Standards in cloud computing are essential to its growth. Learn how to create a private cloud without being locked in to any one vendor. Abiquo uses OVF standards to help its customers create private clouds with multiple hypervisor technologies in the same cloud.
5. About Abiquo
Our Company
Founded 2006 in Barcelona by Diego Mariño and Xavier
Fernández
Our Team
Pete Malcolm, CEO
Trevor Chamberlain, VP Business Development
Xavier Fernández, Founder and VP Engineering
Helena Torras, VP Operations
Diego Parrilla, VP Product Management
Steve Soechtig, VP Global Sales
Nick Wetton, VP Regional Sales
6. About Abiquo
Our Technology
Abiquo product development commenced early 2008
First open source pre-release April 2009
Over 15,000 downloads
Formal 1.0.0 release February 2010
Our Mission
Become a leading vendor of groundbreaking virtualization
management solutions, liberating both IT organizations and
the users they serve, while increasing business agility,
efficiency, and reducing cost.
8. The Cloud Dream
Cloud Computing is the ideal solution for users & providers
Cloud Users
No upfront commitment, no CAPEX, only OPEX
Pay-per-use, no long-term contracts
Dynamic Scaling
Physical location irrelevant
Cloud Provider
Higher ratio of servers per Sys Admin
Higher efficiency
Built on top of commoditized hardware
9. Virtualization 1.0 Issues
The Cloud created additional problems, including:
High Provisioning Effort = IT Bottleneck
Poor Capacity Planning and Utilization
Vendor Lock-In
Low-efficiency Virtual Server Sprawl
Security and Compliance Concerns
10. The Cloud Nightmare
Examples of Common Problems:
“Our Cloud Provider SLA is not meeting our needs, but there is
no easy way to move our solution to another provider.”
“We had all of our project data stored virtually, but the hosting
provider corrupted it. How can we trust the cloud for future
projects?”
“I developed my solution on top of an existing platform, which
was sold to another company. Now I have 30 days to remove
all aspects of my solution and have no control over it.”
“There are new players in the Cloud Provider arena that we
might want to try, but it is impossible to transfer our servers and
data.”
12. What is Vendor Lock-in?
Reliant on one vendor and cannot switch to another vendor
without substantial costs
No alternative if the vendor fails or the product is no longer
viable
Cloud Users risk being completely reliant on one vendor
Cloud Providers are limited to customers that only want to use
the vendor they support
“#2 Obstacle for Adoption and Growth of Cloud Computing:
The degree of difficulty associated with moving an application from one
cloud provider to another, to your datacenter, or simply take your data
out of the cloud.”
Above the Clouds: A Berkeley View of Cloud Computing
13. Vendor Lock-in
Impacts on the Cloud User:
Lock-in prevents three crucial benefits of cloud computing:
Portability
Interoperability
Federation
14. Infrastructure Lock-in
Impacts on the Cloud Vendor:
Vendor lock-in does not allow you to change any of your
providers during the Platform’s lifetime.
A Cloud Platform is composed of:
Servers
Storage Systems
Networking devices
Hypervisors
Monitoring tools
Cloud Management Software
The lifespan of a Cloud Platform can last many years.
17. Our Vision
To build a product that enables Cloud Providers to:
Choose their infrastructure, including:
Servers
Hypervisors
Open-source and proprietary solutions
Storage Array Networks
Networking devices
Provide elasticity
Leverage existing systems and resources
Mix different technologies and make them interoperable
18. Our Vision
Cloud Users should be able to:
Import existing Standard (gold) images
Use any infrastructure of their choice
Manage Global Resources from one dashboard
Manage the platform using different types of APIs
Portability
Interoperability
Federation
20. The Abiquo Solution
Revolutionary Cloud Management
Vendor independent
Supports ESX, ESXi, Xen, Xen Server, KVM, Hyper-V
Virtual-to-virtual (V2V) conversion between all hypervisors
Enterprise class
Standards-based
Policy-driven
Multi-tenancy delegated control
Manages private and public clouds
21. The Abiquo Solution
Background information
Developed in Java, C (Cloud Nodes) and Flex (interface)
MySQL as the database backend
Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
Abiquo Enterprise Edition codebase extends the Abiquo
Community Edition
Standards:
OVF
WS-Management / CIM resources
Stateless architecture (horizontal scalability)
22. The Abiquo Solution
Use of standards and APIs effectively
overcomes lock-in and achieves:
Portability Federation
Interoperability
26. Multiple Technologies, Same DC
Abiquo can manage multiple virtualization technologies in the
same Data Center
New technology can be added or removed at any time
Any change in the Infrastructure does not impact the Cloud
Services Layer or the Cloud Interfaces Layer
30. Infrastructure Vendor Lock-in
Problem Abiquo Alternative
Unique provider for long-term contracts Choose the technology based on your
own criteria
Existing contracts with providers, but new Choose from a list of existing plugins, or
Cloud Platforms does not support them. develop a custom-made plugin for the
product.
End-of-Lifecycle products Migrate existing products with the new V2V
features
Cannot define different Quality of services Different technologies can be mixed in a
depending on the underlying hardware. single datacenter.
Propietary solutions Based on the opensource version, Abiquo
Community Edition
SOA oriented, REST interfaces
32. The Open Cloud Manifesto
Principles of an Open Cloud
1. Open collaboration
2. No platform vendor lock-in
3. Use and adopt existing standards
4. Promote innovation
5. Customer-driven
6. Collaboration to prevent open-source effort overlap
33. Open Clouds
Required Features
Portability: move a cloud solution (apps, data, network,
config)to other Cloud Platform than the one that it was
created
Interoperability: use the services of more than one Cloud
Platform
Federation: Cloud Platforms can talk to each
other to offer interoperability or transparency
34. The Abiquo Architecture (revisited)
Background Information
Developed in Java, C (Cloud Nodes) and Flex (interface)
MySQL as the database backend
Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
Abiquo Enterprise Edition codebase extends the Abiquo
Community Edition
Standards:
OVF
WS-Management / CIM resources
API based on vCloud 0.9 (beta)
Stateless architecture (horizontal scalability)
35. The Abiquo Solution
Use of standards effectively overcomes lock-in
and achieves:
Portability Federation
Interoperability
36. Portability via OVF
Open Virtualization Format (OVF) enables people to move a cloud
solution (apps, data, network, config) from one Cloud Platform to
another.
Packaging and distributing virtual appliances
Software to be run in virtual machines
Not tied to any particular hypervisor or processor architecture
An OVF Package contains one or more virtual systems
Can be deployed to several virtual machines
Supported by DMTF
OVF is the only open standard getting traction in the industry and
community
37. OVF Use Case
Virtual Machine(s) Cloud
running in Cloud Provider
“A”
Provider “A”
OVF
The user packages
the Virtual Machine in
OVF Format
The user moves the
OVF Package to Cloud
Cloud Provider “B” Provider
“B”