Post on 18-May-2015
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The Future of Cloud Computing at NASA
Karen Petraska
Service Executive, NASA Computer Services Office
Raymond G. O’Brien
CTO for IT, Ames Research CenterApril 20, 2012
From the NASA Strategic Plan:
Goal 6: Share NASA with the public, educators, and students to provide opportunities to participate in our mission, foster innovation and contribute to a strong National economy
• 2009: NASA’s contribution to OpenStack was timely to the introduction of cloud computing to the industry
• 2012: Industry has enthusiastically embraced OpenStack and an increasing number of commercial implementations of OpenStack clouds are now available
• 2012 and Beyond: NASA shifts focus to becoming a wise and informed consumer of commercial cloud services
Past, Present, Future
NASA CIO’s Vision For Cloud Computing
The NASA CIO’s vision for cloud computing at NASA: »To have a good computing environment that addresses
NASA’s computing requirements for all NASA people»Have an easy and seamless way to obtain services,
leveraging economies of scale wherever possible» Innovate how we do security in the cloud; remove as
much burden from the end users as possible»Leverage our buying power and unique requirements to
influence industry where appropriate»Be agile and nimble to embrace and integrate new
technologies that support our mission
Embracing the Technology
The NASA community in general is starting understand the advantages of using the cloud model
NASA is evaluating its application portfolio and experimenting to understand the characteristics of applications that run well in the cloud
NASA is exploring options for and aspects of delivering enterprise cloud services within the NASA environment» Challenges: Governance, Security, Cost Recovery
Success stories in using commercial cloud»JPL BeAMartian and others»NASA Web Environment
NASA’s Computing Environment
NASA requires many types of computing» Business and administrative (highly virtualized today)» Web sites and web applications» Modeling and simulation» Science data processing and analysis» Engineering analysis» Flight command, control, telemetry and flight operations
NASA collaborates with scientists and others all over the world» Universities, corporations, other US Government agencies, foreign space
agencies
Data of interest to NASA resides in many locations depending on the collaborators» Often extremely large data sets» Science data archives of long term scientific interest
Actions to Achieve the Desired Future State
Current activities to support an enterprise cloud service» IaaS focus for now
• Working to understand what platforms will be useful»FedRAMP: A&A for provider controls but what about
consumer controls?»Common Cloud User and Management Interface»Acquisition Strategy»Best approach for user support
• Decision trees for assessing cloud suitability• Managed environments
Things We’ve Learned
What Works Well (and What Doesn’t)
It is easier to birth new applications in the cloud than to migrate legacy applications» Legacy code that has not been ported recently can be very time
consuming to move to cloud, and if it requires out of date or specialized compilers, it may simply not be worth the effort
Applications that are bursty or require many nodes for brief periods of time» Applications that run continuously may not be economical in the cloud
Compute servers that have more than 50% of wall clock time idle Applications that need to be always available but not always running “Embarrassingly parallel” computations (e.g., suitable for Hadoop
processing) work well in the cloud» Applications that require significant inter-processor communication (e.g.
climate models) will be substantially slowed
Economics
The learning curve getting into cloud is steep: developers and systems administrators have to learn new paradigms and work in new ways
Second big investment is moving legacy code into the cloud If the organization has excess capacity in existing data centers and
existing owned computing infrastructure, it may make sense to fully utilize what you already own BEFORE paying for additional capacity in a cloud
Build a business case for each application to decide if a move to cloud is prudent: understand hidden and unanticipated costs. » Costs of getting data into and out of the cloud» Cost of computing cycles» Long term data storage costs» Licenses, IP addresses, etc.
Summary
NASA is embracing cloud computing NASA is working to become a well educated customer of
commercially available cloud services We believe there are aspects of our business that can be
improved through the use of cloud, potentially enabling more work within the same budget
Cloud’s Potential is Becoming More Evident Within NASA
April 12, 2023
2009 2012
Today: Lots of NASA Piloting Activity
Different cloud providers Mission and Enterprise
workloads Private and public cloud
services Becoming an informed
consumer Some already pursuing
steps towards routine use
04/12/23
OpenStack: Creating Competition and Choice
NASA ultimately buys all its on-going services, support, and products
NASA will likely use most major commercial services in the future
Ditto for major private cloud products
As a cloud consumer, NASA wins from competition and choice
04/12/23
NASA’s Continued Community Involvement
NASA is very proud to have been part of the creation of OpenStack
Future participation will shift largely to involvement as a user
Very active Bay Area community makes this easy for Ames
Will strive to keep the original Nebula-based contributor authority active
04/12/23
Climbing up the Stack within NASA
Lots of focus on IaaS layer right now within NASA, but…
Nebula testing feedback showed the high value certain groups place on what equates to platform services
Increasing popularity of SaaS with employees requires guidance and governance
04/12/23
Leveraging OpenStack’s Success for Future NASA Policy Revision
Commercial Tech Transfer is a high priority for NASA
OpenStack is a shining example
Current NASA policy is being reviewed for possible revision to allow more NASA involvement in community SW development products
04/12/23
Product Positioning for Future NASA Use
Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP)
FedRAMP will be Key to Future Authorized NASA Cloud Use of Commercial Clouds
Cloud features that facilitate or address NIST 800-53 control implementation will be highly valued
04/12/23
NASA’s OpenStack List for Santa
Easy to install distributions Many commercial service
providers Lots of value-add tool and
support providers Lots of priced enterprise-class
customer support options Tight alignment with
FedRAMP and NIST security requirements
Niche features enabling HPC cloud
Continued rapid feature development
04/12/23
And Finally…
A much deserved thank you from NASA to:» The Nebula project team and
all its sponsors and supporters
» Rackspace Hosting
» The entire OpenStack community
Together you have created something truly special that will benefit the industry and all consumers of cloud
Congratulations!
04/12/23