Cloud UT. Pay-as-you-go computing explained

Cloud Computing @ UT

Acknowledgement and

references

Outline

Players in the field

Cloud providers

- Listing some

- Comparing them

Find an alternative to

Amazon EC2 for

maximum portability

and choice

Our shopping list

 

Charge on a per-usage

  Ideally per-hour

 

Quickly and easily start-up instances

 

Under 5 minutes if possible

 

Offer base OS images that we have full control over

 

API to remotely control the environment

 

Ability to perform our image snapshots

 

Supported by 3rd party tools

gogrid.com - Payment Model

Based on number of Server RAM usage

o 

Pre-packaged bundles available

  eg 800 server ram-hour’s for $99.99 per month

o 

Per-usage model available

  $0.19 per server ram-hour

o 

1GB of RAM deployed for 1 Hour = 1 Server RAM-hour

Server instance: how much RAM you wish to use

o 

Disk space tied to the RAM

Cloud Storage

o 

10GB Free

o 

$0.15 per GB per MONTH

gogrid.com – Server Options

480 GB

8 GB

6 Xeon Core

240 GB

4 GB

3 Xeon Core

120 GB

2 GB

1 Xeon Core

60 GB

1 GB

1 Xeon Core

30 GB

0.5 GB

1 Xeon Core

Sample Cost on PayAsYouGo:

2GB machine will cost 2 x $0.19 per hour ~ $ 127 per

month

http://www.gogrid.com/how-it-works/technical-gogrid.com – Server Images

Wide range of base images to run

o 

Windows Server 2008 / 2003

 SQL Server 2005 (extra licensing levy)

o 

CentOS 4.4 / 4.5 / 5.1

o 

RedHat Enterprise 4 / 5.1

Preloaded with

o 

Apache / MySQL / PHP

gogrid.com ++

Hard disk data persists over reboots/shutdowns

A true VLAN

o 

Supporting multicasting

Full integrated Web based GUI

o 

HTTP API available for remote automation

Free inbound bandwidth

f5 load balancing part of the standard package

10 Public IP addresses

Flexible Private Cloud Storage

o 

Mountable as a shared drive

o 

Billed for only what you use, dynamic scaling

Instant sign-up

o 

$50 sign-up credit

gogrid.com --

No automatic server image snapshots

o 

Contact support to do it manually

Hard disk size tied to the RAM usage

o 

Flexible disk options coming soon (no date)

You pay for the server, even if its not turned on

No server-parameter passing on start up

Single data centre

From start to provision a server

elastichosts.com – Payment Model

Server

o 

CPU

 £0.012 per CORE per GHZ per HOUR (monthly)

 

or £0.04 per hour if burstable

o 

Memory

 £0.016 per GB per HOUR

o 

Disk

 £0.05 per GB per MONTH

Bandwidth

o 

£0.10 per GB each way (allocated)

o 

£0.20 per GB outside of allocation

elastichosts.com ++

Very flexible server configuration options

Full control over what OS you wish to run

Persistent disk storage over restarts

VNC runs at the BIOS level

Multicast network available

Private network available

Remote API for configuration

Fast start-up times

mosso.com – Pricing Model

Fixed sized servers

o 

Choose memory/disk

o 

Resizing can be done without recreating instance

Server

o 

Quad Core

Bandwidth

o 

OUT: $0.22 per GB

o 

IN: $ 0.08 per GB

mosso.com – server images

Linux Based

o 

CentOS 5.2

o 

Gentoo 2008

o 

Debian 5.0

o 

Fedora 10

o 

Arch 2007

o 

Ubuntu 8.04 / 8.10

No Windows support

mosso.com ++

Fast to start up a server from scratch

Very Clean/Functional Web UI

Clear billing model

Private network available

o 

Multicast supported

Image backups

mosso.com --

Disk space is tied to Memory Size

No Windows support

No API

o 

Coming soon though

Cloud Storage available separately

appnexus.com - Pricing

Pricing Upon Application

o 

High grade SLA / Security policy

o 

Per Usage Per Day model

For users that demand true ‘Enterprise’ control

appnexus.com ++

Full control over hardware/instances

o 

Running on a real server

Large data store (16TB)

o 

Mountable to one or more instances at once

Multiple Data centers

VLAN support

Hardware f5 Load balancing

Very fast startup and provisioning

Snap Shots instance

flexiscale.co.uk – Pricing model

A per-hour CPU model

o 

Factors for pricing includes

 RAM + No. CPU’s

Bandwidth

o 

£0.07 per GB In

o 

£0.10 - £0.08 per GB out

Storage

o 

Per server; only billed for what you use

flexiscale.co.uk - Relaunch

One of the first pioneers of the Cloud Computing

space in the UK

Had some high profile problems

“Rebooting” the service with a greater range of

products

joyent.com – Pricing Model

OpenSolaris based

Includes 10TB bandwidth

o 

$0.15 per GB

Hardware load balancer

o 

$100 per month per server

Shared NFS/NAS disk

o 

$0.15 per GB per MONTH

Setup fee’s

Cost for 1 month: Lowest Spec

Cost for 1 month: Highest Spec

How do I choose?

• 

Determine your real needs

o 

Do you need only a single instance?

o 

Bandwidth needs?

  High incoming data?

o 

Type of software you are running

  Amazon EC2 not good for some J2EE servers that require

multicasting

o 

Networking

  Do you need your instances to have public IPs?

• 

How easily can you move?

o 

Is your image portable?

o 

Any minimum lock-in periods

o 

3

rd

Party Tool Support

Can you trust them?

• 

Do your own research on the company

• 

What happens if something goes wrong

o 

Will THEY talk to you

o 

Can YOU talk to them?

Cloud Storage Calculator

Infrastructure

Storage

Platform

Applications

Services

Clients

Increasing

level of

complexity

and

vendor lock-in

The higher you go in the cloud taxonomy,

the higher the risk of lock-in

Vendor lock-in, or the

risk/benefit dance

Before you trust your business to the cloud, be sure you know how

to get out

- Do an X-ray of the vendor

- Multiple vendors (pros and cons)

- Pre negotiated contracts, with exit plans

Benefits vs risk

"There are APIs and platforms in the cloud world that create a walled

garden. You get the benefits of that garden, but you're also restricted.”

- Security customization increase the lock-in

- Only for short term? Smaller problem.

Standards – don’t hope for too much, or very soon

Compare to pre-Cloud

“If anything, [moving away from EC2] would be

easier than [exiting] an on-premise system”

"It's much harder to move from AIX to Sun than to

move from Amazon to FlexiScale”, better ask the

full picture question

“Is there lock-in in the choices

I'm considering?”

Summary

There are alternatives

to Amazon, and the list it growing

Many

pricing models are confusing and unclear,

and hard to compare

Many

pricing models will change

(and are already)

Important to get the

big picture

of what you need,

today and later on

Vendor locking is definitely a problem

to address.

Lecture 4

Room 404 and 403 (from 2 pm)

STARTUP

@ UT

SCHOOL