Category Archives: Cloud Platforms

SDN Openflow commercial applications – Part 1

Cloud Platforms, Networking & SDN, , ,

In this blog, I will cover some commercial SDN Openflow applications available in the market now. SDN is the most overused term in the Networking industry now and there are different applications and technologies claiming as SDN.  I am going to cover SDN Openflow applications which rely on the model of switches supporting Openflow agent and a centralized controller running the control plane and programming the data path in the switches using Openflow protocol. The switches can either be virtual or physical switches. Following are the topics that I am planning to cover in this blog.

  • SDN Openflow application model
  • SDN Openflow applications. Following are some broad categories and examples of vendors providing the solutions in that category. This is not an exhaustive list..
    1. TAP Monitoring fabric – Bigswitch Big Tap monitoring fabric, Microsoft DEMon(Distributed Ethernet monitoring)
    2. Security – F5 Big Ddos, Bluecat DNS director,  HP Network protector, Radware Defenseflow, Guardicore Defense suite
    3. Network performance optimization and monitoring – Kemp adaptive load balancer, Realstatus hyperglance, Ecode Evolve, HP Network optimizer
    4. Data center fabric – Big switch big cloud fabric, HP VCN, NEC Programmable network fabric
  • Final thoughts

In the first blog, I will cover the SDN Openflow application model and TAP monitoring fabric and Security applications. In the next blog, I will cover Network performance optimization and monitoring, Data center fabric and some final thoughts from my side.

Continue reading SDN Openflow commercial applications – Part 1 →

NFV Solutions

Cloud Platforms, Networking & SDN, , , ,

This is a continuation from my previous blog on NFV overview. In this blog, I will cover popular NFV solutions in the market. This is not an exhaustive list, these are the NFV solutions that I am aware of. Following are the ones that I will cover:

  • Cisco Evolved services platform(ESP)
  • Alcatel-Lucent Cloudband
  • CloudNFV
  • Overture’s Ensemble OSA

Continue reading NFV Solutions →

Cloud policy – Congress and Opflex

Cloud Platforms, Networking & SDN, , , , , ,

Recently, I saw a lot of press on Cisco’s Opflex protocol that allows a declarative policy model to control a physical or virtual device. There were discussions around if the Opflex protocol would replace Ovsdb and Openflow. Within Openstack, there is a new project called Congress that allows for creating a policy framework within Openstack. This blog is my attempt to get into more details on Congress and Opflex and explain the relationship between them. This is mostly information gathered from different references that I have listed in the end.

Congress:

Congress is a new Openstack project that is used to enforce compliance within the cloud environment. The end goal would be to integrate Congress with other cloud orchestration software as well. Compliance could be needed because of Government regulations, contracts between organizations, SLA enforcement etc. Following picture illustrates the need for Congress.

Continue reading Cloud policy – Congress and Opflex →

Openstack Networking Demo

Cloud Platforms, Storage & Virtualization, ,

This blog covers a hands-on session demonstrating Openstack networking capabilities. This is a followup to my previous blog where I covered the Openstack Icehouse installation and basic usage. I have covered the following in the video.

  • Connectivity between VMs in a single subnet.
  • Connectivity between VMs across different subnets by having a router between the 2 subnets.
  • Connectivity between VMs across 2 different hosts and establish connectivity between the VMs using GRE tunnel between the 2 hosts.
  • Using Access security control policies to control access to VM.

VMs used are same as previous blog:

Controller localrc can be found here. Compute localrc can be found here. I had some issues getting connectivity across hosts working with network type vlan and vxlan. I am not clear if the issues are with the ovs switch version that I have or with the localrc configuration. Open vswitch version I am using is 1.4.6.

Continue reading Openstack Networking Demo →

Openstack Icehouse install using Devstack

Cloud Platforms, DevOps & Automation, ,

In this blog, I will cover steps to install Openstack Icehouse release using Devstack. I will cover Single node installation as well as Multi-node installation. In a single node installation, both control and compute instance runs in the same VM. In multi-node install, control and compute instance runs in 1 VM/host and a compute instance runs in another separate VM/host. In multi-node install, we can spin as many compute instances as needed. With 12GB RAM in my host, I was running out of memory with single control and compute instance and a bunch of host applications running in my system.

