1. Tim Mackey – XenServer Community Manager and Evangelist
Hypervisor Selection in CloudStack 4.3
and OpenStack Havana
Understanding the choices available
virtg Deep Dive Day 2014

2. Building a successful cloud
What are we trying to accomplish?

3. © Citrix 2014. More information at xenserver.org and follow me on twitter @XenServerArmy
Service Offerings
• Clearly define what you want to offer
ᵒ What types of applications
ᵒ Who has access, and who owns them
ᵒ What type of access
• Define how templates need to be managed
ᵒ Operating system support
ᵒ Patching requirements
• Define expectations around compliance and availability
ᵒ Who owns backup and monitoring

4. © Citrix 2014. More information at xenserver.org and follow me on twitter @XenServerArmy
Define Tenancy Requirements
• Department data local to department
ᵒ Where is the application data stored
• Data and service isolation
ᵒ VM migration and host HA
ᵒ Network services
• Encryption of PII/PCI
ᵒ Where do keys live when data location unknown
ᵒ Need encryption designed for the cloud
• Showback to stakeholders
ᵒ More than just usage, compliance and audits

5. © Citrix 2014. More information at xenserver.org and follow me on twitter @XenServerArmy
Virtualization Infrastructure
• Hypervisor defined by service offerings
ᵒ Don’t select hypervisor based on “standards”
ᵒ Understand true costs of virtualization
ᵒ Multiple hypervisors are “OK”
ᵒ Bare metal can be a hypervisor
• To “Pool” resources or not
ᵒ Is there a real requirement for pooled resources
ᵒ Can the cloud management solution do better?
ᵒ Real cost of shared storage
• Primary storage defined by hypervisor
• Template storage defined by solution
ᵒ Typically low cost options like NFS

6. Choice is a good thing….

7. © Citrix 2014. More information at xenserver.org and follow me on twitter @XenServerArmy
Apache CloudStack
• Current release: 4.2.1 (4.3 imminent)
• Highly scalable
• Monolithic architecture
• Mostly written in Java
• Multi-hypervisor support
ᵒ XenServer, KVM, OracleVM, vSphere,
Linux Containers, Bare metal
ᵒ 4.3 adds: Hyper-V
• Strong backing from Citrix,
CloudOps, Shapeblue and others
Back Up
DB
Management
Server
MySQL
DB
Replication
Management
Server
Management
Server
Load
Balancer
Infrastructure
Resources

8. © Citrix 2014. More information at xenserver.org and follow me on twitter @XenServerArmy
OpenStack
• Current release: Havana
• Scalable in 500 node blocks
• Distributed architecture
• Mostly written in Python
• Multi-hypervisor support
ᵒ Group A: KVM
ᵒ Group B: Hyper-V, vSphere, XenServer
ᵒ Group C: All others deprecated in Icehouse
• Strong backing from HP, IBM, RAX, RHT,
Canonical, Mirantis, Piston Cloud, SUSE,
Cloudscaling

9. Leading hypervisor options

10. © Citrix 2014. More information at xenserver.org and follow me on twitter @XenServerArmy
XenServer 6.2
Feature
Source code model Open Source (GPLv2)
Maximum VM Density 650 (Linux)
CloudStack VM Density 500
CloudStack integration Direct XAPI calls
OpenStack driver OpenStack nova-compute domU
Maximum native cluster size 16
Maximum pRAM 1 TB
Largest VM 16 vCPU/128GB
Windows Operating System All Windows supported by Microsoft
Linux Operating Systems RHEL, CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu, SLES, OEL
Advanced features supported (CloudStack) ovs, Storage XenMotion, DMC
Advanced features supported (OpenStack) ovs, Storage XenMotion

11. © Citrix 2014. More information at xenserver.org and follow me on twitter @XenServerArmy
vSphere 5.5
Feature
Source code model Proprietary
Maximum VM Density 512
CloudStack VM Density 128
CloudStack integration vCenter
OpenStack driver vCenter – nova-compute node per cluster
Maximum native cluster size 32
Maximum pRAM 4 TB
Largest VM 64 vCPU/1TB
Windows Operating Systems DOS, All Windows Server/Client
Linux Operating Systems Most
Advanced features supported (CloudStack) HA, DRS, vDS, Storage vMotion
Advanced features supported (OpenStack) HA, DRS, vMotion

