Boyan Krosnov - Building a software-defined cloud - our experience. Presentation from CloudStack / Ceph day Thursday, April 19, London.

1. Building a software-defined cloud with CloudStack
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2. Boyan Krosnov
● Chief of Product
● Cloud architect
● "External technology"
● Previously service providers, networks, packet
processing (SDN)
● Algorithms & data structures
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3. StorPool
● Fast and efficient software-defined storage system
● Used by MSPs, Cloud service providers, Hosting
companies and in private clouds
● Started in 2011 to solve storage for cloud service
providers
● Clean slate design - scale-out, API-controlled,
end-to-end data integrity, CoW
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4. StorPool
● Most deployments are with KVM
○ some Xen, some VMWare, some Hyper-V
○ some bare metal / dedicated server
● Deep integrations into OpenStack, OpenNebula,
OnApp
● New integration in CloudStack
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5. Building a software-defined cloud
our experience
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6. Typical cloud infrastructure
1. Hyper-converged
2. Stand-alone storage system - rack-level or
datacenter-level integration
3. Other

7. Modern server: 28-40 cores; 384GB+ RAM
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-
15
%
Hyper-converged: Efficiency
StorPool takes 3 cores & 8 GB RAM
< 10% of compute node resources 7

8. Hyper-converged: typical hardware
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9. Hyper-converged: rack design
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10. Hyper-converged: component selection
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11. Hyper-converged: example
Private cloud for production public-facing application
(high-end VDI)
● Independent racks design. Each rack has…
● Top of rack switches, 2x 25GbE to each node
● 38 compute nodes
● Each with 2x 3.84 TB NVMe SSDs
● 88 TB usable space (3-way replication, checksums,
CoW, safety)

12. Hyper-converged: example
Private cloud for production public-facing application
(high-end VDI)
Strong case for all of
● SDS
● hyper-convergence
● scale-out storage architecture
● low latency and efficient storage software layer

13. Contrast requirements
Best performance I can get at reasonable cost
(private cloud for web/mobile application)
vs.
Good performance and low $/GB for desired performance
level. Market leading, but not too expensive. (service
providers)
vs.
Lowest $/GB (e.g. archival use-case)

14. Latency
opspersecond
best service
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15. Latency
opspersecond
best service
lowest cost per
delivered resource
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16. Latency
opspersecond
best service
lowest cost per
delivered resource
only pain
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17. Latency
opspersecond
best service
lowest cost per
delivered resource
only pain
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benchmarks

18. When hyper-converged
Hyperconverged:
● Green-field
● KVM virtualization
● Building pods / small availability zones
Stand-alone storage system:
● Retrofit
● Other hypervisors: Xen, VMWare, Hyper-V
● Requirements for independence of infrastructure (I don't want an issue
in my KVM environment to affect my VMWare environment)
● Requirement for administrative boundary - e.g. additional storage to
dedicated server via iSCSI
● Building datacenter-scale infrastructure. Cost of high bandwidth
leaf-spine network (3x) justified

20. StorPool-CloudStack
StorPool for CloudStack/KVM
● Uses StorPool native driver in host OS
○ block devices in /dev/storpool/volname are raw disk
images for qemu/KVM
○ data management - e.g. create, delete, clone, resize
snapshot - API calls
● Implements a datastore driver for primary storage
On other hypervisors use their native storage mechanisms -
e.g. VMFS

21. StorPool-CloudStack
https://github.com/storpool/storpool-cloudstack-integration
http://10.111.0.42:8080/client/

22. Demo
3 nodes, each with
4-core CPU
16GB RAM
dual-port 40G NIC
4x 1TB Intel P4500 NVMe SSD

23. Demo
50 ㎲ writes!
$/IOPS -
<$15 000 hardware = 1M IOPS
$/GB -
> 30TB capacity 3x NVMe approx $1.90/GB
> 20 TB StorPool SSD-Hybrid approx $1.00/GB
84%16%

25. © 2018 StorPool. All rights reserved.
Boyan Krosnov
StorPool Storage
bk@storpool.com
www.storpool.com
@storpool
Thank you
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