Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

introduction

Startup intro: Runecast

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I met with Runecast a couple of years ago at VMworld. Actually, I am not sure they already had a name back then, I should probably say I met with the guys who ended up founding Runecast at VMworld. One of them, Stan, is a VCDX and back then he pitched this idea to me around an appliance that would analyze your environment based on a set of KBs. His idea was primarily based on his experience managing and building datacenters. (Not just Stan’s experience, but most of the team are actually former IBM employees) Interesting concept, kind of sounded similar to CloudPhysics to me, although the focus was more on correlation of KB then capacity management etc.

Fast forward to 2017 and I just finished a call with the Runecast team. I had a short conversation at VMworld 2016 and was under the impression that they sold the company or quit. None of this is true. Runecast managed to get a 1.6m euro funding (Czech Republic) and is going full steam ahead. With around 10 people, most being in Czech Republic they are ready to release the next version of Runecast Analyzer, which will be 1.5. So what does this provide?

Well just imagine you manage a bunch of hosts and vCenter (not unlikely when you visit my blog), maybe some shared storage along with it. There are many KB articles, frequent updates of these and many newly published KBs every week. Then there’s also a whole bunch of best practices and of course the vSphere Hardening Guide. As an administrator do you have time to read everything that is published every day? And then when you have read it, do you have time to check your environment if the issue or best practice described applies to your infrastructure? Of course you don’t, and this is where Runecast Analyzer comes in to play.

You download the appliance and provision it in to your environment, next you simply hook vCenter Server in to it and off you go. (As of 1.5 it also supports connecting several vCenter Server instances by the way.) Click analyze now and check the issues called out in the HTML-5 dashboard. As the screenshot below shows, this particular environment has issues identified in the log file that are described in a KB article. There are various other KB articles that may apply, just as an example: a combination of a certain virtual NIC with a specific OS may not be recommended. Also, various potential security issues and best practices are raised if they exist/apply.

When you would click one of these areas you can drill down in to what the issue is and potentially figure out how to mitigate it. In the screenshot below you see the list of KBs that apply to this particular environment, you can open the particular entry (second screenshot below) and then find out to what it applies (objects: VMs, hosts, vCenter etc). If you feel it doesn’t apply to you, or you accept the risk, you can of course “ignore” the issue. When you click ignore a filter will be created which rules out this issue from being called out through the dashboard. The filtering mechanism is pretty smart, and you can easily create your own filters on any level of the virtual infra hierarchy. Yes, it is also possible to delete the filter(s) again when you feel it does apply to your environment.

Besides checking the environment, as mentioned, Runecast can also analyze the logs for you. And I was happy to see that this got added, as it makes it unique compared to other solutions out there. Depending on what you are looking for you have these quick filtering options, and of course there are search strings and you can select a time period in which you would like to search of this particular string

As I said, all of this comes as a virtual appliance, which does not require direct connection to the internet. However, in order to keep the solution relevant you will need to update regularly, they mentioned they release a new data set once every two weeks roughly. It can be updated over the internet (through a proxy if needed), or you can download the ISO and update Runecast Analyzer through that, which could be very useful in secure locations. The appliance works against vSphere 5.x and 6.x (yes including 6.5) and there is a 30 day free trial. (Annual subscription, per socket pricing.) If you like to give it a try, click the banner on the right side, or go to their website: https://www.runecast.biz/. Pretty neat solution, and looking forward seeing what these guys can achieve with the funding they just received.

Startup introduction: Springpath

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Last week I was briefed by Springpath and they launched their company officially yesterday, although they have been around for a long time. Springpath was founded by Mallik Mahalingam and Krishna Yadappanavar. For those who don’t know them, Mallik was responsible for VXLAN (See the IETF draft) and Krishna was one of the folks who was responsible for VMFS. (Together with Satyam who started Pernix Data) I believe it was early 2013 or end of 2012 when Mallik reached out to me and he wanted to validate some of his thinking around the software defined storage space, I agreed to meet up and we discussed the state at that time and where some of the gaps were. Since May 2012 they operated in stealth (under the name Storvisor) and landed a total of 34 million dollars from investors like Sequoia, NEA and Redpoint. Well established VC names indeed, but what did they develop?

Springpath is what most folks would refer to as a Server SAN solution, some may also refer to it as “hyper-converged”. I don’t label them as hyper-converged as Springpath doesn’t sell a hardware solution, they sell software and have a strict hardware compatibility list. The list of server vendors on the HCL seemed to cover the majority of big players out there though, I was told Dell, HP, Cisco and SuperMicro are on the list and that others are being worked on as we speak. This approach offers a bit more flexibility according to Springpath for customers as they can chose their own preferred vendor and leverage the server vendor relationship they already have for discounts but also maintain similar operational processes.