12. © Citrix 2014. More information at xenserver.org and follow me on twitter @XenServerArmy
KVM
Feature
Source code model Open Source (GPLv2)
Maximum VM Density 10 times the number of pCores
CloudStack VM Density 50
CloudStack integration CloudStack Agent (libvirt)
OpenStack driver libvirt driver
Maximum native cluster size No native cluster support
Maximum pRAM 2 TB
Largest VM 160 vCPU/2TB
Windows Operating Systems Windows XP and higher
Linux Operating Systems Varies
Advanced features supported (CloudStack) None
Advanced features supported (OpenStack) None

13. © Citrix 2014. More information at xenserver.org and follow me on twitter @XenServerArmy
Microsoft Hyper-V
Feature
Source code model Proprietary
Maximum VM Density 1024
CloudStack VM Density 1024
CloudStack integration CloudStack Agent (C# calling WMI)
OpenStack driver Use Cloudbase driver
Maximum native cluster Size 64
Maximum pRAM 4 TB
Largest VM 64 vCPU/1TB
Windows Operating Systems All Windows supported by Microsoft
Linux Operating Systems RHEL, CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu, SLES, OEL
Advanced features supported (CloudStack) None
Advanced features supported (OpenStack) None

14. The CloudStack 4.3 world …

15. Defining the network

16. © Citrix 2014. More information at xenserver.org and follow me on twitter @XenServerArmy
Flat Network – Basic Layer 3 Network
Option XenServer vSphere KVM Hyper-V
Security Groups Yes- bridge No Yes Yes
IPv6 No No Yes No
Multiple IPs per NIC Yes Yes Yes Yes
Nicira NVP Yes No Yes No
BigSwitch VNS Yes No Yes No
65.11.1.2
65.11.1.3
65.11.1.4
65.11.1.5
Public Network
65.11.0.0/16
Guest VM 1
Guest VM 2
Guest VM 3
Guest VM 4
DHCP,
DNS
CloudStack
Virtual Router
Security Group 1
Security Group 2

17. © Citrix 2014. More information at xenserver.org and follow me on twitter @XenServerArmy
VLANs for Private Cloud
Option XenServer vSphere KVM Hyper-V
Max VLANs 800 254 1024 4094
IPv6 No No Yes No
Multiple IPs per
NIC
Yes Yes Yes Yes
Nicira NVP Yes No Yes No
BigSwitch VNS Yes No Yes No
MidoKura No No Yes No
VPC Yes Yes Yes Yes
NetScaler Yes Yes Yes Yes
F5 BigIP Yes Yes Yes Yes
Juniper SRX No Yes Yes Yes
Cisco VNMC No Yes No No
10.1.1.1
10.1.1.3
10.1.1.4
10.1.1.5
Public
Network/Internet
Guest Virtual Network 10.0.0.0/8
VLAN 100
DHCP, DNS
NAT
Load Balancing
VPN
Public IP
65.37.14.1
Gateway
10.1.1.1
Guest VM 1
Guest VM 2
Guest VM 3
Guest VM 4
CloudStack
Virtual
Router

18. © Citrix 2014. More information at xenserver.org and follow me on twitter @XenServerArmy
Beyond the VLAN – Network Virtualization
Option XenServer vSphere KVM Hyper-V
OVS GRE tunnels Yes No No No
Nicira STT tunnel Yes Yes Yes No
MidoNet No No Yes No
VXLAN No Yes Yes No
NVGRE No No No No
Nexus 1000v No Yes No No
Juniper Contrail Yes No No No
Palo Alto Yes Yes Yes No

19. © Citrix 2014. More information at xenserver.org and follow me on twitter @XenServerArmy
Virtual Private Cloud and nTier Applications
Feature XenServer vSphere KVM Hyper-V
PVLAN Yes - ovs Yes ovs No
Web
App
DB
Router
DC1
DC2
DC3
DC4
DC5
DC6
VLAN 1
VLAN 2
VLAN 3
S2S VPN
Private
GW

20. © Citrix 2014. More information at xenserver.org and follow me on twitter @XenServerArmy
Delivering specific network services
• KVM
ᵒ IPv6
ᵒ Security groups
ᵒ Large quantity of VLANs
• vSphere
ᵒ VXLAN required vSphere Enterprise Plus
ᵒ Cisco Nexus 1000v and ASA 1000v require vSphere Enterprise Plus
• XenServer
ᵒ Security groups
ᵒ Large quantity of VLANs
ᵒ Juniper Contrail

21. Instances need a home …
Storage, Storage and more Storage

22. © Citrix 2014. More information at xenserver.org and follow me on twitter @XenServerArmy
Primary Storage Options
Feature XenServer vSphere KVM Hyper-V
Local storage Yes Yes Yes Yes
NFS Yes Yes Yes No
SMB No No No SMB3
Single path iSCSI Yes Yes Yes No
Multipath iSCSI PreSetup No No No
Direct array No VAAI No No
Shared Mount No No Yes No
Template format VHD OVA QCOW2 VHD
SolidFire Plugin Yes Yes Yes No
NetApp Plugin Yes Yes Yes No
Zone wide No Yes Yes No
Ceph RBD No No Yes No
Clustered LVM No No Yes No
Cluster
Host
Host
Primary Storage

