Breakout presentation from Softlayer Bluemix User Summit 2015 hosted in Tokyo, Japan. A deeper dive on the Blue Box technology and offering, architecture and use cases.

1. Jesse Proudman
@blueboxjesse
CTO, Blue Box, an IBM Company
Making it REAL:
All about Blue Box
SoftLayer Bluemix Summit – Tokyo, September 2, 2015

2. A little about me
 Started in infrastructure in 1997.
 Founded Blue Box from my dorm room
in 2003.
 Raised $22M USD in venture
investment.
 Technologist at my core.
 IBM acquired Blue Box on June 2nd
 Race cars for fun
 Wonderful wife and 2 awesome kids
@blueboxjesse
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3. 3
The IBM Cloud Value Proposition
Open Cloud Architecture
One Cloud Platform
One Cloud Platform
Open Cloud Architecture
One User Experience

5. Private Cloud,
any where in the world,
in under an hour…5

6. Put the cloud
experience back into
private cloud.6

7. The best of public and private…
@blueboxjesse
7
Private Cloud
as a Service
 Elasticity
 OPEX
 Ease of Use
 Time to Implement
Best of Both
Worlds
 Data Sovereignty
 Environment Control
 Cost Predictability
 Hybrid Capability
Private CloudPublic Cloud

8. Blue Box Cloud Dedicated
@blueboxjesse
Add-ons include:
Compute
Standard
Block
Storage
Object
Storage
Compute
Enhanced
Express Architecture
 Hyper-converged Cluster
 Dedicated FWs included by default
 Add on Dedicated controller nodes
 Add on Compute, Block or Object Storage
 Seamlessly upgrade to Enterprise ArchitectureController Nodes
add-ons
Compute Block Object
Compute
Controller
Dedicated
Controller

9. Single-tenant dedicated private cloud
@blueboxjesse
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Customer A
Customer B
 Single Tenancy via Bare Metal Isolation
 Customers isolated via dedicated hardware
 Start small, grow to the enterprise
 Multi-Tenant Networking
 Shared Physical Infrastructure
 VLAN and Layer 3 Isolation
 Isolation via Defensible Network Border
 Border Protection via...
 Hardware Firewalls
 VPN Tunnel
 Connectivity via...
 Public Transit
 Point to Point Cross Connects

10. Supported OpenStack Services
@blueboxjesse
HeatCinder GlanceCeilometer
SwiftNeutron NovaKeystone
Ceilometer and Heat Support Available in Q4 2015
Horizon

11. Blue Box Cloud Architecture
 Completely HA control plane.
 No single point of failure.
 3 converged nodes to host controller services
 Controller Services and Customer VMs on
shared nodes
 Provides low cost entry point for PoC and
dev/test workloads
 Option to convert to dedicated Controllers
 Two (active – active) copies of the services
 Service VIP managed by UCARP
@blueboxjesse
Converged Node
HA Proxy
Horizon,
Nova,
Keystone,
Neutron,
Glance,
LBaaS,
Heat
RabbitMQ
MySQL
Ceilometer
MongoDB
Cinder
Cust VM
Cust VM
Converged Node
HA Proxy
Horizon,
Nova,
Keystone,
Neutron,
Glance,
LBaaS,
Heat
RabbitMQ
MySQL
Ceilometer
MongoDB
Cinder
Cust VM
Cust VM
Converged Node
MySQL
Arbiter
MongoDB
Arbiter
Cust VM
Cust VM
Cust VM
Cust VM
Cust VM
Cust VM
Cust VM
Cust VM
Cust VM
Cust VM

12. Open Source: Ursula and Giftwrap
 Ursula
 Ansible playbooks for operating OpenStack
 https://github.com/blueboxgroup/ursula
 Giftwrap
 A tool for creating bespoke system-native OpenStack artifacts.
 https://github.com/blueboxgroup/giftwrap
@blueboxjesse
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13. Network effect of “as a service”
@blueboxjesse
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Cloud 1
Cloud 2
Cloud 3
Cloud NCloud N
Cloud NCloud N

14. Blue Box Dedicated Pricing
@blueboxjesse

15. Why customers choose Blue Box
@blueboxjesse
True Private Cloud as easy to consume as Public Cloud

16. Customer case studies
@blueboxjesse
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‣ 1 Blue Box Dedicated Cloud
‣ X-Connected into BFG DC
Customer Wanted:
‣ Integration to existing facility
‣ Billing control with charge backs
‣ Control over entire environment
‣ Wanted “cloud” services
‣ 3 Blue Box Dedicated Clouds
‣ Geographically distributed
Customer Wanted:
‣ Cloud Foundry Compatibility
‣ OpenStack Open APIs
‣ Concierge Support
‣ Reliable and Consistent Pricing
‣ Control over entire environment
‣ Two Blue Box Dedicated Clouds
‣ Geographically distributed
Customer Wanted:
‣ Data Isolation
‣ Cloud Service Catalog
‣ Bare Metal Integration
Big Fish Games US Media Company Finsphere

17. @blueboxjesse
Just last week, 90 days in…
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18. Blue Box + SoftLayer: Global Cloud
@blueboxjesse
Now
Available

19. Blue Box Cloud Local
@blueboxjesse
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Private Cloud as a Service
Common OpenStack Services
Common Operational Model
Local Dedicated
Any Data Center
(inc. customer DC) Global Data Centers
Hybrid , OpEx and CapEx Pure OpEx

20. Blue Box Local Hardware Design
@blueboxjesse
Compute
 256 GB RAM, 32 Core, 2.4 TB usable per node
 5.12 TB RAM, 640 Cores, 48TB Ephemeral
Storage per rack
 Blade chassis preferred
Object Storage
 6 TB raw per node
 12 TB usable
Block Storage
 12 TB raw per unit
 14-24 TB usable
Core Network
 Enterprise grade network
 10/40 bonded GbE
 Connected over L3 and BGP
Box Panel
Full remote hardware, network and OpenStack
automated configuration, admin, operations and
management

21. Image Courtesy of the Seattle Municipal Archives
Thank you and Questions?
@blueboxjesse