is a standalone application that allows you to create computing environments that contain virtual (from VMware vcenter and Microsoft Hyper-V) and public cloud (from AWS) resources. Virtual or public cloud resources include processing, network, storage, operating systems, software licenses, and common business applications. PAN Cloud Director can include the following types of resources: Hypervisor-based virtual resources from VMware and Microsoft PAN Cloud Director allows the creation of solution environments with one or many servers, networks, storage, applications and services. Resources can be hosted by VMware or Microsoft hypervisors simultaneously allowing for a heterogeneous resource pool. Virtual machine resources are created within PAN Cloud Director using VMware vsphere with vcenter and/or Microsoft Hyper-V with System Center Virtual Machine Manager. PAN Cloud Director orchestrates the creation of computing resources in these hypervisor environments using the API for the management servers. There are two methods for creating a VMware vcenter environment. In the manual method, you use a vsphere client to create datacenters, hosts, and base clones in vcenter, then import those resources into PAN Cloud Director. In the automatic method, the vapp creates a vcenter server and datacenter then automatically imports them into PAN Cloud Director. Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager is installed using standard Microsoft procedures. Public cloud resources from Amazon Web Service (AWS) The Public Cloud Connector option for PAN Cloud Director allows you to build compute environments with resources from public clouds. This enables enterprise users to launch workloads to public clouds while adhering to enterprise policies and standards. The current release of PCD supports Amazon Web Services Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), but additional public cloud resources will be added in the future PAN Cloud Director Technical Overview 4

5 4. Features and Functions PAN Cloud Director includes all the capabilities needed to build, provision and manage cloud services. Let s review the major functions. Design PCD works by abstracting IT infrastructure and presenting that infrastructure in a service catalog. This catalog contains all the components of the data center, virtual servers, storage, switches, firewalls, hypervisors, operating systems, applications, failover services, back up services, SaaS services etc. Public cloud resources from Amazon Web Services can also be included in the service catalog, so users can choose the optimal resources for particular applications. Components are added to the catalog through the software s Content Management System (CMS). Different server or environment types can be defined to address particular market, user or customer needs. Users leverage the catalog and the associated design palette to literally drag, drop and connect all the components of the desired IT service. Once the design is complete, users can deploy their application solutions with the click of a mouse. In this way, solution architects, applications owners and other credentialed users can easily design, configure and deploy IT resources when needed. Advanced server and network builds can be saved as templates for fast repeated deployment. The right hand panel within the designer displays pricing and a more detailed specification of the IT solution as the design evolves. PAN Cloud Director Technical Overview 5

6 Provisioning Once a design is complete, it can be provisioned immediately without any human intervention, saved as a PDF quote or saved for approval. The provisioning process also includes the automation of IP addressing, firewall settings and network configuration, and adds the new builds into back-up schedules and monitoring systems, providing enhanced security and availability. In addition to provisioning the design, a number of steps automatically occur: Monitoring and management is enabled. Ticketing is set up. Billing linkages are established First login and terms and conditions prompts are enabled Financial aspects of Cloud use - tracking, reporting, charges and billing PAN Cloud Director includes instant pricing and quote generation, with easily configurable channel partner/reseller and end-user management of cost, sell price and margin. Pricing to clients or users can be displayed instantly as configurations are built or changed, while cost, sell price and margin data can be displayed and managed for multi-tier resellers enabling transparent margin control. The Content Management System lets you easily control pricing and costs. The CMS: 1. Supports a three tier - service provider, channel partner, end user - business model. 2. Allows the application of variable margins by account. 3. Has built-in cost control to permit or avoid below-cost selling. 4. Includes real-time online pricing and send-a-quote feature. The CMS also lets you set cost, sell price and pricing effective dates, which can then be rolled out globally or to individual partners or customers. It includes an easy and effective mechanism to run sales promotions on an individual product line or on complete service bundles, making it easy to generate additional sales revenues from upgrades and add-on services. Margin Control PAN Cloud Director lets you set margin per component or per customer. It monitors margin in real time, preventing below-cost selling while allowing you to set override prices for individual deals. Setting margins is a simple as moving the slider for the component. PAN Cloud Director Technical Overview 6

7 Price in Real Time Prices are displayed in real time for end user clients as desired configurations are specified. Cost data can be displayed for margin analysis for service providers and their resellers. The view below shows the PCD drag-anddrop design environment. The prices in the yellow box will update automatically and instantly as components are added to the solution. Charges and Billing PAN Cloud Director can export billing data for incorporation into existing finance or billing systems or can generate complete invoices. The software was also designed as a multi-channel solution so service providers and their resellers can use the software to generate billing information. Charging features include: Default reports for the purpose of billing. Data export to in-house billing software. Batch runs. Invoice generation, scheduling of billing cycles and notifications to clients. Create invoices for users. Invoices can be customized through the CMS to include full client account identification, each component of the clients service, per day changes of resources, sales tax rates, payment terms and currency type. Configuring and customizing invoices for branding, monthly generation date, and billing contact details. Configuring report settings for Microsoft services Provider License agreement. Configuring quotations. PAN Cloud Director Technical Overview 7

