Does Cloud Computing Help Configuration Management ?

[Ricky Ho]

I am wondering what role "Cloud Computing" has played in the Configuration Management.  Does it help or make it worse ?

A typical IT environment that involve many servers need to solve a provisioning problem, including which software need to be installed in each machine.

Cloud computing seems to localize the configuration management problem to the creation of an image.  Once the image is created, you can boot up as many instance as you like based on that image.  In other words, provision the image to hundreds on machines is easy.

However, the configuration management at the "image" level seems to be too coarse-grain to me.  There may be different software installed inside the image and version compatibility and dependency exist among them.  The complexity of managing this seems to and on the administrator who is creation the image.

I am wondering if anyone can share their view on this.  Does Cloud computing make the configuration management problem worse, better, or stay the same ?  Can anyone who is using any vendor solution like VMware, Amazon, or IBM, Microsoft  ... etc. share their experience in how these products address that ?

Rgds,
Ricky

[Himanshu Khona]

This is an under-lying issue of cloud. Not many softwares do this today as far as I know.

This is eventually come as technology stack is developed.

You have an excellent point and a good use case for cloud software development to pick up.

Vmware can do host profiles and so can many other softwares but I don't think any of them does version management and manage dependencies of the softwares.

Thanks,

Himanshu

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[Zul Kagalwalla]

A time will eventually come when one can do something like this (probably it is already being done):

 

Boot a server from bios or any other initial boot system,  then you are presented with a menu:

 

Top level Menu:

 

What OS you want to load?

 

Second question what kind of user you are ?

 

Third what vertical if a business owner?

 

What is the primary use of the server?

 

And you can go on?

 

Once you have all the responses and versions, maybe even enter licenses etc, Then you have the picture of what you are configuration needs to be, i.e. patch levels for software, OS versions etc.

 

You could present to the user how the server will be configured. The user can accept it or try a different configuration.

 

Now if you break this down to a private cloud, I think it is doable, so following the above thought process you can achieve a much better provisioning model. Obviously this can all be scripted   

 

What do you all think a fantasy or doable?

 

Zul

 

---

[Ray Nugent]

Doable!

---

From: Zul Kagalwalla <kar...@verizon.net>
To: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thu, July 22, 2010 8:51:58 AM
Subject: RE: [ Cloud Computing ] Does Cloud Computing Help ConfigurationManagement ?

[Geoff Arnold]

A number of people who deploy composite applications (scale-out and/or SOA) into EC2 use SimpleDB to store configuration data (per app, per service, and per instance). Rather than directly configuring each VM or (even worse) each AMI, every VM boots a standard AMI which retrieves its configuration information and uses it to drive the instance configuration. This approach fits well with schemes like Zookeeper.

On Jul 22, 2010, at 12:30 PM, Ray Nugent wrote:

> Doable!

>
> From: Zul Kagalwalla <kar...@verizon.net>
> To: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com
> Sent: Thu, July 22, 2010 8:51:58 AM
> Subject: RE: [ Cloud Computing ] Does Cloud Computing Help ConfigurationManagement ?
>
> A time will eventually come when one can do something like this (probably it is already being done):
>
> Boot a server from bios or any other initial boot system, then you are presented with a menu:
>
> Top level Menu:
>
> What OS you want to load?
>
> Second question what kind of user you are ?
>
> Third what vertical if a business owner?
>
> What is the primary use of the server?
>
> And you can go on?
>
> Once you have all the responses and versions, maybe even enter licenses etc, Then you have the picture of what you are configuration needs to be, i.e. patch levels for software, OS versions etc.
>
> You could present to the user how the server will be configured. The user can accept it or try a different configuration.
>
> Now if you break this down to a private cloud, I think it is doable, so following the above thought process you can achieve a much better provisioning model. Obviously this can all be scripted
>
> What do you all think a fantasy or doable?
>
> Zul
>

[Ray Nugent]

It makes it better - potentially. Automation platforms like Puppet and Chef can address OS and app provisioning and take some of the manual/error factor out of the process. However we are finding a school of thought that favor provisioning at the coarse grained image level you spoke of. They keep a library of pre-provisioned images and when they make changes they simple redeploy the entire image. There are versioning and continuous deployment products available to facilitate this as these images are just treated like any other code.

