Private PAAS by Oracle

In recent week, I had the opportunity to attend all three vendors presentation on the topic of  cloud computing. Today, I shall blog about one of them, the Oracle cloud offerings, or they termed it as Oracle Private PaaS(Platform as a Service). I have been using oracle products for many years now, and was very interested in the presentation given by the Oracle reps.

Oracle Private 'PaaS' aimed to achieve these 5 parts.

1) Shared Infrastructure with dynamic scaling
To create an infrastructure which can dynamically scale,  Oracle re-utilized the Grid technology. On the application front, there is an Application grid, where the tools like Weblogic Server, JRockit, Coherence, Tuxedo resides.On the data management, Oracle has the Database Grid & Storage Grid. Concept of In-Memory Database Cache(IMDB), Real Application Cluster(RAC) and Automatic Storage Management are also in built in the private PaaS offerings. The OEM also allow to do the administering.

2) Support component sharing
To support component sharing, Oracle have the SOA & BPM together with the Oracle workflows and Identity Management(IM).

3) Support fast deployment
Pre-configured images, Oracle VM and new component like the Weblogic Server Virtual Edition(VE), can be assembled using the Oracle Assembly Builder by making them into Assembled catalog and then the can be deployed as a platform.

4) Self-serviced
Oracle EM can help PaaS to be self-serviced by scaling up and down.

5) Management and Automation
Lastly management and automation can be done via OEM. IM allow identity management of users.

Oracle believe, most organization providing application services really need a private PaaS solutions instead of IaaS. The focus should be in facilitating the build of apps, making it easier and flexible and can be deploy fast.
Oracle propose this by adopting their Private PaaS solutions.

The cloudburst of IBM

Was fortunate to attend another interesting cloud presentation by a consultant from UK (Mr Lewis Troke) on the cloud offerings by IBM. He was a captivating presenter, whom was very generous to share hs knowledge on cloud computing.At the end, the message that he wanted to put across was that Cloud computing is more business than IT. Technology and IT are still important, but to make cloud computing work, the business must champion it

For this post, I will like to narrow down on "cloudburst." the cloud enabler appliance from IBM.

Cloudburst is actually an IBM hardware appliance that integrates service management software with servers, storage and services for use in the private cloud. It is used to build, configure, deploy and manage the WebSphere private cloud environments. It is also used for building patterns and configuration, which are the Virtual images and script packages so that the deployment can be easier and automated, via the portal.

The virtual images are packaged in the WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition(WAS-HE) under the Catalog. It contains WebSphere components, like the IBM HTTP server, and a Linux operating system. The (WAS-HE) is packaged according to the Open Virtualization Format (OVF) standard.

The steps involved in setting up a private cloud are firstly by integrating IBM cloudburst in the datacenter and network. Then assigning the local storage. Users account and security profiles are also created. The pattern creator can then create some pattern templates. After patterns are created and agreed upon, it will be saved and access list to it will be established. Likely the cloud administrator will then in future deploy this pattern as or when required.

To define the cloud, the administrator normally begin with hypervisors. The details of the hypervisor include the installed URL, authentication information, virtual machine instances and IP groups (DNS servers, gateways, and  range of IP addresses available for the cloud)

The cloudburst can also tracks and reports cloud usage for charge-back based on one's consumption. Other settings include security, backup/restore actions, firmware upgrades, logging, trace auditing and power management.

At the time of this post the cloudburst is at version 1.2.

Oracle VM

I had the opportunity earlier to understand something about OracleVM(OVM) by the Oracle representative that came to visit my company earlier today. Besides the Oracle Cloud-G Architecture that they presented, I am more curious about what is OVM


OVM or oracle virtual machines is based on open-sourced Xen Hypervisor technology. Oracle VM previously only supported on  linux and window platform or they sometime called the, linux and window guests. However, they have recently release Oracle VM server for SPARC or previously in Sun called LDOM.

Each OVM has its own virtual CPUs, network interfaces, storage and operating system. With Oracle VM, users have an easy-to-use browser-based tool for creating, cloning, sharing, configuring, booting and migrating VMs. Using Oracle EM, we can also administered the OVMs.

Oracle has always encourage better use of hardware. So it is not surprise that OVM is built upon predecessor like the Oracle Grid, ASM and RAC. OVM also serve as a building block in Oracle Clouds's offerings.