8 Service Level Agreements PAN Cloud Director automates the licensing and service level agreement process. It features the automatic display and client acceptance of master service agreements, terms and conditions, service level agreements and sales order forms. This lowers administration costs while speeding up the sales cycle for service providers and their resellers. Features: A granular transaction log records all changes and actions completed. Client is prompted to accept the terms & conditions before being permitted access to the portal. Standard service agreements are available for localization. Buying authority settings can be adjusted by user type. Management and Monitoring PAN Cloud Director provides a comprehensive management and monitoring system. The console provides key alerting data that highlights any technical issues, displays open tickets and the status of backup processes. It also provides access to servers and firewalls via the application for ongoing management. The management console has a consolidated view of all user/client environments for service providers, resellers or datacenter operators, as well as an individual user view that enables users to view and interactively manage their own environments. It contains a zoom function which adjusts the viewing window to suit the complexity of the environment and a top tool bar where users can edit an existing environment or access ticketing, reporting and a resource center. Features: Logon console view. High Level traffic view of client s status. Granular monitoring and status information for individual infrastructure components. Easy access to any client s environment for troubleshooting or to make modifications. The panel on the right displays monitoring information PAN Cloud Director Technical Overview 8

9 Reports PAN Cloud Director also includes a reporting module that will display a historical graph of the selected monitored value. You can also access reports on the historical performance of servers and components and customize reporting timeframes. Snapshot status and history are also available in the right hand panel. Ticketing PAN Cloud Director includes a ticketing system that has been structured to operate in a three-tier fashion, providing an escalation path and single communications record for issues between an end user and reseller and back to the infrastructure provider. Upgrade With PAN Cloud Director it is easy to edit existing environments at any time and as often as required. Its selfprovisioning capabilities enable users to upgrade their services independently. All changes are automatically recorded and billed. This easy upgrade capability is especially useful when users/clients have temporary or seasonal requirements for additional capacity. It also enables resellers to drive new revenues and to quickly adapt to the changing needs of their clients. Leasing PAN Cloud Director includes a leasing capability for customers who need temporary computing services, or would prefer a pay as you go financial model. Leases apply to the entire environment or can be applied to individual servers, with different lease expiration dates. Leasing may be applied to physical, virtual, or public cloud servers. Features of the leasing function include: All or part of an environment can be leased for a period of time. Administrators can set minimum, maximum and default lease periods. The time period of the lease is shown in the designer with pricing showing per day, per month and overall cost of the whole lease period. Supports optional auto shutdown or auto tear down (deletion) on lease expiration. Provides notification of an approaching lease expiration. Notice to customer, reseller and their account manager. Notification will be via and also within the customer s portal window. Has renewal option on expired leases with a message and option to renew. PAN Cloud Director Technical Overview 9

10 Approvals PAN Cloud Director allows those who create computing environments to seek and obtain prior approval for the environments they create. This is a useful optional safeguard that keeps stake- holders informed of any environments being deployed on their behalf, and their associated cost. When setting up an account, the PCD Administrator can optionally associate the account with one or more approvers. Later, when a user designs an environment and clicks Save & Build, PAN Cloud Director first sends an notification to any approvers associated with the account. The approver gets a synopsis of the request including information about the environment and costs, and can approve or deny the request. If approved, the build will proceed. Approvals are also integrated with lease management functionality to allow online renewal of a lease. Approval Request and Authorization page PAN Cloud Director Technical Overview 10

