Broadpeak’s Take on the Virtualization Journey?and Cloud Transformation

Introduction?

As a software provider, Broadpeak relies on some specific infrastructure and hardware components in order to achieve the performance expected in the streaming industry. Video?streaming?services must provide?high?performance,?low?latency,?and an outstanding quality of experience (QoE)?for the final customer.?

The initial?architecture,?based on?bare-metal?software,?still?remains a?valid option?in the industry.?On-premises infrastructure?is also an option. For all the ISPs,?the?network?is still a?managed?service with its set of metrics and capacity.?

The evolution?is happening in?two steps:?

• Step?1:?Virtualization,?where the applications?are moved from COTS?hardware?to a farm?of dedicated resources,?and?the virtualized environment?is?driven by a hypervisor.?From?an architecture point of?view,?dealing with?virtual machines in?a?private cloud (owned by the operator) or on a public cloud (hosted by an external cloud provider)?proposes the same level of modularity and savings at the operational level.?
• Step?2:?Containerization?is the last step of the current?software?transformation of the monolithic applications?into?microservices?or at least modules that?have their own lifecycle, redundancy,?and?scalability.??

The?cloud?offers several key benefits?for our industry:?

• New ways to consume infrastructure?
• New ways to deliver solutions
• New ways to provide solutions, including managed services and SaaS offerings

Architecture should be based on use cases?and workloads to be run on the cloud?and maturity of the customer. Not all the applications?fit best with a?cloud deployment,?and Broadpeak?can help customers make?the best choice.?

Specific use cases and workloads?are?more?appropriate?for?a?cloud?deployment?based on?infrastructure?metrics and?specific?KPIs?related to streaming industry QoE.?

Not all?of?the?video?streaming?use cases?have adopted?cloud.?Different customer sectors might be?best?addressed using different consumption?models?based on cloud capacities.?

The?Shift to Cloud-Based IT?

Virtualized?private and?public cloud deployments?are quite?similar?at the application layer but at the infrastructure layer?there are structural differences that could?lead to a specific choice?mainly?based on costs?and?reliability.?

Virtualization over?private?cloud?offers?all the advantages of bare-metal solutions, along with?certain?disadvantages:?

• Infrastructure control.?When an organization owns the hardware it has total control over where those components live, how they run,?and who can access them.??
• Costs.?Long-term costs for on-premises infrastructure?can?be?seen as?lower for applications with predictable usage patterns. Once organizations buy the hardware, the only ongoing costs are?power and maintenance.??
• Security.?With on-premises infrastructure, security is under the IT team’s complete control.?
• Efficiency.?On-premises systems can present advantages in performance,?as all the resources seem to be under control.

But,?bare–metal?deployment?also has?some specific drawbacks that should be taken into account:?

• Reliability.?A company’s infrastructure is only as reliable as its maintenance.??
• Scalability.?A fixed set of on-premises servers represents fixed resource capacity. When an organization needs more resources, its only option is to buy more servers.??
• Costs. When the demand of resources?at a time increases, then?the?organization purchases more servers,?with the risk that?additional capacity?may be?underutilized.??
• Maintenance.?The organization?is?responsible for?its?own on-premises hardware, and maintenance equirements never go away.??
• Skills.?On-premises infrastructure requires traditional IT skills, including hardware and software systems administration, networking, database management and security.??

Every project and use case?is?unique?but?some infrastructure?patterns?can?be?reused between each solution.?Customers can leverage?Broadpeak’s?expertise to?define the most?effective infrastructure service to?deploy, based on their?own?technical, economical, and operational constraints.?

Next Step:?Containerization?is?the last stage of the transformation,?as it brings scalability and elasticity?on top?of the?private?cloud based on?the?CaaS model.?

Figure 1.?Software transformation

At Broadpeak we see this?transformation?happening?based on?nine?pillars?defining?an ideal?system. ?