Installing OVM should be relatively straightforward like installing linux. Give it  a try and it's free.

Links to OVM specs:
http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/virtualization/024974.htm

Below are some useful OVM commands

Logs path = /var/log/xen/xend 

List which virtual machines are running right now. 
# xm list

Start the vm.  
# xm create vm.cfg

Kill the power to vm: vm01 - hard shutdown 
# xm destroy vm01

Monitors a host and its domains in real time 

# xm top 
 
Send the vm: vm01 the shutdown command, like doing a shutdown inside the vm
 # xm shutdown vm01
 
Current status of the guest operating system is written to disk and removed from system memory
 # xm suspend vm01
 
restore vm01 (any time including after a host system reboot) 
# xm resume vm01

Split / Join files

Sometime the files are too big to put on FAT32 thumbdrives. Use the split and cat commands here:

Split the file system.img into 3Gig chunks 
# split --bytes=3000m system.img

Join up the files system.img.part1, system.img.part2, etc... into the file system.img 
# cat system.img.part* > system.img


Here we created a new device, /dev/xvdb. Now we start up the vm and run fdisk
# fdisk /dev/xvdb

Create a physical volume from this device 
# pvcreate /dev/xvdb1

Create the logical volume group from the physical device 
# vgcreate lvm-oracledb /dev/xvdb1

Create the logical volume using 100% of the free space in the logical group lvm-oracledb 
# lvcreate -l 100%FREE lvm-oracledb -n lvm0

Format the file system 
# mkfs -t ext3 /dev/lvm-oracledb/lvm0

Create a mount point 
# mkdir /oracledb

Add the following to "/etc/fstab" to automatically mount the volume when the computer starts up/dev/lvm-oracledb/lvm0 /oracledb ext3 defaults 1 2
Mount the volume 
# mount -a

ADDITIONAL LINK : 

http://www.techotopia.com/index.php/Managing_Xen_using_the_xm_Command-line_Tool

Remove a Disk (LVM)

Remove /etc/fstab entry[root@vl-ucm1 ~]# vi /etc/fstab

Unmount the device, get device name with: lvdisplay
# umount /dev/lvm-stellent/lvm0

OR
[root@vl-ucm1 /]# ls /u01
downloads lost+found oracle
[root@vl-ucm1 /]# umount /u01
[root@vl-ucm1 /]# ls /u01

If you get: [root@vl-ucm1 /]# umount /dev/lvm-stellent/lvm0
umount: /u01: device is busy

Find out what is using the device with: [root@vl-ucm1 /]# fuser -m /dev/lvm-stellent/lvm0
/dev/lvm-stellent/lvm0: 3557m 3620m 3621m 3622m 3623m 3624m 3625m 3626m 3627m
[root@vl-ucm1 /]# ps auxw| grep 3557
root 3557 0.0 0.5 10856 3104 ? Ss 10:55 0:00 /usr/sbin/httpd
[root@vl-ucm1 /]# service httpd stop
Stopping httpd: [ OK ]
[root@vl-ucm1 /]# umount /dev/lvm-stellent/lvm0
[root@vl-ucm1 /]# df -h
And you should no longer see the disk with 'df'

Remove any entries from /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf that refer to this disk.

use lvremove to remove the logical volume[root@vl-ucm1 /]# lvremove /dev/lvm-stellent/lvm0
Do you really want to remove active logical volume "lvm0"? [y/n]: y
Logical volume "lvm0" successfully removed

use lgdisplay and lgremove to remove logical group[root@vl-ucm1 /]# vgremove lvm-stellent
Volume group "lvm-stellent" successfully removed

use pvdisplay and pvremove to remove physical volume[root@vl-ucm1 /]# pvremove /dev/hdb1
Labels on physical volume "/dev/hdb1" successfully wiped

remove partition with fdisk /dev/hdb, 'd', enter, 'w' = write partition and exit
# fdisk /dev/hdb

Remove the disk entry from the vm.cfg file, and restart the vm.

To shrink a LVM

Just create a new disk, copy over contents and delete old volume.
.

Local Cloud, virtualization and more.

Even as cloud computing has been around for quite awhile, most organisation  will likely not to jump straightaway to cloud. Most will approach it first using hybrid method. Moving the least sensitivity and lesser risk apps to cloud while majority applications are still retain in the traditional computing system. It will then evolved in phases. Some organisation will then start to offer to user the computing resources as utility based product. Let's take a look at virtualization as it is the main driver of cloud computing.

