NETWORKING IN THE AGE OF CLOUD COMPUTING

NETWORKING IN THE AGE OF CLOUD COMPUTING POWERING A CONNECTED ASIA 1

INTRODUCTION Cloud computing, largely enabled by server virtualisation, has transformed the IT landscape for enterprises large and small. Long gone are the days when all IT applications were run on dedicated hardware in company data centres. This scenario has been replaced to a large extent with virtualisation: virtual machines are launched and shutdown as required by IT workloads, greatly increasing hardware utilisation and enabling organisations to create private cloud computing environments and deploy IT as a service. Virtualisation and advances in wide area communication technologies that enable high bandwidth services to be provided at low costs have combined to create the industry that is public cloud. This is because the efficiencies that virtualisation offers greatly increase with scale. Public cloud services are never likely to meet all IT needs for various reasons, so organisations look to use the flexibility and economy of public cloud services and integrate these with their own private cloud services. These are hybrid cloud services. A virtualised computing environment is in constant flux: virtual machines are brought up and shut down, applications move between physical servers. Until recently data centre networks were not similarly fluid, configurations were rigid and could only be changed manually. Now, thanks to the development of Software-Defined Networking (SDN), the network can be configured to optimise links between servers running applications, storage and the external connections to the data centre. 32% of organisations surveyed by 451 Research now possess a formal cloud computing plan as part of their overall IT and business strategy. On-premises private cloud adoption accounted for 26 percent of onpremises infrastructure spending in 2013. Hosted private cloud is expected to experience the highest rate of growth for off-premises infrastructure, accounting for 32 percent of hosted spending in the next 24 months. Source: Hosting and Cloud Study 2014: Hosting and Cloud Go Mainstream 2 POWERING A CONNECTED ASIA

BANDWIDTH PROVISIONING HOW BANDWIDTH IS PROVISIONED TODAY Today an organisation wanting a high bandwidth link between two data centres, whether it s across a city, across a country or across the world, must order the service from a telco, wait a minimum of several days for its activation and commit to that link for a minimum, in most cases, of 12 months. And that commitment extends beyond bandwidth: QoS parameters like throughput, transmission delay, etc., would also be included. THE NEED FOR FLEXIBLE BANDWIDTH Apart from the demands of cloud computing there are many situations where organisations need bandwidth on demand. Daily back up to a remote location Many organisations choose to back up production data in distant locations for greater resilience. Backups generally take place in batch mode overnight. The link needs sufficient capacity to enable backups to be completed outside of operating hours, but might carry little or minimal traffic at other times. With flexible bandwidth, the capacity of the link can be scaled up and down as needed, or it can be disconnected. Disaster recovery For disaster recovery organisations need data, applications and the facilities to support them ready on standby in a location separate from their main facilities. If these facilities are called into service, the organisation must also have sufficient communications capacity to make them available wherever they are needed. Product launches New, high-profile online games are highly anticipated by the gaming community. Immediately following launch there is massive demand placed on servers as users rush to download the new game. With flexible bandwidth the game developer can respond to varying network demands within minutes or even seconds, keeping customers happy and keeping costs under control by not having excess bandwidth when demand has slackened off. Major staff events Large organisations frequently gather executives from widely scattered facilities together into one location for conferences, briefings, etc. All participants will continue to fulfill their normal roles, putting larger than normal loads on the communications networks of the host facility. For example, one global bank has an internship program that gathers 500 interns annually. The event is held in a different location each year, placing a significant additional demand on the connectivity of that facility. Video conferences A company might have a link with bandwidth adequate for nightly backup to a remote site, but if one day it decides it would like to use that link for a video hook-up it could find high latency making this impossible. Short-term processing tasks Organisational demands on IT are not constant: short term projects such as end of financial year processing can place unusually large demands on IT resources where data is spread across multiple locations. TRADITIONAL BANDWIDTH PROVISIONAL CYCLE Complex, Manual, Takes Days Order form preparation Order validation and acceptance Wiring installation from network platform to customer racks Interconnect testing ~30 DAYS Customer signs and submits form to order desk PoP-PoP design, build and testing, Racks and power preperation in data centre Device installation at customer racks Figure 1: Traditional bandwidth provisioning POWERING A CONNECTED ASIA 3