Ray

---

From: Ricky Ho <rickyp...@yahoo.com>
To: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thu, July 22, 2010 7:20:00 AM
Subject: [ Cloud Computing ] Does Cloud Computing Help Configuration Management ?

[Ian Mills]

Worse
Firstly unless you nail your configuration management down you will have to license ALL your hardware infrastructure for ALL the software you might use on it. Even then if you can reliably measure high water marks of deployment the software vendors T&Cs may still insist you pay for its potential deployment.
Secondly the basic config management still applies, once you have created a deployable image it is frozen in time and has almost all the characteristics of a real server e.g. software levels etc. which need tracking.  

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Service to the customer, the pursuit of excellence, respect for the individual.

[Moore, Eric (HPSW PS)]

This is how we (HP) design our cloud services today, based on the Opsware/server automation App Config / Configuration Markup Language technology.

 

I tell my clients that snapshot based cloud management has inherent limitations, while it may take longer to do a raw build/deploy/configure, it provides significantly more flexibility.

 

When you boot a server, you are presented with a menu of which boot image you would like to use (RHEL4, RHEL5, WinPE64, Solaris, etc…), once you select one, it loads into the “server pool” where from the interface you provision the specific build/sw packages/config options.

 

In cloud environments, we use a technology called managed boot client which populates DHCP with the mac address and specific boot image to use, then the process is fully automated as the server boots into the server pool with no human interaction. SW deployment and configuration occurs in an automated fashion.

 

This is one of the areas we find it easiest to differentiate our offerings. Re-IP scripts break some apps, raw builds into the final environment prevent multiple issues from arising that snapshots cannot properly manage. We get pushback when we say it will take 15 minutes to provision a Linux server, but smart companies see the value.

 

-Eric

[Subhasis Dasgupta]

From my understanding , that configuration management will face new challenges to manage configuration over cloud.

In your example,  image creation is a very good solution for a single server , i.e. a single instance. But suppose you are managing a application or database cluster then you need to do lot of manual modification after you start your image. Which is because :
most of the cloud will provide you dynamic IP address you have set those at your configuration file
you have to set up your firewall rules
If it is an internet based application server then you may have to update your DNS as well

(Which will may not be a good use of your time.)

If your needs are dynamic scale up , scale down and recovery then it will be very difficult for you to manage.

So most of the cloud management / cloud configuration management tools are trying to support the above functionality . And some of them has real product, the main motivation of the cloud management is to build a system by which you can bring up your whole infrastructure (may be a three tier architecture ) by a very minimum number of click(s). And you can scale up scale down by a single click.
As for example , in a three tier(WEB=>APPS=>DB) system if  you want to scale up , you can do it by a single click and the following tasks will performed and managed automatically

1. It will bring up a new virtual server
2. It will add the server to the cluster
3. It will update the  DB (security and other permission)
4. It will update the APP tier

Kaavo's IMOD exactly dose the exact above task , we call it "Application Centric Management"  , please look at the website

and also  ask me if you have any other questions





 
 
 

[dave corley]

There are precedent products/services in the marketplace today that offer some form of configuration management. These are generally classified as "RMM"s. The architectural model is one in which there is a server application hosted in the cloud (either on or not on IaaS), a local (behind the customer firewall/NAT boundary) client application and a web portal for policy administration. The local client application acts as a proxy/relay for commands from the server and as a data collector for events and other data. Most of these RMM architectures have process and database state in the client and in the cloud server in order to operate in the event of a disruption of internet access between the client and the cloud server. There may be an initial management penalty to pay in that configuration of authentication of the service to allow the local client/proxy access to each machine/OS may require "visiting" each local computer.

Some examples of the RMM providers are Kaseya, n-able, Level Platforms Inc (LPI) and Solar Winds. In most cases, these RMMs sell their service through a channel of MSPs (managed services providers) who eventually resell the service to end customers. Some of these RMMs may have business models that allow direct interaction between the RMM and the enterprise. I do not believe that any of these RMMs support a business model in which they sell their respective server or client software to an enterprise. i.e. RMMs offer a cloud management service, not an applicaiton.

