Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Hello everyone and thank you for joining the fluidOps webinar. Today you will learn about
fluidOps and our SAP cloud enablement solutions powered by eCloudManager.
Founded in 2008 and based in Walldorf, Germany -- right across from SAP's Headquarter -- fluidOps
provides innovative cloud and data management technologies to
automate processes around infrastructure and converged management, enterprise application
clouds and Big Data, add transparency to all aspects of a customer's
business and innovate new services for end-users
and drive corporate objectives. Over the years we received great feedback
and recognition from analysts. Among others, we were named Gartner Cool Vendor and our
solution portfolio was qualified by them as "without any direct competition in the market".
We also got a great positioning from the Experton Group, a German analyst firm. As you can see,
we were placed second only to VMware in the cloud market.
A couple of months ago we also won the Best in Cloud Award for a 'Storage as a Service'
project with PfalzKom, a German service provider. Now let's have a quick look behind the scenes
fluidOps leverages semantic technologies and an in-memory database and uses an innovative
way for managing data. Unlike 99% of IT providers, we do not use
a relational database where you first need to define and create a database schema and
then use the tables and primary keys to exchange information between different tables.
We can integrate data from any data sources and
categorize the data into subject, predicate and object,
enrich it with metadata such as time stamp, context or origin
and save it in the in-memory triple store. This means we basically represent the information
as a graph or a tree which grows further the more information or sources we integrate.
A branch might for example arise when an object is used in a different context as a subject.
Thus, the graph extends itself automatically. The number of graphs is irrelevant for our
solutions. We can correlate information from any data source the customer might have, regardless
of the application or format it is stored in.
As we showed before the core technology is our semantic in Memory technology. Based on
the semantic platform, fluidOps offers two out-of-the-box products -- eCloudManager and
Information Workbench -- which deliver solutions covering a range of areas including converged
IT management, IT transparency and data center intelligence, enterprise application
deployment portal, scalable end user access to Big Data and dynamic semantic publishing.
In addition to that, our customers and partners can also use the platform directly and build
their specific solutions on top of the semantic platform. As you can see, we deliver a rich SDK that enables our
partners to build joint solutions of their portfolio enriched and enhanced by the semantic platform.
To give you some solution examples: the world's
largest Demo Cloud is running on our platform as well as the converged management for several
converged Infrastructure stacks like Vblock, VSPEX, FlexPod, ExpressPod, VShape, etc.
eCloudManager allows to manage all integrated infrastructure resources and with its infrastructure
and application awareness functionalities, its ability to also manage private, public
or hybrid clouds, and its capabilities for scale in, scale out, scale up and scale
down scenarios, customers can achieve a high degree of automation.
This of course allows for real Business Impact Management. Customers can find out what kind
of impact infrastructure issues have or could have on the business, for example which customers
are affected, which SLAs, etc. In the diagram you can see the eCloudManager architecture.
eCloudManager uses so-called providers, where a provider is like a driver or interpreter
between the infrastructure, application or cloud components and our semantic eCloudManager
world. In short, we connect to the management console of the storage, to the management
console of the hypervisor, to the management console of the application and so on. However,
this is sometimes not enough to achieve our 'Landscape as a Service' goal. In eCloudManager,
a landscape is a set of systems which belongs together due to their communication or configuration.
Therefore, eCloudManager takes the most efficient and scalable approach and uses an additional
path to communicate and extract information from the data center resources.
The openness of the platform can be seen by the amount of providers we integrate and through
the fact that, for example, in the case of EMC VNX, we integrate using over seven different
protocols, different languages and APIs in order to leverage all functionalities of the
resource. Thus, we are able to achieve our Landscape as a Service goal to deliver complete,
ready to use, multiple terabyte large SAP landscapes via the push of a button. Because
we want to take advantage of all functionalities of the data center resources and to be able
to implement new operation concepts, we use more than just standard APIs.
Going back to the architecture and provider concept. One example is that we extract
and read data from the SAP CCMS and recognize that the "response time" between the backend
and the frontend is 40 milliseconds. Assuming that the service level was set to 30 milliseconds,
we can now trigger automated actions. We can for example inform the administrator to prioritize
the network; if this does not help, we can continue with storage tiering.
In this case, we would use the technology of the manufacturer, but not the "intelligence"
or trigger of the manufacturer, since most storage vendors only measure and push the
Hotspot I/O, which could be caused by a log file, or a database journal. We can define
what should be tiered up from SATA to FiberChannel or to Flash Disks since we know where a database
logfile is written and where the actual databases are.
