Avanade Virtualized Grids A case study on the benefits of virtualization Presenter: Date: Luca Regini Associate Principal Consultant, CTO team, Avanade Italy Sep 22, 2008

2 © Copyright 2007 Avanade Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Avanade name and logo are registered trademarks in the US and other countries. Agenda ► Who we are –Our offering in Grid space ► Our experience with virtualization.

3 © Copyright 2008 Avanade Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Avanade name and logo are registered trademarks in the US and other countries. Our beginning In 2000 Accenture and Microsoft came together to create Avanade. A joint venture designed to meet the growing demand for Microsoft-based services among enterprises worldwide.

4 © Copyright 2008 Avanade Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Avanade name and logo are registered trademarks in the US and other countries. Eight years of growth and global expansion Delivering value in 22 countries More than ► 8,000 professionals ► 3,700 in India, Philippines ► $593m revenue in FY07 ► 2,900 customers

5 © Copyright 2008 Avanade Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Avanade name and logo are registered trademarks in the US and other countries. A diverse, global customer base ► Forbes Global 2000 ► Fortune Global 1000 ► All industries ► Government agencies

6 © Copyright 2008 Avanade Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Avanade name and logo are registered trademarks in the US and other countries. Avanade’s Grid: AGA ► In 2004 MPS was looking for a solution to lower Mainframe workload and to better use its available PCs and servers Fortune Global 1000 ► After evaluating MPS technological requirements and constraints Avanade proposed the development of AGA (Avanade Grid Assett). ► I joined the AGA design and development team from project's start and contributed to delivery of many projects based on this technology. As of today, I am still actively involved as an architect and maintainer for AGA.

7 © Copyright 2008 Avanade Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Avanade name and logo are registered trademarks in the US and other countries. AGA evolution 2004 ► AGA development ► First task: log analysis ► Linux Node ► 4 applications deployed ► Solaris Node ► Geco ► Massive account statement print ► 100 computing nodes ► tasks each day ► Murex ( report generation ) ► Algorithmics 2007-today ► Two production grids and one “development” grid ► 250+ Windows machines ► 80+ Linux machines ► Adding 60 more, dedicated to Finance business unit ► CPUs available ► Tasks executed each day ► Over 40 “Grid enabled” running applications and two of them are mission critical ► Basel II compliancy (VaR computation) ► IAS 32 / IAS 39 instrument categorization

8 © Copyright 2008 Avanade Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Avanade name and logo are registered trademarks in the US and other countries. AGA features ► Object Oriented API for tasks development on multiple platforms (Windows/.NET, Linux Sun Solaris /Java). ► Windows, Linux, Solaris (AIX in development ) computing node. ► Leverages Microsoft.NET security strength (i.e. Code Access Security, WS-Security, PKI, etc.) and setuid security on Linux. ► Allows Kerberos impersonification for running tasks. ► The system is able to function under stress and recover from critical conditions like temporary network failures, computer failures or excessive server load. ► A native code layer allows a fine grained control of each computing task and its running processes. ► Mainframe Integration.

9 © Copyright 2008 Avanade Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Avanade name and logo are registered trademarks in the US and other countries. What’s next? ► One of the most successful projects in Avanade Italy has been a replatforming of the Italian Social Security from mainframe to.NET technologies. ► (see Gartner report G published 28 March 2007). ► MPS asked us to leverage the tools and the experience developed in this project to migrate some critical task.  Some must produce weekly result, some must produce results daily.  The tasks are heavy and their workload cannot be easily anticipated.  We must deal effectively with peaks.  We would like the grid to be more dynamic.

10 © Copyright 2008 Avanade Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Avanade name and logo are registered trademarks in the US and other countries. Some other problems ► Tasks often depends on auxiliary software:  How to distribute a grid task?  How to avoid software conflicts?  What if there is a custom software distribution system that introduces additional constraints? ► Software is written so that you cannot run multiple jobs on the same machine ► A temporary or isolated grid to run a critical or dangerous elaboration. ► A “provisional” experimental grid for prototypical development or test purposes.

11 © Copyright 2007 Avanade Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Avanade name and logo are registered trademarks in the US and other countries. Why virtualization matters ► Virtualization lower costs of grids maintainance and administration –Application virtualization –Loosen dependencies software dependencies –Computing hosts virtualization –Add dynamism to the Grid

12 © Copyright 2007 Avanade Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Avanade name and logo are registered trademarks in the US and other countries. Application virtualization ► ThinApp to virtualize software that is likely to cause conflicts. ► Successfully virtualized.Net and Java runtimes, Fujitsu COBOL. ► A grid job now comes as a bundle containing both the software performing the required task and its dependencies.

13 © Copyright 2007 Avanade Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Avanade name and logo are registered trademarks in the US and other countries. Host Virtualization ► Set of complete AGA Computing Node VMs with different setups –Available packages and package versions –Different Operating Systems and versions ► Management tool set –Easy clone of available virtual machines –Patch management of master virtual machines ► Task execution on Virtualized Computing Nodes –1. Pilot AGA Task wake up the required VM on the physical machine –2. Job execution AGA Task gets allocated on the VM machine –3. Each VM is reverted to initial status

14 Task execution on Virtualized Computing Nodes © Copyright 2007 Avanade Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Avanade name and logo are registered trademarks in the US and other countries. Computing Node VM Pilot Task 1 Computing Node VM2 (OS 2) Computing Node User Task 2 VM Pilot Task 2 HARDWARE Operating System VM1 (OS 1) Computing Node User Task 1 Scheduler (1) (2) (3) (4)

15 © Copyright 2007 Avanade Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Avanade name and logo are registered trademarks in the US and other countries. Virtualization Benefits ► One set of physical machines can change behavior and serve multiple Tasks –Different Operating Systems –Different packages versions ► Freedom of choice –Select the best Operating System for each Task –Availability on demand

16 © Copyright 2007 Avanade Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Avanade name and logo are registered trademarks in the US and other countries. Achieving Dynamism ► Automatic node migration between grids. ► Virtualization for on-demand creation of nodes.

Avanade Italy as EGEE EBA Activities and goal

18 © Copyright 2007 Avanade Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Avanade name and logo are registered trademarks in the US and other countries. Activities as EGEE EBA ► Implement a compatibility layer for gLite –Use gLite CNs as part of AGA installations ► Setup and run a gLite site –Let some Avanade CPUs be part of gLite environment –Manage an AGA site as part of gLite ► Partecipate to EGEE events –Share Avanade experiences and results –Sponsor the Grid adoption in enterprises

19 EGEE EBA activity plan © Copyright 2007 Avanade Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Avanade name and logo are registered trademarks in the US and other countries.

20 © Copyright 2007 Avanade Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Avanade name and logo are registered trademarks in the US and other countries. Questions? ► For any further information –Luca AGA Architect –Raffaele Sgherri AGA Technical Lead, EGEE EBA primary contact –Roberto Cappuccio Director of Florence office