Dave

[Amy Wohl]

IBM sells configuration management software which can be used in clouds (public and private) and across data centers and clouds.  It can be accessed through a dashboard.  This is from IBM’s Tivoli division.

 

Amy D. Wohl

Editor, Amy Wohl's Opinions

1954 Birchwood Park Drive North

Cherry Hill, NJ 08003

856-874-4034

a...@wohl.com

www.wohl.com

 

 

From: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com [mailto:cloud-c...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of dave corley
Sent: Thursday, July 22, 2010 6:07 PM
To: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [ Cloud Computing ] Does Cloud Computing Help Configuration Management ?

 

There are precedent products/services in the marketplace today that offer some form of configuration management. These are generally classified as "RMM"s. The architectural model is one in which there is a server application hosted in the cloud (either on or not on IaaS), a local (behind the customer firewall/NAT boundary) client application and a web portal for policy administration. The local client application acts as a proxy/relay for commands from the server and as a data collector for events and other data. Most of these RMM architectures have process and database state in the client and in the cloud server in order to operate in the event of a disruption of internet access between the client and the cloud server. There may be an initial management penalty to pay in that configuration of authentication of the service to allow the local client/proxy access to each machine/OS may require "visiting" each local computer.

[Jeanne Morain]

Ricky, There seems to be some confusion of paradigms, technologies, etc.  First - what you are describing below is server vritualization which can be done in a data center not necessarily Cloud Computing.  Although Virtualization is a component or can be of Cloud Computing it does not equal Cloud Computing like some vendors would of course want to define it as. Server Virtualization has had significant benefit for the datacenter (both in and out of the Cloud).  Customers I have worked with over the years in their design, deployments, etc typically have leveraged Server Virtualization to reduce their hardware requirements and optimize their CPU utilization.  Although Server Virtualization is a component that makes cloud computing more practical (cost conducive) in some instances there are drawbacks. Server Virtualization and Configuration Management of Virtual Servers is actually fairly mature.  These technologies really started to take off in 2003 (or thereabouts) and a lot more focus on optimizing virtual images that are a part of the overall stack in a VSphere (or Virtual Center) instance have been added.  Items such as offline patching of an image, VMotion, etc and APIs in ESX or other computing platforms (AZURE) have really helped address some of the early issues around inventory, compliance, and sprawl. Depending on what the Cloud is trying to achieve (Server based applications or desktop/client based applications) the impact the cloud will have varies from minimal to quite a bit.  The later would be things like Type 1 hypervisors, application delivery, etc. The Cloud does make Configuration Management a little more tricky depending on the tools used but for different reasons then some may think: 1) Agents & Privacy Laws/Support costs - Most configuration management tools require some form of agent for inventory, patch, drift tracking and overall application distribution.  For delivery to off premise systems - this can be problematic from a support/trouble shooting perspective and compliance (Privacy laws for permissions). 2) Encryption -impacts Performance & Efficiency -  it is nearly impossible to leverage some of the key efficiency gains such as byte level differencing on encrypted files but files without encryption pose too much risk for regulated applications (CRM, EMR, etc).  The cost of compliance may equate to more latency and network traffic.  Meaning that the full file will be transported versus just the bytes of what has changed. 3) Licensing & Control - It is still unclear how new forms of enabling technologies and models (User versus Machine, Subscription versus Perpetual) etc will be handled.  Although many traditional Configuration Management technologies have had capacity for User provisioning - few companies were able to take advantage of it due to tightly coupled OS/App restrictions.  Tools like Application Virtualization change that game a bit.  The question is though - is just because it is possible - should you do it - particularly if the vendor won't support the application.  All the major vendors have a different take on this - Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, etc.  More standards and/or adjustments to current standards are needed. 4) Distribution/Configuration - this becomes tricky.  Although many technologies (like my former company BMC) do have reverse proxy capability for a Hybrid internal/external scenario - few can scale to the level needed to to support the magnitude of users the Cloud could present.  Marimba has great scale (largest customer was 15 million) - the question is how well does that work for larger applications, across various Cloud and Internal Pops?  It is still an unknown that needs to be considered. 5)Impact of newer technologies on traditional tools/investment - Most customers have  specific way of reporting etc due to Compliance or other internal audit limitations.  Newer technologies that provide optimization across databases, servers, etc will have to be integrated with traditional reporting tools to merge the two paradigms.  Else the process becomes very manual and harder to manage from a larger company perspective. In summation - although Cloud Computing (server virtualization) does help Configuration Management (reach masses, cost effective for smaller businesses, etc) there are some hurdles that you will want to address.  Work with your Configuration Management vendor to specifics such as (do they integrate, can they see into the virtual environment/application, off premise control)  For Cloud providers - how they achieve SAAS 70 audit clearance, segregation of data, duties,etc/ Very good question - Jeanne www.universalclient.blogspot.com --- On Thu, 7/22/10, Ricky Ho <rickyp...@yahoo.com> wrote:

[Miha Ahronovitz]

Jeanne,

You gave a long, winded answer (which is informative, neverthe less) to a very simple question.

Ricky asked: hey guys,  we always had in IT "A typical  environment that involve many servers[that]  need to solve a provisioning problem, including which software need to be installed in each machine."  This way we created an "image". In a cloud, we copy this image in other, as many as possible servers,  We play with many images, and let's assume inside the images, all resources are used optimally. But, Rick asks, if this image is optimal, how do we know the totality of the images, the cloud it seld is optimal.

Don't we need something less coarse to manage the cloud? How do we know we don't duplicate work unnecessarily? How do we know can move resources to meet SLAs from on corner of the cloud to another corner.

You points of " how they achieve SAAS 70 audit clearance, segregation of data, duties,etc" are highly important, but they are separate issues, unrelated to Ricky's question. I searched the web for what in the world is SAS 70  I found an answer, for the benefit of the group see it below  (I bet many people, like me, didn't know)

The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) issued a Statement on Auditing Standard No. 70 (SAS 70). SAS 70 is the definitive standard by which user organizations (companies that use outsourced service providers) and their auditors can gain comfort that controls at the third-party service providers are adequate to prevent or detect a related material error that could impact the user organization's financial statements.

Regarding your explanation that virtualization is not a cloud, very true, except that explaining this to Rick is like telling God how to make an Universe :-)

In all other aspects, your post has been very informative to me.

Thanks,

miha

[Ricky Ho]

Thanks for all the feedback !  It is very informative to me.

Jeanne correctly pointed out that "Virtualization" is a better term, my original intent is to compare configuration management between physical machines and virtual machines environment.

One fundamental difference is that a physical machine has persistent storage to store all the software installed on it, but a virtual machine relies on the image it boots from.

A very popular approach for physical machines to get update is to have them periodically poll for latest software from a central repository.  However, this approach won't work in a virtual machine environment, all software update in the VM will be lost once the VM is reboot from the image which hasn't been updated.  Therefore, the same set of software update need to repeat again and again after each reboot.

Therefore, we need to update the image instead.  One way to do this is to wait until all the software updates complete at the VM and then take a snapshot image from there.  This will work except that you need to manually keep track of the change history.  There is no easy way to notice the imageB is an upgrade from imageA, or there is no way to "diff" between two different images.

So what I looking for is a tool that can keep track of the software components (and its version) inside an image and be able to track the change history of how an image is upgraded to a newer image.  Of course, I also expect there will be a compatibility matrix or tree between the software components so I know the correct version is installed.

In summary, I am looking for a tool to track the configuration at a finer grain level (not at the image level but the software component within it).  Anyone aware of such a tool ?

Rgds,
Ricky

---

From: Miha Ahronovitz <mij...@sbcglobal.net>
To: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com
Cc: Miha Ahronovitz <mij...@sbcglobal.net>
Sent: Fri, July 23, 2010 10:11:46 PM
Subject: Re: [ Cloud Computing ] Does Cloud Computing Help Configuration Management ?

[ZUL KAGALWALLA]

Ricky,

Most of what you mention about VM images not being persistent is not true as per my understanding. It maybe true for Desktops but there also there are two kinds persistent and non-persistent.

But for the enterprise I think this is not true. Only place in enterprise it could be true is in SaaS. I would like to hear more from SaaS experts regarding the image being persistent or not?

Just in case you are correct then I am learning, it seems the images are frozen at some point by the cloud provider.

