This was my presentation at the OpenStack Summit in Hong Kong, November 2013. Learn detail around a unique deployment of the Dell OpenStack-Powered Cloud Solution with Inktank Ceph installed at a large nationally recognized American University that specializes in cancer and genomic research. The University had a need to provide a scalable, secure, centralized data repository to support approximately 900 researchers and an ever-expanding number of research projects and rapidly expanding universe of data. The Dell and Inktank cloud storage solution addresses these storage challenges with an open source solution that leverages the Dell Crowbar Framework and Reference Architecture. After assessing a number of traditional storage scenarios, the University partnered with Dell and Inktank to architect a centralized cloud storage platform that is capable of scaling seamlessly and rapidly, is cost-effective, and that can leverage a single hardware infrastructure, with Dell Power Edge R-720XD servers and the Dell Reference Architecture for their OpenStack compute and storage environment.  

1. Dell OpenStack Cloud
with Inktank Ceph
A Large Scale Customer Deployment
Kamesh Pemmaraju
Senior Product Manager
Dell
Kamesh_Pemmaraju@Dell.com
@kpemmaraju
Blog: Cloudel.com

2. Dell’s commitment
to OpenStack
• First OpenStack cloud solution provider
• Pioneering OpenStack partner
Only tier 1 day 1 hardware provider
• Deep partner ecosystem
with single point of service and support
• Crowbar development and stewardship
Championed open source deployment tool
• Dell OpenStack experts
continually invest in the community
• Gold Foundation Member
with 2 board positions
“Dell … was one of the first of the hardware vendors
to grasp the fact that cloud is about provisioning
services, not about the hardware.”
Maxwell Cooter, Cloud Pro
Save on
licensing
fees
Innovate
aggressively
Scale
operations
efficiently

3. Dell OpenStack-powered solutions
Complete cloud infrastructure powered by OpenStack
Simplify
the experience
• OpenStack leadership, expertise,
innovation and solutions engineering
Accelerate
• Complete solutions combine
software, hardware and services
time to productive
operations
Optimize
solution performance
Deliver
the best return on
investment
• Proven platforms and reference architectures
• Robust partnerships across the ecosystem
• Full service consulting from assessment
through implementation and management
• Integrated support for enterprise deployment

4. Deploy an OpenStack cloud in ~2 hours
Evolve to meet your needs over time with built in DevOps
Use Crowbar to:
• Automate deployment and
configuration of an OpenStack cloud
Crowbar
operations
platform
• Quickly provision bare-metal
servers from box to cluster with
minimal intervention
• Simply maintain, upgrade & evolve
your cloud over time
• Leverage open source framework
backed by a growing global
developer ecosystem
Accelerates
multi-node
deployments
Simplifies
maintenance
Streamlines
ongoing updates

5. Dell OpenStack-Powered Cloud Solution
Validated reference architecture built and delivered by Dell
Proven solutions
Develop, deploy, & deliver your own cloud
• Validated reference architecture with
infrastructure, software and services
• Open cloud infrastructure to drive innovation
and flexibility
Key components
Dell Crowbar Operations Platform Software
OpenStack Grizzly software release
Dell PowerEdge C8000, C6220, R720, R720xd
Dell Force10 S60 and S4810 Switches
Dell Multi-Cloud Manager support
 Quickly offer new cloud services
Inktank Ceph storage support
 Lower software licensing costs
Deployment Guide
 Help mitigate the risks of cloud computing
Dell services, implementation and support

6. What is Ceph?
Traditional
enterprise storage

7. Ceph Unified Storage
OBJECT
STORAGE
BLOCK
STORAGE
FILE
SYSTEM
S3 & Swift
Snapshots
POSIX
Multi-tenant
Clones
Linux Kernel
Keystone
OpenStack
CIFS/NFS
GeoReplication
Native API
Linux Kernel
HDFS
iSCSI
Distributed Metadata

8. Ceph with OpenStack

9. Overcoming a data deluge
Inconsistent data management across research teams hampers productivity
• Growing data sets challenged available resources
• Research data distributed across laptops,
USB drives, local servers, HPC clusters
• Transferring datasets to HPC clusters took too
much time and clogged shared networks
• Distributed data management reduced
researcher productivity and put data at risk

10. Solution: a storage cloud
Centralized storage cloud based on OpenStack and Ceph
• Flexible, fully open-source infrastructure
based on Dell reference design
− OpenStack, Crowbar and Ceph
− Standard PowerEdge servers and storage
− 400+ TBs at less than 41¢ per gigabyte
• Distributed scale-out storage provisions
capacity from a massive common pool
− Scalable to 5 petabytes
• Data migration to and from HPC clusters via
dedicated 10Gb Ethernet fabric
• Easily extendable framework for developing
and hosting additional services
− Simplified backup service now enabled
“We’ve made it possible for users to
satisfy their own storage needs with
the Dell private cloud, so that their
research is not hampered by IT.”
David L. Shealy, PhD
Faculty Director, Research Computing
Chairman, Dept. of Physics

11. Building a research cloud
Project goals extend well beyond data management
“We envision the OpenStack-based
cloud to act as the gateway to our
HPC resources, not only as the
purveyor of services we provide, but
also enabling users to build their own
cloud-based services.”
John-Paul Robinson, System Architect
• Designed to support emerging
data-intensive scientific computing paradigm
– 12 x 16-core compute nodes
– 1 TB RAM, 420 TBs storage
– 36 TBs storage attached to each compute node
• Virtual servers and virtual storage meet HPC
− Direct user control over all aspects of the
application environment
− Ample capacity for large research data sets
• Individually customized test/development/
production environments
− Rapid setup and teardown
• Growing set of cloud-based tools & services
− Easily integrate shareware, open source, and
commercial software

12. Research Computing System (Next Gen)
A cloud-based computing environment with high speed access to
dedicated and dynamic compute resources
UAB Research Network
Cloud services layer
Virtualized server and storage computing cloud
based on OpenStack, Crowbar and Ceph
Open
Stack
node
Open
Stack
node
Open
Stack
node
Open
Stack
node
Open
Stack
node
Open
Stack
node
Open
Stack
node
Open
Stack
node
Open
Stack
node
10Gb Ethernet
HPC
Cluster
DDR Infiniband
HPC
Storage
HPC
Cluster
QDR Infiniband
Open
Stack
node
Open
Stack
node
Open
Stack
node

13. For more information:
Visit us at Dell booth #B10
Visit Dell.com/OpenStack
Email: openstack@dell.com
Breakout Sessions in Expo Breakout Room 1
OpenStack in the Enterprise: Customers Prove It
Thursday, 9:50 AM
Panel on Application Portability
Thursday, 3:30 PM
Contact Kamesh Pemmaraju
Kamesh_Pemmaraju@Dell.com
@kpemmaraju
Blog: Cloudel.com