BANDWIDTH PROVISIONING THE IDEAL SOLUTION: BANDWIDTH ON DEMAND Today an organisation who needs a high bandwidth link, ideally long-distance bandwidth services should match the flexibility and fluidity of the organisations they serve and of the IT facilities to which they connect: Links with specified bandwidth, latency and QoS should be able to be established and torn down at will either by human action or under direct control of software. Pricing should be based on the duration of commitment and on committed bandwidth usage but with the ability to increase bandwidth as and when required. A central controller should have overall visibility of and control of the network. All these things are possible with a SDN. SOFTWARE DEFINED NETWORKING: THE ENABLER OF BANDWIDTH ON DEMAND At the heart of all data networks are switches and routers - hardware devices that control the flow of data packets, delivering them to the destinations specified in their address headers. Today most switches and routers contain two major components: the data plane that is responsible for directing the flow of data packets and the control plane that provides the instructions to the data plane. In commercial routing and switching hardware the control plane function is typically fulfilled by a proprietary operating system - for example Cisco s IOS and Juniper Network s Junos. In switches and routers that support SDN the control plane function is removed from the physical device and implemented in software running on standard servers. Standards have been developed for this interface enabling the creation of software that can be used to control a network of routers and switches conforming to the same standard. There are three main advantages for SDN: OPENFLOW: THE ENABLING STANDARD OF SDN To create and maintain an open standard interface between control plane and data plane a group of global major users of communication technology that included Facebook, Google and Microsoft created the Open Networking Foundation (ONF). It has now grown to well over 120 members, including most major switch and router vendors, and has developed the OpenFlow protocol the first standard communications interface between the control and data planes in a software defined network. OpenFlow: Key to software defined networking OpenFlow is the first standard communications interface defined between the control and forwarding layers of an SDN architecture. OpenFlow allows direct access to and manipulation of the forwarding plane of network devices such as switches and routers.... No other standard protocol does what OpenFlow does, and a protocol like OpenFlow is needed to move network control out of the networking switches to logically centralised control software. Because [OpenFlow] SDN controllers provide complete visibility and control over the network, they can ensure that access control, traffic engineering, quality of service, security, and other policies are enforced consistently across network infrastructures. Enterprises and carriers benefit from reduced operational expenses, more dynamic configuration capabilities, fewer errors, and consistent configuration and policy enforcement Source: Open Networking Foundation White Paper: Software Defined Networking the New Norm for Networks It enables applications to directly configure the network to meet their requirements. It provides end-to-end visibility across the network through separating the control plane and data plane. The costs of the routers and switches are greatly reduced because they are standard items that do not incorporate proprietary operating systems to perform control plane functions. 4 POWERING A CONNECTED ASIA

TELSTRA S PEN PLATFORM SDN technology within data centres is rapidly gaining acceptance. However its implementation in wide area networks is in its infancy. PEN represents one of the first implementations of SDN platform to commercially available domestic and international wide area network services. Telstra has deployed OpenFlow-enabled routers and switches in its Asia Pacific network of data centres and has developed software to control and configure these through OpenFlow, to create PEN. Telstra customers can provision network services in PEN-enabled locations, specifying bandwidth from 1Mbps - 100Gbps and durations ranging from hourly to yearly. Customers can also match network performance and latency characteristics to application needs. Pricing is displayed in real time and the requested circuit is activated within minutes. Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are available to enable the same instructions to be embedded into software. PROVISION A NETWORK IN MINUTES WITH PEN SELECT LOCATION SELECT SWITCH PORT BUILD FLOW PROVISION FLOW 1 MIN 1 MIN 5 MIN 2 MIN Provision a network in minutes (not months)! No more paper, or manual processes Intuitive user interface and intergrated user experience Flexible terms - hourly, auto-renew or auto-disconnect Scale bandwidth from 1Mbps - 100Gbps Add NFV appliances such as vfirewalls and vrouters Figure 2: Provisioning can be done in minutes PEN PRICING CALCULATOR * This pricing calculator provides an estimate of usage charges for PEN based on the information you enter. Final charges will be based on your actual usage, and my vary from the Estimated Cost this calculator provides. **PEN is also available between Telstra s China data centres in Tianjin and Beijing. Pricing is availble on request. Figure 3: An online pricing calculator gives an indication of price for any combination of PEN route, bandwidth and service quality. POWERING A CONNECTED ASIA 5

TELSTRA S PEN PLATFORM PEN AND TELSTRA CLOUD DIRECT CONNECT : A POWERFUL INTEGRATION Telstra s Cloud Direct Connect service gives you consistent, high-speed access to third party cloud services such as Amazon Web Services. When combined with PEN, customers can dynamically match their bandwidth to the demands of bandwidth-intensive workloads and applications. Cloud Direct Connect gives customers across Australia, and for customers hosted at Telstra s Tier III data centre facilities in Singapore, Sydney and Tokyo, as well as those connected to any Telstra Points-of-Presence (PoPs) across the Asia- Pacific region connection via Telstra s Ethernet Private Line (EPL) and MPLS-based Global IP VPN services, the ability to dynamically manage application workloads across the AWS cloud and their private IT environments. By using a dedicated private network to access AWS, Telstra Cloud Direct Connect delivers a more consistent network experience and improved performance and lower overall network costs because customers save on public Internet connectivity. CASE STUDY Online retailer uses PEN with AWS Direct Connect A leading kitchen and laundry specialist founded in 1906, has been running an online store since 2005. It has made a big investment in Agile development and deployment methodologies and is a heavy user of Amazon Web Services: Amazon S3 (public cloud storage) and AWS Virtual Private Cloud. These services are accessed using AWS Direct Connect with 200Mbps of bandwidth, providing 100Mbps for its main Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), 50Mbps for its secondary VPC and 50Mbps for access to public assets like S3. The company connects branch offices and retail stores over a Telstra MPLS network. This network provides access to the company s billing and order management systems as well as important digital assets for the appliances they sell, including (photos, manuals, etc - stored in AWS S3). Now, the company is using PEN to provide connectivity between AWS Direct Connect and its MPLS network. By connecting its 200Mbps AWS Direct Connect into a 100Mbps PEN Long Duration Flow service, the company can grow the PEN flow on demand without paying for bandwidth it does not need. 6 POWERING A CONNECTED ASIA