Zul

---

From: Ricky Ho <rickyp...@yahoo.com>
To: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com

Sent: Sat, July 24, 2010 10:30:45 PM

[Bernard Golden]

A number of cloud management systems (e.g., RightScale and CohesiveFT)
operate just as you outline, i.e., using an OS base image and
injecting code at the boot stage to configure a virtual machine for a
specific role. The application code itself can be pulled from the
version control software used by the development/operations group,
which allows for fine-grained control of code and when code is
introduced into executing virtual machines.

There are strengths to each approach, as updating the OS image with
all code resident makes for more efficient bootup, while injecting
code allows for more agile change of application code and middleware,
as well as avoiding virtual machine sprawl caused by many incremental
changes during development and operations.

On balance we lean to the OS base image with code injection, but it's
not imperative that it be done that way.

HTH.

> >--- On Thu, 7/22/10, Ricky Ho <rickyphyl...@yahoo.com> wrote:

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[Matthew Zito]

We've actually seen a lot of pickup lately from enterprise customers who are  looking for this capability for the database tier.  They have a base OS image for the database, perhaps one that has all the vendor prerequisites (kernel parameters, OS patches, etc.), and then from there, they want to self-service provision a database environment.  So, they have basically two option - store hundreds, thousands of vm images at a minimum to handle all the different variability between different environments - or use a tool like our software to automate the builds on top of a new VM.

It's an area that's still very much beta/alpha/POC for everyone, but there's real concerns there, to the original point.

Thanks,
Matt

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[Ricky Ho]

In a typical scenario, you have a golden image sitting somewhere.  Then you launch a VM that is booted from that image, which is basically copying the golden image to the running VM, which now has a local copy.  All upates happens at the local copy but not the original golden image which you will boot from next time.

Rgds,
Ricky

---

From: ZUL KAGALWALLA <kar...@verizon.net>
To: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Sun, July 25, 2010 8:11:26 AM

[Jeanne Morain]

Ricky et all,

Many traditional systems management tools actually do track the "drift" or internal software changes within the VM - this capability has been around for quite some time.   Yes you could try the approach below with database storage that rebuilds the image every time but there are inherent issues with each approach that need to be proven before large scale production deployments should be considered.  (I/O, performance impact on the host machine, latency, issues with data integrity/corruption etc.).  Although there is promise for some of the newer technology a lot of it is unproven and still may not solve the issues you are trying to.

Meaning - we have all seen the hardware stack evolve over time and we have all see the evolution of the data center and virtualization in general.  However, at the end of the day we are still bound by the limits of the hardware and capacity of the technology we are using.  A database is still a database and the concern with that approach would be the impact to performance on the database in general. 

When the CMDB first came out - one of the biggest lessons I learned in the field was that just because you can do something - doesn't mean you should.  Like any system - the more you stuff into a database the bigger the performance impact.  Although in demos and in small implementations it may seem to work well - I would really test these tools for large scale feasibility - say in a virtual desktop arena with 5000 plus machines.  What do I base this on?

As one of the early implementers of Business Service Management - I have worked closely with many large companies such as Metlife, Schwab, Caterpillar, Motorola, etc to implement their CMDB solution.  Today, companies require inventory and patch control for regulatory as well as other business purposes.  Along with the creation of the stack, storage of all the data or "drift" that occurred on the given image, etc - other elements will need to be stored and reported on (inventory, patch, etc).  Imagine the amount of drift that happens within the typical update cycle for a given image.  Multiply that by several thousand machines (servers) or more for hosted virtual desktops.  Now think about performance impact.

In the case you mention - VMware ESX (VSphere) enables patching the images offline, ability for golden master, etc.  Further more there are tools that are a part of normal data center automation (BMC Bladelogic, HP Opsware), Run book automation for policy orchestration, DML (Definitive Media Library), etc that are part of the normal BSM stack that actually make the tracking, patching, and updating of these VMs efficient.  ie) The VMs can be stored in the DML, patched offline and used as the golden master.  This is not new to virtualization or the data center.
 

This is not to say that these new tools will not evolve over time - but the bigger piece that everyone needs to consider is that Configuration Management is not a NEW industry and the Cloud is not NEW either.  Those tools have been updating applications and images on VMs and ESX for over a decade now.   Furthermore, they have been optimizing the delivery, tracking, and patching of applications over the WAN/LAN for much longer than that.  The customers are much more sophisticated users and have established pretty strong SLAs within their corporate environment (95%+ Up Time).  This includes many early Software As A Service implementations such as MusicMatch (over 15 million endpoints, etc) so the point being - the traditional tools should suffice just fine for the Cloud. 

