Comcast chose to deploy OpenStack for its private cloud due to its vibrant open source community, flexible licensing, ability to scale, and potential for vendor participation without lock-in. OpenStack's API abstraction allows Comcast to change underlying technologies without changing interfaces and leverage contributions from its large ecosystem. Comcast was able to customize OpenStack to its needs like IPv6 support and contribute code back to the community.

1. Why OpenStack? What led Comcast to choose and
deploy OpenStack for private cloud.
Andrew Mitry
May 28, 2014

2. A little context
About Comcast
- Two primary businesses: Comcast Cable & NBCUniversal
- Comcast Cable is the largest US provider of video, Internet, phone services (XFINITY)
- NBCUniversal operates 30 news & entertainment cable networks, NBC & Telemundo broadcast
networks, TV production & station groups, Universal Pictures, and Universal Parks & Resorts
The Comcast Cable traditional development stack has been…
- Vertically integrated, closed HW & SW
- Three to six months to deploy new hardware
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3. What are we looking for?
Platform Stability
Vibrant Community
Flexible Licenses
Ability to Scale
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4. What differentiated OpenStack?
Community is driving standards
– Standards are hashed out by delivering working code, not by long, drawn out theory
Rich ecosystem
– Multiple players (open source and proprietary vendors) in every project
Active Contributor Community
– Healthy mix of operators and vendors continually contributing to the code base
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5. Vendor Participation without Vendor Lock-in
API Abstraction
– End users interface with APIs or Dashboard to consume resources
– Self-service, automatable, elastic infrastructure
– Plugs into the ecosystem, leveraging same authentication and metrics resources
– Ability to change out underlying technology without changing interface
– Ability to run multiple vendors at once while providing one interface
– Allows us to continually improve (higher performance, lower cost)
Standard Infrastructure for our Products
– Reference model for our development teams and product vendors
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6. Extensible – Catering OpenStack to our needs
IPv6
– Comcast has the largest native IPv6 deployment in the world!
– IPv6 use cases
– Comcast X1 Video STB
– CDN
– Messaging
– Voice services
– DNS
– Small Comcast team able to add IPv6 support and contribute code back in under six months
Scaling OpenStack
– Comcast is a Top 20 contributor to Icehouse
– Contributing code, documentation and expertise
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7. Innovative Partner Communities
Compute
– KVM
– Xen
Storage
– Swift
– Ceph
Network
– Open vSwitch
– Openflow
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8. Enabling new deployment models
Removing barriers for our product teams
– Resources are now available to our products on demand
– Elastic scaling allows us to better serve peaks and lows
– Opens doors for special initiatives (event specific applications)
Horizontal Scaling and App Resiliency
– Encourages our products to scale horizontally and dynamically
– Moves resiliency up to the application layer where there is more intelligence
Regional Data Centers
– Two data centers in every region
– Compute and Storage resources closer to our customers
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9. Additional Resources
Comcast’s X1 Platform Powered by OpenStack
Driving Cloud Innovation with OpenStack-Powered Infrastructure
IPv6 in OpenStack
Twitter: @amitry
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