Infostructure Directions: Technology and Architecture

1
Infostructure Directions Technology and
Architecture

• "If you don't know where you're going, any road
  will take you there.
• TEG -NDC SysMgt Retreat- 23 Jul 01

2
Rejected "Road" Themes

• The Road Ahead -Bill Gates
• Every day is a Winding Road -Sheryl Crow
• The Long and Winding Road -Beatles
• What a long strange trip it's been -Grateful Dead
• Embryionic Journey -Jefferson Airplane
• Endless Road -Hoyt Axton
• Carefree Highway -Gordon Lightfoot

3
Closer...

• Whats Goin On -Marvin Gayeor
• What's Going On -Santana

4
Bingo!

• Without A Klugh -Michael Powers

5
Topics

• Architectural foundations
• Architectural evolution/trends
• Technology trends
• Project priorities
• UFOs and their prevention

6
System Architecture Goals

• Reliable
• Effective
• Efficient
• Secure
• Manageable

7
Architectural Context Outside-In Design

• Desktop
• HW
• OS
• Local apps
• Network services
• Backroom
• Front-end servers (e.g. compute, web)
• Back-end servers (e.g. file, transaction, DBMS)
• Support servers (e.g. DNS, Kerberos)

8
Baseline Apps

• Personal productivity (e.g. MS Office)
• Email
• Web
• Calendar
• Streaming/On-demand A/V
• Collaboration/conferencing

9
Application Requirements
Fedex
VR
HD videoconf
HD-VoD
VideoConf
VoD
MM-IM
BW
SAN
Web
NFS/SMB
DBMS
Text-IM
Calendar
Email
Latency
10
Architectural Choices(Wheres the network?What
to cache?)
Display
Client App
Server App
FileSys/ DBMS
Disk
Cache
Cache
Cache
Cache
Cache
11
Architectural Evolution

• Text terminal (timesharing)
• PC as terminal
• Client-Server
• X terminal (GUI timesharing)
• Web
• p2p
• asp/.net

12
Scaling Strategies

• Its about managing complexity
• Optimum number of boxes?
• Divide and conquer (airplanes and fault zones)
• Reducing contention for shared resources
• Design for diagnosis

13
Architecture Issues

• Whither Peer-to-Peer?
• Commodity vs. data center disk
• Backup isolating the weak link
• Thin clients X-ng vs. mini-PC vs. handheld
• Debugability
• Simplicity
• e.g. unification of servers/services,
  accounts/Ids
• Security/disaster recovery
• PKI, server sanctuaries, SPoF studies, ECI

14
Hardware Trends

• Intel chaos for another year
• (e.g. 845 DDR chipset not until 1Q02)
• AMD coming on strong, but behind on .13 micron
  chips
• Peripheral stagnation - builtin firewire,
  USB 2.0, Device Bay, DVI LCD, HD-DVD
• PCI successor Infiniband??
• Disk drives SCSI, IDE, S-ATA, or ??
• DVD burners DVDRW, DVD-RW, or DVD-RAM ?
• Handhelds coming on strong
• Thin clients??

15
Appliances/Thin Clients

• Specific use (e.g. Internet radio)
• Yes, but if price low enough
• Web surfing appliance (e.g. eVilla)
• Too expensive/limited compared to g.p. PC
• Thin clients have most merit where reduced
  function is a feature i.e. business

16
Network Trends

• IP/Ethernet continues to win
• 10GigE coming soon
• Multicast, QoS, and IPv6 are hot topics
• Wireless LAN here now, 11b obsolete soon
• Wireless WAN busted business models

17
OS trends

• Win XP advanced features (e.g. IPv6)
• but some troubling trends (activation, smart
  tags)
• Linux solid in the backroom. Desktop?
• Where's Mozilla? StarOffice 6.0? Multimedia
  Apps?
• Mac OS X niche as long as it's PPC only
• BeOS eVilla is their last hope

18
Digital Rights Management

• Hot topic
• Hollywood is in control
• May constrain legitimate use
• Questionable impact on piracy

19
Project Categories/Drivers

• Growth
• Environment changes HW, SW, Middleware
• New service requirements
• Security/robustness/disaster recovery
• Working smarter vs. harder
• Architectural simplification e.g. consolidation
• Improved tools, e.g. canaries, FPTs

20
Priorities

• Reliability
• Function and failure isolation
• Complexity reduction except
• SPoF reduction implies more complexity
• Manageability making it easier to...
• bring up new systems
• do routine mtce
• accts, s/w, disk mgt, backups
• know about problems troubleshoot

21
UFOs and their Prevention

• Divide-and-conquer architecture
• Canaries for advance warning
• Finger-Pointing Tools for problem isolation
• Communication mechanisms
• Capturing user experiences
• Coordinating events
• Coordinating experiments
• Reporting status, new data
• E2E PI

22
SysMgt lessons from TMI

• Busted valve
• Had failed 11 times elsewhere NRC mum
• Jammed phones
• Designers couldnt talk to operators (users)
• Hydrogen bubble scare
• Wrong formula... but where were the sensors?

23
The Zen of Troubleshooting

• one seeing 1000 tellings
• one doing 1000 seeings
• one sniffing 1000 speculations