One should proceed with caution - try the new stuff but give it time to evolve.  Many of the new vendors I have seen don't have a firm grasp of the old problems those veterans in the Config Management space have had to solve around optimizing for drift, storage, NTier Distribution, etc and believe LTE and 4G etc will solve all their problems.  When I mean veterans - you want founders that have been in this space before 2000.  Why?  Because rollback, self healing, drift, storage optimization for tracking drift etc was all done prior to that.  The guys that joined later and were not customers - will not remember when products like Marimba were called Crash the Net back in the day...  In the end remember the customers ultimately pay the price when they try to scale the products out. 

My advice to you - look at the tools your company is currently using for Configuration Management and ask about their partners and how they plug into those tools.  Many of these up and coming start ups are actually trying to be acquired by these bigger companies so they typically have some type of plug-in, integration, etc.  Start from the established vendor (through some form of program - so you are less likely to go against the company grain).  Dip your toe in the water - do a small pilot and see how well they work together versus sticking your neck out too far and having it chopped off in this economy.  Good Luck!

Regards,
Jeanne
www.universalclient.blogspot.com

---

From: Matthew Zito <mz...@gridapp.com>
To: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com; Cloud Computing <cloud-c...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sun, July 25, 2010 8:17:11 PM
Subject: RE: [ Cloud Computing ] Re: Does Cloud Computing Help Configuration Management ?

[Ray Nugent]

There are a couple of schools of thought on how to do this. Each has merits depending on 1) The role the user has and 2) what they are trying to achieve. The fine grained control Ricky has described can be had with the use of products like Puppet or Chef and others. These products will provision a VM based on a gold master definition or "recipe" and than watch the resultant VM for any changes made to it ultimately either alerting a sys admin that something has changed or automatically returning the VM to it's original state. This great if your job is to patch 1000 running Linux VMs to a certain security patch level and so this schools is the domain of Ops folks.

If you're a Developer and want to do continuous build and deployment in the cloud, i.e. the target for your code is now a VM running in a cloud as opposed to a CPU in a server under your desk, then course grained provisioning may be preferable. Course grained provisioning ensure that your target platform is in a known state enabeling you to debug only the changed code you've deployed. The deployment model in this case is short lived and developers deploy, test and terminate VMs quite frequently. Fine grained provisioning gets in the way here. Both have their use cases and audiences so the key is to decide which one fits you best. This can lead to VM sprawl in an uncontrolled environment but can be easily managed with enterprise multi-tenant governance solutions.

Existing enterprise tools companies will claim they do this but that's largely cloudwashing. Fortunately there are a number of new, pure cloud focused start ups that really do this and have innovative solutions.

Ray

---

From: Ricky Ho <rickyp...@yahoo.com>
To: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com

Sent: Mon, July 26, 2010 9:22:44 AM

[Yiping Zhang]

On Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 7:30 PM, Ricky Ho <rickyp...@yahoo.com> wrote:

In summary, I am looking for a tool to track the configuration at a finer grain level (not at the image level but the software component within it).  Anyone aware of such a tool ?

Our cloud management application, http://www.open.collab.net/products/labmgnt/,  can deploy virtual machines either from a base image or from OS component packages directly, such as rpms, Solaris packages etc, depending on which profile the virtual machine is provisioned from.

The profiles are stored in a Subversion repository, therefore, preserving necessary configuration histories. For component based profiles, you have all the flexibilities supported by underlying technologies (RHEL's kickstart and Solaris's Jumpstart etc).

Yiping

Disclaimer: I am one of main developers working on this product.
  

[Ian Mills]

An interesting discussion, but lots of folk are forgeting the operational component, if you want to run real business applications. Reality is you test each application against a particular software stack make it live and do not want anyone tinkering with the stack without you re-testing. Last thing you want is a dynamic stack even if it is maticulously configuration managed. Testing is not cheap so a real production environment does not change the production stack frequently.  Nett is you will have many versions of deployable images in the environment.

