- occi-wg - lists.ogf.org

Is AtomPub already the HTTP of cloud computing?
by Sam Johnston 25 May '09

25 May '09

Second post in the three-post series: Is AtomPub already the HTTP of cloud computing?<http://samj.net/2009/05/is-atompub-already-http-of-cloud.html>A couple of weeks ago I asked Is OCCI the HTTP of cloud computing?<http://samj.net/2009/05/is-occi-http-of-cloud-computing.html>I explained the limitations of HTTP in this context, which basically stem from the fact that the payloads it transfers are opaque. That's fine when they're [X]HTML because you can express links between resources within the resources themselves, but what about when they're some other format - like OVF describing a virtual machine as may well be the case for OCCI? If I want to link between a virtual machine and its network(s) and/or storage device(s) then I'm out of luck... I need to either find an existing meta-model or roll my own from scratch. That's where Atom (or more specifically, AtomPub) comes in... in the simplest sense it adds a light, RESTful XML layer to HTTP which you can extend as necessary. It provides for collections (a 'feed' of multiple resources or 'entries' in a single HTTP message) as well as a simple meta-model for linking between resources, categorising them, etc. It also gives some metadata relating to unique identifiers, authors/contributors, caching information, etc., much of which can be derived from HTTP (e.g. URL <-> Atom ID, Last-Modified <-> updated). Although it was designed with syndication in mind, it is a very good fit for creating APIs, as evidenced by its extensive use in: - Google's GData <http://code.google.com/apis/gdata/> - Microsoft's Live Services<http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView.aspx?guid=8c8b2311-96c9-41b9-…> - IBM's Lotus Connections<http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/library/connections-deploy-pt6/> - SalesForce.com's Google Apps Integration<http://www.dehora.net/journal/2008/06/24/salesforcecom-and-google-integrati…> I'd explain in more detail but Mohanaraj Gopala Krishnan has done a great job already in his AtomPub, Beyond Blogs<http://www.slideshare.net/mohangk/atompub-beyond-blogs?type=presentation>presentation. The only question that remains is whether or not this is the best we can do... stay tuned for the answer. The biggest players in cloud computing seem to think so (except Amazon, whose APIs predate Google's and Microsoft's) but maybe there's an even simpler approach that's been sitting right under our noses the whole time.

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Is OCCI the HTTP of Cloud Computing?
by Sam Johnston 25 May '09

