From a scriptedFrom a scriptedvirtualization infrastructurevirtualization infrastructureto an OpenNebula Cloud.to an OpenNebula Cloud.

Guillaume Oberlé

goberle@unistra.fr

Direction Informatique

08/07/2015

University of StrasbourgUniversity of Strasbourg

37 faculties, schools, institutes and departments. 73 research units. 46 000 students, 5 000 teachers, lecturers, engineers,technicians and libraries administrative staff. IT department

110 people.5 sub-departments including one dedicatedto infrastructure matters.

Legacy InfrastructureLegacy Infrastructure

100 hypervisorsVirtualization Technology : KVM.Network Isolation : 802.1Q.Storage : local.

2 data-centers500 meters apart.

700 virtual machines.

Legacy InfrastructureLegacy Infrastructure

Virt-manager and Python scripts developedinternally are used to manage the infrastructure. Privileged access to hypervisors are mandatory. No ressource and management delegation. Middlemen are required to operate virtual machinesfor our teams and customers.

New approachNew approach

ContinuityPush forward our virtualization infrastructure.Share our physical ressources.Help unexperienced users.

BreakingCreation of a service offering.Setup a delegation system.=> Migration to a Private Cloud.

CustomersCustomers

IT departmentMost of our services are running in VMs.Operational team needs a better tool to handleall managed VMs.Dev teams want to be able to manage their ownVMs easily.

Academic components and research unitsRepresent only 10-20% of our VMs.Strong demand to have an access to a "UniversityPrivate Cloud".

Choice of the solutionChoice of the solution

Plenty open-source solutions.OpenNebulaOpenStackCloudStack....

Many differences between solutions.Software architecture.Network topology.Ressources visibility....

Networking RequirementsNetworking Requirements

Network technology : 802.1Q and VXLAN.We plan to move most of our networks to VXLAN.We will keep our storage networks on 802.1Q.

Virtual networks sharing between groups/projects.Related projects may share the same network.Importation of legacy VMswithout network reconfiguration.

Our legacy networking architecture doesn't fitthe Virtual Routers paradigm.

Storage RequirementsStorage Requirements

Storage technology : local, Ceph and Netapp.Ceph is to become our main storage backend.Netapp reserved for critical data.Local storage for I/O intensive, low latency.

Storage backends visibility and quotas.Great to make a service offering.

Backups are one of our top priority.

OpenNebulaOpenNebula

Open-source, easy and flexible. Good documentation. Central management node for simplicity. VDCs allows us to segment our infrastructure. Fits with our existing network topology. Supports local and Ceph storage backend.

Testing InfrastructureTesting Infrastructure

Management server in a virtual machine. No HA configuration at the moment, we don't needsuch complexity right now. 6 Hypervisors

144 cores1.5To RAM

Small Ceph ClusterTwo machines, 8 OSDs, 2.2To available3 MONs

Production HardwareProduction Hardware

16 Hypervisors354 cores.2.5To RAM.

Ceph Cluster10 machines.80 OSDs.25To available.

Triple the number of hypervisors next year.

ContributionsContributions

Minor improvement:

Major planned improvement :

Isolation method is a new attribute of thevirtual network and bypasses the host'snetworking driver.Still interesting to support the old behaviour.We made some good progress with it!

feature 3666: Clean VXLANdevices when no VM is left in the hypervisor.

feature 3848: Virtualnetworks should have an associated networkingdriver.

ConclusionConclusion

OpenNebula's VDC functionality was the gamechanger when choosing the solution. Continue contributing to the project.

Feature 3848.Netapp plugin.

Still a lot of things to explore before production.Contextualisation.OneFlow.HA configuration.