23. © Citrix 2014. More information at xenserver.org and follow me on twitter @XenServerArmy
Secondary Storage Options
Option XenServer vSphere KVM Hyper-V
NFS Yes Yes Yes No
Swift(1) Yes Yes Yes No
S3 compatible (2) Yes Yes Yes No
SMB No No No Yes
(1) Requires NFS staging area
(2) Can be region wide, but must not have NFS secondary storage in zone
Zone
Secondary Storage
Pod
Cluster
Host
Host
Primary Storage

24. Core virtualization capabilities
The limits and features which matter

25. © Citrix 2014. More information at xenserver.org and follow me on twitter @XenServerArmy
CloudStack Features
Feature XenServer vSphere KVM Hyper-V
Disk IO Statistics Yes No Yes Yes
Memory Overcommit Yes (4x) Yes No No
Dedicated resources Yes Not with HA/DRS Yes Yes
Disk IO throttling No No Yes No
Disk snapshot (running) Yes Yes No No
Disk snapshot (pluggable) Partial Partial No No
Disk snapshot (Stopped) Yes Yes Yes Yes
Memory snapshot Yes Yes Yes No
Zone wide primary storage No Yes Yes No
Resize disk Offline Online Grow Online No
High availability CloudStack Native CloudStack CloudStack
CPU sockets 6.2 and higher Yes Yes Yes
Affinity groups Yes Yes Yes Yes

26. © Citrix 2014. More information at xenserver.org and follow me on twitter @XenServerArmy
Multiple Hypervisor Support in CloudStack
• Networking
ᵒ Ensure network labels match
ᵒ Topology is intersect of chosen hypervisors
• Storage
ᵒ For system VMs to specific hypervisor type
ᵒ Zone with primary storage limited
• Operations
ᵒ vSphere Datacenter can not span zones
ᵒ Hyper-V may not be mixed with other hypervisors
ᵒ HA won’t migrate between hypervisors
ᵒ Capacity planning at the cluster/pod level more difficult

27. The OpenStack Havana world …

28. Defining the network
The goodness of Neutron (Quantum)

29. © Citrix 2014. More information at xenserver.org and follow me on twitter @XenServerArmy
Flat Network – Basic Layer 3 Network
Option XenServer vSphere KVM Hyper-V
Security Groups Yes Yes-NVP Yes No
IPv6 No No No No
Multiple IPs per NIC Yes Yes Yes Yes
Nicira NVP Yes Yes Yes No
Firewall rules Yes No Yes No
Routing Yes No Yes No
65.11.1.2
65.11.1.3
65.11.1.4
65.11.1.5
Public Network
65.11.0.0/16
Guest VM 1
Guest VM 2
Guest VM 3
Guest VM 4
DHCP,
DNS
CloudStack
Virtual Router
Security Group 1
Security Group 2

30. © Citrix 2014. More information at xenserver.org and follow me on twitter @XenServerArmy
VLANs for Private Cloud
Option XenServer vSphere KVM Hyper-V
Max VLANs 800 254 1024 4094
IPv6 No No No No
Multiple IPs Yes Yes Yes Yes 10.1.1.1
10.1.1.3
10.1.1.4
10.1.1.5
Public
Network/Internet
Guest Virtual Network 10.0.0.0/8
VLAN 100
DHCP, DNS
NAT
Load Balancing
VPN
Public IP
65.37.14.1
Gateway
10.1.1.1
Guest VM 1
Guest VM 2
Guest VM 3
Guest VM 4
CloudStack
Virtual
Router

31. © Citrix 2014. More information at xenserver.org and follow me on twitter @XenServerArmy
Beyond the VLAN – Network Virtualization
Option XenServer vSphere KVM Hyper-V
OVS GRE tunnels Yes No No No
Nicira STT tunnel Yes Yes Yes No
VXLAN No Yes Yes No
NVGRE No No No No
Nexus 1000v No Yes Yes No
Nicira NVP Yes Yes Yes No
BigSwitch VNS No No Yes No
MidoKura No No Yes No
Brocade No No Yes No
Plumgrid No No Yes No
Ryu No No Yes No
NEC No No Yes No
Cisco VNMC No No Yes No

