wdiff draft-tsou-vrom-problem-statement-01.txt draft-tsou-vrom-problem-statement-02.txt

Internet Engineering Task Force V. Grado
Internet-Draft T. Tsou
Intended status: Informational Huawei Technologies (USA)
Expires: December 14, 15, 2011 N. So
Verizon Communications Inc.
June 12, 13, 2011

Virtual Resource Operations and & Management in the Data Center
draft-tsou-vrom-problem-statement-01
draft-tsou-vrom-problem-statement-02

Abstract

The

TThe dynamic allocation of computing resources on a massive scale
through the use of virtual machines running over a "hypervisor" layer to serve a large number of
customers and applications simultaneously brings a number of benefits
but also a number of challenges to data center operations. Such
challenges range from acquiring the information needed to provision
the physical servers, storage and networking elements, through
accounting for resource and application usage at the user level. The Distributed Management Task Force
(DMTF) has begun the work of developing the standards needed to
support In
particular, this work, but many tasks remain. This document provides a
brief survey of describes the problem space, but focusses on the requirements
for operation of operational and
management of network resources within challenges that virtualization brings in the (carrier)
data center complex as an enabler of new technologies such as self-
provisioning and between that complex elastic capacity and related benefits of
consolidation, reduced total cost of ownership, and energy
management. This document does not cover the users. problem of address
resolution in massive data centers. It does not cover technologies
related to VDI either.

Status of this Memo

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This Internet-Draft will expire on December 14, 15, 2011.

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1. Requirements Language
2. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.
3. Operational Challenges for Virtualization . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.1. A More Detailed Look At the Hypervisor
3.1. Unique Requirements from Virtualization . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.2.
3.2. Operations and Management in a Virtualized Data Center DC . . 4
3. Real and Virtual Network Management in the Virtualized
Data Center . . . . . . 5
4. VM Performance and Configuration Management Challenges . . . . 6
4.1. Performance Management Challenges in Virtualization . . . . 6
4.2. VM Configuration and Inventory Operational Challenges . . . 6
5. Operational Challenges in Services with Virtual Resources . . . 6
5.1. VM Migration Operational Challenges . . . . . . 6
4. Conclusions . . . . . . 7
5.2. VPC Operational and Management Challenges . . . . . . . . . 7
6. Conclusion and Recommendation . . . . . . . . . . . 6
5. Acknowledgements . . . . . . 8
7. Manageability Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
6. IANA 8
8. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
9. IANA Considerations . . 6
7. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
8. Informative References 8
10. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 . . . 8
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 8

1. Introduction

There is currently a strong movement toward virtualization of data
center resources, with the aim of improving physical resource
utilization, reducing energy consumption as a result, and improving
responsiveness to demands for data center resources. Along with this
is a parallel movement toward outsourcing data center operations,
with the result that multiple enterprises may share the same physical
resources for their own computing and storage requirements. Both in-
house and outsourced data center virtualization raise obvious
concerns over data security and regulatory compliance, but this is
just one aspect of the operational and management challenges raised
by large-scale resource virtualization.

The

IThe basic unit of resource virtualization in this architecture is
the virtual machine (VM), running over a "hypervisor" layer and
sharing a physical server with other virtual machines and a
management entity. The virtual machine has its own guest operating
system, set of one or more applications, and allocations of
processing, storage, and networking resources. The Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF)
has provided a standard interface for management of the virtual
machine life cycle, the Open Virtualization Format [OVF].

Within the data center complex, virtual machines may migrate from one
set of physical resources need to another. The data center complex may
itself be distributed geographically, mix and resources for a single
virtual machine may
match products from different vendors can lead to interoperability
challenges that need to be spread over multiple locations. addressed by standards from the start, or
risk vendor lock-in.

This raises document focuses on the importance problem statement of ensuring adequate and well-running network
resources within the various data center complex.

