CloudShell Lab as a Service

Transcription

1 Lab as a Service Technical Solution Guide By Hans Ashlock, Technical Marketing Manager

2 Contents 1. Transform your Lab into a Self Service Cloud 3 2. What is a Self Service Cloud? 3 3. Deploying 4 Components Managing Network/Security Zones 5 5. Sizing Your Deployment 5 6. Import Your Inventory 5 7. Customize your Data Model 6 8. Configure Physical Connections 7 9. Create Your Automation Library Create Your Self-Service Catalog 8 a. Create Environment 8 b. Add Resources and services 9 c. Create Orchestration Flows Monitoring, Reporting and Bi Your Lab, your Cloud 11

3 1 Transform your Lab into a Self Service Cloud Whether you manage a test lab, support lab, demo/poc center, security cyber range, dev/r&d lab, or any other lab, you re managing a complex and sophisticated data center that constitutes a substantial ongoing investment and opportunity for significant savings. However, lab environments are often under-utilized and largely manually driven. Equipment is scheduled using ticketing or spreadsheets; conflicts between users vying for the same equipment are difficult to resolve and often see critical devices reserved for weeks or months; complex end to end configurations are often inadvertently overwritten by others. Furthermore, many organizations are seeking to consolidate multiple lab sites into central, shared data centers that can be used by many remote user groups. Transforming your lab into a self-service cloud not only delivers impressive CAPEX and OPEX savings, but leveraging the full breadth of an open automation system like leads to additional business benefits such as faster time to market, agility in responding to market and customer changes, as well as increased competitiveness. This guide provides a technical overview of how to use to transform your lab infrastructure into a self-service Cloud Sandbox. 2 What is a Self Service Cloud? Transforming your lab into a self-service cloud means that your end customers whether internal or external are given the ability to model and provision complex infrastructure environments that consist of any combination of physical, virtual, and logical components. In a self-service cloud, end users can browse from a catalog of environments that are available to them. Selecting and activating an environment in a self-service cloud will reserve and orchestrate all the infrastructure in the environment, which can include making connections, creating networks, launching virtual machines, configuring equipment, or running other complex automation tasks. Managing and resolving shared and exclusive access to resources by multiple users is handled automatically. When activated, an end user can be sure the environment is in a known state and reserved for their use, allowing the user to focus on what they need to get done rather than setting up their environment. When done, the environment and associated resources will be returned to the shared pool of resources that make up the lab as a service cloud. State of the art orchestration software for enabling lab-as-a-service should deliver a broad range of capabilities that enable sustainability of the LaaS initiative including: Centralized, live infrastructure and resource inventory that is built on an open, XML based data model Inventory-aware environment topology design SEERVLICFE Web-based, catalog-driven environment reservation S Automated setup and teardown provisioning of connectivity and resource states Non-programmer friendly, object based automation workflow creation Open interface for extending integrations Fully interactive sandboxing and live environment customization is the self-service automation platform built on these capabilities for transforming heterogeneous, multi-generational infrastructures and networks into self-service clouds. allows IT infrastructure, lab, and network teams deliver fully automated, custom, self-service infrastructure to internal and external users - transforming complex, even legacy infrastructure, into a solution specific Cloud Sandbox that enables consolidation, increased device utilization, multi-tenancy, and overall CAPEX and OPEX savings. 3

4 3 Deploying Before you build your Lab-as-a-Service solution, you ll need to deploy. is enterprise class, distributed software, consisting of multiple components that can be deployed in various configurations. Here is an overview of the components. Components Quali Server The Quali Server is the main server component that manages all the core capabilities. Typically only one Quali Server component is required, unless a High-Availability configuration is used (see below). The Quali Server runs on Windows and can be deployed as a preconfigured for Ware or K. Execution Servers One or more Execution Servers are used to run automation and provision physical and virtual infrastructure. allows scalable, distributed execution of automation on both Windows and Linux platforms. Execution Servers can scale out as needed. Quali Portal Server The Quali Portal Server is the web server for the self-service portal. The Portal Server runs on IIS. Quali Database Server This is the main database component for, and runs on Microsoft SQL (or use an existing SQL instance which is installed automatically during the install process). Business Intelligence Components also provides BI/Dashboarding software called InSight which requires a web server and data server to store and manage the analytics data. Admin and Authoring Clients These are the back end clients used for administration of and for authoring custom orchestration flow and automation drivers. Your Infrastructure Servers License Server Database Server(s) Protected / Cloud InSight Server Execution Servers Portal Quali Server Distributed Scalable Cross-Platform Clients Self Service Portal On-Premises Web Browser / Mobile / Tablet Authoring Admin Studio (Test Automation) NOTE - can be installed in a high availability configuration using active-standby clustering based on either Ware vsphere or Microsoft solutions. 4