WHY AUSTRALIA NEEDS ELASTIC BANDWIDTH Organisations in Australia stand to gain more than most from the flexibility in bandwidth provisioning provided by the PEN, thanks to the tyranny of distance. Most large organisations have facilities in all the major cities of the countries in which they operate. Facilities in one city might act as a backup and disaster recovery site for those in another, resources might be replicated for better performance, very large files (engineering designs, graphics, etc depending on the nature of the business) might need to be transferred between locations. All these applications create huge peaks and troughs in bandwidth utilisation. All Australia s major cities are hundreds of kilometers apart, bandwidth costs are high and therefore inefficiencies resulting from bandwidth capacity that is under-utilised are great. For organisations operating internationally, the distances between Australia s major cities and those of important trading partners are also much greater than for nations in the Northern Hemisphere, and with Australia and New Zealand the only sources of traffic on these routes, costs are further increased above those for comparable distances on much more heavily used routes in the Northern Hemisphere. The nearest capital city to Australia, Auckland is almost 2,000kms from Sydney. Going northwards, Indonesia s capital Jakarta is 5,200kms from Melbourne. Beijing - capital of Australia s largest trading partner, China - is more than 9000kms from Melbourne. Tokyo - capital of Australia s number two trading partner - is more than 8,200kms from Melbourne. CASE STUDY Techno Group The Techno Group, one of Australia s leading systems integrators, is using PEN for its disaster recovery operation. It offers private cloud services hosted out of data centres in Melbourne and Sydney for clients throughout Australia and the wider Asia-Pacific region. Prior to taking up PEN Techno Group used a permanent connection for its disaster replication requirements. This link carried traffic only during disaster recovery, but incurred the same fixed bandwidth cost, 24 hours every day. With PEN Techno Group is now able to provision network services between two locations in minutes via the PEN online portal. The Techno Group is also using PEN to support design and printing companies that need to send large files across continents. The Techno Group is only billed according to the amount, quality and duration of its network usage while at the same time benefitting from Telstra s industry-leading SLAs and secure private network. PEN has taken our disaster recovery program to a new level by giving us the flexibility to perform data replication based on demand. Peter Bell Founder Techno Group POWERING A CONNECTED ASIA 7

SUMMARY Virtualisation has greatly increased the efficiency and flexibility of computing resources. Instead of processors and storage being dedicated to specific applications they can be shared among many applications. To further increase the flexibility of virtualised data centres the networks within them that connect servers to storage and to the outside world can now be controlled by software to meet the changing needs of the applications they serve. The growing popularity of cloud computing, the need for remote backup facilities, disaster recovery and the increasing fluidity and mobility of global business all combine to create rapidly changing and often unpredictable demands for bandwidth between data centres in different cities and countries. Until recently such flexibility was not available: bandwidth had to be acquired on long term contracts, provisioned manually and took days to activate. PEN: REVOLUTIONISING BANDWIDTH PROVISIONING PEN underpinned by SDN technologies has changed that and has brought about a revolution in long distance bandwidth provisioning. Under user control from a simple and easy to use graphical user interface - or directly by software - links can be provisioned in minutes; for an hour, a week, a day, up to years, and bandwidth and QoS parameters changed on the fly. By removing the need to have dedicated bandwidth locked in by long term contracts and lying idle PEN can bring significant savings to corporate communications budgets. By linking bandwidth costs directly to bandwidth usage requirements PEN can make affordable services that were previous prohibitively expensive and open up possibilities for new bandwidth-dependent commercial offerings. The possibilities are endless. Contact Telstra today to discuss how PEN can expand your horizons. Contact your Telstra account representative or email tg_sales@team.telstra.com for more details. Asia: +852 2827 0066 Americas: +1 877 835 7872 EMEA: +44 20 7965 0000 Australia: +61 2 8202 5134 telstraglobal.com