11 SUMMARY OF PAN CLOUD DIRECTOR FEATURES: PAN Cloud Director Feature VMware vsphere 5.x MS Hyper-V 2012 R2 Amazon AWS EC2 Change comms bundle N/A (VPC only) Assign comms bundle & VLANs to users N/A Select AWS region N/A N/A Add server Edit server Select instance size Remove server Rename or remove deleted server permanently N/A Server console access N/A Server naming conventions Portgroup naming conventions N/A N/A Store VMs in folders N/A N/A GuestOS ready installed Customisation scripts for GuestOS N/A Choose Disk layout type N/A Connect to switch Select VLAN/SubNet Associate Public IP Address Set Root disk space Select instance size Set CPU Select instance size Set Memory Select instance size Storage types supported Any supported by Hypervisor Any supported by Hypervisor EBS Add additional storage (EBS) Add tiered storage Storage resizing (stretch existing disk) Snapshot support (Checkpoints) (EBS Snapshots) Add switch Add load balancer N/A N/A (Cross Zone) Power on/off servers (Will destroy EC2 instance) Set security groups N/A N/A Add Business Application (mount ISO on server) Parallel deployment of multiple servers from same image N/A Pre-Build resource validation & over commitment N/A Manage OS licenses (VL/SPLA) N/A Save Design Approval workflow Edit built environment Save as template (VM only environment) Hybrid environment (virtual and public cloud) Status shown in partner portal Show built environment view Control end user permissions in built environment view Status shown in built environment view Monitoring Threshold Alerting (CPU, RAM, Disk, Network) Statistics shown in built environment view Apply pricing to catalogue items Show pricing for each catalogue item Apply bundle price to server One time charge items Apply pricing table to reseller Product Revenue Sharing Categories Generate quotation Excl. AWS charges PAN Cloud Director Technical Overview 11

12 5. Roles, security and permissions PAN Cloud Director uses a secure role-based approach to define the capabilities different users have. This is especially useful for service providers who have multiple provisioning roles. At the highest level there are two types of users - administrators and users. There are several levels of administrators and users with different permissions, as shown in the roles and permissions table that follows. Administrators PAN Cloud Administrators import physical, virtual or public cloud resources into the PAN Cloud Director service catalog, create one or more accounts and allocate resources to them. For a service provider these accounts are likely to be their resellers who provide resources to their own customers. A PAN Cloud administrator may create other levels of administrators who are responsible for designing IT environments that can be used by individual users or departments. Service providers and enterprise customers can customize PAN Cloud Director with their own Branding and Corporate identity. Corporate identity can be extended with inclusion of logos, company graphics and messaging on their cloud portal and where necessary invoices. This feature can be used to differentiate cloud catalogs and resources for between different organizations, departments, divisions or subsidiaries. Customizing the branding of the PAN Cloud Director User Interface and invoices is easy. Simply import image files or other graphic and select where it will be included. User Roles A range of user roles exists based on the functions they can perform. Solution administrators can create, edit and delete environments, while the monitor role users are limited to viewing environments that have been built. This flexibility makes it easy to implement the model that works best for a particular organization. Roles and Permissions Table PAN Cloud Director Technical Overview 12

13 6. PAN Cloud Director Workflow Creating your Cloud The basic steps for provisioning environments with PAN Cloud Director are: 1. The PAN Cloud Administrator uses PAN Cloud Director to import virtual resources from vcenter, Hyper- V/SCCM or AWS. 2. The PAN Cloud Administrator creates one or more accounts with dedicated Account Administrator(s). 3. The Account Administrator creates users or user groups and may create the compute infrastructures for them or enable users or group admins to do so themselves. 4. Users have varying permissions relative to creating, editing and monitoring compute infrastructure. The following sections discuss each step in more detail. PAN Cloud Administrator Workflow PAN Cloud Administrators create a service catalog of all of the resources (or stock ) that will be part of an IT environment. Stock can include virtual resources based on VMware and/or Microsoft Hyper-V and/or public cloud resources from AWS. PAN Cloud Director comes pre-loaded with the most common elements used in data centers. Depending on the specific environment and computing needs, elements can be added to the stock. If there are elements in the preloaded virtual stock that a data center does not have or need, they may be removed. The following elements are typically part of the stock, and additional information such as base price, cost, size (e.g. memory size, processor type) and other data is stored for each. Operating Systems O/S Licenses Business Applications Business Licenses Services, such as backup, disaster recovery and Firewall setup Memory Processors Disk space Storage Servers Build Rules/ Restrictions Assign Rules for specific or multiple partners. Server Type PAN Cloud Director Technical Overview 13

14 PAN Cloud Administrator Workflow (cont.) For Amazon Web Services the following EC2 services are available through PAN Cloud Director: Amazon Machine Instances (AMI) Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) Multiple Region and Availability Zones Elastic Block Storage (EBS) EBS Snapshots Elastic IP Addresses Elastic Load Balancing Security groups After the service catalog is built, administrators configure all of the appropriate network resources needed to provide access to users. These include Switches Firewalls vsphere distributed switches (dvswitch) for use by virtual machines. The networking configuration tasks for the PAN Cloud Administrator depend on which types of environments their users plan to create virtual, public or a combination. Once the above tasks are complete administrators can create accounts, customize their portal and the designer view, either creating one default or further customizing it for particular accounts. Amazon EC2 Pricing PAN Cloud Director does not support integrating charges incurred with AWS into the display of pricing in the Designer View, quotations, or invoices. Instead billing would go directly from AWS to the partner or enterprise. However PAN Cloud Director does allow the administrator to incorporate a surcharge for EC2 items if appropriate. PAN Cloud Director Technical Overview 14

