A Real World Outlook On Why And How

CloudStack Collaboration Conference, Europe 2014

HYBRID CLOUD

Thomas Orozco

Me

Product Manager @ Scalr

Open-source Enterprise Cloud Management Platform.

All our enterprise customers run on hybrid cloud.

WHAT’S SCALR?Why Talk About Hybrid Cloud?

• CloudStack + AWS at Samsung

• OpenStack + AWS at Expedia, NASA

Who are you?

And you

What do you do?

Image Credit: Bybzee from the Noun Project

WHAT’S “HYBRID CLOUD”?

Image Credit: PhotoAtelier (Flickr)

A system with components deployed across multiple cloud platforms is said to be using hybrid cloud.

Oftentimes, it’s one public cloud and one private cloud (but that consideration actually has limited implications).

DEFINE: HYBRID CLOUD

Image Credit: greeblie (Flickr)

At the app level, “operating on a hybrid

cloud” means you have interdependent

services that make up your app

distributed across clouds.

At the organizational level, “operating a

hybrid cloud” means you have some

resources, possibly independent,

distributed across clouds.

WHAT “SYSTEM”?Challenges and success strategies largely

depend on what you are looking at

Image Credit: Dane Hetteix, Auda Samora from the Noun Project

OrganizationApp

25% of enterprises will be

deploying IT workloads

and applications in a

hybrid cloud setup by 2015.

23% think that hybrid

cloud is the best execution

venue for cloud-native

apps (i.e. greenfield).

Private: 11%, Public: 66%.

43% think that hybrid

cloud is the best

execution venue for e-

business applications.

Private: 18%, Public: 39%.

TIME FOR STATISTICS!Adoption exists both at the organization and app level

23%25% 43%

Source: Forrester Research, “Cloud Wave 6” Study, 2014

COST OPTIMIZATION

Deploy ephemeral apps (e.g. ad campaigns) and risky ventures to a public cloud.

Deploy long term workloads to a private cloud.

Or, “buy the base and rent the spike.”

FAILOVER, DR, BACKUPS

Host failover resources and data backups in a separate cloud for redundancy and possibly cost reduction.

CUSTOM SKUS

Deploy workloads that require unusual CPU / RAM / Disk ratios to a private cloud with custom SKUs.

Deploy more typical workloads to a public cloud.

LEGACY SYSTEMS

Deploy backend resources that integrate with legacy on-premises systems in a private cloud (latency compliance). Deploy frontend resources in a public cloud.

PERFORMANCE

Achieve greater performance by deploying to a private cloud (e.g. smaller DC implies lower latencies, and using bare metal cloud is an option).

VENDOR LEVERAGE

Get a better deal with your public cloud provider by having an alternative.

WHY USE HYBRID CLOUD?More reasons than you can think of! The same apply at both levels

COMPLIANCE

Deploy regulated workloads and store regulated data in a gold-plated secure private cloud, use public cloud for the rest.

AND MORE!

There are literally innumerable use cases for hybrid cloud.

Hybrid cloud means you deploy

workloads to the cloud that is the

best suited to fit their requirements.

Key considerations often revolve

around SLAs and value / cost ratios.

OPTIMIZATION

Image Credit: Sabine Wollender from the Noun Project

SUCCESS STRATEGIES AT THE

APP LEVEL

Image Credit: Ched Cheddles (Flickr)

One application, multiple tiers distributed across different clouds.

USE CASEWhat are we talking about here?

Image Credit: Auda Samora, Callum Egan from the Noun Project

3 Key Success Strategies:

1. Understand infrastructure differences

2.Be mindful of leaky abstractions

3.Avoid vendor lock-in

“Hybrid cloud? Everyone was talking about it, but no one was really doing it.”

Mark Williams, CTO of Redapt,

formerly at Zynga where he built zCloud

Abstraction libraries like libcloud or fog resolve syntactic API incompatibilities.

But don’t miss the forest for the trees! Semantic incompatibilities matter the most. Account for them!

1. INFRASTRUCTURE“I’ll just use libcloud”

Image Credit: Edward Boatman, Richard de Vos from the Noun Project

E.g. provisioning times can vary across clouds, so scaling parameters that work well on one cloud may not be appropriate for another one.

“APIs are tiny windows into massive, complicated systems”

Randy Bias, CTO of CloudScaling,

built Korea Telecom’s uCloud

Abstractions like Weave (a virtual network for Docker) or a VPN let you simplify application operations, but they are leaky abstractions.

E.g. latency across clouds can be quite high. Latency within a public cloud may already be too high for your workload. Test it!

2. ABSTRACTIONS“I’ll just use Docker”

Image Credit: André Raphael, Richard de Vos, Icomatic from the Noun Project, Michael Wyszomierski (Flickr)

Backend latency can quickly slow a typical Django / Rails app to a crawl. Don’t forget bandwidth costs, too.

Managed services are the bread and butter of cloud lock-in (e.g. DynamoDB, SQS…)

Consider relying on trusted OSS software instead if you intend to use hybrid cloud (e.g. Redis, RabbitMQ)

3. LOCK-IN“I wish I hadn’t used DynamoDB”

Image Credit: Marwa Boukarim from the Noun Project,Vinoth Chandar (Flickr)

SUCCESS STRATEGIES AT THE

ORGANIZATION LEVEL

Image Credit: Ched Cheddles (Flickr)

Entire organization. Numerous independent apps deployed across multiple clouds.

USE CASEWhat are we talking about here?

Image Credit: Dane Hetteix, Callum Egan from the Noun Project

3 Key Success Strategies:

1. Define cloud for your organization

2.Enable users to transition across clouds

3.Encourage them with the right incentives

1. DEFINEWhat cloud? Cloud-native, or just cloud?

Cloud can have many meanings, but to freely distribute across clouds, your organization must agree on one.

Different clouds encourage different architectures (e.g. cloud-native “cattle vs pets”, traditional “scale-up”).

The “big public clouds” are “elastic”, or “scale-out” clouds.

Image Credit: Martin Delin, Icomatic from the Noun Project

Users of CloudStack should be especially careful.

CloudStack accommodates scale-up workloads differently than most cloud platforms.

2. ENABLESupport end-users that want to migrate from a cloud to

another

Most organisations start on a public cloud and migrate back to a private cloud later on.

End users expect a solid experience that matches what public clouds offer.

Image Credit: Simple Icons, Apache Software Foundation

In private cloud, CloudStack “just works”

3. ENCOURAGEProvide the right incentives for users to place their workloads

where you want them to

To achieve organizational hybrid cloud objectives (e.g. a cost reduction), end users are the ones that must migrate.

Chargeback is an efficient way to incentivize users to move to the cloud where your costs are the lowest.

But private clouds can also typically achieve greater performance than public clouds.

Image Credit: TukTuk Design, hunotika from the Noun Project

Zynga was able to cut cloud costs by 2/3 by moving to zCloud.

Studios started moving when staying on AWS would negatively affect their P&L.

CONCLUSION

Image Credit: Ched Cheddles (Flickr)

At the organization level

CONCLUSIONWhat can you do?

Image Credit: Dane Hetteix, Callum Egan from the Noun Project

1. Define cloud for your organization

2.Enable users to transition across clouds

3.Encourage them with the right incentives

At the application level

1. Understand infrastructure differences

2.Be mindful of leaky abstractions

3.Avoid vendor lock-in

thomas@scalr.com

QUESTIONS?