25 May '09

Reposting with comments, esp: "*I'm not a XML or JSON expert, but I think this is not the time for the OCCI guys to discuss it, there work is already on top of XML and they should focus it, specially, on its simplicity.*" Is OCCI the HTTP of Cloud Computing?<http://samj.net/2009/05/is-occi-http-of-cloud-computing.html>The Web is built on the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP>, a client-server protocol that simply allows client user agents to retrieve and manipulate resources stored on a server. It follows that a single protocol could prove similarly critical for Cloud Computing<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing>, but what would that protocol look like? The first place to look for the answer is limitations in HTTP itself. For a start the protocol doesn't care about the payload it carries (beyond its Internet media type <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_media_type>, such as text/html), which doesn't bode well for realising the vision<http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Activity.html>of the [ Semantic <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web>] Web<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web>as a "universal medium for the exchange of data". Surely it should be possible to add some structure to that data in the simplest way possible, without having to resort to carrying complex, opaque file formats (as is the case today)? Ideally any such scaffolding added would be as light as possible, providing key attributes common to all objects (such as updated time) as well as basic metadata such as contributors, categories, tags and links to alternative versions. The entire web is built on hyperlinks so it follows that the ability to link between resources would be key, and these links should be flexible such that we can describe relationships in some amount of detail. The protocol would also be capable of carrying opaque payloads (as HTTP does today) and for bonus points transparent ones that the server can seamlessly understand too. Like HTTP this protocol would not impose restrictions on the type of data it could carry but it would be seamlessly (and safely) extensible so as to support everything from contacts to contracts, biographies to books (or entire libraries!). Messages should be able to be serialised for storage and/or queuing as well as signed and/or encrypted to ensure security. Furthermore, despite significant performance improvements introduced in HTTP 1.1 it would need to be able to stream many (possibly millions) of objects as efficiently as possible in a single request too. Already we're asking a lot from something that must be extremely simple and easy to understand. XML It doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out that this "new" protocol is going to be XML based, building on top of HTTP in order to take advantage of the extensive existing infrastructure. Those of us who know even a little about XML will be ready to point out that the "X" in XML means "eXtensible" so we need to be specific as to the schema for this assertion to mean anything. This is where things get interesting. We could of course go down the WS-* route and try to write our own but surely someone else has crossed this bridge before - after all, organising and manipulating objects is one of the primary tasks for computers. Who better to turn to for inspiration than a company whose mission<http://www.google.com/corporate/>it is to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful", Google. They use a single protocol for almost all of their APIs, GData <http://code.google.com/apis/gdata/>, and while people don't bother to look under the hood (no doubt thanks to the myriad client libraries <http://code.google.com/apis/gdata/clientlibs.html> made available under the permissive Apache 2.0 license), when you do you may be surprised at what you find: everything from contacts to calendar items, and pictures to videos is a feed (with some extensions for things like searching<http://code.google.com/apis/gdata/docs/2.0/basics.html#Searching>and caching<http://code.google.com/apis/gdata/docs/2.0/reference.html#ResourceVersioning> ). OCCI Enter the OGF's Open Cloud Computing Interface (OCCI)<http://www.occi-wg.org/>whose (initial) goal it is to provide an extensible interface to Cloud Infrastructure Services (IaaS). To do so it needs to allow clients to enumerate and manipulate an arbitrary number of server side "resources" (from one to many millions) all via a single entry point. These compute, network and storage resources need to be able to be created, retrieved, updated and deleted (CRUD) and links need to be able to be formed between them (e.g. virtual machines linking to storage devices and network interfaces). It is also necessary to manage state (start, stop, restart) and retrieve performance and billing information, among other things. The OCCI working group basically has two options now in order to deliver an implementable draft this month as promised: follow Amazon or follow Google (the whole while keeping an eye on other players including Sun and VMware). Amazon use a simple but sprawling XML based API with a PHP style flat namespace and while there is growing momentum around it, it's not without its problems. Not only do I have my doubts about its scalability outside of a public cloud environment (calls like 'DescribeImages' would certainly choke with anything more than a modest number of objects and we're talking about potentially millions) but there are a raft of intellectual property issues as well: - *Copyrights* (specifically section 3.3 of the Amazon Software License<http://aws.amazon.com/asl/>) prevent the use of Amazon's "open source" clients with anything other than Amazon's own services. - *Patents* pending like #20070156842<http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p…>cover the Amazon Web Services APIs and we know that Amazon have been known to use patents offensively<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click#Barnes_.26_Noble>against competitors. - *Trademarks* like #3346899<http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=77054011>prevent us from even referring to the Amazon APIs by name. While I wish the guys at Eucalyptus <http://open.eucalyptus.com/> and Canonical <http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-292296.html> well and don't have a bad word to say about Amazon Web Services, this is something I would be bearing in mind while actively seeking alternatives, especially as Amazon haven't worked out<http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2009/01/20/Cloud-Interop>whether the interfaces are IP they should protect. Even if these issues were resolved via royalty free licensing it would be very hard as a single vendor to compete with truly open standards (RFC 4287: Atom Syndication Format<http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4287>and RFC 5023: Atom Publishing Protocol <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5023>) which were developed at IETF by the community based on loose consensus and running code. So what does all this have to do with an API for Cloud Infrastructure Services (IaaS)? In order to facilitate future extension my initial designs for OCCI have been as modular as possible. In fact the core protocol is completely generic, describing how to connect to a single entry point, authenticate, search, create, retrieve, update and delete resources, etc. all using existing standards including HTTP, TLS, OAuth and Atom. On top of this are extensions for compute, network and storage resources as well as state control (start, stop, restart), billing, performance, etc. in much the same way as Google have extensions for different data types (e.g. contacts vs YouTube movies). Simply by standardising at this level OCCI may well become the HTTP of Cloud Computing. 