Eucalyptus is an open-source software for building private and hybrid clouds. It implements the Amazon Web Services API and allows users to deploy and access cloud resources. Eucalyptus has a modular architecture with controllers that manage user requests, virtual networking, and hypervisor-level virtual machine execution across physical cluster nodes. While still in development, initial experiments show Eucalyptus can provide cloud-like functionality and performance on small Linux clusters. Key challenges include improving extensibility, networking support across clusters, security, and easing installation and maintenance.

1. An Open-source Infrastructure for
Cloud Computing
Tudor Zaharia

2. Overview of the presentation
What is a Cloud?
Public Clouds
Open Source Cloud Infrastructure
Eucalyptus
What is it?
Goals
Features
Design and architecture
Experiment
Conclusions

3. What is a Cloud?
SLAs
Web Services
Virtualization

4. Public Clouds (Now)
Large scale infrastructure available on a rental basis
Operating System virtualization (e.g. Xen) provides CPU
isolation
Network isolation
Locally specific storage abstractions
Fully customer self-service
Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are advertized
Requests are accepted and resources granted via web
services
Customers access resources remotely via the Internet
Accountability is e-commerce based
Web-based transaction
“Pay-as-you-go” and flat-rate subscription
Customer service, refunds, etc.

5. Open Source Cloud Infrastructure
Simple
Transparent
Scalable => complexity often limits scalability
Extensible
New application classes and service classes may require new features
Clouds are new => need to extend while retaining useful features
Commodity-based
Must leverage extensive catalog of open source software offerings
New, unstable, and unsupported infrastructure design is a barrier to
uptake, experimentation, and adoption
Easy
To install => system administration time is expensive
To maintain => system maintaining time is really expensive

6. Eucalyptus

7. Eucalyptus
Elastic Utility Computing Architecture Linking Your Programs To
Useful Systems

8. Eucalyptus - what does it brings?
• Web services based implementation of elastic/utility/cloud
computing infrastructure
— Linux image hosting ala Amazon
• How do we know if it is a cloud?
— Try and emulate an existing cloud: Amazon AWS
• Functions as a software overlay
— Existing installation should not be violated (too much)
• Focus on installation and maintenance
— “System Administrators are people too.”

9. Design goals
Extensibility
Non-intrusiveness

10. Features
Current release is version 1.5.1:
Interface compatibility with EC2 (both Web service and Query
interfaces)
Support for the KVM hypervisor
Stand-alone RPMs for non-Rocks RPM based systems
Secure internal communication using SOAP with WS-security
Elastic Block Store (EBS) compatible storage service
Basic "Cloud Administrator" tools for system management and
user accounting
The ability to configure multiple clusters, each with private
internal network addresses, into a single Cloud.

11. Installation prerequisites
Support XEN virtualization
Host Web services

12. Architecture
Starting point:
Firewall

13. Architecture
Hierarchical design reflecting underlying resources:

14. Architecture
Hierarchical design reflecting underlying resources:
Cloud controller

15. Cloud Controller
user/admin entry point
high-level VM instance scheduling decisions
processing SLAs
maintaining system and user metadata

16. Cloud Controller as a service provider
handle user requests and authentication
handle persistent system and user metadata (VM images and ssh
keys)
manage and monitor VM instances
Web interfaces and Query interfaces

17. Architecture
Hierarchical design reflecting underlying resources:
Cluster controller

18. Cluster Controller
groups collections of Node Controllers that logically belong
together
gathers state information from its nodes
schedules incoming VM instance execution requests
manages the configuration of public and private instance networks
described as WSDL

19. Architecture
Hierarchical design reflecting underlying resources:
Node controller

20. Node controller
executes on the physical resources
instance startup
inspection
shutdown
cleanup
only one NC per physical machine is needed (regardless on the
number of VM's on that machine)
calls the hypervisor (XEN) to control and inspect running
instances.

21. Virtual networking
Things to address:
Performance
Isolation
Connectivity

22. Virtual network connectivity
Each instance is given:
one "public" network interface
handles communication to "outside" world
bridged to real network device
one "private" network interface
used only for inter - VM communication
CC deals with set-up and tear down of virtual network

23. Virtual network isolation
instances are assigned tags
used as VLAN identifiers
tag incomming traffic
forward packets that have the same VLAN

24. Experiment
Small research Linux cluster:
System description:
7(compute nodes) + 1(head node) of Intel Xeon 3.2GHz, 3GB
of RAM, 40GB single SCSI disk
single CLC
single CC
one NC per node
Access and restrictions
Granted by the CLC through user signup web page
Allocation is limited to 4 instances killed after 6 hours
Reverse firewall for preventing EPC accesing external network
addresses (except Linux distribution sites)
Ambient induced load

25. Comparison - Instance throughput

26. Comparison - Instance throughput

27. Comparison - Instance throughput

28. Comparison - Network performance
Eucalyptus vs. EC2

29. Conclusions
Eucalyptus was designed from the ground up to be easy to install
and as non-intrusive as possible (can be installed on a laptop for
experimentation)
Highly modular
External interface is based on highly popular API of Amazon
(industry standard interface)
Unique among the open-source offerings in providing a virtual
network overlay

30. Questions?
Anyone?

31. Challenges
Extensibility
Simple architecture and open internal APIs
Client-side interface
Amazon’s EC2 interface and functionality (familiar and testable)
Networking
Virtual private network per cloud
Must function as an overlay => cannot supplant local networking
Security
Must be compatible with local security policies
Packaging, installation, maintenance
system administration staff is an important constituency for
uptake

32. EC2 Compatibility
Interface is based on Amazon’s published WSDL
2008 compliant except for
static IP address assignment
Security groups
“Availability” zones correspond to individual clusters
Uses the EC2 command-line tools downloaded from Amazon
REST interface
S3 support/emulation: not yet, but on its way
Images accessed by file system name instead of S3 handle for
the moment
Unless user wants to use the actual S3 and pay for the
egress charges
System administration is different
Eucalyptus defines its own Cloud Admin. tool set for user

33. Networking
Eucalyptus does not assume that all worker nodes will have
publicly routable IP addresses
Each cloud allocation will have one or more public IP addresses
All cloud images have access to a private network interface
Two types of networks internal to a cloud allocation
Virtual private network
Uses VDE interfaced to Xen that is set up dynamically
Substantial performance hit within a cluster
Allows a cloud allocation to span clusters
High-performance private network (availability zone)
Bypasses VDE and uses local cluster network for each
allocation
Runs at “native” network speed (I.e. with Xen)
Cloud allocations cannot span clusters

34. Performance of the Virtual Network

35. Security
All Eucalyptus components use WS-security for authentication
Encryption of inter-component communication is not enabled by
default
Configuration option
Ssh key generation and installation ala EC2 is implemented
Cloud controller generates the public/private key pairs and installs
them
User sign-up is web based
User specifies a password and submits sign-up request
Cert is generated but withheld until admin. approves request
User gains access to cert. through password-protected web page
Similar to EC2 model without the credit cards

36. Packaging, Installation, and Deployment
Rocks
“One-button” install per cluster
Requires Rocks V (the most current release) for Xen
support
If you know what you are doing, RPMs can be extracted
and installed manually
Multiple clusters requires a configuration file
Multi-cluster configuration tools ala Rocks not readily
available
Build-from-source
“Many-button” install
Instructions, scripts, rsync, and perseverance
Single-machine “cloud”