Lachlan Evenson discusses Lithium's journey to deploying containers on OpenStack. They initially ran Kubernetes clusters on OpenStack VMs using static routing for connectivity. Later, they utilized the OpenStack SDN, OpenContrail, to provide networking for Kubernetes, allowing the clusters to run on VMs using the SDN. Evenson outlines their strategy of incrementally adopting containers while maintaining stability, and how building cloud-native applications required changing their thinking and tooling around standardized deployments. Their current state includes Kubernetes on OpenStack with OpenContrail networking and a standardized microservices deployment pipeline.

1. OpenStack and Containers
Lachlan Evenson
Team Lead, Cloud Platform – Lithium Technologies
@LachlanEvenson

2. AGENDA
Share how Lithium deployed Containers on
OpenStack and hopefully provide a pattern
that can be followed for your journey.
2

3. OUR JOURNEY TO CONTAINERS
• Cloud-platform running on OpenStack and AWS
• Microservices
• DevOps
3

4. WHY CONTAINERS AND OPENSTACK?
• OpenStack provides a stable platform to innovate.
• OpenStack bridged gaps in the container story.
Lithium | Klout - Confidential4

5. HERE’S WHAT WE DIDN’T WANT TO HAPPEN
5

6. THE RIGHT TECHNOLOGY AT THE RIGHT TIME
• No one ever got fired for running VMs
• Who doesn’t love whales?
• You know your work loads
• There isn’t a problem. Why are we doing this?
6

7. THE CONTAINER VALUE PROP
• Developer productivity
• Portable
• Multi-cloud deployments
• Lightweight orchestration
7

8. 8

9. CONTAINER STRATEGY
Incremental revolution!
9

10. CONTAINER STRATEGY
• Leave the monolith alone
• Staying in the “success zone”
• Overlay container orchestration on OpenStack
and AWS
• Had to address container security
10

11. BUILDING CLOUD-NATIVE APPLICATIONS
• Containers demanded a change in thinking
• Tooling
• Standardized deployments
11

12. CURRENT STATE OF PLAY
• Kubernetes on OpenStack
• Standard microservice deployment pipeline
• Moving workloads - The big payoff is coming
• CI/CD pipeline overhaul
• Multi-cloud
• Happy Developers
12

13. HERE’S HOW WE DID IT
• First iteration was Kubernetes cluster on
Openstack VMs using static routing to deliver
cluster connectivity.
• This provided a cluster that developers can deploy
apps to and network connectivity to allow external
access to the cluster.
Lithium | Klout - Confidential13

14. BOLTING IT ALL TOGETHER – STATIC ROUTING
Lithium | Klout - Confidential14

15. GREAT! IS THAT ALL?
• How about we utilize the same SDN that powers
our Openstack to run out Kubernetes networking?
• Kubernetes cluster running on Openstack VMs
using OpenContrail as the SDN.
• http://superuser.openstack.org/articles/kubernetes
-and-openstack-multi-cloud-networking
Lithium | Klout - Confidential15

16. KUBERNETES ON OPENSTACK WITH OPENCONTRAIL
Lithium | Klout - Confidential16

17. AS PROMISED
• Here’s how I built it
• http://bit.ly/k8s-openstack
• http://bit.ly/k8s-contrail
Lithium | Klout - Confidential17

18. FUTURE STATE
• Containerize all the things?
• Stick with Docker?
• Libnetwork/CNI?
• Persistent storage?
• Kubernetes, Mesos?
• PaaS? OpenShift?
18

19. DEAD BODIES
• The Docker problem
• Workflow disruption
• Complexity shifts back to Ops
19

20. OPENSTACK AND CONTAINERS
• Magnum
• Kuryr
Lithium | Klout - Confidential20

21. WISH LIST
• I would like to use OpenStack APIs to provide
networking, storage, images.
• Provide persistent container storage via Cinder.
• Make Glance/Swift a container registry.
• Container registry as a service.
Lithium | Klout - Confidential21

22. DEMO
• Hope this works.
22

23. THANKS!
• Questions?
23