5 4 Managing Network/ Security Zones is an agentless architecture, which means that s Execution Servers will provision your lab infrastructure via standard interfaces like SSH, SNMP, CLI, and REST APIs. This means you need to deploy an Execution Server in each zone of your lab or labs, and open the appropriate ports so that those Execution Servers can communicate with the Quali Server. 5 Sizing Your Deployment You ll also want to plan the size of your deployment. Typical deployments of range from pilot, small, medium, and enterprise. Pilot Deployment In a pilot deployment, where is being used in a limited fashion (e.g. evaluation, training, or pilots)., In this scenario, it is common to install all components on a single machine. Small Production Deployment A Small Production Deployment will typically target a couple of teams with a maximum of five to ten users accessing and provisioning resources simultaneously. In this deployment model all Quali components are installed on a single machine (or ) except for the InSight Analytics component and client components. InSight should be installed on a separate machine. Medium Production Deployment A Medium Production Deployment will typically target more than five teams, and will include typically have more than ten users accessing and provisioning resources simultaneously. In this deployment model one machine or will include the Quali Server, Web Server, and Database. Another machine or will have the InSight Analytics component. And lastly, the Execution Server will be on a separate machine. Additional Execution Server machines can be added as needed to scale out with demand. Enterprise Deployment The Large Production Deployment is typically used to handle organization wide scale out capabilities and maximum demand. In this configuration all the components will be installed on separate machines. Multiple Execution Servers can be used and added as needed to scale to meet capacity needs. The Large Production Deployment can also support High Availability options (see below). In addition, a SSD based drive is recommended for the Quali Server and Database storage volumes. The Deployment and Sizing Guide provides detailed guidelines to help you size and scope your deployment, and give you step by step instructions on how to deploy each component. Follow the Installation Guide to install in your lab environment. 6 Import Your Inventory As part of transforming your lab into a self-service cloud, will track and manage of all your lab inventory, which includes everything from physical equipment like network, storage, and servers, to virtual components like s, Virtual Network Functions (VNFs), and virtual appliances, as well as logical components like security groups, address pools, VLANs, policies, and quotas. can import your lab infrastructure through auto discovery. With the click of a button can detect and import all your network gear, servers, and virtualization components. 5

6 If custom device and structure information needs to be discovered (like specific chassis, blade, and port data), s Authoring Tool provides a template to allow you to easily extend the autoload process, which will then allow to discover custom and extended device information. can also import inventory data directly from your BOM, DCIM, Asset Management system, or even from a Spreadsheet. Auto Load 7 Customize Your Data Model When imports your inventory it will assign your resources unique names and assign them to the data model structure. The data model is organized by default to reflect general lab infrastructure like switches, routers, servers, storage, etc. with default attributes and structure. Family Model Cisco Model HP Juniper Attribute B Model Attribute C Attribute B The data model can be customized according to your needs. You might define custom attributes for tracking, reporting, and automated provisioning of infrastructure. This can be done for individual types of resources or families of resources. Attribute C For example you might want to define a Firmware Version attribute for managing firmware upgrades on equipment, or a Location attribute for tracking the physical location of equipment in a InSight dashboard. The data model takes a modular approach using the concept of composition to create complex, compound representations of your infrastructure. For example a switch might be composed of a parent resource with multiple ports as sub-resources. This allows you to easily customize and extend the way your infrastructure is modeled. One of the important aspects of creating a cloud out of your lab infrastructure is managing access to resources. s modular approach to modelling allows you to customize how resources are shared and locked at a granular level so that multiple users can simultaneously access the common pool of resources down to the port level without risk of users overwriting each other s configurations. Port Role Cisco Role Juniper Role Bandwidth EthernetPort FiberPort 6 Bandwidth Juniper A CE Eth1 10G Eth2 40G Fib1 40G 10KHz Freq