[Bhuvaneswaran A]

Ricky,

You may also try CollabNet Lab management using the following link. As Yiping mentioned, Subversion version control system plays a significant role in managing the cloud infrastructure including the profiles, hosts and cloud info.
  http://www.collab.net/products/labmgnt/tryit.html

Regards,
Bhuvaneswaran A
www.livecipher.com

[Miha Ahronovitz]

@Ian Your point is compelling: You recommend many versions of the
deployable images that cover more scenarios, but not dynamically
reconfigured images by some invisible foreign power :-).

@Yiping, I did not know Collabnet is no longer a repository of open
source development platforms, and offers development platforms to
paying commercial customers. Does it mean (1) I do not need to build
a development platform in-house? Can I use Collabnet cloud instead?
Or (2) I can build a development platform with my own physical
servers, using lab management software? Or (3) install your sw on
public instances providers like EC2? What about hardware specific
platforms (graphic cards, etc...)

@Yiping, will lab management work in production environment as well?
What do you think about Ian observation above?


Cheers,

Miha

On Jul 28, 12:58 am, Ian Mills <i.c.r.mi...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> An interesting discussion, but lots of folk are forgeting the operational
> component, if you want to run real business applications. Reality is you
> test each application against a particular software stack make it live and
> do not want anyone tinkering with the stack without you re-testing. Last
> thing you want is a dynamic stack even if it is maticulously configuration
> managed. Testing is not cheap so a real production environment does not
> change the production stack frequently.  Nett is you will have many versions

> of deploy-able images in the environment.
>
> On 28 July 2010 06:23, Yiping Zhang <yiping4...@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
>
> > On Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 7:30 PM, Ricky Ho <rickyphyl...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > In summary, I am looking for a tool to track the configuration at a finer
> >> grain level (not at the image level but the software component within it).
> >> Anyone aware of such a tool ?
>
> >> Our cloud management application,
> >http://www.open.collab.net/products/labmgnt/,  can deploy virtual machines
> > either from a base image or from OS component packages directly, such as
> > rpms, Solaris packages etc, depending on which profile the virtual machine
> > is provisioned from.
>
> > The profiles are stored in a Subversion repository, therefore, preserving
> > necessary configuration histories. For component based profiles, you have
> > all the flexibilities supported by underlying technologies (RHEL's kickstart
> > and Solaris's Jumpstart etc).
>
> > Yiping
>
> > Disclaimer: I am one of main developers working on this product.
>
> >> Rgds,
> >> Ricky

> >> ------------------------------
> >> *From:* Miha Ahronovitz <mij...@sbcglobal.net>
>
> >> *To:* cloud-c...@googlegroups.com
> >> *Cc:* Miha Ahronovitz <mij...@sbcglobal.net>
> >> *Sent:* Fri, July 23, 2010 10:11:46 PM
> >> *Subject:* Re: [ Cloud Computing ] Does Cloud Computing Help

> >> Configuration Management ?
>
> >> Jeanne,
>
> >> You gave a long, winded answer (which is informative, neverthe less) to a
> >> very simple question.
>
> >> Ricky asked: hey guys,  we always had in IT "A typical  environment that
> >> involve many servers[that]  need to solve a provisioning problem, including
> >> which software need to be installed in each machine."  This way we created
> >> an "image". In a cloud, we copy this image in other, as many as possible
> >> servers,  We play with many images, and let's assume inside the images, all
> >> resources are used optimally. But, Rick asks, if this image is optimal, how
> >> do we know the totality of the images, the cloud it seld is optimal.
>
> >> Don't we need something less coarse to manage the cloud? How do we know we
> >> don't duplicate work unnecessarily? How do we know can move resources to
> >> meet SLAs from on corner of the cloud to another corner.
>
> >> You points of " how they achieve SAAS 70 audit clearance, segregation of
> >> data, duties,etc" are highly important, but they are separate issues,
> >> unrelated to Ricky's question. I searched the web for what in the world is
> >> SAS 70  I found an answer, for the benefit of the group see it below  (I bet
> >> many people, like me, didn't know)
>

> >> The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA)<http://infotech.aicpa.org/Resources/Assurance+Services/Standards/SAS+...>issued a Statement
> >> on Auditing Standard No. 70<http://infotech.aicpa.org/Resources/Systems+Audit+and+Internal+Contro...>(SAS 70). SAS 70 is the definitive standard by which user organizations

