Agile Architectures and Their Evaluations

John ReynoldsTexas A&M University

March 25, 2015

Our story begins in the United States on August 14, 2003.

The distortion of the harmonics of the grid caused billions of dollars in destruction.

Our initial strategy is to support the 940 rural co-ops in the U.S. with hybrid cloud/device services.

There are potentially 42 million Americans that will be served by this system.

The NRECA Vision“The Agile Fractal Grid”

Achieving Grid Security, Reliability, and Resiliency

through Advanced Analytics and Control

This is the Kobayashi Maru

Our current model provides a private enterprise incentive approach to the supply chain.

IaaS

Agile Fractal GridCorporation

DigitalMarketplaceNaaS DaaS

TheKeiretsu

• Equity Financing• Joint Investments• Project Financing• Equipment Financing• Insurance Agent• Trust Services

Infrastructure as a ServiceNetwork as a Service

Datacenter as a ServiceSystems as a Service

• Tower and spectrummanagement

• Dark fibermanagement

• Service structuremanagement

• Neutral communicationstransport management:• National• Regional• Local

• Central facilities• Distributed facilities

• Industrial app store• Institutional app store• Commercial app store• Consumer app store• Provider voice services• Enterprise voice services• Content services• Transactional Energy• Security services

An ecosystem orchestratormatching wholesale providerswith retail service agents

• Vision• Orchestration• Advisory Services

At NRECA the private cloud-based supportneeds to provide applications options for

all the participating utilities.

The Agile Fractal Grid must support all the interfaces.

The telemetry systems occur in front of the analytic applications and feed data to the Big Data stores.

Utility Operations

BroadbandOperations

ServiceProviders

1. Provide an “applications store” for operational, analytical, and financial applications for the cooperatives.

2. Participate in the “Substation of the Future” for the remote equipment and subsystems.

3. Apply the Security Fabric within the emerging Industrial Internet to protect all communications between the elements.

The synchrophasor service ultimately might become the largest Big Data repository in the world.

AccessingCustomer

Node

RegionalData HubService

UtilityNode(local)

SubstationPDC+PMU

• Memory Cache• Protection Logic• S&F Uplink

• Behavioral Data Capture• Multi-Dimensional Index• Profile Directory• Configuration Synchronizer• Reference Data Replica• Time Sync

• Behavioral ParallelData Capture Cluster

• Multi-Dimensional Index• Owner*• Type*• Configuration Item*• Location*• Time Bracket

• Profile Directory• Configuration Synchronizer• Reference Data Replica• Analytical Data Marts• Private Parallel Processing

Spaces (by user) • Time Sync

10 G

B

Dyna

mic

ban

dwid

th

Allo

catio

n (N

x100

GB)

Para

llel

Tran

smiss

ion

Indu

stria

l Int

erne

t

• Visualization• EMS Access• Historian Capture• Ad hoc Analysis

Although this service is designedfor synchrophasor data capture,it can also capture and segregateother types of event notifications.

(~940) (~3)

This also may also be the largest distributed Cray supercomputing cluster in the world. .

The Renaissance City is considering joining the movement.“Empowerment of human creativity is the ultimate economic resource.“

This is cool.

The building of the Boeing 777is an inspiring lesson.

• The design phase for Boeing's new twinjet was different from the company's previous commercial jetliners. For the first time, eight major airlines had a role in the development of the airliner. This was a departure from industry practice, where manufacturers typically designed aircraft with minimal customer input.

• The 777 was the first commercial aircraft designed entirely on computer. Each design drawing was created on a three-dimensional CAD software system. This let engineers assemble a virtual aircraft, in simulation, to check for interference and verify that the thousands of parts fit properly—thus reducing costly rework.

• The initial 777-200 model was launched with propulsion options from three manufacturers, General Electric, Pratt and Whitney, and Rolls-Royce, giving the airlines their choice of engines from competing firms.

Due to the dynamics, our entire system must be integrated, tested, and redeployed

each and every day.

(The Antipattern: Deploying to a Production-Like Environment only after Development Is Complete)

Zero-Downtime Blue-Green Deployments

Users

DeviceEnds

Router

Transactions

Green Slice

Blue Slice

Web server

Green Slice

Blue Slice DB server

Green Slice

Blue Slice

App server

Green Slice

Blue Slice

• Green is the current production environment• Deploy the new release to the blue slices• Let the applications warm up• Run smoke tests against the blue environment• When ready, alter the routing configuration.• Blue is now the production environment

Switchover is typically performed in much less than a second.(If something goes wrong, switch the router back.)

Canary releasing in larger environments:• Only switch for a small number of users.• When the coast is clear, switch the rest/

Deploy every change that passes the automated tests to production

First we start with the vision.Second, we build the simulator.

We follow the genetic “unfolding” codes.We focus on giving life to the “centers.”

We use the real system as part of the testbed.And we deploy a new agile variant every single day.

This is in fact the Timeless Way of Building.It’s always done this way…

Discussion

A Concluding Word on Strategy

• Every increment of construction in the growing city must be designed to preserve wholeness at all levels…

… from the largest level of public space…… to the intermediate wholes at the scale of individual buildings…

… to the smallest services that occur in the building details.

• We have found that this fundamental theory of architecture extends all the way:

– To the design patterns of complex systems and organisms,

– To the “DNA” like genetic codes that shape the outcomes,

– To the very personal process by which the living organism unfolds to its ultimate purpose.

Every project must first be experienced, and then expressed as a visionwhich can be seen by the inner eye… it must have this quality so strongly

that it can also be communicated to others, and felt by others, as a vision.