Smart servers platform

Presentation about the smart servers platform built for Locaweb cloud infrastructure using kvm based virtualization technologies, live hypervisors and automated configuration engine.

Transcript

1. Smart servers Luiz Viana (@luizxx), Roberto Gaiser (@rgaiser) Locaweb Engineering Team - September 26, 2013
2. Smart servers, wtf is that?
3. What is a smart server?  Basically, a volatile virtualization host  Runs directly from network (diskless) and with dynamic configuration.  KVM based virtualization platform  Pxe server boot with automated bootstrap engine  Optimized virtualization infrastructure based on hardware resources  Provides cloud flexibility, high availability and high performance  Easy to manage and operate
4. KVM Virtualization
5. KVM hypervisor  High performance  Cross platform  Security  Low cost  Scalable  Hardware support  Active maintained
6. Features  VirtIO and passtrhough SCSI integration  VirtIO dataplane  Guest agents for Linux and Windows  Live storage migration  Live snapshots  New CPU resources  Device attachment  Windows guest compatibility (HyperV timing)
7. KVM architecture Copyright Red Hat
8. IO architecture Compatibility:  Native devices and drivers Performance:  VirtIO paravirtualized devices and drivers Performance and compatibility:  Device attachment and SR-IOV (passthrough)
9. Integration  Standard virtualization platform  Cloud based environments  Open Stack support  Distributed storage solutions
10. Advantages  Integrated virtualization on operating system  Hardware abstraction (currently 160 vCPU’s, 2TB vMemory)  Resource management (Cgroups native integration)  Server consolidation (support for heavy workloads)  Paravirt End Of Interrupt (PV-EOI)
11. PV EOI  Improved performance on interrupt intensive workloads  Less CPU usage in some scenarios  Lower number of context switches between guest and hypervisor  Higher performance on high incoming network traffic  Paravirtualized calls in guest kernel (did I hear Red Hat?)
12. Management  Libvirt and virt-manager  oVirt and Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Console  Extensible APIs  Operating system friendly (automated configuration friendly)
13. Diskless hypervisor
14. Advantages  Homogeneous environment  Easy to manage and update  Less hardware maintenance (disks are disks)  High performance (external storage)  Easy to migrate and update to new hardware  Enhanced compatibility (drivers are the same)  Enhanced power saving (right drivers for the right hardware)
15. Components  DHCP server (preferably connected to a cmdb)  PXE enabled hardware  Image catalog (PXE image server)  Configuration management engine (in our environment, Cfengine)
16. Management  Kickstart based image creation (Really motivated? Preseed works)  LiveCD tools available (Red Hat based?)  Images can be created and evaluated using any virtualization tool  Easy to customize  Dynamic network and firewall configuration
17. High performance  Updated drivers  Automated firmware updates  Support for multiple block devices (heavy IO, optimized operations)  Updated environment (reboot and it’s done)  Easy to create testing and staging environments  Improved NUMA support
18. Network management
19. Network management  Flexible network configuration  Software defined network support  Native vlan support  Optimized packet inspection and filtering  Avoid vendor lock in
20. Open vSwitch  Guest network managed by openvSwitch  Guest Vlan tagging  Flow control  Native support and easy to update (Red Hat?)  Integrated with network scripts (Red Hat based?)  Support for complex networking environments
21. Real world implementations
22. Reselling platform  Heavy loaded environments  Extensible storage management  High network throughput  High IO operations (databases, app servers, mail servers, etc)  Operating system paravirtualization support (Linux and Windows)  Simplified disaster recovery operations  Integrated with provisioning and monitoring systems  Network and storage managed by our cmdb
23. Cloud infrastructure  Can be easily integrated with OpenStack, CloudStack SimpleStack, etc  Multiple operating system support (Currently Windows and Linux)  Live storage migration support  Hardware optimization  Low cost solution
24. Infrastructure as a service  Deliver high performance and stable servers  Usage of commodity hardware  Operating system compatibility (does not depend on hardware)  Automated on demand provisioning  Reduce hardware maintenance  Higher storage capacity and compatibility (NAS, iSCSI, SAN, etc)
25. But the question is… Why use Red Hat hypervisor instead of a Debian based one?
26. Because…  Hardware support and drivers (Emulex, Broadcom, HP, Dell, etc)  Native integration with openvSwitch  Easy image creation and maintenance (Kickstart based)  Great support and tools for live CD creation  Native tools for PXE image creation  No need for backports (rhev based solution)
27. But I can do that using…
29. Sure, you can :)
30. Questions? Thank you! lviana@include.io gaiser@gmail.com