The next section is a slightly more detailed description of the
interaction between the hypervisor and the
virtual machines it
supports, followed by a general enumeration of the complete range of resources operations and management issues associated with massive
virtualization within the data center complex. The following section
looks in more detail at areas. This document
does not cover the problem of operating and managing the
virtual and physical networking resources within the complex, with
the aim of laying the groundwork for identifying gaps address resolution in massive data
centers nor the existing
set problem of standards in this area. The concluding section actually
identifies those gaps.

1.1. Requirements Language

This document contains no normative language. technologies known as VDI.

2. Terminology

CE: Customer Edge

DC: Data Center

DE: Data Center Edge

PE: Provider Edge

VDC: Virtualized Data Center

VDI: Virtualized Desktop Infrastructure

VPC: Virtual Private Clouds (or VPN based Clouds)

VM: Virtual Machine (or host)
SLA: Service Level Agreement

3. Operational Challenges for Virtualization

2.1. A More Detailed Look At the Hypervisor

With

3.1. Unique Requirements from Virtualization

There are operational challenges and requirements ensuing from
virtualized resources that are unique and not present in conventional
implementations.

In virtualized resources, a virtual machine (VM) embodies virtual
hardware that is emulated by a hypervisor (or a similar mechanism
with respect to in
virtual networking resources. The hypervisor resources), that mediates all interactions with
the underlying physical hardware. That mechanism is transparent to
the guest operating system, which
runs running completely independently independent of other VMs sharing
guests VM in the same physical resources.

The hypervisor then performs the mapping between the virtual
resources of the VM (usually an application and a guest operating
system) and the physical hardware of a server, storage, or network.
The hypervisor is the component responsible for managing physical
resources to allocate them fairly to the multiple VMs running on a
host.

The main physical resource pools that the hypervisor needs to manage
to carry
for carrying out its job are as follows:

o CPU: A An configurable amount of CPU assigned to a VM, during
creation, regardless of the real amount of physical CPU. The
hypervisor uses a A CPU
scheduler is used by the hypervisor to process the CPU requests
from the VMs.

o Disk: A single large file allocated on one the host's datastores
as a virtual disk for each VM. Disk I/O requests are also queued
for each VM.

o Memory: A fixed amount of memory that gets mapped into virtual
memory pages and in turn to physical memory pages. The hypervisor
must ensure there is no overallocation of virtual memory that the
physical memory cannot handle.

o Network: The virtual machine It includes a virtual network to provide the same
functionality as a physical network, including IP address, virtual
NIC, switches and firewalls. Some Because the network traffic passes is only
handled between VMs on the same host, and will not be
visible VMs, many times there is no visibility to external
physical tools.

2.2.

3.2. Operations and Management in a Virtualized Data Center

[PTT] We can add material to expand this, but bear in mind that it is
just an introductory section and need not get too detailed. DC

From the brief description given above, one can infer a number of operational challenges that arise in a
virtualized environment to that cover different levels leves of service in a data center.
DC. Some of challenges are:

1. Impact of new New devices and elements: elements

* monitoring of the Monitor VM life cycle, lifecycle, including VM migration ("lift
and shift"); & shift")

* address Address management for VM life cycle support; lifecycle support

* resource Resource monitoring for faults and abnormal conditions; conditions

* metering of resource Resource availability, performance peformance metrics and
usage; usage based
metering

* monitoring of the Hypervisor status of the hypervisor and the interface
to it. monitoring

2. Infrastructure management support: support

* connectivity Connectivity needs for virtualization management; management

* policy Policy management and enforcement; enforcement in the Virtualized DC

* IPFIX for virtualization performance management; management

* interoperability Interoperability of multiple hypervisors; hypervisors

* open Open programmatic interfaces to support access and management
of data center Datacenter contents and resources

3. Enabling service management: Service management enablement

* supporting Supporting secure low-latency VLAN and VPN connections in
large scale on an on-demand (pay as you go) basis for capacity
management of dedicated pools pool of resources

* scalable service Service hosting, collocation, co-location, and distributed virtualized
redundancy for seamless scaling

* facilities Facilities management including premises, security, privacy, privacy
and data integrity management for regulatory compliance; compliancy

* management Management of virtual private data centers, VPN-based data
centers.

