University of St Andrews School of Computer Science Experiences with a Private Cloud St Andrews Cloud Computing co-laboratory James W. Smith Ali Khajeh-Hosseini {jws7,

2 University of St Andrews School of Computer Science Background School of Computer Science, University of St Andrews launched StACC in April 2009 – Funding of £0.5million for: PhD Studentships Experimental hardware platform Technical Support Aim is to explore the research potential of Cloud Computing – Bringing together researchers from: Distributed Systems High-performance Computing Systems Engineering

3 University of St Andrews School of Computer Science Motivation Motivations for having a private cloud: –Monitoring Energy consumption, network bandwidth, on board... –We can break it And we do, frequently! –Experiment with cloud software Hypervisors Provisioning –Modifications Speed scaling algorithms We anticipate that the lessons learned from a private cloud can be applied to a massive cloud

4 University of St Andrews School of Computer Science How to build a Cloud Server infrastructure –10 machines –2x 4 core CPU, 16GB RAM, 2TB Storage Networking –Switch,fibre optic, 1Gbit Cat6 Cloud Software –Eucalyptus, VMware, etc –We had one of the first working Eucalyptus private clouds in UK academia

5 University of St Andrews School of Computer Science Our setup

6 University of St Andrews School of Computer Science Eucalyptus Elastic Utility Computing Architecture for Linking Your Programs To Useful Systems EC2 like functionality –Spawn VMs on demand –Interact in a similar way to EC2 Positive Experiences –Our system is now stable and is being used by both academia and industry partners –Fantastic ability to provision resources on demand –Our own platform for monitoring –Exposure to building these types of systems –Works like Amazon, but can combat some concerns

7 University of St Andrews School of Computer Science Eucalyptus Issues No VM management GUI –Problem for non-technical users Monitoring is not clear –Investigating use of Nagios & other techniques Common errors not well documented –Online wiki at needs community inputhttp://open.eucalyptus.com Needs a part-time sysadmin –just to deal with Computing Officers & ITS Cant limit how many resources people can use –This could be Very Important in a large scale system

8 University of St Andrews School of Computer Science Problems Encountered General networking / linux problems –Quite a complex piece of software & interactions –Requires a good deal of linux and networking knowledge DHCP, VLANS, Subnets, IPTables Eucalyptus specific –configuration manages network which can lead to problems with existing network –software upgrade 1.5 had problems, re-install required to goto 1.6 –ssh into instances –problem with volumes

9 University of St Andrews School of Computer Science So if we havent put you off... If you want to build your own Private Cloud with Eucalyptus there are a few things to remember: 9 It is not as easy as it seems It will take you longer than you anticipate It does require regular administration

10 Future Investigation with other Cloud Software Recent EPSRC grant -> expand our hardware Significantly increasing our monitoring capability –performance degradation relating to Virtual Machines –Network performance –Energy Consumption Cloud Adoption Toolkit

10 University of St Andrews School of Computer Science Cloud Adoption Toolkit Wide range of research interests in StACC, our group is currently developing the Cloud Adoption Toolkit – based on our experiences with the private Cloud and other platforms A collection of tools that support decision-making during the adoption of cloud computing in enterprise Support the process of migration Includes –Modelling Cost & Energy –Technology Analysis –Stakeholder Impact & Requirements Analysis

11 University of St Andrews School of Computer Science Example of Cost Modelling

12 University of St Andrews School of Computer Science Cost Report

Contact If you would like to use the StACC Cloud please Or if you wish to speak to me directly: 13