If this is still not sufficient, we can perform one last step and do a hypervisor switch namely
V2P. For instance, on a Vblock we can move the application from VMware down to bare metal
on Cisco UCS to achieve the full performance for the application. When the SLAs are back
to normal we can perform P2V back on VMware for the usual operation.
This enables complete scale in, scale out, scale up or scale down scenarios within one
data center but also across geographically distributed data centers or within the cloud.
As we have seen in the architecture diagram, eCloudManager can be used to manage the entire
IT stack. Our Virtual Landscape Management concept ensures
that complete landscapes are functional and reachable at all times, or, when necessary,
can be connected and communicate with other systems as well. This concept works for any
application, from heavy-weight complete SAP landscapes to self-developed software.
Our concept is based on templates which can be rolled out and provisioned, without the
need to adjust or configure anything additional. eCloudManager delivers a multi broker concept
and allows users to consume services with one click. On the left side of the graph we
can see that eCloudManager can provision services in a service provider cloud, in the private
cloud of the customer, or in public clouds, depending on what is needed, required
by regulations and compliance rules, or specified by cost constraints.
Management and IT teams want, however, to be able to define and control what and where
is being deployed and used, and to define what actions users are allowed to take. Reporting,
the use of structured and unstructured information such as contract data, as well as the preparation
of billing data are also part of this. All of this can be seen on the right side of the graph.
Moreover, eCloudManager supports complex distribution
channels. For example, Cloud Service Providers who offer cloud resources and services can
allocate space to their distributors and resellers using eCloudManager. The distributors can
in turn allocate cloud services and resources to service resellers, who can then assign
services to their customers, namely the service end users.
This model can also be implemented within the enterprise, where the centralized Global
IT department makes services available in various countries. These services are then
available for local IT departments in the respective country or region and even certain
Business Units who then offer them to certain departments, namely the end users.
Here we can see how eCloudManager automatically brings together infrastructure and application
awareness, and business related information such as CMDBs, ticketing systems, etc., and
allows for Business Impact Management. Automatic listing of the used licenses in
the data center is possible out-of-the-box without any programming effort, since eCloudManager
already knows what is available on the infrastructure level, correlates this data, and also
uses it for reporting and analyses. Here we can see some uses cases in this area
license management, root cause analysis and error handling, responsibility management,
performance monitoring, capacity planning and more.
Just a quick summary of eCloudManager's capabilities before we go on with a detailed use case around SAP applications.
As you can see, eCloudManager covers a range
of topics in the cloud space including semantic integration, automation, service definition
and consumption, analytics and reporting, security, as well as next generation data
management. Now let's dive a bit deeper into the area
of SAP applications and find out more about how eCloudManager can help customers build
and run private and public SAP clouds. eCloudManager provides full control over the
lifecycle of a customer's SAP enterprise application landscapes through a single, unified, easy-to-use
management console. This includes infrastructure preparation, installation and configuration;
application system and landscape template management; self-service deployment of
SAP application landscapes as Landscape as a Service; remote access to SAP systems;
upgrade and transport support; infrastructure and application monitoring and control; usage
metering for billing; infrastructure and application retirement.
We'll now see some details on how each of these steps is supported with eCloudManager.
eCloudManager can be used to configure, set up and provision VMs and storage resources
in order to provide installation sandboxes to leverage the Virtual Landscape Concept
described before. For this, we leverage fast and lean storage-based cloning as well as
storage-based datastore cloning.
eCloudManager also delivers support for the creation and management of the templates which
are to be used for deployment. This includes the one-time definition of Master Virtual
Landscapes as to network, VM and storage configuration and their distribution across the required
data centers, the definition of specific services and their SLAs and prices as
well as the specification as to which users are allowed to access certain services.
Such templates can either be running and proven systems, custom developed systems or for example
appliances from the SAP Virtual Appliance Factory.
So how does it work once the templates have been set up and made available to end users?
Actually pretty simple: the end user logs into the self-service portal, selects the
SAP landscape he needs, selects his SLAs, clicks deploy, waits a few minutes and then
receives a notification that the landscape is ready and he can log in to the system.
eCloudManager provides a flexible workflow engine which also allows to use hooks and
extend or change certain pre-defined workflows. Such extensions can include trust re-initiation
for Citrix XenApp, Sybase mobile user inject, Active Directory user management, or SID change.
Once provisioned, the SAP systems are easy to access. Using our concept, the customer
requires a one-time installation of the required components -- eCloudManager, Citrix NetScaler,
Citrix Web Interface, Citrix XenApp, and Active Directory --
and can allow end users to log on to their SAP systems using secure, single sign-on.
Here we can see an architecture of how exactly this works. As you can see, leveraging Citrix
Web Interface, eCloudManager allows for on-time authentication for all landscapes and systems.
