The Energy ========= The cost of energy is increasing. A significant part of electrical energy cost is the cost of distribution. That's the reason why the popularity of small home solar systems increases. That's the way how to generate and consume electricity locally and be independent of the distribution network. However, we have a problem. "Green Energy" from solar, wind, and hydroelectric power stations is difficult to distribute via the electrical grid. Energy accumulation (batteries, pumped storage power plant, etc.) is costly and for the traditional electrical grid is very difficult to automatically manage the distribution of so many energy sources. The Cloud Computing ================= The demand for cloud (computing and storage) capacity is increasing year by year. Internet bandwidth increases and cost decreases every year. 5G Networks and SD-WANs are on the radar. Cloud Computing is operated on data centers. The significant part of data center costs is the cost of energy. The potential synergy between Energetics and Cloud Computing ================================================= The solution is to consume electricity in the proximity of green power generators. Excess electricity is accumulated into batteries but batteries capacity is limited. We should treat batteries like a cache or buffer to overcome times when green energy does not generate energy but we have local demand. However, when we have excess electricity and the battery (cache/buffer) is full, instead of providing the energy into the electrical grid, the excess electricity can be consumed by a computer system providing compute resources to cloud computing consumers over the internet. This is the form of Distributed Cloud Computing. Cloud-Native Applications ==================== So, let's assume we will have Distributed Cloud Computing with so-called Spot Compute Resource Pools". Spot Compute Resource Pools are computing resources that can appear or disappear within hours or minutes. This is not optimal IT infrastructure for traditional software applications which are not infrastructure aware. For such distributed cloud computing the software applications must be designed and developed with infrastructure resources ephemerality in mind. In other words, Cloud-Native Applications must be able to leverage ephemeral compute resource pools and know how to use "Spot Compute Resource Pools".

1. FlexCloud Conceptual Architecture
Date / Last Revision Jun 15, 2020 / Jan 17, 2022
State In progress, In Review
Lead architect David Pasek (VCDX #200), +420 602 525 736, david.pasek@gmail.com
Technical designers David Pasek (https://dpasek.com)
Reviewers
Project name FlexCloud

2. Document versioning
Date
2020-05-16
2022-01-17
Version
0.1
0.2
Description
Initial Draft
Hardware projects related to concept, Distributed Cloud Resources Networks

3. Design Log
Date Design topic Description

4. "Green Energy" from solar, wind and hydroelectric power stations is difficult to
distribute via electrical grid.
Conceptual Architecture - Problem Description
Demand of cloud (computing and storage) capacity is increasing year by year.
Cost of energy is increasing.
The significant part of electrical energy cost is the cost of distribution.
That's the reason why popularity of small home solar systems increases.
Generate and consume electricity locally.
Energy accumulation (batteries, pumped storage power plant, etc.) is costly.
Internet bandwidth increases and cost decreases every year.
5G Networks and SD-​
WANs are in the radar.

5. Excess electricity can be consumed by special computer system providing
resources to consumers over internet
This is the form of Distributed Cloud Computing
Conceptual Architecture - Problem Solution
The solution is to consume electricity in proximity of power generator.
Excess electricity is accumulated into batteries but batteries capacity is limited.
Cloud Native Applications must be able to leverage ephemeral compute
resource pools.
Spot Compute Resource Pools =>
Resources can be powered off anytime with short notification (in minutes)

6. Arch/Design Factors
Requirements
Use Cases
Constraints
Assumptions
Infrastructure for Multi-​
Cloud Native Applications
Globally Distributed Hyper Converged Infrastructure - (compute, storage, network)
Predictable infrastructure (CPU, Net, Storage) performance
based on SLA requirements
Functional
Non-​
Functional
Provision and manage L2/L3 Networks
Provision and manage L4/L7 Load Balancers
Provision and manage Security Policies with ability to
apply segmentation and preferably even micro-​
segmentation.
Provision and manage compute instances (VMs, Containers)
Compute system units (PODs) will be located into on-​
prem edge environments
FlexCloud must have centralized management and service catalog
Various Edge x86 Hardware based on VMware/vSAN HCL is available.
Conceptual Architecture Design Factors
Kubernetes Cluster deployment up to 5 minutes
vCPU : pCPU - between 3 : 1 and 5 : 1
vRAM : pRAM - 1 : 1
Storage response time (64KB IO) < 5 ms
System must support Kubernetes API for infrastructure consumption
VM instance deployment up to 1 minute
VMware technologies (vSphere, vSAN, NSX, Tanzu)
Effective "distribution" and monetization of renewable electrical energy

7. FlexCloud - Local Electric Power Station & Compute POD
Solar
System UPS Battery
Accumulation
Electric
Capacity
Electricity
Inverter
External
Electricity Grid Compute
Resource Pool
ISP1
Wind
Power Station Hydroelectric
Power Station
ISP2
SD-​
WAN
Internet
Excess
Electricity

8. FlexCloud - Home Electric Power Station & Compute POD
Home Solar
System
UPS Battery
Accumulation
Home
Electric
Consumption
Excess
Electricity
Electricity
Inverter
External
Electricity Grid
Compute
Resource Pool
ISP1 ISP2
SD-​
WAN
Internet
If not enough Electricity
IF

9. FlexCloud - Global Distributed Computing
Internet
Compute
Resource Pool
Compute
Resource Pool
Compute
Resource Pool
Compute
Resource Pool
Compute
Resource Pool
Resource Meta Searcher
kubectl
Resource Service Catalog
Containers and VMs
GRRID SRE
Knative
GRRID APP DEVELOPER
Serverless workloads

10. FlexCloud - SMB Compute POD
x86 Server x86 Server x86 Server x86 Server
VMware Software Defined Storage (vSAN)
VMware Compute Hypervisor (vSphere)
VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG)
SMB Customer
Namespace
1
SMB Customer
Namespace
2
SMB Customer
Namespace
N
kubectl kubectl kubectl

11. FlexCloud - Enterprise Compute POD
x86 Server x86 Server x86 Server x86 Server
VMware Software Defined Network (NSX)
VMware Software Defined Storage (vSAN)
VMware Compute Hypervisor (vSphere)
VMware Kubernetes Supervisor (TKG)
ENT Customer
Namespace
1
ENT Customer
Namespace
2
ENT Customer
Namespace
N
kubectl kubectl kubectl

12. FlexCloud - Compute Modules

13. FlexCloud - Compute Module - Lenovo ThinkSystem SE350

14. FlexCloud - Compute Module - Lenovo ThinkSystem SE350

15. FlexCloud - Compute Module - Edge Compute Stack

16. FlexCloud - Compute Module - Edge Compute Solution Edges

17. FlexCloud - Home Energy Storage
Home Energy System (HES) for Electrical Vehicles

18. Distributed Cloud Resource Networks
Akash Network
https://akash.network/
Akash Network is a
Distributed Peer-​
to-​
Peer
Marketplace for Cloud
Compute
Massive
https://joinmassive.com/
The Massive is about
alternative business
models and distributed
computing.

19. Q & A
FlexCloud Conceptual Architecture