An overview of cloud computing for PHP developers. This is a slightly updated version of my earlier 'PHP and the Cloud' slides, mostly to reflect my new company's layout.

1. http://www.egeniq.com
info@egeniq.com
@egeniq
PHP Development In The Cloud
Ivo Jansch
February 2011

2. Contents
WARNING
This is not Yet Another
“Store files on Amazon S3” talk.
2

3. What is the Cloud?
3

4. What is the Cloud?
4

5. Gartner’s Hype Cycle
5

6. Gartner’s Hype Cycle
6

7. Gartner’s Hype Cycle on Clouds
7

8. Clouds According to NIST
“Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand
network access to a shared pool of configurable computing
resources that can be rapidly provisioned and released with
minimal management effort or service provider interaction.
This cloud model promotes availability and is composed of five
essential characteristics, three service models, and four
deployment models.”
National Institute of Standards and Technology
http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/SNS/cloud-computing/
8

9. NIST: Five Characteristics
Things that are considered cloud:
‣ On-demand, self-service
‣ Broad network access
‣ Resource pooling
‣ Rapid elasticity
‣ Measured service
9

10. NIST: Three Service Models
Cloud applications are:
‣ Software as a Service
‣ Platform as a Service
‣ Infrastructure as a Service
10

11. NIST: Four Deployment Models
‣ Private cloud
‣ Community cloud
‣ Public cloud
‣ Hybrid cloud
11

12. Infrastructure as a Service
12

13. Application Layers
Standard layers in a typical application:
Application
System Software
Storage
Operating System
Hardware
Network
13

14. Infrastructure as a Service
Parts of the infrastructure offered as service to your app:
Application
System Software
Storage
Operating System
Hardware
Network
14

15. Infrastructure as a Service
‣ Pitfalls:
• Vendor lock-in
• Security
• Integrity of the service provider
‣ Advantages:
• Easily scalable
• Move from capital expense to operational expense
• Metered use
• Don’t worry about hardware...
15

16. Infrastructure as a Service
16

17. The Hardware/OS Layer
‣ Typically offered as Virtual Machine images
‣ Gives ‘throw hardware at the problem’ a new dimension
‣ Elastic load balancing divides traffic over instances
17

18. Example: The Rackspace Cloud
‣ The RackspaceCloud is what used to be called Mosso
‣ Powerful API for managing your cloud
‣ Easy access in PHP through Aleksey Korzun’s PHP API:
• http://github.com/AlekseyKorzun/php-cloudservers
‣ Concepts
• Images (various operating systems)
• Flavors (configuration: mem, cpu, disk)
18

19. The Rackspace Cloud in PHP
19

20. The Rackspace Cloud in PHP
20

21. Clouds for Development
‣ Private Cloud:
• Flexible development environments
• Easy to simulate large scale environments
• Easy to set up multiple clusters
21

22. Example: Terremark’s Infinicloud
22

23. Terremark’s InfiniCloud
23

24. IaaS Architecture
Prepare your app to run on IaaS
24

25. Horizontal Scalability
‣ If you run your app on multiple servers today, would it work?
‣ Typical problem areas:
• Sessions
• Files
25

26. Horizontal Scalability
‣ Danga - http://www.danga.com/
• People behind LiveJournal / SixApart
• Creators of tools to help make software horizontally scalable
• Memcache - distributed caching, session clustering
‣ http://github.com/andreiz/php-memcached
• MogileFS - distributed file storage
‣ http://projects.usrportage.de/index.fcgi/php-mogilefs
• Gearman - distributed parallel job processing / message queue
‣ http://pecl.php.net/package/gearman/
26

27. Elasticity
‣ Fewer bottlenecks
• More elasticity
• Easier to scale
27

28. Elasticity
28

29. Elasticity
29

30. Abstraction
‣ Abstract services where possible
30

31. Abstraction
‣ Con:
• Common denominator functionality
• Adds some overhead
‣ Pro:
• Reduce vendor lock-in
• Increase flexibility
• Save development time
• No need to learn different APIs
• Promotes competition between providers
31

32. Abstraction
‣ Zend’s SimpleCloud
• http://simplecloud.org
• Good attempt at generic cloud abstraction
32

33. Characteristics Of Your Application
‣ Service oriented
‣ Stateless
‣ Low coupling
‣ Modularity
‣ Interoperability
33

34. Infra as a Service = SLA Hell?
‣ Find out service levels of infrastructure components
‣ Get proper support
‣ Create “What if...” scenarios
• What if Amazon is down?
• What if SupaDupaCloudStore goes bankrupt?
‣ Who owns the data?
‣ Pay attention to license agreements
34

35. Platform as a Service
35

36. Platform as a Service
Complete platform offered as a service:
Application
System Software
Storage
Operating System
Hardware
Network
36

37. Platform as a Service
‣ Platform scales up and down as necessary
‣ Same pitfalls and advantages as IaaS, plus:
• Don’t worry about scalability
37

