Thomas Higdon from Akamai Technologies discusses how they use OpenNebula to clone virtual machine instances of Akamai's global content delivery network. This allows them to more quickly provision development and testing environments that mimic Akamai's production instances. OpenNebula manages the virtual machines and resources while an Akamai instance service exposes specific machine types and services. When changes need testing, they can clone an existing instance to a new environment rather than rebuilding it from scratch.

1. Clone Your Network with OpenNebula
Thomas Higdon – Akamai Technologies

2. ©2013 AKAMAI | FASTER FORWARDTM
A little about me
• Software engineer at Akamai in the platform
infrastructure team
• We develop the software that goes on every
Akamai server out there (well over 100,000).

3. ©2013 AKAMAI | FASTER FORWARDTM
Some statistics
Accelerating Daily Traffic of:
• 10+ Tbps
• 25+ million hits per second
• 1.5+ trillion deliveries/day
• 50+ petabytes/day
• 10+ million concurrent streams
15-30%+ of Web Traffic
Delivering 250,000+ Domains
• 5,000+ Customers • 9 of the top 10 Banks
• 9 of the top 10 Social
Media Sites
• All top 30 M&E Companies
• All top 60 eCommerce Sites
A Global Platform:
• 132,000+ Servers • 86 Countries
• 650+ Cities
• 1,150+ Networks
• 2,200+ Locations

4. ©2013 AKAMAI | FASTER FORWARDTM
A little about me
• I’m addressing the problem of how to get new
platform software out there faster, and with a
smaller likelihood of disruption
• We’re using OpenNebula!

5. ©2013 AKAMAI | FASTER FORWARDTM
Akamai in a nutshell
• Akamai is a globally-distributed cloud of
physical servers
• Machines at Akamai are grouped into functional
units called networks.
• Edge networks - CDN services, object/file storage,
analytics, etc.
• Infrastructure – distributed file transfer, messaging,
monitoring, reporting, etc.

6. ©2013 AKAMAI | FASTER FORWARDTM
Akamai in a nutshell
• Each network runs a different set of software that
depends on the role of the network in the
ecosystem.
• Each also runs a common set of platform software
• Generally OS software and Akamai-specific
File transferMessaging Monitorin
g
Network-specific software
OS

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Akamai in a nutshell
Infra networkFile transferMonitoringMessaging
Operating system/kernel
Edge network
Network-specific software

8. ©2013 AKAMAI | FASTER FORWARDTM
Akamai in a nutshell
Infra networkFile transferMonitoringMessaging
Operating system/kernel
Edge network
Network-specific software

9. ©2013 AKAMAI | FASTER FORWARDTM
Akamai in a nutshell
Infra networkFile transferMonitoringMessaging
Operating system/kernel
Edge network
Network-specific software
Edge network
Network-specific software
Edge network
Network-specific software

10. ©2013 AKAMAI | FASTER FORWARDTM
Akamai in a nutshell
• State of a network
• Installed software and configuration
• Dynamic configuration/metadata
• Persistent (across installation) filesystem state
• Applied manual changes
• Each network tends to have built-up state
necessary for proper functionality
• not well-documented or defined

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An Akamai “instance”
• A given unique set of Akamai networks that
function together
• Self-contained with limited external
dependencies

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Akamai “instances”
Production – 105
SQA – 102
SQA – 102
SQA – 102
Dev – 102
Dev – 102
Dev – 102

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Commoditizing an Akamai instance
• Instances are labor-intensive to manage
• We’d like the ability to create these as a
commodity
• Automatically bootstrapping from scratch is
possible, but difficult.

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Commoditizing an Akamai instance
• Solution: virtualization with
OpenNebula
• Represent the state of an
instance using virtual
machines.
• Save the virtual machines
and clone them.
SQA – 102 SQA copy– 102
SQA – 102

15. ©2013 AKAMAI | FASTER FORWARDTM
Cloning Akamai instances
• Static IP configuration
• Isolation
• traditional NAT
• “reverse” NAT
• SOCKS proxy
• Akamai “authgate”

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Accessing an instance
NAT
SOCKS
authgate192.168.0.0/16
192.168.0.1
NAT
SOCKS
authgate192.168.0.0/16
192.168.0.1
Client
172.26.238.10
172.26.238.20

17. ©2013 AKAMAI | FASTER FORWARDTM
Clone a machine
1. Power down VM
2. Clone each disk
3. Add new virtual network with given VLAN.
4. Construct new VM template
• Using cloned disks
• Using new virtual network
5. Reboot old VM – still functioning
6. Power up new VM

18. ©2013 AKAMAI | FASTER FORWARDTM
Managing the Akamai side
• OpenNebula is great for managing VMs and
their resources
• We needed another level of management
• “Akamai” networks
• Akamai instances
• Expose specific Akamai machine types and services

19. ©2013 AKAMAI | FASTER FORWARDTM
An Akamai instance service
• Service-oriented
• Language/test harness agnostic
• Share common resources

20. ©2013 AKAMAI | FASTER FORWARDTM
An Akamai instance service
Instance
service
OpenNebula
2. “Clone these machines”
3. Creates
resources
4. “Here’s your
instance!”
5. “Ok, let’s
use it.”
Gateway
User1. “Give me an instance”

21. ©2013 AKAMAI | FASTER FORWARDTM
A well-managed instance
• Leverage expertise from around the company to
create an internal “master” instance
• Each additional network gets it closer to a “real”
instance.

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Addressing existing instances
• Can also address existing instances of physical
machines
• Production
• Lab instances

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Testing at Akamai
Unit testing
Dev QA
SQA
Checklisting
Alerting

24. ©2013 AKAMAI | FASTER FORWARDTM
Unify these stages
Dev QA
SQA
Checklisting
• Use the same code to write tests by using a
common interface to refer to an Akamai
instance.

25. ©2013 AKAMAI | FASTER FORWARDTM
Thank you!