32. Instances need a home …
Storage, Storage and more Storage

33. © Citrix 2014. More information at xenserver.org and follow me on twitter @XenServerArmy
Instance Storage Options – Nova and Cinder
Feature XenServer vSphere KVM Hyper-V
Template format VHD VMDK QCOW2 VHD
Local storage Yes Yes Yes Yes
NFS Yes Yes Yes Yes
Fiber HBA No No Yes No
iSCSI Yes Yes Yes Yes
iSCSI CHAP Yes No Yes No
Ceph No No Yes No
Gluster No No Yes No
ZFS No No Yes No

34. © Citrix 2014. More information at xenserver.org and follow me on twitter @XenServerArmy
OpenStack Features
Feature XenServer vSphere KVM Hyper-V
Pause VM Yes No Yes Yes
Inject networking Guest agent Yes Flat (Debian) Yes
Inject file Yes No Yes cloudbase-init
Serial console Yes Yes Yes No
VNC consoles Yes Yes Yes Yes
SPICE console No No Yes No
Snapshot Yes Yes Yes Yes
Set administrator password Yes No No cloudbase-init
Auto configure disk Yes No No No
Evacuate host Yes No Yes No
Volume swap No No Yes No
Volume rate limiting No No Yes No

35. © Citrix 2014. More information at xenserver.org and follow me on twitter @XenServerArmy
Multiple Hypervisor Support in OpenStack
• Capabilities
ᵒ Multiple hypervisor support varies by distro
ᵒ Most deployments are single hypervisor
ᵒ Difficult to schedule instances to compute nodes
ᵒ Use host aggregates
• Networking
ᵒ Topology is intersect of chosen hypervisors – ML2 helps
• Operations
ᵒ HA won’t migrate between hypervisors
ᵒ Capacity planning at the cluster/pod level more difficult
ᵒ Hyper-V does not work with all Neutron plugins

36. Picking the “best one”
When to use which hypervisor…

37. © Citrix 2014. More information at xenserver.org and follow me on twitter @XenServerArmy
KVM
• Primary value proposition:
ᵒ Low cost with available vendor support
ᵒ Familiar administration model
ᵒ Broad feature set with active development in both CloudStack and OpenStack
• Cloud use cases:
ᵒ Linux centric workloads
ᵒ Dev/test clouds
ᵒ Web hosting
ᵒ Tenant density which dictates SDN options
• Weaknesses:
ᵒ CloudStack: Requires use of an installed libvirt agent
ᵒ Limited native storage options
ᵒ No use of advanced native features

38. © Citrix 2014. More information at xenserver.org and follow me on twitter @XenServerArmy
Microsoft Hyper-V
• Primary value proposition:
ᵒ Unlimited Windows Server VM licenses
ᵒ Familiar Windows management paradigm
• Cloud use cases:
ᵒ Windows and Linux workloads
ᵒ Dev/test clouds
ᵒ .Net application web hosting
ᵒ Desktop as a Service clouds
• Weaknesses:
ᵒ Minimal use of advanced native features
ᵒ CloudStack: First introduced with CloudStack 4.3 (not yet released)

39. © Citrix 2014. More information at xenserver.org and follow me on twitter @XenServerArmy
vSphere
• Primary value proposition:
ᵒ Broad application and operating system support
ᵒ Readily available pool of vSphere administration talent
ᵒ Large eco-system of vendor partners
ᵒ CloudStack: Many features are native implementations
ᵒ Direct feature integration via vCenter
• Cloud use cases:
ᵒ Private enterprise clouds
ᵒ Dev/test clouds
• Weaknesses:
ᵒ vSphere up-front license and ongoing support costs
ᵒ vCenter integration requires redundant designs
ᵒ CloudStack: Single data center per zone model

40. © Citrix 2014. More information at xenserver.org and follow me on twitter @XenServerArmy
XenServer
• Primary value proposition:
ᵒ Low cost with available vendor support
ᵒ Broad feature set with active development in both CloudStack and OpenStack
ᵒ CloudStack: Large install base
ᵒ Direct integration via XAPI toolstack
• Cloud use cases:
ᵒ Linux centric workloads
ᵒ Dev/test clouds
ᵒ Web hosting
ᵒ Desktop as a Service clouds
ᵒ Large VM density and secure tenant isolation
• Weaknesses:
ᵒ Minimal use of advanced native features

41. © Citrix 2014. More information at xenserver.org and follow me on twitter @XenServerArmy
Tying it all Together
1. Define success criteria
2. Select a topology which works
3. Decide on storage options
4. Define supported configurations
5. Select preferred hypervisor(s)
6. Validate matrix
7. Build your Cloud

42. Work better. Live better.