CENIC Private Cloud Pilot Using Amazon Reserved Instances (RIs) September 9, 2011

Transcription

1 CENIC Private Cloud Pilot Using Amazon Reserved Instances (RIs) September 9, 2011 CENIC has been working with Amazon for some time to put in place procedures through which CENIC member institutions can obtain reduced costs and improved performance for the use of Amazon s compute and storage services, collectively called Amazon Web Services (AWS) (see ). CENIC established a 10 gigabit peering relationship with Amazon last year to assure high performance networking to Amazon s West Coast peering location in Seattle. This provides direct connectivity to Amazon s network, which serves all Amazon cloud computing throughout the world. At this point, the means by which CENIC can offer a cost reduction to associates is through a combination of the Amazon Reserved Instance (see offering coupled with Amazon consolidated billing. For the future CENIC is also exploring becoming an Amazon channel partner, but the timing of this being available and the pricing is not known at this time. The channel partner might provide an alternative discounted service approach to the use of Reserved Instances (RIs). It would presumably also provide discounts on services other than compute. Reserved Instances Improved Price This involves CENIC paying up-front for a pre-determined amount of services, which would then be reserved for use by CENIC Associates. Since any unused services could not be sold back to Amazon, shareable/community RIs are an attractive option for users such as CENIC who can share the risk of unused services among a large population of users, reducing the risk of any individual user or user institution paying for unused services. In effect, CENIC would create a private compute cloud for use by its Associates. CENIC plans to purchase a pool of shareable/community RIs on behalf of interested associates. The quantity and type of servers in the initial pool of RIs will be determined by the usage commitments of the participating pilot institutions, and the up-front/fixed cost of the RIs will be shared. This approach will formalize participation, and will help guarantee that the s will be fully used. In return for what is effectively a guarantee of future use, Amazon s hourly cost is lower compared to the cost of spot or on-demand s. At the end of a relatively short pilot phase (perhaps 3 to 4 months), CENIC s private pool of community Reserved Instances could be expanded, allowing other interested CENIC associates to buy into the pool of RIs. CENIC will allocate the cost of the RIs based on the usage commitments of the participating institutions and segments, as has been done in the past with other shared services such as commodity Internet service. Other costs incurred by the participants, such as storage, database usage, network traffic, will be charged by Amazon at their usual rates (see and rebilled by CENIC to the participants. The server types and pricing (start-up and per-hour) available from Amazon are as follows:

2 Type CPU Memory Local Storage Platfom I/O One time cost Per hour cost Small 1 EC2 Unit (1 virtual core with 1 EC2 Unit) 1.7 GB 160 GB storage (150 GB plus 10 GB root 32-bit Moderate $ $0.03 $0.05 Large 4 EC2 with 2 EC2 7.5 GB 850 GB storage (2 x 64-bit High $910 $0.12 $ EC2 Units (4 with 2 EC2 15 GB 1690 GB storage (4 x 64-bit High $1820 $0.24 $0.40 Micro Up to 2 EC2 Units (for short periodic bursts) 613 MB None (use Amazon EBS volumes for storage) 32-bit or 64- bit Low $54 $0.007 $0.013 High CPU Medium 5 EC2 with 2.5 EC2 1.7 GB 350 GB storage (340 GB plus 10 GB root 32-bit Moderate $455 $0.06 $0.125 High CPU 20 EC2 Units (8 with 2.5 EC2 7 GB 1690 GB storage (4 x 64-bit High $1820 $0.24 $0.50 High Memory 6.5 EC GB 420 GB storage (1 x 420 GB) 64 bit Moderate $1325 $0.17 $0.24

3 High Memory Double Extra Large 13 EC2 Units ( GB 850 GB storage (1 x 840 GB plus bit High $2650 $0.34 $0.48 High Memory Quad 26 EC2 Units ( GB 1690 GB storage (2 x 840 GB plus bit High $5300 $0.68 $0.96 Cluster 33.5 EC2 x Intel Xeon X5570, quad core Nehalem architecture) 23 GB 1690 GB 64- bit storage (2 x 840 GB plus bit Very High (10 Gbps Ethernet) $4290 $0.56 not available Cluster GPU 33.5 EC2 x Intel Xeon X5570, quad core Nehalem architecture), plus 2 NVIDIA Tesla M2050 "Fermi" GPUs 22 GB 1690 GB 64- bit storage (2 x 840 GB plus bit Very High (10 Gbps Ethernet) $5630 $0.74 not available Note: Although CENIC s connectivity to Amazon is located on the US West Coast, Amazon s US East Coast s are less expensive than those on the west. Prices above are for East Coast s, but West Coast s can be provisioned by special arrangement. In addition to the shared/community pool of RIs, Associates can also elect to acquire RIs dedicated to their use. Provisioning these via CENIC rather than directly with Amazon would help CENIC to demonstrate high usage volumes to Amazon, and thereby help CENIC attain future favorable channel-partner pricing, though there would be no immediate cost benefit to associates in doing so as part of the pilot; the immediate cost benefit of the pilot lies in the sharing, and cost-sharing, of RIs among Associates. Clearly, this option offers the benefits of lower pricing for CENIC Associates. However, since RIs must be purchased for either a 1 or a 3 year period, the most beneficial way to employ this option for CENIC Associates is to anticipate the real use of RIs as closely as possible and purchase that amount.

4 Accordingly, all participants in this pilot will obtain access to RIs (either from a pool shared with other Associates or as s dedicated to a single Associate), using consolidated billing under CENIC s account. CENIC will charge back to each Associate based on monthly expenses incurred by their respective participants, and billed to CENIC on the consolidated bill. Participating in the Pilot To participate in the pilot, institutions must take the following steps: 1. Designate an individual who will serve as CENIC s point of contact (POC) with that institution. Send the name and address of the institutional POC to [email protected]. The institutional POCs will need to help determine the initial size of the community RI pool, and agree to share the one-time costs for establishing it: (#RIs)x(one-time cost of RI)x(participant s share of the pool). The share of the pool will be based on committed hours-per-year of usage; if the usage commitments across all participants does not add up to a fixed number of RIs, CENIC will obtain one more RI than it has full commitment for, and spread the cost of the not-fully-committed RI across all participants on a basis proportional to the usage commitment of each participant. For example, if three institutions participate in the initial pilot, all using a small RI, with commitments of 1000 hours/year (institution A), 1000 hours/year (institution B), and 2000 hours/year (institution C), CENIC would obtain one RI for one year (8760 hours). The up-front/fixed cost of the RI would be allocated at 50% to institution C and 25% to each of institutions A and B, and each institution would pay for the hours it uses. By contrast, an institution obtaining its own RI would be responsible for the entire fixed cost, in addition to the hours used. The institutional POCs, along with any interested end users, will be invited to a project kick-off session to be held by phone among the pilot participants. The kick-off session will be scheduled once the participants are identified. 2. Contact CENIC, either directly (via to [email protected]) or via the institutional contact to express interest in the pilot. If the participant is already using AWS, CENIC will link the participant s AWS account to CENIC s master account for consolidated billing. If a new AWS account is needed, CENIC will create that, similarly linking it to CENIC s master account. 3. Once the AWS account linkage is in place, AWS usage for the participant will be charged by Amazon to CENIC, using the lower pricing associated with CENIC s private

5 cloud, and rebilled by CENIC to the participating segment or institution on a monthly basis. Project Information and Best Practices Sharing CENIC has created a wiki, for sharing project information, issues, and best practices concerning this pilot and other cloud efforts. Participants in the pilot are encouraged to make use of this wiki for information sharing and problem reporting.