All about Grid and Cloud Computing: Discover the limits

Cloud Computing is a hype topic, most of you know that. Still there is a lot of interesting stuff going on during the past months and weeks. As one of the chairs of the OCCI (http://www.occi-wg.org) working group I had the great opportunity to present the status and some cloud related work during the Cloud Computing and its Applications conference. I was invited by Ian Foster to present the following slides:

What it comes done to is the following: During OGF27 (http://www.ogf.org/OGF27) we stated to present one of the first standardized Cloud interfaces. We are almost there and soon the specification will be out in the public comments phase of the OGF editor pipeline. More important than having one standard is to have the standards collaborate while each focus on a different aspect. For example the Cloud Data Management Interface driven by SNIA (http://www.snia.org). Now we need some more efforts like demos demonstrating interoperable and portable cloud solutions.

If you wanna know what is going on for OCCI right now: We had a lot of blog posts, mails, etc going on...

BTW the OCCI sessions during OGF27 itself went pretty well and both OCCI and myself have been in the closing remarks from Craig Lee:

Here is the talk I gave at GridKa School 2009 in Karlsruhe. Recordings will follow later – so stay tuned. The slides itself might not be to easy to read because they are designed for presentation not for Offline usage.

A transcript can be found here: http://85.114.139.198/nohuddleoffense/?p=369

It have been some busy weeks. But great things have happen over the past weeks. The OCCI working group which tries to deliver one of the first standards in the cloud community is moving along very well. We have almost finished our first document describing the use cases and requirements for a Cloud API. This API should be capable of deploying, managing and monitoring virtual workloads (like virtual machines) in a Cloud. The draft can be found on our website: http://www.occi-wg.org. BTW there is a small one-pager describing OCCI. The draft of the specification can also be found on the OCCI website.

Next to that the cloud community is engaging to work together on cloud standards. The wiki on http://cloud-standards.org shows this. There is a nice overview (which might need some refinement) demonstrating where which standard might apply (I took if from the Wiki so it might be outdated).

Overall it seems that the work from SNIA, DMTF and OGF is coming together pretty nicely. For the last days I have been working on presentations and papers to present the work done in OCCI and RESERVOIR. For example a paper forcloudcomp 09 describing howto use OCCI to get RESERVOIR and the SLA@SOI project interoperate. Also upcoming are talks about RESERVOIR, the Cloud in general and OCCI at GridKa school, Sun HPC workshop and other smaller events. Also a poster about the Cloud and the Sun Grid Engine, Service Domain Manager and RESERVOIR is on its way. So great times to be in the clouds...

During the Cloud Summit hosted by OMG a new website was launched: cloud-standards.org. Goal of this website is the collaboration, coordination and communication of standards for Cloud computing and Cloud Storage.

OCCI has also been presented by on this summit. A press release is also available here.

This is probably the last blog entry which comes live from OGF26. OGF 26 has been great with interesting talks and group meetings. As said OGF wants to take a leadership role in manging the collaborations about Cloud standards. 

The security talks have been interesting as well as sessions about Green IT, SAGA (A Simple API for Grid Applications) and JSDL (Job Submission Description Language). next to that there was a lot of talk about Cloud computing. And thanks to OCCI OGF has a great chance to get some great stuff going on. So stay tuned :-)

Here are some last impressions from OGF:

The Friday Center...

 

Lunch break

 

Prior to the OCCI group meeting

 

Some paper work :-)

 

We are already in the second day of the OGF meeting. Nevertheless the first day has been interesting and full of information. This time not so many attendees are here in Chapel Hill. Which makes this meeting more a working meeting than a collaboration meeting like last OGF.

Still I got some great feedback about the work done in OCCI. And it somehow comes to my mind that it can be indeed a big thing to happen. I'll be giving a presentation and introduction of OCCI tomorrow in our working group meeting. Other presenters will also show their works and thoughts on Clouds - so stay tuned! The slides will be available.

A great session yesterday was hosted by Craig Lee, himself President of OGF, about the strategic position of OGF. He talked a lot about OGF relation towards Clouds and that OGF has a great standpoint with OCCI. But there is a need for collaboration with other Standard efforts like those from SNIA and DMTF. Therefor OGF will trigger this and work on collaboration. Next to that a OGF representative will be available at the main Cloud summits and conference to present this view.

Next to that here are some impressions from OGF. Watch closely to the Jelly Beans I got here during coffee break :-)

 Craig Lee present some slides at the opening session.

Nice slides about Clouds and Grids.

Great diet!

Today is the first day of the Open Grid Forum meeting here in Chapel Hill, NC. And during the the opening session the President of the Open Grid Forum (OGF) Craig Lee and the VP of Standards Chris Smith both stated the OCCI working group meeting as a high-light.

Currently it looks like the OCCI will be the first group to have a implementational ready API! And with this background and the collaborations to other groups like DMTF, SNIA and other standardization bodies it looks like OCCI is becoming a great thing! And for me fun to work on :-)

OCCI has currently a great momentum! And with over 130 subscribed persons on the mailing-list there is a lively and active discussion. Contributions come from individuals, large companies and end-users of the Cloud. Even some of the persons on the list have their own Wikipedia page.

If you want to join feel free to visit: http://www.occi-wg.org

The Open Grid Forum meets next week in Chapel Hill, NC. And currently two session are scheduled for the Open Cloud Computing Interface working group OCCI (http://www.occi-wg.org):

Thursday, May 28 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm OCCI - Group session

Thursday, May 28 3:30pm - 5:00 pm OCCI - API discussion

There will be dial-in lines if possible.

So please join and collaborate on the OCCI efforts. If everything works out fine we will be presenting a first draft API in these sessions. One of the first Standards in Clouds without a vendor-locking!

Yesterday DMTF announced the Cloud Incubator. Today OGF announces the launch of OCCI. It is a great week for Cloud Standards!

The DMTF announce the incubator for Cloud Computing. See the complete information here. The charter can be found here. Sun is one of the parties in this group.

This is interesting indeed. The DMTF has the following time line in mind for their efforts:

The Cloud incubator is expected to complete within 1 year from approval of the charter by the board.

OCCI has a similar approach and tries to deliver in the same time frame. Hope to see some work overlap and collaboration!

Update: Mark also has a nice entry about it.

The OCCI working group is currently heavily discussing stuff on the mailing-list. We are trying to create an API for 'Infrastructure as a Service' based Clouds. So please come join and help out. Many others already have and some interesting work is going on!

Finally after some time now the Open Cloud Computing Interface working group became official. We will focus on the creation of an API for remote management of 'Infrastructure as a Service' based clouds. 

The latest charter can be found here: http://forge.ogf.org/sf/projects/occi-wg. That is also the link to our working space in the internet. The official webpage is: http://www.occi-wg.org.

So feel free to join, hop on the project and get involved in the creation of one of the first standards in Cloud Computing.

The OGF homepage released an wrapup of the last event. Seems to be that the Cloud Interface API BoF session I co-chaired was a highlight. Just like the session "from Grid to Clouds" where I presented RESERVOIR. Afterall a great OGF event. The complete wrapup is here.

Me, myself and I at the stage answering questions at OGF 25 (Cloud interface API BoF session):