Internet Engineering Task Force V. Grado
Internet-Draft T. Tsou
Intended status: Informational Huawei Technologies
Expires: December 11, 2011 N. So
Verizon Inc.
June 9, 2011
Virtual Resource Operations & Management in the Data Center
draft-tsou-vrom-problem-statement-00
Abstract
The adoption of cloud computing brings a number of benefits but also
a number of challenges to the data center operations. Such
challenges include automation and management of data center resources
including servers, storage and networking elements. In particular,
this document describes the problem of operational and management
challenges that virtualization brings in the (carrier) cloud data
center as an enabler of new technologies such as self-provisioning
and elastic capacity and related benefits of consolidation, reduced
total cost of ownership, and energy management. This document does
not cover the problem of address resolution in massive data centers.
It does not cover technologies related to VDI either.
Status of this Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on December 11, 2011.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2011 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Grado, et al. Expires December 11, 2011 [Page 1]
Internet-Draft VRO&M June 2011
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. Operational Challenges for Virtualization . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4. VM Migration Operational Challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
5. VPC Operational Challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
6. Conclusion and Recommendation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
7. Manageability Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
8. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
9. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
10. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
11. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Grado, et al. Expires December 11, 2011 [Page 2]
Internet-Draft VRO&M June 2011
1. Introduction
Virtualization increasing adoption in the data center, involving
resources such as servers, storage and although still evolving, the
network as well, it has helped deliver some of the essential
characteristics of cloud computing [NIST800-145]. Those cloud
characteristics include: measured Service, rapid elasticity, on-
demand self service, resource pooling, and broad network access. The
resulting virtualized data center resources need to be
operationalized and managed with new tools and techniques that are
still in process of maturing.
In addition, vendors are providing equipment and services categorized
as the so-called unified computing stack [UCStack], the set of
converging technologies supported by products of server CPU, I/O,
storage connectivity, and network elements at the core of the
virtualized data center. Carrier and other service providers are
deliverying cloud services most commonly using the service model
known as IaaS, or Infrastructure-as-a-Service. The need to mix and
match products from different vendors can lead to interoperability
challenges that need to be addressed by standards from the start, or
risk vendor lock-in.
This document focuses on the problem statement of various data center
virtual resources operations and management areas. This document
does not cover the problem of address resolution in massive data
centers nor the problem of technologies known as VDI.
2. Terminology
CE: Customer Edge
DC: Data Center
DE: Data Center Edge
IaaS: Infrastructure-as-a-Service
PE: Provider Edge
VDC: Virtualized Data Center
VDI: Virtualized Desktop Infrastructure
VM: Virtual Machine
VOCS: VPN-Oriented Cloud Services
Grado, et al. Expires December 11, 2011 [Page 3]
Internet-Draft VRO&M June 2011
VPC: Virtual Private Cloud
SLA: Service Level Agreement
3. Operational Challenges for Virtualization
A number of challenges arise at the virtualized data center
supporting cloud services. Some of them are:
1. New devices and elements
* Monitor VM lifecycle, including VM migration ("lift & shift")
* Address management for VM lifecycle support
* Resource monitoring for faults and abnormal conditions
* Resource availability, peformance metrics and usage based
metering
* Hypervisor status and interface monitoring
2. Infrastructure management support
* Connectivity needs for virtualization management
* Policy management and enforcement in the Virtualized DC
* IPFIX for virtualization performance management
* Interoperability of multiple hypervisors
* Open programmatic interfaces to support access and management
of Datacenter contents and resources
3. Service management enablement
* Supporting secure low-latency VLAN and VPN connections in
large scale on on-demand (pay as you go) basis for capacity
management of dedicated pool of resources
* Service hosting, co-location, and distributed virtualized
redundancy for seamless scaling
* Facilities management including premises, security, privacy
and data integrity management for regulatory compliancy
Grado, et al. Expires December 11, 2011 [Page 4]
Internet-Draft VRO&M June 2011
* Management of virtual private clouds (VPC), VPN-based clouds
4. VM Migration Operational Challenges
VM migration, also called by other names such as VM Motion, "lift &
shift", etc., implies moving a VM to another location within a data
center, or even to a different data center, with the consequent
operational and management challenges.
Just to name a few of the challenges:
o Policy reconfiguration in the destination device
o Other dynamic information updating in destination
o Address management and reconfiguration when involving different
data centers
In addition, there are a few models for the interconnection of
clouds, such as cloud peering and brokering [GartnerCB], already
working their way into real implementations that will allow more
complex VM migration schemes but that also represent their own set of
operational and management challenges.
5. VPC Operational Challenges
From the cloud deployment models, the VPC or VOCS is a variant within
the IaaS model that brings together most of the operational
requirements into the unified computing stack, and in particular the
network side, directly. VPC embodies Cloud Services that are
delivered over a virtual private network (VPN) and therefore the VPN
protocols and implementations need to be enhanced to support cloud
"characteristics" including operational requirements. At a higher
level, a VPC needs to meet SLA and enfore policies, meet demands from
the management of order requests, self-provisioning, usage-based
metering, and management, either through programmatic interfaces or
by other means.
There are two cases, 1) the pure play cloud provider, that needs to
use another carrier to interconnect the different data centers, and
2) the carrier offering over their own network. In both of those
cases, the VPN protocols need operations to support end-to-end SLA
monitoring or even just internal service level objectives in addition
to customer SLA, all which requires corresponding metrics, based on
usage per resource and per customer.
Grado, et al. Expires December 11, 2011 [Page 5]
Internet-Draft VRO&M June 2011
In the second case, there are additional improvements that can be
made as in the case of the deployment of a Data Center Edge device
(DE), a box in between the data center and the network edge that will
simplify provisioning and operations by eliminating the need of a
CE-PE pair.
6. Conclusion and Recommendation
With the new networking, server and storage technologies converging
in to the data center in the form of a unified computing stack at
whose core is virtualization stack, many new operational and
management challenges arise.
Therefore, we recommend that the IETF engage in the study of the
problem of virtualized resources operations and management in the
data center and, if appropriate, the development of interoperable
solutions.
7. Manageability Considerations
This document does not add additional manageability considerations.
8. Security Considerations
To come.
9. IANA Considerations
This memo currently includes no request to IANA.
10. Acknowledgements
Awaiting comments.
11. Informative References
[GartnerCB]
"Three Types of Cloud Brokerages Will Enhance Cloud
Services", May 2009.
[NIST800-145]
"The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing (Draft)",
Grado, et al. Expires December 11, 2011 [Page 6]
Internet-Draft VRO&M June 2011
Jan 2011.
[UCStack] "The Unified Computing Stack Wars", May 2011.
Authors' Addresses
Victor M. Grado
Huawei Technologies
2330 Central Expwy
Santa Clara, CA 95050
US
Phone:
Email: vgrado@huawei.com
Tina Tsou
Huawei Technologies
2330 Central Expwy
Santa Clara, CA 95050
US
Phone:
Email: tena@huawei.com
Ning So
Verizon Inc.
2400 N. Glenville Ave
Richardson, TX 75080
US
Phone:
Email: ning.so@verizonbusiness.com
Grado, et al. Expires December 11, 2011 [Page 7]