38. Platform as a Service
38

39. Google AppEngine
‣ http://code.google.com/appengine/
‣ Python and Java
‣ Able to run PHP via Quercus (Java PHP interpreter)
• http://www.webdigi.co.uk/blog/2009/run-php-on-the-google-app-engine/
• http://www.caucho.com/resin-3.0/quercus/
‣ Technology needs to prove itself
• Example sites running on Quercus:
‣ http://www.webmonkey.com/
‣ http://www.style.com/stylefile/
39

40. The Rackspace Cloud ‘Sites’
40

41. Rackspace’s TrueHybrid
‣ Platform selects the best operating system for your site
‣ Magically blends Windows and Linux, ASP.NET and PHP
41

42. Other Platforms for PHP
‣ NING
• http://ning.com
• Social Network PaaS
‣ Force.com
• Salesforce cloud platform
• Business applications
‣ PHPFog
• http://phpfog.com
• Cloud platform for PHP apps
• Quite young, looks very promising
42

43. Software as a Service
43

44. Software as a Service
Everything in the cloud:
Application
System Software
Storage
Operating System
Hardware
Network
44

45. Software as a Service
‣ Complete applications or application components
‣ Popular phrase: “We are moving our ... to the cloud”
‣ Examples:
• Gmail
• Google Apps (office apps, calendar, email)
• Salesforce for CRM
‣ Often built on IaaS
• Dropbox file sharing (makes use of Amazon S3 for storage)
• Jungledisk backups (same)
45

46. Software as a Service
46

47. Example: Salesforce
‣ Gives access to all your data in Salesforce using SOAP
‣ PHP library available
‣ Documentation abundant
• http://developer.force.com/
‣ Salesforce was SaaS way before term ‘cloud’ was coined
‣ Most developer friendly SaaS
• Documentation
• Sandbox functionality (paid)
47

48. Example: Salesforce
Source adapted from tutorial at http://www.mikesimonds.com
48

49. Example: Google Apps
‣ Many features available through Zend_Gdata_* in ZF
• Information retrieval
• Document storage
• Calendering
• Account Configuration
49

50. Example: Google Apps
50

51. General SaaS suggestions
‣ Want to work with X from PHP?
• Google ‘X php api’ or ‘X php tutorial’
• You’re almost never the first to want to work with it
‣ Cloud apps are easier to work with than most desktop/
noncloud apps.
‣ Testing
• You don’t want to jeopardize your production data
• See if there is a sandbox feature (Salesforce has one)
• If not, create test accounts
51

52. The ‘Warcraft Effect’
Clouds are living entities that change when you’re not looking
52

53. Creating SaaS
53

54. Creating SaaS
‣ In 2 years Cloud Infrastructure will be a commodity
• It’ll be all about application development
‣ Building an application for multiple users/customers
‣ Things to pay attention to:
• Reliability (one customer getting in the way of another)
• Security (competitors seeing each other’s data)
• Deployment
• Maintenance
54

55. Multi-Tenancy evolution
Source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa479069.aspx
55

56. Multi-tenant Databases
56

57. Multi-tenant Databases
57

58. Things to think about
‣ Privacy
‣ Shared data
‣ Collaboration
‣ Interoperability
‣ Vendor lock
58

59. Putting it all together
Cloud Computing In Practice
59

60. A Hybrid IT Cloud
60

61. A Hybrid IT Cloud
61

62. Summary
If you were sleeping, wake up now!
62

63. Summary
‣ What is the Cloud?
• The cloud = IaaS + PaaS + SaaS
‣ If you have trouble remembering:
• Cloud = Platform, Infrastructure & Software as a Service
63

64. Summary
‣ With your next PHP application:
• See if you can run it on a Cloud Platform
• See if you can run parts on Cloud Infrastructure
• See if you can use Software as a Service components
• See if you can offer it as a service
• Keep your architecture ‘cloud ready’
‣ Think about clouds!
• In a couple of years, we’ll all be doing it
64

65. Food for Thought
Let’s leave you with something to think about
65

66. Food for Thought
Are you worried about this?
Cloud
Cloud
Provider
Where’s my
data?!
66

67. Food for Thought
Then what about this?
Financial System
Bank
Where’s my
money?!
Our money has been in the cloud since the 18th century!
67

68. http://www.egeniq.com
info@egeniq.com
@egeniq
Thank you! Questions?
http://www.egeniq.com
ivo@egeniq.com
@ijansch

69. Credits
Pictures used (under Creative Commons Attribution licenses)
Cloud (slide 3):
http://flickr.com/photos/kables/6324973/
Cat + harddisk:
http://flickr.com/photos/sirmildredpierce/42928070/ (adapted)
Rubber Band Man:
http://flickr.com/photos/thenovys/3791884189/
Clipart used (royalty free and public domain)
http://www.clker.com/