Cloud Standardization: Unified Cloud Interface (UCI)
Today I submitted my first email to the XMPP standards list. I thought I'd share my post with the readers of my blog.
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A few months ago a number of us came together to create "The Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum". The purpose of this group is to discuss the creation of a common cloud computing interface. The group is made up of a some of the largest cloud related vendors and startups who all share the goal of cloud interoperability as well reducing cross cloud complexity.
I'd like to take a moment to explain my cloud interoperability ideas. After various conversations, our concept is starting to take shape and is based on what I'm called the "unified cloud interface" (aka cloud broker). The cloud broker will serve as a common interface for the interaction with remote platforms, systems, networks, data, identity, applications and services. A common set of cloud definitions will enable vendors to exchange management information between remote cloud providers.
The unified cloud interface (UCI) or cloud broker will be composed of a specification and a schema. The schema provides the actual model descriptions, while the specification defines the details for integration with other management models. UCI will be implemented as an extension to the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) specifically as a XMPP Extension Protocol or XEP.
The unified cloud model will address both Platform as a service offerings such as Google App Engine, Azure and Force.com as well as infrastructure cloud platforms such as Amazon EC2. Ultimately this model will enable a decentralized yet extensible hybrid cloud computing environment with a focus on secure global asynchronous communication.
Once we are in general agreement on the draft proposal, it will be submitted for approval by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for inclusion as a XMPP Extension and presented at the IEEE International Workshop on Cloud Computing (Cloud 2009) being held in May 18-21, 2009, in Shanghai, China.
My draft is based on a combination of working being done in conjunction to XMPP, CIM, Xam and several other standardization efforts.
Comments welcome.
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A few months ago a number of us came together to create "The Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum". The purpose of this group is to discuss the creation of a common cloud computing interface. The group is made up of a some of the largest cloud related vendors and startups who all share the goal of cloud interoperability as well reducing cross cloud complexity.
I'd like to take a moment to explain my cloud interoperability ideas. After various conversations, our concept is starting to take shape and is based on what I'm called the "unified cloud interface" (aka cloud broker). The cloud broker will serve as a common interface for the interaction with remote platforms, systems, networks, data, identity, applications and services. A common set of cloud definitions will enable vendors to exchange management information between remote cloud providers.
The unified cloud interface (UCI) or cloud broker will be composed of a specification and a schema. The schema provides the actual model descriptions, while the specification defines the details for integration with other management models. UCI will be implemented as an extension to the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) specifically as a XMPP Extension Protocol or XEP.
The unified cloud model will address both Platform as a service offerings such as Google App Engine, Azure and Force.com as well as infrastructure cloud platforms such as Amazon EC2. Ultimately this model will enable a decentralized yet extensible hybrid cloud computing environment with a focus on secure global asynchronous communication.
Once we are in general agreement on the draft proposal, it will be submitted for approval by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for inclusion as a XMPP Extension and presented at the IEEE International Workshop on Cloud Computing (Cloud 2009) being held in May 18-21, 2009, in Shanghai, China.
My draft is based on a combination of working being done in conjunction to XMPP, CIM, Xam and several other standardization efforts.
Comments welcome.
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Labels: cim, cloudbursting, interoperability, standards, xmpp
posted by enomaly
at
1:19 PM
4 Comments :
Link to draft?
Hi Ruv,
Good call - this is something that many people are talking around but not many people are doing much about. As more clouds emerge the need for API, management and access functionality to be less complex grows. I personally do not see much scope for "standardised interop" in the short term but would like to see more portability, more open and commonly used frameworks, and more open and commonly used tools.
On the portability front, as you know we at CohesiveFT offer Elastic Server which enables cross cloud portability based on a standard bill of materials. We are extending this with uniform management - each Elastic Server is bundled with an "Elastic Manager" - and more recently with cross-cloud security with VPN-Cubed.
It is interesting that you mention XMPP. What functions do you see XMPP providing? You are probably aware of Vertebra from Ezra Zygmuntowicz at EngineYard. Vertebra uses XMPP for intra-cloud management. Is this a requirement you see being fulfilled in a common way across clouds?
As you may or may not be aware, I work on AMQP which is a new messaging standard that complements XMPP by adding routing, delivery and fidelity. I would seriously consider this for any common cloud toolkit.
Here is an introduction to this from the RabbitMQ team: http://google-ukdev.blogspot.com/2008/09/rabbitmq-tech-talk-at-google-london.html
Recently the SoundCloud guys went public with their use of RabbitMQ AMQP for cloud, at the Amazon Web Services event in London: http://www.slideshare.net/ericw/soundcloud-presentation-aws-startup-event-london-presentation (see slide 75 onwards for cloud architecture..). Another user of this technology is EngineYard with their Nanite framework for scaling Merb backends in an "elastic" way -- http://brainspl.at/articles/2008/10/11/merbcamp-keynote-and-introducing-nanite
I think it should be clear from all these presentations that messaging - whichever standards are used to implement it - is just extremely useful here. Many functional requirements are met by messaging. XMPP is a powerful tool for internet scale federation and addressing, for example.
So my question to you is - which do you see being provided by XMPP and which by other internet protcols such as AMQP and HTTP?
Cheers,
alexis
That Google group is closed to non-members. Shouldn't this be a transparent process?
@doug,
anyone can signup for the CCIP google group. I've made it members only because google groups tends to attract a fair bit of spam. No secondary agenda.
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