15 PAN Cloud Administrator Workflow (cont.) View of the Catalog Management System interface Building environments An account administrator logs onto the portal to create users and groups. The portal also allows billing information to be viewed for those environments that have already been provisioned. Double clicking on a user account opens the Drag and Drop designer tool, which has a library of infrastructure components, including servers, network, storage, firewalls and applications, as well as CPU, RAM, Disks space and both OS and application licenses. The administrator or permitted user builds up their environment by dragging and dropping the required components into the central palette and configuring each component to the required specification, including configuring licenses. The price is displayed in real time on the right of the palette as the environment is designed. Having designed their environment, the user may save the design for future provisioning or to change the environment at a later date, such as having obtained sign off on the design and cost. Clicking Build sends the design to the provisioning engine. The provisioning engine takes the design and splits it up into component types, such as servers, network and storage and builds the individual components into a complete environment by interfacing with the underlying virtualized infrastructure via the infrastructure APIs and also via various automation scripts within PAN Cloud Director. The provisioning engine also configures the monitoring system to begin to monitor and collect statistics from the newly created environment. Once provisioned, the user receives their login credentials to the environment. They may view the environment in the PAN Cloud Director management console, which includes an active network map that mirrors what was created in the designer and which enables the user to click on a server to login and power up and down a server. The management console also shows per server statistics such as CPU, RAM and disk space usage. Permitted users may choose to edit their environment from within the PAN Cloud Director console, which will open the designer and populate it with the existing environment. Only those components which are changed within the designer will be re-provisioned, such as adding disk space. Some changes such as changing firewalls rules may be performed while the server is running, while others such as changing the CPU or RAM on a server will require a reboot of that particular server. PAN Cloud Director Technical Overview 15

16 PAN Cloud Administrator Workflow (cont.) The user may then return to the portal to view a high level traffic light monitoring view of all of their active environments, and create and view support ticket status. 7. Summary PAN Cloud Director is a powerful tool for service providers and enterprises. Service providers can set up a private or public cloud service in just a few hours to build new revenue streams and offerings. PCD s unique multi-tier channel pricing feature lets service providers easily set prices and control margins to ensure they are meeting financial objectives. For enterprises, PCD provides an easy way to set up a private cloud and give internal users the self-service capabilities they want for the fast turnaround they need. This reduces operational expenses while increasing asset utilization. PCD also provides the secure and highly available environment that internal and external customers demand. PCD is a full cloud management platform that makes it easy for organizations to design, request and provision, protect, and manage IT as a service. As the next step to experience the full range of benefits PCD brings to organizations interested in building clouds on new or existing virtualized environments visit: The PAN Cloud Director Evaluation Package provides interested parties with an easy to access, fully featured, selfguided method to experience the power of Egenera PCD; the industry s most versatile multi-tenancy, cloud management tool. The package includes all the software and documentation required to create your own portal, publish common catalog objects, and integrate into a VMware cluster for real world deployment scenarios. The included guide will take you on a complete journey, starting with hands-on exercises of the Egenera cloud solution and the challenges faced by enterprise customers when deploying the various different cloud options available. Finally the developed cloud will be deployed and running. PAN Cloud Director Technical Overview 16

17 8. PAN Cloud Director Licensing Advantages Egenera maintain a simple and consistent licensing model for all applications. PAN Cloud Director is licensed on a per host basis. A PCD license is required for each host that PCD has visibility of and can deploy virtual machines to, No other licensing requirements exist around abstract configuration parameters like the amount of memory, number of sockets/cores or the number of virtual machines deployed on a host. One physical server equals one license no matter how much resource the hardware provides or how many virtual machines it can run. Organizations that want to take advantage of the Public Cloud Connectors in PCD, e.g. orchestrating resources in Amazon EC2 via PCD self-service portal, require additional public cloud connector licenses which are selling in packs of ten or more. 9. More Egenera PAN Cloud Director provides the ideal way to deliver an intuitive cloud portal for both Service Providers and Enterprises. Ultimately behind any cloud solution is an infrastructure that has to be scalable, flexible and resilient. Egenera PAN Cloud Director seamlessly integrates with Egenera PAN Manager to deliver the Egenera Cloud Suite. Egenera Cloud Suite extends functionality of PAN Cloud Director to Manage and control the physical assets required to run a cloud platform. This includes the provision and management of processing, networks, storage, High Availability and Disaster Recovery, all in a secure multi-tenanted software defined environment. For further information on any of Egenera products set contact us: emea@egenera.com Web: Phone: Egenera GmbH, Dornhofstrasse 34, Neu Isenburg, Germany PAN Cloud Director Technical Overview 17