Sierra Wireless has deployed its AirVantage M2M cloud on an OpenStack private cloud infrastructure, utilizing Ubuntu and Puppet for configuration management. The company has managed over 500 servers across multiple sites since 2010, emphasizing the importance of open-source solutions and automation in their operations. Lessons learned include the complexity of OpenStack and the necessity for a supportive community for effective implementation.

1. 1Proprietary and Confidential
OpenStack @ Sierra Wireless
Lionel Porcheron– 5th June 2014
lporcheron@sierrawireless.com

2. 2© Sierra Wireless 2014
Sierra Wireless in one slide
Leading-edge
intelligent devices
Secure cloud
services platform
Faster time to market +
lower costs+ =

3. 3© Sierra Wireless 2014
A customer success: Nespresso
M2M CloudProgrammable
Modem
Custom Web Application
Web APIs
• Asset Data Management
• Device Management
• Subscription Management
Hardware
Integration
ERP
Network
Operator

4. 4Proprietary and Confidential
• AirVantage production is deployed in
two datacenters: France and Canada
• Our preproductions are hosted in our
Toulouse facilities
• Pure collocation mode (we purchase
our hardware and deploy in
« empty » racks).
• Virtual and physical machines (for
perfomances, appliances – HSM,
RSA, VPN concentrator)
AirVantage Infrastructure Overview
© Sierra Wireless 2014

5. 5Proprietary and Confidential
Our Infrastructure in 2010
• Complex deployments: multiple Java webapps, multiple stores: Oracle,
Solr, Hadoop, Redis, message queue, etc.
• Deployed in multiple environments (pre-productions, two productions)
• Eavy usage of virtual machines (service isolation). Virtual Machines
built « by hand »
• Lot of copy-paste from wiki pages
© Sierra Wireless 2014

6. 6Proprietary and Confidential
AirVantage Private Cloud Management
• AirVantage M2M Cloud is deployed in an
OpenStack private cloud
• OpenStack is a open source project initiated by
NASA and Rackspace.
• Sierra Wireless Team manages hardware,
virtualization layer and cloud software to
optimize performances and security.
• Machines (physical or virtual), and services are
automatically configured using Puppet
configuration management tool.
• Puppet configurations are historized and
validated like software changes.
Puppet is also used by
Wikimedia Foundation,
Dell, Rackspace, Twitter,
Disney, Oracle and
Google, among others.
OpenStack is also used by
NASA, Rackspace Cloud,
HP Public Cloud, AT&T,
Deutsche Telekom,
Wikimedia Labs, among
others.
© Sierra Wireless 2014

7. 7Proprietary and Confidential
Why OpenStack?
• Open Source Private Cloud infrastructure support
• Well known components in our infrastructure team:
– Ubuntu Linux
– Libvirt/kvm
– Bridge/VLAN in Linux
• OpenStack is only a “glue” between existing and robust
components, orchestrating machines lifecycle.
• Pushed by Ubuntu as Private Cloud solution
• OpenStack community: RackSpace, Dell, HP, Canonical, etc.
© Sierra Wireless 2014

8. 8Proprietary and Confidential
Our OpenStack History
• Started with Cactus and Diablo on Ubuntu 10.04 in 2010
• First deployment in production based on Diablo + Ubuntu 10.04 in 2011
• Lot of room of improvements, issues identified during the first year (not
all relative to OpenStack)
• Refresh our deployment in 2012 with Linagora assistance
• 2012 deployment: Ubuntu 12.04 + OpenStack Essex (2012.1)
© Sierra Wireless 2014

9. 9Proprietary and Confidential
Why not VMWare?
• Open Source culture at Sierra Wireless AirVantage
• The aggressive pricing 
• Capability to use API to manage the infrastructure
• Adopt the “Infrastructure as a Code” movement
• Infrastructure creation scripts are store under version control
© Sierra Wireless 2014

10. 10Proprietary and Confidential
Infrastructure status in 2014
• 500+ servers managed on three physical sites administered by a
three engineers team
• Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise)
• OpenStack 2012.1 (Essex) with compute and image registry
• puppet (home made recipes)
• Full stack deployment is now about 2h. We are working to reduce it.
• Automated life-cycle (puppet, cloud-init, unattended-upgrades) of
servers
© Sierra Wireless 2014

11. 11Proprietary and Confidential
Some Days, OpenStack looks like this…
© Sierra Wireless 2014

12. 12Proprietary and Confidential
Lessons learned

• Need time to learn/understand
OpenStack
• Powerful but complex: complexity is not
really hidden
• Some bugs, but rather stable when setup

• Good project documentation
• Very responsive and visible community
• Lot of events around OpenStack (even in
France!)
© Sierra Wireless 2014

13. 13Proprietary and Confidential
Conclusion
• Infrastructure As A Code!
• Infrastructure is self-documented
• Industrialization of existing infrastructure
• Infrastructure reproducibility
• More standard tools (instead of home-made tools).
• Deployable on public cloud “as-is”
We ♥
© Sierra Wireless 2014

14. 14Proprietary and Confidential
Questions?

15. 15Proprietary and Confidential
Thank You