Figure 2.?Requirements of an ideal system

Based on?the?expected benefits and how important they are?in meeting technical or financial goals,?different choices can be made relative to the target architecture and the deployment environment (i.e.,?public or private cloud, VM, or containers).

Benefits of Virtualization and Containerization?

Many content delivery vendors are deploying software solutions in their private clouds to increase flexibility and agility. With cloud technologies, operators can?deliver new services and applications with greater speed and efficiency.?There is also a surplus of additional benefits from deploying virtual machines and adopting a containerized approach to video delivery, described in more detail below.?

• Cost savings:?Reduced capex and opex is a primary advantage of virtualization and containerization. Transitioning to virtual machines, operators only need to maintain and manage a single IT infrastructure. They have a farm of identical servers at negotiated prices. With containerization, operators have access to compute resources, no matter what hardware they are using. Capex is reduced since there is no upfront investment in hardware, and operators can pay as they grow.?Automated elementary processes are handled by the framework components.?
• Scalability:?Virtualization offers a set of physical resources as a cluster of disposable virtual machines. Adding new virtual machines in the system to increase capacity allows operators to easily scale up. Containerization takes scalability to the next level?by providing built-in vertical and horizontal scalability for independent modules or microservices.?
• Robustness:?Virtual machines are deployed in isolation and can be moved between physical hosts to ensure high robustness. For containerized applications and services, a control plane monitors the state of every pod and worker node, offering built-in redundancy processes.??
• High performance:?Performance is critical for video delivery. Containers can be booted up in seconds and guarantee a predictable performance, thanks to their isolated design.??
• Easy upgrades:?Migrations and updates are easy with containerized deployments.?Containers enable fast elementary upgrades and simple roll-back, if needed.??
• Simplified operation:?Virtualization supports mutualized procedures for batch deployment, streamlining video delivery operations. A key advantage of containers is that they are a lightweight technology that is easy to manipulate. Operators can use container technology to package and deploy applications, and the granularity of the packages allows for continuous delivery and seamless integration with third-party solutions.?
• Security:?Virtual machines and containers are both secure. Virtual machines offer dedicated storage and isolation, ensuring information from one application cannot be freely accessed by another application. Containers provide role-based access control, enforced isolation policies, and a patch management pipeline to maintain high security.?

A?shift to?public?cloud?infrastructure is?often a possibility but it?requires?analyzing?a few potential issues:?

• Lack of control over reliability.?Handing over control to a cloud provider also means relinquishing control over reliability. Cloud providers boast impressive uptime, but services occasionally go down.
• Complexity.?Cloud providers frequently expand their service portfolios.??
• Efficiency.?Application infrastructure that isn’t designed for the cloud may not perform optimally.?This is also the purpose of adequate transformation.??
• Lock-in.?The more a company uses cloud-based infrastructure from a?specific?provider, the greater the risk of vendor lock-in.??
• Cost management.?If organizations aren’t careful, they might inadvertently?use more cloud services than planned.??

Regarding cost management aspects,?the cloud infrastructure introduces?new ways of consuming resources?via?IaaS,?CaaS,?PaaS?and?SaaS?business models,?combined?with a?mode of consumption?based on demand.?

Figure 3.?An overview of cloud-based business models?

• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS):?It provides only?the nominal?infrastructure (virtual machine,?software-defined?network,?storage attached). End-users?have to configure and manage?the?platform and environment, as well as?deploy?applications on it.?
• Container as a Service (CaaS):?This model is?a form of container-based virtualization in which?the?container engines, orchestration,?and the underlying compute resources are delivered to users as a service from a cloud provider.?Google Container Engine(GKE), AWS (ECS), Azure (ACS) and Pivotal (PKS)?are some examples of CaaS.?
• Platform as a Service (PaaS):?This option?provides a platform?that?allows?end-users?to develop, run, and manage applications without the complexity of building and maintaining the infrastructure.?
• Software as a Service (SaaS):?SaaS?is sometimes called “on-demand software.”?It is typically accessed by users?through?a thin client via a web browser. In SaaS everything can be managed by vendors: applications, runtime, data,?middleware, OSes, virtualization, servers, storage and networking.?End-users have to use it.?
• Function as a Service (FaaS):?FaaS?provides a platform?for?customers to develop, run, and manage application functionalities?on?without the complexity of building and maintaining the infrastructure.?AWS (Lamda), Google Cloud Function?are some examples of FaaS.?