The user has direct access to the SAP systems, while applications feel and behave like local
applications and can be accessed from the Internet and the Intranet without the need
to install any further software.
eCloudManager also allows for VPN access to SAP Virtual Landscapes. This can for example
be leveraged for mobile access using Sybase Unwired Mobility Platform.
Here we can see how eCloudManager delivers integration for SAP HANA Platform and supports
automated workflows for failover and scale out.
While for end users it is important to be able to consume services on-demand, from an
administrator's perspective it is also important to be able to manage and monitor the SAP applications
delivered, in the context of the entire data center. As we have seen before, eCloudManager
delivers integration of IT and business resources into a unifying semantic database, it
supports the automatic correlation of data, it provides a unified view across the
border of departments, and it allows for exploration, analysis and actions based on
the entire data corpus.
This is achieved using our semantic master data management approach which allows for
the integration of data scattered across various silos -- as we have seen before. This data
can have various formats and domains, can be redundant, can include various IDs for
the same resource, etc. eCloudManager takes care of all of that.
It uses a two phase approach for semantic master data management. An organization (in
this case fluidOps) is represented by two different IDs in two different data sources.
In a first step, eCloudManager aligns this information using a global ontology. An ontology
-- represented in blue -- describes concepts and their context. In a second step, eCloudManager
matches the two identical tax ID numbers from the two datasets and establishes that the
two different company IDs refer to the same organization. The two organizations are merged.
The resulting data graph aggregates the information about the two initial organizations while
storing the details about data provenance. The solution delivers transparency, allows
for improved data quality, enables the reuse of data, allows for the discovery
of redundancies and inconsistencies, and allows to perform ad hoc analysis and queries
and generate dashboards. As we have seen in the introduction, such
data center intelligence and administration dashboards can be easily created on-demand
using eCloudManager, and deliver support for a variety of use cases for data center monitoring.
eCloudManager also delivers advanced SAP -- and non-SAP -- application monitoring and analysis
including everything managed within the SAP systems. Applications supported include but
are not limited to SAP NetWeaver, SAP Sybase Mobility Platform, SAP Afaria,
SAP HANA, SAP MaxDB, Microsoft Active Directory Citrix Access Gateway, Citrix NetScaler and Citrix Web Interface.
Leveraging the eCloudManager policy engine,
admins can also ensure SLA enforcement across the entire data center. For example, applications
affected by errors at the infrastructure level are immediately identified and corrective
actions are taken. Going back to the end user who has provisioned
an SAP landscape, accessed it and used it for his needs. Once he has done so, he of
course also has full control over the landscape, which means he can decide to shut it down,
restart it and power back it on as soon as needs it again.
The user will also be charged for the services he consumes. eCloudManager allows for the
definition of flexible pricing models based on a customizable cost calculation formula
and tracks all actions performed by an end user.
Once the end user is done using the system, he can retire it. eCloudManager will make
sure that all storage, compute and network resources are freed up again and can be used
for other systems. Since we are sometimes asked how we differentiate
to SAP Landscape Virtualization Manager. I would like to give you a short introduction
into our point of view. As you may know, LVM is the successor of ACC. So the initial focus
of LVM was to support the SAP Basis Admins as much as possible. If you take a deeper
look at LVM and eCloudManager you will see that there is not much overlap. Of course,
if you compare only the marketing buzzwords you could get a different impression -- so
make sure you try it out.
We do not feature direct SID changes. We integrate third party vendors (like SAP LVM or others)
to do the SID Change. Also for the database refresh and direct SAP administration we use
third parties since we do not have that natively in our out-of-the-box product. We make sure
that you can deploy and clone complete SAP landscapes without the need to have any post-configuration.
This and many more things that you saw already during this presentation paint a clear picture.
As you can see, both tools can work together to provide an even better solution.
Let's now have a look at how eCloudManager works in practice!
eCloudManager provides an end-to-end view over the data center -- hardware layer, virtualization
layer, application layer, projects and customers. This use case focuses on the information retrieved
from infrastructure and application resources, the connection between various components,
and the relationship to business-level information. Technical data is pre-populated by eCloudManager
infrastructure providers. From here, the user can navigate to the components in the data
center and to central eCloudManager modules, such as the documentation module, license
and application management module, etc. Let's start by taking a look at the storage
systems in the data center. Please note that similar information is available for compute,
network and application resources. Here we can see a list of the storage systems
monitored in the data center: EMC storage systems, NetApp storage systems. Additional
storage systems from other vendors can of course be integrated on-demand.