3. Real clouds

4. VM Performance and Virtual Network Configuration Management Challenges

4.1. Performance Management Challenges in Virtualization

From the Virtualized Data Center

[PTT] Time discussion in the previous sections, it is pressing, so I'll propose text clear that
performance management for this later, unless
someone else virtualized resources is a very critical
area. This can do it. Basically we have to monitor at three
levels: virtual include capacity management, as well as availability
management, since they provide a status of the health of the network connections (rely on
resources and services, including the hypervisor for
that), physical connections within health of the (possibly distributed) data
center, VMs and
hypervisors.

While a hypervisor is in charge of load balancing and keeping tab of
resource utilization, additional mechanisms need to be in place to
obtain the customer connections best performance. There is a need to obtain key metrics
from the VMs that can be used to support a more robust management of
resources and services.

A protocol such as IPFIX that can tap into VMs to obtain flow metrics
needs to be devised (or existing ones enhanced). The source of the data center.

4. Conclusions

[PTT] Juergen?? You'd know what tools exist now
metrics for virtualized resources are diferent from the job sources in
physical resources, as described above.

Metrics such as uptime that are provided by mechanisms within IPPM
and what
needs development.

5. Acknowledgements

Tom Taylor added text PMOL recommendations need to be obtained for virtualized hosts as
well.

4.2. VM Configuration and Inventory Operational Challenges

Another critical challenge arising from the creation of virtual hosts
is 'sprawl' that can happen over time when there is lack of control
and monitoring in the lifecycle of a large quantity of VMs. Besides
service and performance problems that might arise, configuration
management issues will ensue from VM that are consuming resources in
the background, if unmonitored, some may become an author unless it out of sync with
policy and compliance, with fine-tuning applications, with bandwith
management, etc.

There is necessary a need to leave room carry out configuration management for others.

6. IANA Considerations

This memo includes no request to IANA.

7. Security Considerations

Security virtual
resources and hosts that include discovery, inventory and backup, for
the both the virtual and physical resources. There is a very important consideration, both need for private a
protocol like NETCONF that also covers virtual hosts.

5. Operational Challenges in Services with Virtual Resources
5.1. 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 complex models for the interconnection
of service providers supporting virtualized resources 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.

5.2. VPC Operational and
multi-user Management Challenges

From the virtualized resources deployment models, this model brings
together most of the operational requirements into the unified
computing stack, and in particular the network side, directly. VPC
embodies services that are delivered over a virtual private network
(VPN) and therefore the VPN protocols and implementations need to be
enhanced to support the "characteristics" mentioned above in addition
to their own 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 virtualization-enabled
provider, that needs to use another carrier to interconnect the
different data centers. However, detailed discussion centers, and 2) the carrier offering over their own
network. In both of those cases, the VPN protocols need operational
enhancements 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.

In the second case, there are additional improvements that can be
made as in the case of the deployment of a DC Edge device (DE), a box
in between the DC and the network edge that topic 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 DC in the form of unified computing solutions at whose core
is out a virtualization stack, many new operational and management
challenges arise.

Therefore, we recommend that the IETF engage in the study of the scope
problem of this document. virtualized resources operations and management 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 raises currently includes no
security issues in itself.

8. Informative References

[OVF] Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF), "Open Virtualization
Format (OVF)", January 2010, <http://dmtf.org/standards/ovf>. request to IANA.

10. Acknowledgements

Awaiting comments.

Authors' Addresses

Victor M. Grado
Huawei Technologies (USA)
2330 Central Expwy, Expwy
Santa Clara,, Clara, CA 95050
USA
US

Phone:
Email: vgrado@huawei.com
Tina Tsou
Huawei Technologies (USA)
2330 Central Expwy, Expwy
Santa Clara,, Clara, CA 95050
USA
US

Phone:
Email: tena@huawei.com

Ning So
Verizon Communications Inc.
2400 N. Glenville Ave,
Richardson,, Ave
Richardson, TX 75080
USA
US

Phone:
Email: ning.so@verizonbusiness.com