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Ready Today Examples Of The VMware vCloud API

Published September 1, 2009 | By Rich Brambley

Several of the VMware announcements this week from VMworld are centered on the vCloud API service. This API is designed for VMware partners to leverage for the development of applications that can move back and forth between private and hosted clouds with the same security, management, and availability expected of applications hosted on traditional “behind the firewall” servers. Don’t misunderstand this topic as forward looking concepts, however. This morning Paul Maritz hosted press, analysts and bloggers to a private session that revealed vCloud API solutions that are available immediately.

VMware actually announced the concept of federating private workloads to partner’s running vSphere virtual infrastructure last year at VMworld 2008, but as Maritz explained in this morning’s meeting, there are now over 1,000 hosting providers that have enlisted with VMware to enable public clouds.

Here’s some details from the press kit I was handed:

Expansion of VMware Service Provider Ecosystem
VMware and its more than 1,000 VMware Virtualized™ service provider partners including AT&T, SAVVIS, Terremark and Verizon Business are giving customers improved flexibility and agility to respond to business needs while saving both capital and operational costs

  • 10x growth in one year
  • Regional breakouts:
  • Americas = 487
  • EMEA = 496
  • APAC = 136
  • TOTAL = 1119

Also taken from the press kit, here is a high level explanation of the API

  • The VMware vCloud API is an open, REST-based, pure virtual API supporting multi-tenancy.
  • Standards-based and platform independent, making it compatible with a diverse range of applications.
  • Provides an interface for consuming and managing virtual resources from the cloud, enabling the deployment and management of virtualized applications in both internal and external clouds, as well as enabling interoperability between clouds.

In fact, for those that need to know on the details of the vCloud API there is a  new community site.

As an attendee of this morning’s session, I got to see several partners demo their vCloud API, vSphere infrastructure based solutions that are available today. Most interesting to me was a private workload federation demo by AT&T that used VMotion to move a VM between two datacenters simulated to be 125 miles apart (private cloud to private cloud), as well as Savvis Project Spirit which showed point and click virtual server provisioning, cloning, and then firewall and load balancing configuration from the web interface. Terremark’s vCloud Express was equally interesting, but I’ll have more on that offering in a separate post.

The rest of this post is my raw notes taken while watching the partners demonstrations.


Cloud services based on vSphere – “This is here and now stuff”

AT&T Services

Network, security, performance, and reliability services all baked in to cloud offering

AT&T Synaptic Hosting available today as a fully managed solution http://www.business.att.com/enterprise/Family/application-hosting-enterprise/synaptic-hosting-enterprise/

Synaptic storage as a service. https://www.synaptic.att.com/

Coined term “workload distribution network”

Workload Federation Demo

Demo moving workloads between datacenters with network simulated to be 125 miles apart

One vCenter managing both datacenters.

Database server running in one DC will be live migrated to the other DC

Dip shown in the database service, but users not disconnected

Worked with Cisco to provide this

Savvis Project Spirit

http://www.telecomramblings.com/2009/09/savvis-unveils-project-spirit/

Drag and drop server provisioning service based on the grade of service you choose

Configure firewalls, load balancing and storage too

Given a cost of the datacenter (per hour) and then choose to deploy

Verizon

Expands cloud computing capabilities in Europe

New business model is the extended enterprise which drives cloud computing

Storage of data should not be separated from security concerns

Caas – computing as a service – on-demand computing infrastructure deployed in the quantities and durations dictated by your business

vCloud Express – Terremark http://vcloudexpress.terremark.com/

Uses vCloud API

Utility pricing

Anyone with a credit card can use vCloud Express for as much time as needed

Reconfigure servers from interface – change number of processors and amount of RAM

Copy servers. Give unique ip and name, auto start up, add to load balancer pool

Short term workloads – load testing for customers

SpringSource demo -vCloud and Platform as a service

-VMware provides the best way to deploy Spring, Tomcat, Apache, Groovy/Grails in the Cloud

Springsource CloudFoundry http://www.cloudfoundry.com/

Cloud services based on vSphere – This is here and now stuff

AT&T Services

Network, security, performance, and reliability services all baked in to cloud offering

AT&T Synaptic Hosting available today as a fully managed solution http://www.business.att.com/enterprise/Family/application-hosting-enterprise/synaptic-hosting-enterprise/

Synaptic storage as a service. https://www.synaptic.att.com/

Coined term “workload distribution network”

Workload Federation Demo

Demo moving workloads between datacenters with network simulated to be 125 miles apart

One vCenter managing both datacenters.

