This document discusses building a scalable federated hybrid cloud using a multi-cloud manager (MCM) architecture. Key points include: - MCM acts as a manager of multiple public and private clouds, providing global policy, configuration, monitoring, and billing capabilities across clouds. - The MCM is built as a web application on a PaaS to leverage existing scalable architectures and avoid reinventing solutions. This allows it to easily scale to millions of endpoints across hybrid cloud environments. - Authentication is handled externally via identity providers while the MCM programs clouds using admin accounts on trusted channels. Synchronization of configurations and templates enables active-active or active-standby cloud architectures for high availability and

1. Building a Scalable Federated
Hybrid Cloud
Sunny Rajagopalan, Principal Architect
sunnyr@plumgrid.com

2. So you have many clouds

3. How did you get here?, or Why are you trying to get
here?
 You don’t like having a social life.
 You love complexity.
 This is your idea of fun.
 Or ….

4. Or, “Nobody builds a multi cloud for fun”
USE CASES FOR THE MULTICLOUD

5. You have an app that only runs on a certain CMS

6. You needed more than one for disaster recovery

7. You’re trying to reduce costs
Proprietary
CMS

8. You’re trying to scale (and/or) you want a smaller
blast radius

9. You want to offer geography based services
Internet
GSLB

10. You want non disruptive upgrades or
maintenance
Blue cloud better than white
cloud, because or “reasons”…

11. You have many “things” in your IoT
Private Cloud
IoT Cloud

12. How did I get here?, or Why am I trying to get here?
 Shucks man, its all on the earlier slides.

13. Or, how to keep sane at scale
MANAGING YOUR CLOUDS

14. Cloud Management Aspects
Status/Monitoring/Trouble
shooting
Inventory Management
Global Policy and
Configuration
Metering and Billing
Event based Cloud
Migration

15. Templates
MultiCloud
Manager

16. How to do the magic
MULTICLOUD MANAGER ARCHITECTURE

17. Why not use an existing controller?
 Scale to millions, maybe billions of endpoints.
 Be able to manage hybrid clouds, or even things that
don’t “look” like clouds.

18. How not to screw this up
 Be a manager, not a micromanager.
 Make the clouds do the heavy lifting.
 For example – *don’t* go to MCM to validate Keystone
tokens.
 Support multiple backends through a pluggable
architecture. OS “just another backend”.

19. Let’s make a controller!
 We’ll spend the next two years making the platform.
 Another two making it highly available.
 And another two years making it scale.
Today
Six years of working on a controller
So let’s not.

20. Does such a unicorn exist?
 Well, yes!
 You use them every day.
 They scale to millions of users and billions of
transactions.
 Yes, we’re talking about web applications.
 They load balance, auto scale, can be distributed
geographically and still play nice.
 Plus, you can build one in just a few weeks.

21. An experiment
 Write the MCM as a web application.
 Don’t worry about “platform”.
 There’s no need to solve every distributed computing
problem already solved.
 Just use a PaaS.

22. Which PaaS

23. Which PaaS
 Any PaaS would do, we used google app engine APIs
powered by opensource AppScale.
 This lets us deploy MCM inside a customer’s private
cloud of any flavor.
 This architecture also lets us offer a hosted service
running “in the cloud” for MCM.

24. Multi Cloud Manager Architecture
PaaS
Webapp2 framework
MCM top half
MCM bottom half
OS
plugin
Physical
Router
plugin
IoT
plugi
n
AWS
plugi
n
Swagger
RESTful
API, json
in/out
Outside
World
Schedule
right
bottom half
DB
acces
ses
using
PaaS
API

25. MCM Platform Features
 Supports load based auto scaling.
 Distributed database backend (big table, cassandra).
 Memcache for fast access of database contents.
 Web based interface for viewing and monitoring
database contents.
 Channels allow MCM to send real time messages to
clients without polling.
 Etc., etc.

26. MCM interaction model
Bottom Half
Top Half
MCM
ODL ODL PLUMgrid
BGP
IPSec
PLUMgrid

27. How to protect your cluster from Godzilla
 Make two or more.
 Using MCM templates, synchronize your config for
keystone, nova, glance, neutron, etc.
 Application data is persisted by their databases doing
remote sync. Why?
 Too much work for MCM, and we have a less-is-more
approach.

28. A/A or A/S clouds
VM images, user accounts,
compute, storage and
networking config DB
MCM Top Half
MCM Bottom
Half
App
DB
App
DB
• FM takes care of persisting configs and
images.
• Apps are responsible for syncing run-
time databases.

29. A/A or A/S clouds
VM images, user accounts,
compute, storage and
networking config DB
FM Top Half
FM Bottom Half
App
DB
App
DB

30. A/A or A/S clouds
VM images, user accounts,
compute, storage and
networking config DB
MCM Top Half
MCM Bottom
Half
App
DB
• Keystone data, glance images etc were
already synced by FM.
• App’s database had been setup to do
remote replication.
• No impact on your keystone, swift, etc
architecture or backends.
• The switch from one active zone to another
can be done using a GSLB or LB.

31. How to do authentication and authorization
IDENTITY MANAGEMENT

32. This is very boring
 Basically, the authentication and authorization is done
“at the periphery” of the system, and MCM programs the
clouds using admin accounts on trusted/encrypted
channels.
 MCM can use an external IdP (like oauth, saml, ldap
etc).

33. Server Creation
MCM
Keystone Nova
PG/
networking
1. Create
server
IdP (local
or
external)
2. get user &
group
Assignment
Authorization
Policy
3. get role, VDs,
tenant, etc.
4. check policy for
(operation, role)
5. Create server
using token
5’. If token has
expired,
reauthenticate
Bottom Half
Neutron
6. Check token 7. Create
port using
svc user
token
8. Create
port using
svc user
token
(keystone or
PG?)

34. 2011-2015 © PLUMgrid - Confidential Information
That probably wasn’t very clear
Just come talk to me later

35. Proof this works
DEMO

36. www.plumgrid.com
Thank you!