7 8 Configure Physical Connections Automating your physical or Layer 1 connections is important to automating your lab. provides a dedicated physical connectivity framework that allows you to define you physical connection fabric. You can also import this connectivity information from a spreadsheet directly into. Once your physical connections are defined, will then be able to automatically connect devices in your lab. Typically customers use Layer 1 switches for making connections, and supports all major L1 switch vendors. However, s physical connectivity framework is extensible, allowing other technologies or devices to be integrated, like using OpenFlow es to simulate Layer 1 point-to-point connections. also supports provisioning L2 es, SDN Controllers, and other networking components for creating higher level network connectivity like VLANs, routes, etc. This is typically done using Services (see below) rather than the physical connectivity framework. If custom device and structure information needs to be discovered (like specific chassis, blade, and port data), s Authoring Tool provides a template to allow you to easily extend the autoload process, which will then allow to discover custom and extended device information. can also import inventory data directly from your BOM, DCIM, Asset Management system, or even from a Spreadsheet. 9 Create Your Automation Library In order to create a lab as a service cloud, needs to provision your lab equipment. To do this, provides an extensive set of libraries that enable integrating with common technologies and vendors including: Networking: Cisco IOS, JunOS, Palo Alto Networks, HP, and others Storage: EMC VNX, Pure Storage, Hitatchi, and others Compute: HP, Cisco UCS, Dell, and others Virtual/Cloud: vsphere, K, OpenStack, AWS; includes ESXi bare metal support Management: Cisco APIC, Cisco UCS Director, and others Test: Ixia IxLoad, IxNetwork, Ix, Breaking Point; Spirent Avalanche; Terra, and others In most cases, the existing integrations that provides will be enough for you start building your cloud environments out of the box. In some cases, you ll want to create custom integrations to equipment and services to provide extended provisioning capabilities. For example you might have legacy devices or custom in house tools that need to be configured as part of activating certain environment. 7

8 The Authoring tool makes it extremely easy to create custom integrations to any kind of device, tool, or service so that they can be used within your self-service cloud. The Authoring tool is visual based, and provides wizard like tools for creating integrations via CLI, SNMP, SSH, XML or REST APIs, as well as any language including Python, JavaScript,.NET, and TCL. even supports other orchestration and configuration tools like Docker and Puppet. s Authoring tool enforces a modular, object based approach to creating integrations and automation. With Authoring, not only can you create integrations with infrastructure, but entire automation flows for performing tasks like enforcing policies with a business process platform, interacting with an external e-commerce or chargeback engine, or running test/certification suites. The automation and provisioning libraries that you create in Authoring can be made available to other users as a shared library of automation objects. Note also supports creating integration libraries and orchestration flows directly in Python. provides a Python API to make it easy for Python developers to use without leaving their native development environment. You can find out more from our API Guide. 10 Create Your Self-Service Catalog Create Environment Now you have all the components in place to start building your self-service catalog. Your goal will be to create a self-service catalog with environments that serve all your end users needs. You ll want to start with the simplest scenarios and progress to more complex scenarios, based on the use cases you ve identified. Each environment can be customized with an icon, description, and user instructions (including video and web content). Each environment can also be assigned to one or more categories, which can also be assigned visibility on a per-domain basis. This allows you to customize which categories and environments are visible to different users based on their domain membership. Each environment can also be further customized to present the user with a set of configuration options when the user chooses to activate an environment. Environment inputs provide a powerful way of configuring both the selection of resources that will compose the environment as well as the automation that s used to provision the environment. 8

9 Add Resources and Services Once you ve created an environment you ll need to model it, which means adding to the environment all the components that represent the infrastructure you want the environment to provision. Clicking on an environment will open the modelling screen where you can drag and drop resources, abstract resources, and services onto the canvas. allows searching across millions of resources in less than a second. You can easily search for any resource by name, type, keyword, IP address or any other attribute. Abstract Resources Abstract Resources are resource templates that specify rules that will use to resolve the resources to actual concrete resources in your Lab Inventory when an environment is reserved. For example suppose we want to include a switch in our environment that supports OpenFlow 1.3. We might add a custom attribute to the family called OpenFlowVersion. We would then create an abstract resource that will select any switch that has OpenFlowVersion set to 1.3. In addition, attributes of abstract resources can be associated with an Environment Input. This allows the user to drive the selection of the resources in a controlled fashion. Services Services are different than Resources and Abstract Resources because they don t represent resources in your inventory. Rather, they represent automation, and can be used to provide continuous automation in an environment or used to dynamically create or provision new resources. Services should not be confused with the automation associated with Resources. For example, the Virtualization Services allow you add a new to your environment that will be created and replaced with a instance when the environment is activated. Another example is the VLAN service, which allows you to connect multiple resources to a common VLAN and, upon activation, will automatically configure whatever resources are connected to it to be on the same VLAN. Services also allow the user to specify the inputs to the service when added to an Environment, even an Active Environment. For example this vsphere service allows the user to specify the configuration of the that will be created in the user s vsphere virtualization environment. 9