My environment:

  • Windows 7 with Virtualbox 4.3.10
  • 12 GB RAM

Downloadable VM:

I have created OVA files for both the controller and compute instance that can be downloaded from below links. Import the OVA files into any VM manager software like Virtualbox to try this out. These VMs are running Ubuntu 12.04.

Alternate locations for downloading VMs in case the Dropbox link above does not work:

Following are the steps that I did to create the VMs above. If you are downloading the OVA files, you don’t need to follow the steps below. Continue reading Openstack Icehouse install using Devstack →

Openstack Overview

Cloud Platforms

In 1 of my previous blogs, I have given overview of Cloud OS and comparison of the popular Cloud OS available in the market today. Currently, the most popular opensource cloud OS in the market is Openstack. Openstack has lot of momentum going for it along with a great industry backing.

Following blog gives a good overview of Openstack components, release history along with comparison of Openstack components with AWS.

Openstack can be downloaded from here. It is pretty complex to install Openstack since there are multiple components involved. Similar to linux distributions provided by linux vendors, there are multiple vendors offering Openstack distributions. Following blog covers popularOpenstack distribution vendors. More vendors are joining into the fray now. These distributions offer easier deployment, customizations, performance tuning as well as support. The best way to try out Openstack is using devstack. Devstack offers a scripted approach to install and try out Openstack. In 1 of the next blogs, I will cover the Openstack install procedure using Devstack.

Hybrid Cloud

Cloud Platforms, Networking & SDN, Storage & Virtualization, , , , , , ,

In the recent Rightscale survey, 74% of the respondents mentioned that they have a multi-cloud strategy and 48% of the respondents are planning for hybrid clouds. The recent trend in Cloud computing after Public and Private cloud is Hybrid cloud. Hybrid cloud offers the best of Private and Public cloud in some scenarios and Enterprises seem to like that.

In this blog, I will cover the following:

  • What is Hybrid cloud and Multi-cloud?
  • Use cases for Hybrid cloud.
  • Components of Hybrid cloud and design considerations – Cloud management, Network connectivity, Application portability
  • Popular Hybrid cloud providers – Rightscale and AWS, Vmware VCHS, Cisco Intercloud, Rackspace hybrid cloud, Redhat open hybrid cloud

Continue reading Hybrid Cloud →

Network Virtualization – Openstack+ODL integration

Cloud Platforms, Networking & SDN, Storage & Virtualization, , ,

In my previous blog, I covered basics of Network Virtualization and overview of commercial solutions available today. The most popular Open source Network Virtualization solution available today is Opendaylight. With the hydrogen release of ODL, ODL can be downloaded in 3 flavors: Base edition, Network Virtualization edition and Service provider edition. Network Virtualization edition adds components like Ovsdb, Opendove, VTN as well as Openstack integration. Ovsdb, Opendove and VTN are different approaches to provide multi-tenant networks. Ovsdb team has put in a nice set of hands-on tutorials for folks wanting to try out Openstack+ODL. I recently tried this out and I was very impressed. In this blog, I will cover my experiences in trying out hands-on Openstack+ODL integration.

Continue reading Network Virtualization – Openstack+ODL integration →

Cloud Infrastructure

Cloud Platforms, Networking & SDN, Storage & Virtualization, , , ,

In this blog, I will cover:

  • Major components of the Cloud infrastructure from hardware perspective
  • 2 models of deploying Cloud infrastructure
  • Overview of different converged infrastructure players and their solutions.
  • Deepdive into VCE converged infrastructure solution.

Major Cloud hardware components are Compute, Storage and Network. There are 2 models of building Cloud infrastructure.

  1. Build using discrete components.
  2. Buy turnkey solution called as Converged Infrastructure.

Continue reading Cloud Infrastructure →