Using Cloud Standards for Interoperability of Cloud Frameworks
SLA@SOI and RESERVOIR have been actively collaborating together with the aim of investigating and pursuing the integration of their respective technologies as part of the NEXOF Reference Architecture initiative. One of the outputs of this work has been a technical report that details how cloud standards, such as OCCI, can be used to support the interoperability and integration of cloud frameworks such as those presented by RESERVOIR and SLA@SOI.
What we call Cloud computing today has evolved over many years. It had other names before and many technologies are involved in it. Virtualization, utility computing, and grid technologies are among the most representative.
Cloud offerings can be classified according to the resources they offer ‘as a Service’ (XaaS): Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) that allows the allocation of virtual machines and storage capacity; Platform as a Service (PaaS) providing users with remote software platforms to run their services; and Software as a Service (SaaS) where applications are moved to the Internet and accessed through web interfaces.
Cloud frameworks on the other hand can be seen as the software environments in which Cloud services can be deployed. Most of the frameworks have automatic and elastic management solutions included: they control the life cycle, placement and Service Level Agreements (SLAs) of a service.
Different frameworks have arisen in the recent past, including commercial proprietary and open frameworks like those developed in the European Commission funded Framework Programme 7 Projects RESERVOIR and SLA@SOI. They consist of similar modules and layers but have different basic architectures. They can be messaging based or client/server, and have a focus on IaaS or SLA management. The different foci leads to different architectures. SLA@SOI targets SLA-driven management, and monitoring the life-cycle of services such as software and infrastructure services. It can also be applied to human-based services. RESERVOIR concentrates on federated clouds, and focuses on the management, interoperability and optimisation within such topologies.
Despite these differences, however, Cloud frameworks typically include a layer to deploy virtual workloads on infrastructure. Allowing frameworks interoperate also enables the use of each other’s unique abilities and functionalities. For example provisioned services could be moved to the Cloud framework which would best fit their needs and their characteristics.
The need to interoperate helps fuel the demand for standards. Only if the frameworks support certain standardized interfaces, can interoperability be achieved. The accompanying paper tries to show the overall setup and ideas behind two Cloud frameworks and includes the description of an upcoming Cloud standard. An architecture which combines all three aspects is also proposed.
Technical Report: Using Cloud Standards for Interoperability of Cloud Frameworks
Tags: IaaS, infrastructure, integration, interoperability, management, NEXOF, OCCI, paas, RESERVOIR, saas, sla, standards
April 6th, 2010 at 22:31
[...] I originally posted this over on the SLA@SOI blog. The subject of the post, a technical report, is one authored by Thijs Metsch (one of my OCCI co-chairs), Victor Bayon (friend and work colleague) and myself. [...]
April 7th, 2010 at 02:07
[...] Using Cloud Standards for Interoperability of Cloud Frameworks | SLA@SOI (tags: IaaS infrastructure integration interoperability management NEXOF OCCI paas RESERVOIR saas sla standards) [...]