10 Connecting Resources Once you ve added resources, abstract resources, and services, you can connect them using the Connection Tool. The Connection Tool allows creating three types of connections: Physical, Route, and Automated Connection. Physical connections represent the physical connections between devices; Routes represent connections that will resolve using the physical connections and the physical connection framework. Automated Connections can be used by the automation or services to perform device or technology specific provisioning. For example, the VLAN Service uses automated connections to determine which hosts should be placed on a common VLAN. Create Orchestration Flows Each Environment is associated with an Environment Orchestration Flow. Environment Orchestration Flows are the high level automation that drives the provisioning of each of your environments. The default Orchestration Flow that you can use with all environments simply calls the Setup automation command on every Resource and Service in your environment. This will cause each Resource and Service in your environment to run their own individual Setup automation flows simultaneously. Each resource and service will in turn make the specific automation calls necessary to setup the resource, which could be different depending on the resource. However, in many cases, you ll likely want to create custom Orchestration Flows. This is because even if an environment uses the built in Services and Resource Models, like the Service, or even just rely on s ability to automatically provision the physical layer connection fabric, the order of tasks may need to be defined by the user. For example, we might want to ensure that spins up a particular before it connects the VLANs. <response> Resource C configure <response> tup REST getstatus Resource B SNMP SSH Resource A S e <response> p Setup S u et 10

11 Orchestration Flows are created in the Authoring client. The Authoring client is visual based, and flows can easily be created by dragging and dropping flow logic tools and Library objects onto the authoring canvas. Once created, Environment Orchestration Flows can be associated with one or more environments. In addition to providing the default Setup and Teardown flows that are required for each environment, additional flows can be published and made available to users from within the environment. 11 Monitoring, Reporting, and BI Once your environments and resources are in place, allows you to configure live status feedback and monitoring of your infrastructure, with default support for integrating with Nagios. Other monitoring solutions are supported as well. Lastly, providing reporting and Business Intelligence through clear, sharable, and customizable dashboards provides insight into the key success metrics for you and your end users. s InSight BI tool provides out of the box support for visualizing utilization of lab resources, users, groups, and more. It can be customized for providing end-user specific analytics because tracks all your lab infrastructure and automation data. 12 Your Lab, Your Cloud Once you ve created your initial set of environments, orchestration flows, and any necessary integration libraries for custom resources you re ready to provide your end users access to your Lab as a Service Cloud. It is recommended that you start with a small set of key use cases and on-board an initial group of beta users. Once you have an initial set of environments published in your catalog and end-users actively using them you can begin to expand your Lab as a Service offering. In addition to end user access via the self-service portal, provides a full API so that your cloud can be integrated with other third party tools and. 11

12 allows IT and engineering organizations to successfully transform their lab environments into consolidated self-service clouds. s object based, open architecture provides the state-of-the-art platform that industry leaders rely on to move beyond fixed, manual based labs to fully automated self-service clouds. The net result is significant CAPEX and OPEX savings, increased business velocity and agility, and higher levels of market competitiveness. s Benefits CAPEX & OPEX savings Business velocity & agility Market competitiveness About QualiSystems QualiSystems is the leading provider of environments as a service solutions. Quali automation makes infrastructure agile to enable business to get to market faster, maximize costly resources, and reduce CAPEX and OPEX waste. Quali solutions are deployed by hundreds of market-leading service providers, mobile operators, global enterprises, governments and military agencies and technology equipment manufacturers. is deployed for a wide variety of use cases ranging from development, test, security & compliance, support, training, sales, marketing and manufacturing. To learn more about QualiSystems and, please visit LAAS-TG-1 12