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]