The document outlines a low-cost cloud solution for the National Library of Florence, focusing on utilizing open-source technologies to reduce expenses related to software development, licensing, and hardware. It emphasizes the use of an open hypervisor for virtualization and GlusterFS for scalable, high-availability storage solutions. The approach aims to provide an affordable, simple, and easily scalable infrastructure for managing digital resources.

1. Open low cost HA cluster cloud

Cristiano Corsani – system
engineer - IT department -
Florence National Library

Giovanni Toraldo – OSS
solutions architect at Libersoft
Low cost cloud for BNCF EVA Florence 2012

2. BNCF services
Cultural Heritage Ministry has progressively
reduced the investment

SBN - national cataloguing system

OPAC - online public access catalogue

WWW - our web interface

Digital data access - public access to our digital storage

Internal services - library management and Intranet services
Low cost cloud for BNCF EVA Florence 2012

3. BNCF data center costs

Open Source – reduce costs of:

SOFTWARE: development and maintenance

LICENSING: server, apps and 250 workstation

Virtualization cloud – reduce costs of:

HARDWARE: maintenance and electricity costs
Low cost cloud for BNCF EVA Florence 2012

4. Virtualization
Low cost cloud for BNCF EVA Florence 2012

5. Commercial solutions

Hypervisor license - depends on CPU and/or memory

Orchestrator license - live migration, HA, backup, …

Certified hardware – limited hardware supported

Centralized storage system – needed for HA
Low cost cloud for BNCF EVA Florence 2012

6. Our Open solution

Open hypervisor
it comes with Linux kernel in standard distro

Orchestrator
live migration, ha, backup, … intuitive and web based

Commodity hardware
only very low requirements needed

No centralized storage system
special network filesystem is used instead physical storage
Low cost cloud for BNCF EVA Florence 2012

7. Compare
3x Sun Fire (2 x quad-core Xeon, 24GB RAM, 2 x 500 GB SATA2)
3 HOSTS 6 CPU 72GB RAM 1TB Storage
Commercial Our Open
Hypervisor license 4000€ + 12000€/year ---
Centralized storage
5000€ ---
+ FB lan
Hardware 20000€ << 20000€
Installation +
500€/day 500€/day
Maintenance
Our Open Cloud is: open, simple, easily scalable and affordable
Low cost cloud for BNCF EVA Florence 2012

8. Open details
Giovanni Toraldo, OSS solutions architect in LiberSoft
 Virtualization (OpenNebula and Proxmox)
 Massive long-term storage for digitalized resources
(GlusterFS)
 Migration to Open Source desktop/server platforms.
(Ubuntu and MooseFS)
Low cost cloud for BNCF EVA Florence 2012

9. Open hypervisor
 Freely available: on your GNU/Linux
distribution;
 Enterprise-ready: powerful mix of enterprise
features and a rich set of partners.
 Support: widest range of hardware without
hassles (Thanks Linux!)
 High-performance: top-level virtualization
benchmarks for Windows and Linux workloads.
Low cost cloud for BNCF EVA Florence 2012

10. Open VM management software
 OpenNebula
 Adaptable: highly modular.
 Proven: massive scale production
environments;
 Interoperable: XML-RPC, EC2, OCCI
 Proxmox
 Easy to deploy: ISO installer or from bare
Debian
 Easy to use: centralized web management
Low cost cloud for BNCF EVA Florence 2012

11. Low-end hardware requirements
 The simplest virtualization host is...
your laptop:
CPU with virtualization extensions;
 A bunch of available memory
 A bunch of available disk space
 Use your workstations to prepare VM
before starting them in production.
Low cost cloud for BNCF EVA Florence 2012

12. Focus on storage
 Shared storage is not an option for live
migration and High-Availability.
 A good storage solution:
 Availability: the sky should not fall on our heads;
 Scalability: we add new bricks when needed;
 Price.
 Common choice is to use a dedicated
NAS/SAN (NetApp, EMC, QNAP and so on).
Low cost cloud for BNCF EVA Florence 2012

13. Our choice: GlusterFS
 GlusterFS is an open source distributed
network filesystem.
 How it works?
 Aggregate available disk space on your
hosts;
 Replicate data: HA and prevent data-loss;
 Data available via LAN with standard
protocols: FUSE, NFS, CIFS.
Low cost cloud for BNCF EVA Florence 2012

14. GlusterFS advantages
 Scalability: to Petabytes and beyond!
 Affordability: use commodity hardware;
 Flexibility: deploy in any environment;
 Linear performances: no degradation;
 HA: replicate data on multiple places;
 Unified namespace: like a folder on a
local disk
Low cost cloud for BNCF EVA Florence 2012

15. Credits
Cristiano Corsani – system engineer - IT department
Florence National Library

Email: cristiano.corsani@beniculturali.it
Giovanni Toraldo – OSS solutions architect at
Libersoft

Email: gt@libersoft.it
Low cost cloud for BNCF EVA Florence 2012