Open Infrastructure

• Table of contents
• Introduction
• General Requirements:
• Technology stack
• Technical requirements
• Components
  • User API (ucloud-api)
  • User web interface (ucloud-web)
  • Scheduler (ucloud-scheduler)
  • Host manager (ucloud-host)
  • VM manager (ucloud-vm)
  • Network manager (ucloud-net)
  • IPAM (ucloud-ipam)
  • Legacy IP supporter (ucloud-legacy-ip)
  • Firewall (ucloud-firewall)
  • Image store (ucloud-image)
  • Metadata (ucloud-meta)
  • Payment service (ucloud-pay)
  • CLI (ucloud-cli)
  • Authentication
• Milestones
  • v1 First MVP : 2019-07-02
  • v2 : 2019-07-16
  • v3 : 2019-07-30
  • v4 : 2019-08-12
  • v5: 2019-08-26:
  • Features not mapped to versions

Introduction¶

For proper growth and stability, we need to challenge our setup. We will try to replace opennebula with ucloud and at the same time challenge OpenStack.

This is not only a technical, but also a public project, which Sanghee will write the public story of.

ucloud supports IPv6 first and might only support IPv4 via NAT64 or proxying.

General Requirements:¶

• a fully portable cloud management system that is API based, exposes all internals w/o secret keys
  • supporting console via guacamole
  • users in ldap
  • api authentication in ungleich-otp
  • firewalling in ufirewall (or similar)
• A great team
• To be built in less than 100 days

Technology stack¶

• python3
  • easy to read
• flask
  • easy to understand
• ldap
  • well known
• ungleich-otp
  • for API authentication
• etcd
  • storing VMs, networks, etc.
• nft (Linux), pf (BSD)
• JSON
  • describing the data, easy to handle
• Prometheus
  • For monitoring hosts and VMs
• VXLAN
  • For networks
• Ceph
  • as a datastore

Technical requirements¶

• ucloud should be portable
  • While the primary target is Linux, it should run on FreeBSD/OpenBSD as well
• There should be no single point of failure
  • APIs should be announced via BGP to the routers
  • Switches will then use ECMP to load balance
  • All APIs write to a distributed data store (v1: etcd) -> all data is distributed, too.
• Fast dead host detection
  • Dead hosts should be detected fast, VMs should be rescheduled fast

Components¶

User API (ucloud-api)¶

Entrance point / communication with the user by CLI. Flask based. Allows for the following actions in v1:

• Create VM
• Delete VM
• Create new network
• Attach network to VM
• Detach network from VM
• Delete network

User web interface (ucloud-web)¶

Might be based on original dynamicweb code (https://code.ungleich.ch/ungleich-public/dynamicweb).

Scheduler (ucloud-scheduler)¶

The scheduler knows about hosts, their capacities and their usage. The scheduler decides which VM gets scheduled where. The scheduler is also responsible for rescheduling VMs (f.i. due to another host becoming better for a specific VM).

How it works:

• Has a list of hosts for usage
• Knows about the capacity (installed cores, installed ram) of a host

Host manager (ucloud-host)¶

Manages hosts. If a host crashes, instructs scheduler to restart VMs (host will be selected by scheduler).
If a host is added, the scheduler can use it.

VM manager (ucloud-vm)¶

Starts and stops VMs. Runs on every VM host.
Reacts on information from the scheduler. This component needs to support qemu on Linux and bhyve and co. on OpenBSD/FreeBSD.

How it works:

• watches a specific key in etcd, for instance: /v1/vm/
• if a key is added, check if it is a VM that should be started on THIS host.
  • if yes, start it
• if a key is modified, check if a VM that is on this host, should be stopped

Network manager (ucloud-net)¶

This service will run on every host and watch keys in the prefix /v1/network/

Creates and manages virtual layer 2 networks. Basically does the following:

• Create VXLAN with correct IPv6 multicast address

IPAM (ucloud-ipam)¶

Network address manager. Provides dhcpd/dhcp6d/router advertisements.

Legacy IP supporter (ucloud-legacy-ip)¶

For users who require legacy IP (IPv4), add a service that

• adds a 1:1 NAT64 entry
• adds a protocol based proxy entry
  • http(s)
  • smtp(s)
  • ssh jumphost

Firewall (ucloud-firewall)¶

The VMs should not be able to interfere with other VMs or hosts in a malicious way. The following protective measures need to be implemented:

• prevent dhcpd answers in public networks
• prevent router advertisements in public networks
• prevent VM from using incorrect mac address
• prevent VM from using incorrect ipv6 addresses

Note to Nico: ping reyk for possible involvement

Image store (ucloud-image)¶

Ceph will be used for storing images.

Features:

• Allow uploading of images
• Allow cloning of images (required for starting a VM based on an existing image)
• Allow deleting of images
  • For cloned images after shutting down the VM

How it works for uploading:

• There is a server named image.datacenterlight.ch
• Every user in ldap can login via sftp and upload files
  • The server needs to authenticate against ldap for listing users
  • There needs to be a service to pull ssh keys from users into their home
• There will be a base path for users to store their stuff
  • like /var/www/$USER/
  • reasoning for /var/www: to use nextcloud on top later
• The required image format is qcow2

How it works for using it as an image:

• User uses ucloud-cli image-create --name xyz
• The service picks up the image from /var/www/$USER
• Checks if it is qcow2 -> if not reject
• If qcow2: use qemu-img | rbd import

Metadata (ucloud-meta)¶

Provides access to this to

• public ssh keys
• other data users provide

How it works

• VMs need well known entry point
• Should likely be DNS based
• Might be reachable by http://metadata
  • This excludes https!
  • Maybe network configuration can contain metadata server?
    • dhcp option
    • router advertisement?
  • Maybe by convention: metadata.$domain
    • $domain injected by dhcp/router advertisements

Payment service (ucloud-pay)¶

If a user requests a service and the service is not free, the user will be asked to pay for it. Should support at least

• credit card
• bank transfer

Might also manage existing money / coupon / etc.

CLI (ucloud-cli)¶

All services will be primarily available via API, web is a second class citizien. The CLI might be based on / related to https://code.ungleich.ch/ungleich-public/ungleich-cli.

Authentication¶

time based one time tokens as implemented in ungleich-otp will be used for service authentication: https://code.ungleich.ch/ungleich-public/ungleich-otp

Milestones¶

v1 First MVP : 2019-07-02¶

This version should have the following features:

• create and delete VMs

v2 : 2019-07-16¶

Additionally supports

• network service: so VMs get an IPv6 address
• Cleanups / clarifications from v1

v3 : 2019-07-30¶

Additionally supports

• metadata service (for injecting ssh keys and more)
• Cleanups / clarifications from v2

From v3 on we should be able to setup test VMs for our own usage

v4 : 2019-08-12¶

Productive version. We are able to migrate our own production VMs to ucloud.

v5: 2019-08-26:¶

Customer usable version.

Additionally supports

• Console access via guacamole (ldap, totp, vnc)

Features not mapped to versions¶

• VNC should only be exposed as a unix socket from the VM
  • This is much more secure and requires local access to the socket
  • To access the console as a user, we will ssh into the host that runs the VM and start socat on the host
  • i.e. similar to ssh VMHOST "socat ..." and then access it via guacamole