The Pragmatic?Transformation?and Cloud-Ready Portfolio?

To optimize the usage of the infrastructure,?Broadpeak has?decided to follow a pragmatic approach in?how we?address?this?transformation.??

Our solutions?are?based on the various products?in?our portfolio. In order to deliver?cloud-ready systems,?this pragmatic transformation?has?been positioned?on two steps. The first one?consists?of?packaging the software?that used to be deployed on bare metal as?a virtual machine or a container?with adequate resource allocation. This?allows?the customer?to profit from the?operational?benefits,?including the?possibility of accessing?a set of sizing?different from the bare-metal approach in order to fit in the cloud scheme.?

The second step of our strategy?involves?defining?a?module?split inside?each?product. The module?definition?always?corresponds to a scalability need,?which?means that:?

• the modules?that require?scalability are isolated into one module (it could be a VM a PoD or a microservice depending?on?the environment)?
• the modules that are in an A/S mode can be grouped together in order to ease the transformation and facilitate any deployment?

Broadpeak’s?main concept today?is to deploy a partial microservices containerization?or modularization?approach for video delivery that does not require re-architecting software solutions already working?efficiently. This approach offers full redundancy, along with increased operational efficiency, elasticity, and ease of transformation for video delivery now and in the future.?

One?Solution: Hybrid Cloud Deployment?

A hybrid cloud is a cloud computing environment that?can?use a mix of on-premises,?private cloud,?and third-party?public cloud?services depending on where the workload fits?the best. This involves a connection from an on-premises data center to a public cloud,?including edge devices or other clouds.?

At Broadpeak,?in order to?optimize the resource consumption and the different models,?we align the?hybridization?with?data?or?user?plane?and?the?control plane?hosting.?

Figure 4. Hybrid deployments?

The benefits of a hybrid deployment include:?

• Flexibility.?Companies work with various types of data in disparate environments and adjust their infrastructure.??
• Cost management.?With a private cloud, organizations own and operate the data center infrastructure, which requires significant capital expenses?and fixed costs. Alternatively, public cloud resources and services are accounted as variable and operational expenses. Hybrid cloud users can choose to run workloads in whichever environment is more cost-effective.?
• Agility and scalability.?Hybrid cloud offers more resource options via a public cloud provider vs. an organization’s physical data center. This makes it easier to provision, deploy,?and scale resources to meet demand spikes.??
• Resiliency and interoperability.?A business can run workloads redundantly in both private and public environments. Components of one workload can also run in both environments and interoperate.?There is also an opportunity to support a disaster recovery scenario.?

Hybrid cloud networking?

A?strong network connection?is critical to a successful hybrid cloud strategy. Typically,?this involves a dedicated networking service for additional?security.??

Conclusion?

Video delivery is evolving. As operators transition away from using traditional hardware infrastructure in favor of?cloud-based?virtual machines or containers, they need to be pragmatic about how to exploit these new frameworks.?

As a?software?company,?Broadpeak?is?cloud-ready?and?multi-cloud-ready.?Broadpeak is addressing?the different levels of the?software transformation and delivering?solutions?on multiple different environments, including?application,?virtual?machine,?and?container.?

Based on this experience?Broadpeak?is well-equipped to?address various technological fields of the infrastructure?and?advise customers?of?the best approach,?taking into account all of the various parameters?(i.e.,?costs, security)?and analysis.?This contributes toward making Broadpeak a?leading partner for?major actors?in?the video streaming?industry.?

Written by Régis Malgras, Broadpeak’s Cloud Solution Product Manager.

Originally published on December 8, 2021, at https://broadpeak.tv/blog/virtualization-cloud/