openstack-manuals/doc/arch-design/multi_site/section_user_requirements_multi_site.xml

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  xml:id="user-requirements-multi-site">
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    <title>User requirements</title>
    <para>A multi-site architecture is complex and has its own risks
        and considerations, therefore it is important to make sure
        when contemplating the design such an architecture that it
        meets the user and business requirements.</para>
    <para>Many jurisdictions have legislative and regulatory
        requirements governing the storage and management of data in
        cloud environments. Common areas of regulation include:</para>
    <itemizedlist>
        <listitem>
            <para>Data retention policies ensuring storage of
                persistent data and records management to meet data
                archival requirements.</para>
        </listitem>
        <listitem>
            <para>Data ownership policies governing the possession and
                responsibility for data.</para>
        </listitem>
        <listitem>
            <para>Data sovereignty policies governing the storage of
                data in foreign countries or otherwise separate
                jurisdictions.</para>
        </listitem>
        <listitem>
            <para>Data compliance policies governing types of
                information that needs to reside in certain locations
                due to regular issues and, more importantly, cannot
                reside in other locations for the same reason.</para>
        </listitem>
    </itemizedlist>
    <para>Examples of such legal frameworks include the data
        protection framework of the European Union (<link
        xlink:href="http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection">http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection</link>)
        and the requirements of the Financial Industry Regulatory
        Authority (<link
        xlink:href="http://www.finra.org/Industry/Regulation/FINRARules">http://www.finra.org/Industry/Regulation/FINRARules</link>)
        in the United States. Consult a local regulatory body for more
        information.</para>
    <section xml:id="workload-characteristics">
      <title>Workload characteristics</title>
    <para>The expected workload is a critical requirement that needs
        to be captured to guide decision-making. An understanding of
        the workloads in the context of the desired multi-site
        environment and use case is important. Another way of thinking
        about a workload is to think of it as the way the systems are
        used. A workload could be a single application or a suite of
        applications that work together. It could also be a duplicate
        set of applications that need to run in multiple cloud
        environments. Often in a multi-site deployment the same
        workload will need to work identically in more than one
        physical location.</para>
    <para>This multi-site scenario likely includes one or more of the
        other scenarios in this book with the additional requirement
        of having the workloads in two or more locations. The
        following are some possible scenarios:</para>
    <para>For many use cases the proximity of the user to their
        workloads has a direct influence on the performance of the
        application and therefore should be taken into consideration
        in the design. Certain applications require zero to minimal
        latency that can only be achieved by deploying the cloud in
        multiple locations. These locations could be in different data
        centers, cities, countries or geographical regions, depending
        on the user requirement and location of the users.</para></section>
    <section xml:id="consistency-images-templates-across-sites">
        <title>Consistency of images and templates across different
        sites</title>
    <para>It is essential that the deployment of instances is
        consistent across the different sites. This needs to be built
        into the infrastructure. If the OpenStack Object Storage is used as
        a back end for the Image Service, it is possible to create repositories of
        consistent images across multiple sites. Having central
        endpoints with multiple storage nodes will allow for
        consistent centralized storage for each and every site.</para>
    <para>Not using a centralized object store will increase
        operational overhead so that a consistent image library can be
        maintained. This could include development of a replication
        mechanism to handle the transport of images and the changes to
        the images across multiple sites.</para></section>
    <section xml:id="high-availability-multi-site"><title>High availability</title>
    <para>If high availability is a requirement to provide continuous
        infrastructure operations, a basic requirement of high
        availability should be defined.</para>
    <para>The OpenStack management components need to have a basic and
        minimal level of redundancy. The simplest example is the loss
        of any single site has no significant impact on the
        availability of the OpenStack services of the entire
        infrastructure.</para>
    <para>The <link
        xlink:href="http://docs.openstack.org/high-availability-guide/content/"><citetitle>OpenStack
        High Availability Guide</citetitle></link>
        contains more information on how to provide redundancy for the
        OpenStack components.</para>
    <para>Multiple network links should be deployed between sites to
        provide redundancy for all components. This includes storage
        replication, which should be isolated to a dedicated network
        or VLAN with the ability to assign QoS to control the
        replication traffic or provide priority for this traffic. Note
        that if the data store is highly changeable, the network
        requirements could have a significant effect on the
        operational cost of maintaining the sites.</para>
    <para>The ability to maintain object availability in both sites
        has significant implications on the object storage design and
        implementation. It will also have a significant impact on the
        WAN network design between the sites.</para>
    <para>Connecting more than two sites increases the challenges and
        adds more complexity to the design considerations. Multi-site
        implementations require extra planning to address the
        additional topology complexity used for internal and external
        connectivity. Some options include full mesh topology, hub
        spoke, spine leaf, or 3d Torus.</para>
    <para>Not all the applications running in a cloud are cloud-aware.
