OpenStack implementation of private cloud landing requirements summary

Editor's note: As the two main open source cloud platform, OpenStack and cloudstack each have advantages. Cloudstack installation and deployment are very convenient, the OpenStack framework is relatively open and flexible, can be customized according to user needs convenient development and customization. In this paper, the blogger through its own OpenStack building company's private cloud platform of actual combat experience, OpenStack implementation of private cloud landing needs to comb, synthesize personal views and evaluation and share with readers.

A period of time before the work, based on OpenStack to build the company's private cloud platform.

Take this opportunity to comb the OpenStack implementation of private cloud landing needs to treat readers.

Private Cloud landing Requirements:

1. Provide flexible load balancing for corporate Web services to reduce hardware consumption

As an Internet service, the traffic varies greatly during peak and trough periods, and the peak and trough periods of each service are at different points in time, such as the peak of a service's visit from 8 o'clock to 11 in the evening, while the B service peak is 10 to 15 during the day.

If the traditional architecture, it is necessary for the peak value of 2 services to prepare sufficient operational resources, server consumption is the largest resource required for a+b, in order to ensure that the peak two services to operate normally. After the cloud platform scheme is used, the resources can be fine-grained managed, and the physical server resources will be decomposed into virtual machines for resource management. During peak a service, the B service-related instances can be closed to reduce computational resource consumption.

Online Services, you can consider using virtual machines or container technology implementations.

2. Provide virtual machine resources for company development and testing

For internet company Online Services, RD and QA require a set of offline environments to develop and simulate real-world scenarios.

Development and testing environments require complete isolation, and based on this consideration, using virtual machines for development and test environments is now the best option.

3. Solving the bottleneck of resource allocation in the operation and maintenance department

Before the cloud platform, the Web application of the online and offline, all need to transport personnel to deploy and recycle server resources, for the operation of the Department, need to have a person to solve the machine installation and configuration, DNS settings, front-end proxy server configuration and so on. The research and Development department needs to enter the scheduling process after the completion of the research and development process, wait for the operation and maintenance of the machine to install and debug, delivery, before the Web application online.

The cloud platform can be a template, the virtual machine into a template, need to be online, you can quickly use this template as a basis for cloning a new VM for delivery. When recycling resources, delete the appropriate VM.

4. For the company to provide a file server, the company's internal staff to upload and download file permissions for internal file sharing, the establishment of the company's internal knowledge Base system.

Private Cloud Landing selection

OpenStack & Cloudstack

As the two main open source cloud platform, OpenStack and cloudstack each have advantages.

Cloudstack is from the cloud.com company's products to open source, from the product side, itself is a relatively mature products, installation and deployment are very convenient, and provide a complete upgrade process, can be easy to maintain synchronization with the community. However, as the community version of the constantly updated and compatible products, Cloudstack also gradually become huge. Many functions are useless and superfluous in the company's private cloud landing program.

OpenStack opened to date, and did not complete the product distribution, the advantage lies in its plug-in framework, because the technical framework allows free choice of available plug-ins, private cloud landing solution, you can select only the components needed to install. Because the framework allows for the insertion of different components, the OpenStack community is also supported by more vendors and has a higher level of community activity. In the enterprise implementation of the landing plan, you can have more options, to the problems encountered, there are more and faster response.

Given the need for further development of the components needed in the future, and the need for targeted tuning of the cloud platform, such as virtual machine Io, CPU binding, and not just the version of the open source community, the OpenStack framework is a better choice. Cloudstack If you do two development, the code is not merged into the Community version, the upgrade will need to merge the code again, more repetitive work. OpenStack can be made into plug-ins, when upgrading the OpenStack version, keep the plugin available.

Due to the immature production of OpenStack, the upgrading of the landing to the future, as well as the follow-up of the two development, all need to carry out a lot of development and testing of human investment. For internet companies, because there are more mature operational team and research team, development and testing in human resources cost calculation, is not particularly expensive.

The final choice, more inclined to OpenStack.

KVM & XenServer & VMWare

OpenStack native is more complete with KVM support.

KVM is also a more mature virtualization platform that was written into the Linux kernel in 2006 and, after Redhat 6, turned to KVM support rather than a virtualization solution that aggressively promoted Xen.

Compared to Xen, KVM is smaller, lighter, and easier to manage.

XenServer is the first commercial version of Citrix to open source, its products mature, functional and management interface more friendly. But OpenStack is not perfect for xenserver management.

VMware is a commercial software, and in a virtualized platform, it should now be an IO-and stability-optimized scenario. OpenStack, because VMware itself provides the corresponding driver, VMware support is more mature. The reason for the eventual abandonment of VMware is that it is more expensive to authorize.

The current tentative programme, with KVM and XenServer, and the specific use of the program, requires subsequent versions of the test comparison.

CentOS & Ubuntu

The OpenStack community is perfect for Ubuntu support, Ubuntu updates faster, the kernel version is newer, can support a higher version of the KVM, for OpenStack users, Ubuntu can provide better performance.

As far as the stability of the system is concerned, CentOS from the Redhat of the commercial version, stability and system optimization and compatibility, CentOS has a relatively perfect test and hairstyle process. After CentOS 7, the Linux 3.x kernel version was also swapped.

In view of the choice of system reliability and the prior technology accumulation of the company, it is more convenient to choose the CentOS series than the Ubuntu management.

Conclusion

At present, the company selection, based on openstack+kvm/xenserver+centos6.5/7.0 implementation of private cloud landing.
KVM and XenServer options will eventually require further testing to determine the usage scenario.
Evaluation

Personal opinion, OpenStack and Cloudstack as two big open source cloud platform, each has its own area of expertise.
The KVM, XenServer, and VMware battles are also diverging.
The real option to implement the landing plan, or to see the company's internal technology accumulation + future technical input + financial resources to carry out selection.