Database server running in one DC will be live migrated to the other DC

Dip shown in the database service, but users not disconnected

Worked with Cisco to provide this

Savvis Project Spirit

http://www.telecomramblings.com/2009/09/savvis-unveils-project-spirit/

Drag and drop server provisioning service based on the grade of service you choose

Configure firewalls, load balancing and storage too

Given a cost of the datacenter (per hour) and then choose to deploy

Verizon

Expands cloud computing capabilities in Europe

New business model is the extended enterprise which drives cloud computing

Storage of data should not be separated from security concerns

Caas – computing as a service – on-demand computing infrastructure deployed in the quantities and durations dictated by your business

vCloud Express – Terremark

Uses vCloud API

Utility pricing

Anyone with a credit card can use vCloud Express for as much time as needed

Reconfigure servers from interface – change number of processors and amount of RAM

Copy servers. Give unique ip and name, auto start up, add to load balancer pool

Short term workloads – load testing for customers

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  • karmanole

    Any word on software to move VM's between on premise private-clouds to these public clouds?

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  • http://vmetc.com rbrambley

    karmanole,

    There has been a lot of talk about using OVF and vApps as the universal denominator between the private and public cloud. I think the main intent is to be able to easily upload VMs workloads to the cloud with the same tools you use today to migrate VMs to and from vSphere data centers.

    It will get really interesting when somebody figures out how to get a live workload from the private enterprise to the cloud without disconnecting users!

  • Paul

    @karmanole

    I would like to know this as well. I've been browsing around and there are comments that there eventually will (future tense) be this capability. However, it's hard to tell what can be done today. e.g. can I do things like point my premise vCenter to the private cloud to manage my guests running in that cloud? And do my host public could resources appear in my private vCenter so that I can move guests between private and public clouds.

    I'm guessing some of this is future. Would be good to know how much of this is now, and if future, when we can expect some of these features?

  • Dracolith

    vMotion from cloud to cloud would probably be a killer app, if one of the hypervisors could do it effectively.

    But maintaining network connectivity from the outside world is extremely difficult. Need an ISP or “redirection provider” that can dynamically proxy or redirect your inbound network traffic, each /32 from the internet to one cloud or the other, depending on where that particular virtual server actual lives.

    So the HTTP request can get there.. more likely than not you instead want to add a server at the new provider, update DNS, drop the old server, for example.

    The global internet won't let you just move IPs around and expect to get all your inbound traffic moved, assuming you can assign IP space to a cloud provider, well, the longest prefix you can do that with is normally /24.
    Moving a /24 doesn't help to move just one VM without downtime though.

    Or… you have your own cloud and do the same type of redirection.
    Kind of defeats the point if the migration reason is DR.

    You need apps that rely on DNS for public access, quickly update the DNS.
    And replace the old VM with a temporary “shell” that establishes a tunnel with the destination cloud, and forwards errant traffic for a brief time.

    Modern browsers with DNS pinning are working against you.

  • Paul

    @karmanole

    I would like to know this as well. I've been browsing around and there are comments that there eventually will (future tense) be this capability. However, it's hard to tell what can be done today. e.g. can I do things like point my premise vCenter to the private cloud to manage my guests running in that cloud? And do my host public could resources appear in my private vCenter so that I can move guests between private and public clouds.

    I'm guessing some of this is future. Would be good to know how much of this is now, and if future, when we can expect some of these features?

  • Dracolith

    vMotion from cloud to cloud might be a killer app, if one of the hypervisors could do it effectively.

    But maintaining network connectivity from the outside world is extremely difficult. Need an ISP or “redirection provider” that can dynamically proxy or redirect your inbound network traffic, each /32 from the internet to one cloud or the other, depending on where that particular virtual server actual lives.

    So the HTTP request can get there.. more likely than not you instead want to add a server at the new provider, update DNS, drop the old server, for example.

    The global internet won’t let you just move IPs around and expect to get all your inbound traffic moved, assuming you can assign IP space to a cloud provider, well, the longest prefix you can do that with is normally /24.
    Moving a /24 doesn’t help to move just one VM without downtime though.

    Or… you have your own cloud and do the same type of redirection.
    Kind of defeats the point if the migration reason is DR.

    You need apps that rely on DNS for public access, quickly update the DNS.
    And replace the old VM with a temporary “shell” that establishes a tunnel with the destination cloud, and forwards errant traffic for a brief time.

    Modern browsers with DNS pinning are working against you.

  • Dracolith

    vMotion from cloud to cloud would probably be a killer app, if one of the hypervisors could do it effectively.

    But maintaining network connectivity from the outside world is extremely difficult. Need an ISP or “redirection provider” that can dynamically proxy or redirect your inbound network traffic, each /32 from the internet to one cloud or the other, depending on where that particular virtual server actual lives.

    So the HTTP request can get there.. more likely than not you instead want to add a server at the new provider, update DNS, drop the old server, for example.

    The global internet won't let you just move IPs around and expect to get all your inbound traffic moved, assuming you can assign IP space to a cloud provider, well, the longest prefix you can do that with is normally /24.
    Moving a /24 doesn't help to move just one VM without downtime though.

    Or… you have your own cloud and do the same type of redirection.
    Kind of defeats the point if the migration reason is DR.

    You need apps that rely on DNS for public access, quickly update the DNS.
    And replace the old VM with a temporary “shell” that establishes a tunnel with the destination cloud, and forwards errant traffic for a brief time.

    Modern browsers with DNS pinning are working against you.

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