Springpath’s primary focus in the first release is vSphere, which knowing the background of these guys makes a lot of sense, and comes in the shape of a virtual appliance. This virtual appliance is installed on top of the hypervisor and grabs local spindles and flash. With a minimum of three nodes you then can create a shared datastore which is served back to vSphere as an NFS mount. There are of course also plans to support Hyper-V and when they do the appliance will provide SMB capabilities and for KVM it will use NFS. But that is on the roadmap right now, but not too far out according to Mallik. (Note that support for Hyper-V, KVM etc will all be released in a different version. KVM and Docker is in Beta as we speak, if you are interested go to their website and drop them an email!) There is even talk about supporting the Springpath solution to run as a Docker container and providing shared storage for Docker itself. All these different platforms should be able to leverage the same shared data platform according to Springpath, the diagram below shows this architecture.

They demonstrated the configuration / installation of their stack and I must say I was impressed with how simple it was. They showed a simple UI which allowed them to configure the IP details etc, but they also showed how they could simply drop a JSON file in there with all the config details which would then be used to deploy the storage environment. When fully configured the whole environment can be managed from the Web Client, no need for a separate UI or anything like that. All integrated within the Web Client, and for Hyper-V and other platforms they had similar plans… no separate client but all manageable through the familiar interfaces those platforms already offer. [Read more…] about Startup introduction: Springpath

Startup Into: Platform9

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Yesterday a startup came out of stealth which was founded by a couple of former VMware veterans. I happen to know the majority of them, and have had the pleasure to have worked with them on various things in the past. For instance Platform9‘s three of the four co-founders were all heavily involved in vCloud Director, and the fourth co-founder was VMware employee number 27… but that is not where it stops… there is much more talent on-board. But that is not what this blog is about, this blog is about Platform9, the new company that they have formed and the product they are building.

** note, I did not test the product… it is impossible to provide an analysis of what works / does not work and how they play in this space or compete with others, this is based on a conversation and a demo **

Platform9 is as they say themselves:

… the easiest way for enterprises to implement a private cloud, with intelligent, self-service provisioning of workloads onto their computing infrastructure.

  • 100% Cloud Managed: Platform9’s cloud-based model means that there is no complex management software to setup, monitor and upgrade, thus simplifying the operational experience.
  • Single Pane of Glass: Platform9 offers unified management across diverse environments – Docker, KVM and VMware vSphere – across datacenters and geographies.
  • Based on OpenStack: Platform9 customers get the best of OpenStack with 100% API compatibility.

When I met them last month, they gave a demo and showed me what they had implemented so far: Management of KVM based hypervisors using a very easy to use and slick using web-based user interface. Where the whole management solution was running in “the cloud”.

Creating a new “instance” was literally a few clicks, snapshotting / cloning it… same thing, just a couple of clicks. Now what stood out to me during the demo was the use of the word “instance” instead of “virtual machine”. So I asked them why not “virtual machine”, considering they are all VMware veterans that made more sense to me. The explanation was simple: we want to manage multiple layers. We want to manage KVM VMs, vSphere VMs but for instance also Docker containers. That is why we used a different term than we would normally use… and yes that did make sense to me. I also wondered if they would be able to mix different environments and type of instance in their UI, and the answer was yes. Docker containers, KVM VMs, vSphere VMs (etc) will also be seen in the same single pane of glass. I really like the fact that Platform9 did not limit themselves to just vSphere, or just VMs but rather is focusing on the needs of developers and providing what they require.

Similar to CloudPhysics, Platform9 is taking SaaS approach. The major benefit of course being the agility at which new features/functionality can be introduced to the outside world, or tested against a small subset of customers. Same of course applies to bug fixes / updates. No need to do that yourself, Platform9 will take care of that for you. Promising indeed.

Now there is a lot of competition in this space, as also emphasized by  Ben Kepes in his post on Platform9… But to be honest, if I look at one of the examples listed like ServiceMesh, they seem to cater for a completely different market. Platform9 is all about simplicity and managing instances, not so much about creating complex recipes etc. I agree though that there are a lot of vendors playing in this space (and as such competition), or somewhat related space, but that makes it even more interesting to see how Platform9 evolves in my opinion.

For more info, a demo, or a trial:

Platform9 will showcase its product in its booth #324 at VMware’s VMworld Conference, taking place the week of August 25th in San Francisco. The product is currently in beta with general availability planned for later this year. Platform9 currently supports KVM with upcoming support for Docker and VMware vSphere. To register for a free trial, go to: http://www.platform9.com.