Virtualization witin the organisation can be segmented to three types:-

• Server Virtualization
• Using VMware, Hyper-V, Zoning
• Application Virtualization
• Software technology that separate from underlying OS
• Presentation Virtualization
• example is "Thin Client"

Type of server virtualizations

• Microsoft Hyper-V based on window 2008 server
• VMware based on linux & window server
• VMware ESX Server 3i, 3.5
• VirtualCentre 2.5

 Type of thin client

• Sun's Sun Ray ( Sun Virtual desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
• HP VDI  & 6720t Mobile thin client(including Neoware)
• Dell ( e.g OptiPlex & Flexible computing solution)

Why Virtualised?

• Cost
• Reduces administration
• Fast Deployment
• Reduced Infrastructure Cost 

Not suited for cloud :

• Security sensitive data & app
• Graphic Intensive app
• Business Intelligence and data warehousing

Best Practices 

• Find the right vendor
• Read the fine print
• Measure the performance
• Spread service across more than one reliable cloud vendor
• Data should be easily view & port over by owner
• Data security and data flow
• Phase by phase approach

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Based on Gartner's prediction on Cloud Computing Market

Phase I : 2007 -2011 (Pioneer & Trailblazer)

• Cloud Market development phase, and SEAP(service enabled application platform)

Phase II : 2010 -2013 (Could Market consolidation)

• By 2012, SEAP market will be overcrowded with broad range of cloud solutions

Phase III : 2012 - 2015 & beyond (mainstream critical mass & commoditization)

• Cloud market matures and small dominating cloud player providing de facto standards.

References:
Cloud Computing- A Practical Approach, by Anthony T.Velte, Toby J Velte & Robert Elsenpeter (McgrawHill)

Standard used in cloud computing

Communication

• HTTP - http1.1
• XMPP(Extensible Mesaagingand Presence Protocol) also knownas "jabber")

Security

• SSL
• OpenID
• PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard)

Client

• HTML
• Dynamic HTML (DHTML)
• Document Object Model (DOM)
• Javascript

Infrastructure

•  Virtualisation
• Open Hypervisor Standards
• Community Source (e.g in VMware ESX server)
• Open Virtualization Format (OVF)

Web Services

• REST(Representational state transfer)
• SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)
• JSON(Javascript Object Notation)
• XML

Cloud Computing and the major players

Google

• Google App Engine -empower developer to build web-apps on cloud infrastructure
• Google Web Toolkit - a PaaS, tools based on Java with AJAX support for development & debugging

Amazon

• EC2 - Elastic Compute Cloud is a web service that offer elasticity capcity in cloud.
• SimpleDB
• S3 - Simple Storage Service is Amazon's cloud storage solutions
• CloudFront - webservice for content delivery on cloud.
• SQS- Amazon'z Simple Queue Service is a cloud messaging system
• EBS - Elastic Block store is Amazon's persistent storage

Microsoft

• Azure Service Platform ( cloud services platform hosted by microsoft)
• Exchange Online
• Sharepoint services
• Microsoft Dynamic CRM

Saleforce.com

• Force.com - on demand PaaS 
• Visualforce - tool fordesigning  business apps
• AppExchange - directories of apps for salesforce.com by 3rd party.
• Salesforce.com CRM

EMC

• VMware 
• Symmetric V-max system - Management system to manger virtual datacenters
• Storage leader

NetApp

• Cloud Storage & data management solutions
• Unified storage architecture (Joint with Cisco)

Cisco

• Unified Computing System

IBM

• IBM Global Business Services
• X-Force

SAP-IBM

• Partnership with IBM on project RESERVOIR(REsource and SERvices Virtualisation withOut barrIeRs)

Yahoo

• Yahoo! Research & CRL(Computational research laboratories)

HP-Intel-Yahoo!

• creating a global multidatacenter, opensource test bed for cloud computing research.
• partnership with Singapore's IDA, Universitiy of Illinois & Karlsruhe Inst of Technology(Germany)

Institution takes on Cloud.

