How to Deploy the AMP Stack in a Virtualized Environment

"Deploying the AMP Stack in Virtualized Environments - Taking a Step Towards Cloud Computing (login or registration required) is a Sun BluePrints paper by Thierry Manfe of Sun ISV Engineering that explains how to deploy the AMP (Apache, MySQL and PHP) stack in a virtualized environment, describing the virtualization features built into the Solaris Operating System (Solaris OS).

The paper includes discussion of best practices such as using the Solaris ZFS file system to reduce virtual server deployment times to half a minute, and using Project Crossbow technology to set up a virtual network that manages traffic for the multiple AMP stacks that run on the physical system. Finally, the SaaS approach is extended to a complete set of servers to turn the solution into a computing cloud for the AMP stack.

The paper's table of contents covers these major aspects of the subject:

Creating the first virtual server

Carving up the virtual server image
Allocating hardware resources
Installing and booting the virtual server
Provisioning the AMP stack on the virtual server
Setting up the network

Provisioning the second virtual server

Leveraging the Solaris ZFS File System

Using Solaris ZFS clones to speed virtual server installation
Using Solaris ZFS to set a storage quota

Final Tuning: optimizing virtual server boot time

Moving to the cloud

Solaris Containers, Solaris ZFS, Project Crossbow, and iSCSI are the technological building blocks for efficiently implementing the AMP stack as a SaaS on a cloud computing platform, Manfe points out. Indeed, these Sun technologies bring intelligent resource allocation and failover capabilities to traditional network and cloud deployments.

These components, which are available in either the Solaris 10 OS or the Sun Optimized Web Stack for Solaris OS, are designed to work together, reinforcing the value of deploying and hosting Web-based applications on Solaris platforms, the paper notes. In addition, several Sun systems, including Sun SPARC Enterprise X4540 servers and Sun Storage 7410 Unified Storage Systems, support Solaris ZFS and are a good fit for cloud computing environments, according to the author.

The paper goes on to explain that the architecture it describes allows several AMP stacks to run on a single physical server just as if each stack had a dedicated physical system at its disposal. Namespace conflicts and hardware resource allocation are addressed by creating virtual servers on the physical server. The fine-grained control of hardware resources provided can be used as the foundation of a service-level agreement (SLA) between the AMP stack provider and users. This SLA is not limited to storage capacity, but also covers the amount of memory, CPU power, and network bandwidth dedicated to each stack, and therefore to each use, the author contends.

The paper points out that, when it comes to provisioning software in a virtualized environment, it is important to determine which hardware resources are available and how they are to be shared between the different virtual runtime environments deployed. For purposes of discussion, virtualization means that many AMP stacks and virtualized runtime environments (virtual servers) run on a single physical system.

The resources to be allocated range from memory and CPU to disk space and Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. While exploring all possible scenarios is beyond the scope of this document, the author notes, the example presented does describe a general multiprocessor system with approximately 32 GB of memory, four internal disks, and a single network interface card (NIC) that has broad applicability.

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