        If that is the case, there should be clear measures and
        expectations to define what the infrastructure can support
        and, more importantly, what it cannot. An example would be
        shared storage between sites. It is possible, however such a
        solution is not native to OpenStack and requires a third-party
        hardware vendor to fulfill such a requirement. Another example
        can be seen in applications that are able to consume resources
        in object storage directly. These applications need to be
        cloud aware to make good use of an OpenStack Object
        Store.</para></section>
    <section xml:id="application-readiness"><title>Application readiness</title>
    <para>Some applications are tolerant of the lack of synchronized
        object storage, while others may need those objects to be
        replicated and available across regions. Understanding of how
        the cloud implementation impacts new and existing applications
        is important for risk mitigation and the overall success of a
        cloud project. Applications may have to be written to expect
        an infrastructure with little to no redundancy. Existing
        applications not developed with the cloud in mind may need to
        be rewritten.</para></section>
    <section xml:id="cost-multi-site"><title>Cost</title>
    <para>The requirement of having more than one site has a cost
        attached to it. The greater the number of sites, the greater
        the cost and complexity. Costs can be broken down into the
        following categories:</para>
    <itemizedlist>
        <listitem>
            <para>Compute resources</para>
        </listitem>
        <listitem>
            <para>Networking resources</para>
        </listitem>
        <listitem>
            <para>Replication</para>
        </listitem>
        <listitem>
            <para>Storage</para>
        </listitem>
        <listitem>
            <para>Management</para>
        </listitem>
        <listitem>
            <para>Operational costs</para>
        </listitem>
    </itemizedlist></section>
    <section xml:id="site-loss-and-recovery">
      <title>Site loss and recovery</title>
    <para>Outages can cause loss of partial or full functionality of a
        site. Strategies should be implemented to understand and plan
        for recovery scenarios.</para>
    <itemizedlist>
        <listitem>
            <para>The deployed applications need to continue to
                function and, more importantly, consideration should
                be taken of the impact on the performance and
                reliability of the application when a site is
                unavailable.</para>
        </listitem>
        <listitem>
            <para>It is important to understand what will happen to the
                replication of objects and data between the sites when
                a site goes down. If this causes queues to start
                building up, consider how long these queues can
                safely exist until something explodes.</para>
        </listitem>
        <listitem>
            <para>Ensure determination of the method for resuming
                proper operations of a site when it comes back online
                after a disaster. We recommend you architect the
                recovery to avoid race conditions.</para>
        </listitem>
    </itemizedlist></section>
    <section xml:id="compliance-and-geo-location-multi-site">
      <title>Compliance and geo-location</title>
    <para>An organization could have certain legal obligations and
        regulatory compliance measures which could require certain
        workloads or data to not be located in certain regions.</para></section>
    <section xml:id="auditing-multi-site">
      <title>Auditing</title>
    <para>A well thought-out auditing strategy is important in order
        to be able to quickly track down issues. Keeping track of
        changes made to security groups and tenant changes can be
        useful in rolling back the changes if they affect production.
        For example, if all security group rules for a tenant
        disappeared, the ability to quickly track down the issue would
        be important for operational and legal reasons.</para></section>
    <section xml:id="separation-of-duties">
      <title>Separation of duties</title>
    <para>A common requirement is to define different roles for the
        different cloud administration functions. An example would be
        a requirement to segregate the duties and permissions by
        site.</para></section>
    <section xml:id="authentication-between-sites">
        <title>Authentication between sites</title>
    <para>Ideally it is best to have a single authentication domain
        and not need a separate implementation for each and every
        site. This will, of course, require an authentication
        mechanism that is highly available and distributed to ensure
        continuous operation. Authentication server locality is also
        something that might be needed as well and should be planned
        for.</para></section>
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