openstack-manuals/doc/arch-design/multi_site/section_operational_considerations_multi_site.xml
Andreas Jaeger 815a6e5741 Arch Design: Edits on multi-site
Especially:
Follow conventions better, improve markup, capitalization.

Change-Id: I5687257e2554daa3e9058daab057eff974dc8366
2014-08-04 21:07:23 +02:00

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<section xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook"
xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
version="5.0"
xml:id="operational-considerations-multi-site">
<?dbhtml stop-chunking?>
<title>Operational considerations</title>
<para>Deployment of a multi-site OpenStack cloud using regions
requires that the service catalog contains per-region entries
for each service deployed other than the Identity service
itself. There is limited support amongst currently available
off-the-shelf OpenStack deployment tools for defining multiple
regions in this fashion.</para>
<para>Deployers must be aware of this and provide the appropriate
customization of the service catalog for their site either
manually or via customization of the deployment tools in
use.</para>
<para>Note that, as of the Icehouse release, documentation for
implementing this feature is in progress. See this bug for
more information:
<link
xlink:href="https://bugs.launchpad.net/openstack-manuals/+bug/1340509">https://bugs.launchpad.net/openstack-manuals/+bug/1340509</link>.
</para>
<section xml:id="licensing">
<title>Licensing</title>
<para>Multi-site OpenStack deployments present additional
licensing considerations over and above regular OpenStack
clouds, particularly where site licenses are in use to provide
cost efficient access to software licenses. The licensing for
host operating systems, guest operating systems, OpenStack
distributions (if applicable), software-defined infrastructure
including network controllers and storage systems, and even
individual applications need to be evaluated in light of the
multi-site nature of the cloud.</para>
<para>Topics to consider include:</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>The specific definition of what constitutes a site
in the relevant licenses, as the term does not
necessarily denote a geographic or otherwise
physically isolated location in the traditional
sense.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Differentiations between "hot" (active) and "cold"
(inactive) sites where significant savings may be made
in situations where one site is a cold standby for
disaster recovery purposes only.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Certain locations might require local vendors to
provide support and services for each site provides
challenges, but will vary on the licensing agreement
in place.</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist></section>
<section xml:id="logging-and-monitoring-multi-site">
<title>Logging and monitoring</title>
<para>Logging and monitoring does not significantly differ for a
multi-site OpenStack cloud. The same well known tools
described in the <link
xlink:href="http://docs.openstack.org/openstack-ops/content/logging_monitoring.html">Logging
and monitoring chapter</link> of the <citetitle>Operations
Guide</citetitle> remain applicable. Logging and monitoring
can be provided both on a per-site basis and in a common
centralized location.</para>
<para>When attempting to deploy logging and monitoring facilities
to a centralized location, care must be taken with regards to
the load placed on the inter-site networking links.</para></section>
<section xml:id="upgrades-multi-site">
<title>Upgrades</title>
<para>In multi-site OpenStack clouds deployed using regions each
site is, effectively, an independent OpenStack installation
which is linked to the others by using centralized services
such as Identity which are shared between sites. At a high
level the recommended order of operations to upgrade an
individual OpenStack environment is (see the <link
xlink:href="http://docs.openstack.org/openstack-ops/content/ops_upgrades-general-steps.html">Upgrades
chapter</link> of the <citetitle>Operations Guide</citetitle>
for details):</para>
<orderedlist>
<listitem>
<para>Upgrade the OpenStack Identity service
(keystone).</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Upgrade the OpenStack Image Service (glance).</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Upgrade OpenStack Compute (nova), including
networking components.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Upgrade OpenStack Block Storage (cinder).</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Upgrade the OpenStack dashboard (horizon).</para>
</listitem>
</orderedlist>
<para>The process for upgrading a multi-site environment is not
significantly different:</para>
<orderedlist>
<listitem>
<para>Upgrade the shared OpenStack Identity service
(keystone) deployment.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Upgrade the OpenStack Image Service (glance) at each
site.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Upgrade OpenStack Compute (nova), including
networking components, at each site.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Upgrade OpenStack Block Storage (cinder) at each
site.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Upgrade the OpenStack dashboard (horizon), at each
site or in the single central location if it is
shared.</para>
</listitem>
</orderedlist>
<para>Note that, as of the OpenStack Icehouse release, compute
upgrades within each site can also be performed in a rolling
fashion. Compute controller services (API, Scheduler, and
Conductor) can be upgraded prior to upgrading of individual
compute nodes. This maximizes the ability of operations staff
to keep a site operational for users of compute services while
performing an upgrade.</para></section>
<section xml:id="quota-management-multi-site">
<title>Quota management</title>
<para>To prevent system capacities from being exhausted without
notification, OpenStack provides operators with the ability to
define quotas. Quotas are used to set operational limits and
are currently enforced at the tenant (or project) level rather
than at the user level.</para>
<para>Quotas are defined on a per-region basis. Operators may wish
to define identical quotas for tenants in each region of the
cloud to provide a consistent experience, or even create a
process for synchronizing allocated quotas across regions. It
is important to note that only the operational limits imposed
by the quotas will be aligned consumption of quotas by users
will not be reflected between regions.</para>
<para>For example, given a cloud with two regions, if the operator
grants a user a quota of 25 instances in each region then that
user may launch a total of 50 instances spread across both
regions. They may not, however, launch more than 25 instances
in any single region.</para>
<para>For more information on managing quotas refer to the
<link
xlink:href="http://docs.openstack.org/openstack-ops/content/projects_users.html">Managing
projects and users chapter</link> of the <citetitle>OpenStack
Operators Guide</citetitle>.</para>
</section>
<section xml:id="policy-management-multi-site">
<title>Policy management</title>
<para>OpenStack provides a default set of Role Based Access
Control (RBAC) policies, defined in a <filename>policy.json</filename> file, for
each service. Operators edit these files to customize the
policies for their OpenStack installation. If the application
of consistent RBAC policies across sites is considered a
requirement, then it is necessary to ensure proper
synchronization of the <filename>policy.json</filename> files to all
installations.</para>
<para>This must be done using normal system administration tools
such as rsync as no functionality for synchronizing policies
across regions is currently provided within OpenStack.</para></section>
<section xml:id="documentation-multi-site">
<title>Documentation</title>
<para>Users must be able to leverage cloud infrastructure and
provision new resources in the environment. It is important
that user documentation is accessible by users of the cloud
infrastructure to ensure they are given sufficient information
to help them leverage the cloud. As an example, by default
OpenStack will schedule instances on a compute node
automatically. However, when multiple regions are available,
it is left to the end user to decide in which region to
schedule the new instance. The dashboard will present the user with
the first region in your configuration. The API and CLI tools
will not execute commands unless a valid region is specified.
It is therefore important to provide documentation to your
users describing the region layout as well as calling out that
quotas are region-specific. If a user reaches his or her quota
in one region, OpenStack will not automatically build new
instances in another. Documenting specific examples will help
users understand how to operate the cloud, thereby reducing
calls and tickets filed with the help desk.</para></section>
</section>