I had the opportunity to catch a short seminar by Tan Chee Chiang, Assoc. Director, High Performance Computing, Computer Centre, NUS. Briefly here what I summarised from the interview:-

From institution point of view cloud computing:-

• Allow for high density servers requiring special power and cooling
• Short term peak during term end, and project peak period
• Agility to function like a rubber-band in providing services

Challenges:-

• Stable connectivity between consumer and the cloud service provider.
• Data security in the cloud.

Cloud Model Comparison

According to the layers from top to bottom, at top most we have Software as a Service, follow by Platform as a Service and bottom most Infrastructure as a Service.

First we discuss SaaS. SaaS is essentially providing software traditionally need to be purchase by licenses into a pay as you used model.

Software as a Service(SaaS)-  Cloud Applications

Complexity : Low
Flexibility : Minimal Control, determine by apps provider, minimal customization
Consumers: End Users
Type of services: Webmails, MessageLabs, Virus Scanners, online office suite-zoho, CloudFront etc
Pricing: Price based on per used basis.
Benefits: 

• Save Time & Cost, 
• Budget focus of competitive advantage instead of infrasturture,
• Utility model of pay as you used, without worrying of licenses or version upgrades
• Faster to start use, no need to install.
• Flexible & Scalable and 
• Multi-tenant efficiency.

Examples: GoogleApps, Salesforce.com, Cybershift, Zoho, TurboTax Online, Microsoft Online Services, MailTrust.



PaaS provide a platform for business to quickly churn out applications without worrying about setting up servers and development tool licenses. Sometime SaaS can also ride on top of PaaS

Platform as a Service(SaaS)- Cloud Platforms

Complexity : Middle

Flexibility : Medium Control

Consumers: Developers, Programmers,

Type of services: development system, debugging and testings, deployment

Pricing: Price based on per used basis.

Benefits:

• Multi-location development sites working together possible 
• Multi interaction development
• Cost reductions derived from using built-in infrastructure services
• Cost reductions derived from using highlevel programming abstractions
• Opensource and standardization possible
• Multi-tenant efficiency.

Examples: Amazon Web Services, GoogleAppEngine, Force.com, WindowsAzure, engineyard(based on rails on cloud), WolfFramework

(below is the comparison chart extracted courtesy of zdnet.com article comparing "Amazon's and Google's Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) Offerings")

IaaS abstract the computer infrastructure of a system. It can sometime be also refers as Everything as a Service model as it can also include PaaS and SaaS in it.

Infrastructure as a Service(SaaS)-  Cloud Infrastructure

Complexity :High 

Flexibility : Full Control

Consumers: Systems Administrators

Type of services: development system, debugging and testings, deployment

Pricing: Price by utilisation, size, performance.

Benefits: 

• Resources delivered as a service
  
• Dynamic scaling of infrastructure(Elasticity) 
• Lower CapEx as infrastructure is used as service
• Enterprise graded infastructure can be used by mid or small size company to benefit due to aggregated sharing
• Multi-tenant efficiency.

Examples: Amazon EC2, Nebula NASA, Flexiscale

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Annex A

comparison chart extracted courtesy of zdnet.com article comparing "Amazon's and Google's Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) Offerings"

 

Cloud Service Model

 Software as a Service (SaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to use the provider’s applications running on a cloud infrastructure. The applications are accessible from various client devices through a thin client interface such as a web browser (e.g., web-based email). The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure including network, servers, operating systems, storage, or even individual application capabilities, with the possible exception of limited user-specific application configuration settings.


Platform as a Service (PaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to deploy onto the cloud infrastructure consumer-created or acquired applications created using programming languages and tools supported by the provider. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure including network, servers, operating systems, or storage, but has control over the deployed applications and possibly application hosting environment configurations.



Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to provision processing, storage, networks, and other fundamental computing resources where the consumer is able to deploy and run arbitrary software, which can include operating systems and applications. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure but has control over operating systems, storage, deployed applications, and possibly limited control of select networking components (e.g., host firewalls).

[ This definition is provided from NIST(National Institute of Standards & Technology -US)]

What is Cloud Computing?

What is cloud computing? definitely it is not a hype..so what is it? I like to think that it is an Idea.

As a Cloud User:

• No worry of control of underlying IT infrastructure.
• Cloud systems is elastics can expand and shrink as required.

As Cloud Service Provider

• A new IT service delivery model based on consumption( more like power/water utiliities).
• Need to provision highly scalable and virtualised IT resources.

Definition quoted from NIST website

Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction