2012 RightScale Conference NYC - Jeff Gelb, Director of Technology Strategy, Global Technology Operations, Pearson
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Pearson's operations team has set out to solve the problem many large enterprises have -- how to integrate existing operations while taking advantage of the cloud. Jeff and Anthony from Pearson will tell the story of how they are making any cloud provisioned infrastructure as easy to manage as a physical counterpart through a 1-click integration process that includes their existing asset database, configuration management and monitoring server. They will demonstrate their process live during their presentation. Jeff Gelb is a Director of Technology Strategy at Pearson. His 20+ years in IT have ranged across industries such as telecommunications, finance, education, and publishing, and roles spanning training, technical writing, programming, systems administration and architecture, project specification and management, sales engineering and more. Based in Chapel Hill, NC, he and his family spend their downtime travelling, playing music, cooking, and farming. Anthony Garone manages an Application Administration team at Pearson. He is experienced in IT management, software development, project management, and toolset integrations. When not typing or on a conference call, he is either with his family, gardening, or recording music in Mesa, AZ.
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2012 RightScale Conference NYC - Jeff Gelb, Director of Technology Strategy, Global Technology Operations, Pearson
- 1. Connecting the Cloud Jeff Gelb Director of Technology Strategy Anthony Garone Manager of Application Administration Talk with the Experts. #RightScale
- 2. 2# What are we doing?
- 3. 3# Who is Pearson? • International corporation with 37,000 employees • World leader in Education and Educational Technology. • Pearson North America: • $4 billion revenue • 20+ million users • Hundreds of millions of assessments submitted • Ongoing transformation from publishing company to a learning company. Internet/Web/Online is a substantial portion of N.A. revenues. • Always Learning
- 4. 4# Our Technology Landscape • Multiple North America Data Centers, all CoLo • All customer facing, web delivered, SaaS • Diverse Technologies: • Java, ASP, .NET, PHP, … • Oracle, MS SQL, MySQL • IIS, Tomcat, WebLogic, Apache • Thousands of servers, Petabytes of storage, 1.5 avg. Gb/s • Cyclical peaks – seasonal, weekly, daily • 10+ years of 40% annual growth • Many millions invested to date, more growth coming
- 5. 5# The case (for|against) the Cloud Why cloud? Why Cloud? • Outgrowing our Space • Significant Existing Capacity • Big investments still needed • Recoup investments • Cyclical consumption • Cost and growth controls • Go faster • Regulatory/Legal • Cost accounting • Discourage sprawl • Legacy applications • Existing processes • Legacy applications
- 7. 7# What are we doing? Our goals • Cloud can be connected • At least as easy and integrated as anything else • A test-bed for automation and integration • A showcase for transformation
- 8. 8# What are we doing? Our Objectives: • Push-button deployment • Automated integration into our existing management tools. • Asset management • Monitoring • Configuration • Administration • Software Deployment
- 9. 9# What are we doing? Our Pattern: • Integration Bus model • RightScale brokers the APIs • RightScale gives us the hooks • We own most of the logic • The tools and time invested are not cloud-only
- 10. 10# Why RightScale? • Cross cloud support • Templates • Images • API (almost) • Simple hooks • Loose binding • Easy to shift the integration points
- 11. 11# Tools Tool Function RightScale Cross cloud API Automation hooks Mule* Platform-neutral automation orchestration RunDeck Mass/bulk systems administration Zenoss Monitoring Puppet* Systems Configuration EasyCMDB Configuration/Asset Management
- 12. 12#
- 13. 13# Rough Edges, Limitations, Unknowns • Cloud divergence nuisances • Tool limitations and assumptions • Tools are not always cloudified • Software bugs are out of our control • Ephemeral cloud systems, but tools assume longer lifetimes • Our Puppet coverage is limited • Tools are emerging and changing rapidly • We have a lot of work to do
- 14. 14# Next Steps Technical: • Service bus – real orchestration • Continuous integration and software deployment tools • Cover internal infrastructure and orchestration (Private cloud, VMware, Kickstart) Organizational: • Different groups within our company are interested and are bringing new perspectives and requirements • Continue to transform our operations to live up to the vision • We still don’t know what we don’t know
- 15. 15# Questions, comments? Feel free to get in touch • jeff.gelb@pearson.com • anthony.garone@pearson.com
Editor's Notes
- Josh
- We’re not small. Lots of stuff to manage. Many tools, little out of the box integration.
- Motivations and incentives exist in both directionsEven if we wanted to go all in with Cloud/RightScale, we couldn’t (at least not right now)This speaks to why we took the direction we did – we want to craft a solution that will work in and out of cloud.
- Neat new stuff exists in the cloud, but it is often disconnected from everything else that existsThat doesn’t need to be the case.
- Reducing the transactional cost for all of the steps and actions involved in managing infrastructure. Not concerned (in this case) with the ongoing operating costs.Improves efficiency for executing process – faster, better, reduce people/time constraints.
- RightScale reduces complexity – can userightscripts to trigger responses w/o having to wait or keep track of state.Most of the orchestration happens on our side and applies to any of our infrastructureRightScale made it easy to us to take something that might have been internal only and apply it to cloud, and vice-versa.
- RightScale does not impose or force a single method for how automation is run. We can start with putting responsibilities in a rightscript now, shift it into our bus later or move it into Chef or Puppet, all with minimal to no risk to the applications that we are fielding or the business processes. This is especially important as we are prototyping and actively developing.
- Denote proposed or future tools.In 1 month, went from nothing to “all” of the tools. Scope didn’t change. Working out the way we expected.Easy to draw in other participants w/o requiring them to know cloud or RightScale.In 6 months or a year, we’ll almost certainly have adjusted our tools and approach.Exposed some weaknesses, etc. Forces us to think about what it means for tools to talk to one another, imposes/implies integration rigor.