Download ppt - Cameron Seay School of Technology North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University

North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University

Explore. Discover. Become.

Inventing the Future of Eastern North Carolina:Building a Flexible, Heterogeneous

Cloud Infrastructure Using Enterprise Systems Technology

Cameron SeaySchool of Technology

North Carolina Agricultural and TechnicalState University

North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University www.ncat.edu | Explore. Discover. Become.

2


3

A little geography….


4

Needed:

A robust, flexible, scalable, reliable, secure infrastructure to be used by multiple entities meeting multiple needs- especially folks who do not have a lot of money

“One of the promises of cloud computing is that it will allow diverse users to access the same infrastructure to do substantively different things.” C. Seay, et al.


5


6

Definitions (somewhat subjective)

Cloud computing: transparent user access to computing resources

High Performance Computing: Dedicated computing resources for processor-intensive applications

Enterprise Computing: An organizational perspective of computing resources

For my purposes, “cloud computing” is inter-organizational Enterprise Computing

Enterprise computing is heterogeneous, but its foundation is often a mainframe (which today translates to IBM’s System z architecture)


7

MAINFRAME????? Do people still use those?

Uhhh….. Yeah, because they are:

Infinitely scalable

Virtually bulletproof when it comes to security

Can process tens of thousands of transactions a second

Extremely reliable

Capable of massive virtualization of Linux


IBM z9 – IRC Bldg

IBM blades, HP, Dell, Sun

ServersIRC Bldg

Mac, Dell, HP, thin-clients

School of Technology

The NC A & T Heterogeneous Cloud Infrastructure


Cabarrus Co: Cox Mill HSDurham Co: Hillside HSPitt Co: Farmville Cent HSForsyth: Atkins Tech HSGuilford: Northern, Southern, Smith, Dudley, WeaverWash Co: Tech Center-RoperWayne Co: Wayne Comm ColWilson Co: Wilson Comm Col

Current Participants


POKMarist

GROA & T

SYRDave Dischave

TONJZhen Gao, Min Wang

COLLonnie Emmard

ARKDavid Douglas

DALPaul

Newton

ARK – University of Ark.

COL – IToLogy, Columbia, SC

DAL- IBM Innovation Ctr, Dallas, TX

GRO – NC A & T, Greensboro, NC

POK- Marist College, Poughkeepsie, NY

SYR- Syracuse U. Syracuse, NY

TONJ- School of SW Eng, Tonji U, Shanghai, PRC

A potentially global footprint.

CANMaury Woods

CAN – University of Canberra, Canberra, Australia


Projects for the A & T Cloud:

VCL- our #1 priority right now is VCLWe have sanboxes in the School of Technology up and running

Larry Burton has created some excellent scripts that fully automate the installation procedure

CIO Barbara Ellis has purchased IBM blade technology to house a production instance for A & T; tentative rollout for the pilot is fall 2012 (said with fingers crossed…)

Draft MOUs with Wayne Community and Wilson Community Colleges to run VCL pilots; these pilots will begin as soon as the Admins have a meeting of the minds.We’ll get the high schools on board after the A & T pilot is underway.


12

Projects for the A & T Cloud:

Dynamic Linux Virtualization on the mainframe via xCAT

Banner migration to System z (didn’t know Banner ran on a mainframe, did you?)

“Open” Linux access to high schools (CIPA compliant, of course)

Artificial intelligence, M/M fraud detection, business analytics, business R & D

Specific research in physics, chemistry, health management, and education


Example:

In attempting to get students to participate in the “Master the Mainframe” contest in the fall, some schools in the same county system were able to access the required port 1023 and some weren’t. This led to students at school X having a rich experience that school Y did not have- in the same school system…

Challenges…..

Our fundamental challenges are administrative and not technical

We know how to make “smart” networks; what we are not so good at is resolving their conflicting policies


The Problem: conflicting spheres of influence.

IBMrules…

County X

Schools rules…

NC A & T rules…

Community

Colleges rules…

HBCU Community

rules…


15

Another Challenge: Creating and maintaining a skills base

Cloud infrastructures require a broad and deep skill set:

Linux, networks, security, SW development, in our case mainframe technology, and much more

At A & T we are addressing this directly:

A full set of Linux courses through senior admin skills

A recently approved 4-course mainframe track including z/VM (for Linux virtualization)


In Conclusion

NC A & T has created a heterogeneous cloud infrastructure capable of serving the needs of diverse users.

We have worked diligently to build the administrative channels required to make this project a reality.

We are producing the workforce needed to support these types of infrastructures.

We are increasing our portfolio of projects to demonstrate the robustness of our cloud.


17

THANKS!!!