When we now navigate to the compute infrastructure we see a list of all physical and virtual
compute systems in our data center -- VMware, Hyper-V, Xen, KVM -- or in the public cloud,
for example on Amazon EC2. The Landscapes overview shows a list of all
landscapes in the data center. Let's have a more detailed look at one of them.
On this page we can see all relevant information about this landscape, including events that
affect the landscape regardless of their source, basic information such as CPU and disk
utilization, the responsible person for this landscape, but also a list of all
VMs in this landscape and the applications running on these VMs.
Let's have a look at one of the applications in detail.
This page shows us information about this SAP application, including information retrieved
from the SAP CCMS directly. Among others, we can see the response time of the application,
as mentioned earlier. If the response time exceeds a certain threshold, eCloudManager
will trigger corrective actions. Now let's have a look at the VM page running
this application. On this page we see details about this Virtual
Machine, comparable to the information we saw on the landscape page: CPU and memory
utilization, events, responsible person, applications running as well as attached LUNs.
When we navigate to the page of a LUN attached to this VM and expand the breadcrumb we see
how we can navigate from the compute and application level all the way down to the storage level.
Now let's find the servers with a high load in our data center.
Using eCloudManager we can perform ad-hoc exploration of our data center. By sorting
the physical hosts by their CPU usage, we notice that some of them are using less than
10%. The VMs running here could potentially be migrated and the hosts could be shut down
to save energy. We also notice however that two hosts are
using more than 80% of their CPU. Here, we should also investigate what the source is
and whether certain applications and customers using those applications are affected by this.
Now let's access the eCloudManager self-service administration portal and learn how easy it
is to provide end users with innovative IT as a Service offerings.
Here, the admin can manage the self-service users, keep track of which errors are
experienced and provide solutions, define services for end users, and define who
is allowed to deploy and access which services. The Golden Images overview displays all the
available Golden Images. Golden Images are the master copy of a virtual appliance, and
they can be copied to several compute infrastructures where they become templates. New Golden Images
can easily be created with just a few mouse clicks. Golden Images can be created for infrastructure,
storage or application resources. The Golden Landscapes Overview allows data
center administrators to manage the existing landscapes and to create new ones in just
a few steps. A Golden Landscape is the master copy of a virtual landscape, and can be copied
to several compute infrastructures. In order to create a new Golden Landscape, the data
center administrator simply needs to define a name, a description and to determine the
group of Golden Images which will be deployed as a Virtual Landscape.
For each system, the data center administrator can define zones in which the system is available.
A zone consists of a cluster and a storage volume, and is used to define SLAs in terms
of memory, availability, performance, etc. The resources included in a zone can be either
private or public, thus enabling hybrid cloud scenarios.
The data center administrator can also define the various SLAs and their parameters.
The availability overview informs the data center administrator on the availability of
Golden Images and Golden Landscapes in different environments and zones.
Based on a customizable cost calculation formula defined by the data center administrator,
eCloudManager provides a billing report which tracks the costs incurred by each user. The
metering and billing module can include anything from time of day, to resource type, to resource
location. It allows for the definition of flexible pricing models and for detailed monitoring
of the resources allocated to and consumed by end users.
Now let's have a look at all of this from the end-user perspective. The eCloudManager
Self-Service Portal allows end users to provision their own systems and landscapes and have
full control over them, while the administrator retains a complete overview of the costs incurred.
Please note that eCloudManager supports customized UIs for a known look and feel.
Login as an end-user and Show dashboard overview The dashboard overview shows the landscapes
and single systems the end user has deployed, as well as their actual status. It also displays
the current cost status and the overall cost information over time.
The Golden Images overview displays all the Golden Images the end user has access to.
The Golden Images are ready for immediate deployment and can also be used to extend
an already existing landscape. Let's say that the end user urgently needs
a large SAP landscape for a demo. All he needs to do is to access the Golden Landscapes catalog
and choose the SAP landscape he needs. He can decide on which landscape he wants to
use by expanding the landscape to show the systems that are included.
Select one landscape, click on "Customized Deployment" and open the zone selection on
top, then show the "deploy" button. By reviewing the SLAs of each zone, the user
can select the zone where he would like to have his landscape deployed. Alternatively,
an immediate deployment is also possible with pre-defined configurations from the admin.
The Instances overview shows all active instances and the progress of any active deployments.
Instantiated landscapes will be ready to use in just a few minutes without any post-provisioning
configuration necessary. Once an instance has been created, the end
user has full control over it. He can for example start it up, stop it, restart
it, suspend it, delete it, reconfigure it or extend the landscape.
The Usage overview informs the end user of the costs incurred for each performed action
and gives him an overview of the costs incurred for each system or landscape.
Note that the costs are based on the cost formula defined by the administrator.