> >> --- On *Thu, 7/22/10, Ricky Ho <rickyphyl...@yahoo.com>* wrote:
>
> >> From: Ricky Ho <rickyphyl...@yahoo.com>

> >> Subject: [ Cloud Computing ] Does Cloud Computing Help Configuration
> >> Management ?
> >> To: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com
> >> Date: Thursday, July 22, 2010, 7:20 AM
>
> >>  I am wondering what role "Cloud Computing" has played in the
> >> Configuration Management.  Does it help or make it worse ?
>
> >> A typical IT environment that involve many servers need to solve a
> >> provisioning problem, including which software need to be installed in each
> >> machine.
>
> >> Cloud computing seems to localize the configuration management problem to
> >> the creation of an image.  Once the image is created, you can boot up as
> >> many instance as you like based on that image.  In other words, provision
> >> the image to hundreds on machines is easy.
>
> >> However, the configuration management at the "image" level
>

> ...
>
> read more »

[Yiping Zhang]

On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 2:53 PM, Miha Ahronovitz <myinne...@gmail.com> wrote:
> @Yiping, I did not know  Collabnet is no longer a repository of open
> source development platforms, and offers  development platforms to
> paying commercial customers. Does it mean (1)  I do not need to build
> a development platform in-house? Can I  use Collabnet cloud instead?
> Or (2) I can build a development platform with my own physical
> servers, using lab management software? Or (3)  install your sw on
> public instances providers like EC2? What about hardware specific
> platforms (graphic cards, etc...)

To learn more about CollabNet offerings, you can visit our web site at
http;//www.collab.net.

But to answer your specific questions:
1) yes, you can use our hosted service with private cloud dedicated to
your company.
2) yes, you can install our cloud sw in your own datacenter to build
your own cloud.
3) yes, you can use our cloud sw, either as hosted service from
CollabNet or installed in your own datacenter, to manage EC2 guests.

>
> @Yiping, will lab management work in production environment as well?
> What do you think about Ian observation above?

As mainly a product for software developers, our cloud is targeted as
such to developer/QA environments. However, we do have customers using
it in production fashion.

In our cloud, customers are responsible for keeping track of license
obligations. They can deploy separate license server for that purpose,
or connect to an existing license server for licensing enforcement.

Cheers,

Yiping

[Yiping Zhang]

On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 12:58 AM, Ian Mills <i.c.r...@googlemail.com> wrote:

An interesting discussion, but lots of folk are forgeting the operational component, if you want to run real business applications. Reality is you test each application against a particular software stack make it live and do not want anyone tinkering with the stack without you re-testing. Last thing you want is a dynamic stack even if it is maticulously configuration managed. Testing is not cheap so a real production environment does not change the production stack frequently.  Nett is you will have many versions of deployable images in the environment.

I do agree with Ian's statement here.  QA team has to be able to "version control" their test environment, not working on a dynamic platform. To achieve this goal, the cloud service has to meet following requirement:

1) For image based deployment,  the base image itself has to be version controlled, and old versions be kept available to deploy new guest node.
2) For OS package based deployment, media for all versions of supported OS should be kept available at all times, and the profile specifying package selections AND post-install configurations should be version controlled.
3). An auditing trail must be kept for who created which guest node when.
4) Finally, the cloud sw itself must always be backward compatible as itself changes in time. 

Note: This last point is hard to maintain: to do it well means that you can never remove code from your cloud sw. As time goes on, more and more (seldom used) code will cumulate in your software and make it harder and harder to maintain.  So there have to be some balance to maintain here.

Once a cloud service meets above conditions, you can always go back in time and recreate your working environment in use at that time.

Yiping

[d_sa...@hotmail.com]

In regard to Yiping's last point on maintaining backward compatibility, what are the best practices? Debashish «««Sent via DROID X on Verizon Wireless»»»

-----Original message-----

From: Yiping Zhang <yipin...@gmail.com>
To: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Fri, Jul 30, 2010 16:46:42 GMT+00:00
Subject: Re: [ Cloud Computing ] Does Cloud Computing Help Configuration Management ?

--