10 comments: bb <http://b.b3k.us/> said... Sam, I'm hoping there is more to the various decisions than is outlined in this post. "Everyone is doing it" is illustrative, but not convincing. XML drags along an awful lot of baggage, which has resulted in many folks using lighter-weight formats like JSON. ATOM, in turns, lards still more baggage into the mix, again, without any clear advantage in this application. Finally, OAuth is very much in flux, as the recent security incident makes painfully clear, and, once again, its compelling advantage in this scenario is not covered above. The Sun Cloud API work is extremely solid and goes towards simplicity in almost every choice. Why are you ignoring it? Ben Tuesday, 5 May 2009 4:28:00 AM CEST <http://samj.net/2009/05/is-occi-http-of-cloud-computing.html?showComment=12…> <http://www.blogger.com/delete-comment.g?blogID=6834535&postID=6419411439335…> Sam Johnston <http://www.blogger.com/profile/13816529874906993705> said... G'day Ben, Au contraire, we are paying *very* close attention to the Sun Cloud APIs and originally wanted to draw from them heavily were it not for a disagreement with the OGF powers that be over Creative Commons licensing. Nonetheless we have learnt a lot from them about high level concepts such as having a single entry point and "buttons" for state changes and the like. We are also looking at simple text based APIs like those used at ElasticHosts and GoGrid (and of course Amazon). Sun's decision to use JSON no doubt stems from the fact that the API was previously consumed almost exclusively by the Q-Layer web interface - it is not so clear that it is the best choice when you stray from the web and native JavaScript environments, particularly when you want to (safely) support extensibility... XML allows users to extend the API as necessary in a fashion that can be validated and will not break other extensions. Another reasonably firm requirement is that it be possible/trivial to script the interface for e.g. sysadmin tasks... for this we need a simple text based protocol anyway so we already have to support more than one output format (which is increasingly common today, even if not particularly elegant). Finally, given that technology is only half the battle (the other half being marketing/politics), it's necessary to cater to the needs of enterprise users who are well used to horrors like WS-* and who will find a lightweight XML layer refreshingly simple in comparison to the status quo. More importantly though, enterprise requirements like validation, signing, encryption, etc. are natively supported by XML and not (easily) supported for the alternatives. Oh and we are not at all wedded to OAuth - any HTTP authentication mechanism will do (though it may make sense for us to limit this somewhat for interoperability). For more specific details check out the wiki<http://forge.ogf.org/sf/wiki/do/viewPage/projects.occi-wg/wiki/HomePage>and/or get involved yourself. Sam Tuesday, 5 May 2009 9:33:00 AM CEST <http://samj.net/2009/05/is-occi-http-of-cloud-computing.html?showComment=12…> <http://www.blogger.com/delete-comment.g?blogID=6834535&postID=4300728670229…> bb <http://b.b3k.us/> said... Sam, The onus is on you to justify the additional complexity. Rejecting simpler solutions because they are unfamiliar is dangerous. While JSON might have initially entered the protocol via Q-Layer, the current state of the work is miles from those origins. JSON has similarly moved well beyond its origins as something used by Javascript (see CouchDB for a great example). Finally, it is a simple, text-based system, far simpler than XML, and I have recent, painful experience in working in JSON and XML simultaneously for systems management. It's a no brainer: JSON wins in that space because it is easier to write, easier to read, and a lot harder to make poor, structural decisions using it. Enterprises currently use a lot of XML because that is what vendors like Microsoft foisted on them in the name of "standards". If you adopt all the existing validation and security stack for XML, you are so close to WS-* as to be indistinguishable. This work will fail if all it does is produce "WS-Cloud", and that is very much the path on which you are placing it with these choices. You can do better. Ben Tuesday, 5 May 2009 11:30:00 AM CEST <http://samj.net/2009/05/is-occi-http-of-cloud-computing.html?showComment=12…> <http://www.blogger.com/delete-comment.g?blogID=6834535&postID=7113412609436…> Sam Johnston <http://www.blogger.com/profile/13816529874906993705> said... Ben, Thanks for your ongoing interest in this topic - your opinion is valued (and not just by me) so I would very much like us to be on the same wavelength. I've since been looking at CouchDB which is a very interesting project given one of the design patterns I've been keeping in mind is a database driven controller (that is, OCCI being a direct interface to the database) with triggers firing off e.g. AMQP messages for state changes et al. Erlang is the obvious choice for such infrastructure and it seems like CouchDB has done a lot of the work already. Of course it's well out of scope for the spec itself but it's useful to consider how it might be realised. In terms of the XML vs JSON bikeshed <http://www.bikeshed.com/> (and I say bikeshed because once you have to reach for library, as is the case for both XML and JSON, you may as well use ASN.1 on the wire for all it matters), I have many reasons for preferring XML, not the least of which is the ease at which it can be trivially converted to $PREFERRED_FORMAT using tools and expertise that already exists (the same cannot necessarily be said for the reverse, or between other formats). Very few enterprise developers have JSON exposure, let alone experience, and it's not surprising given that essential features such as schemas <http://www.json.com/json-schema-proposal/> and validation are still in a state of flux. Incidentally one thing I *do* like about YAML (and to a lesser extent, JSON) is the relative ease at which even complex data structures can be represented - this does provide more rope with which to hang oneself though. This brings us to the specifics of the proposal... XML can be [ab]used in so many different ways it's worth pointing out that the proposal uses it in the simplest way possible. Atom giving us just enough structure to link objects together, categorise them and provide metadata (such as owners, etags for caching, etc.) - as Andy observed it's more of a meta-model than anything else and we found that much of what we were trying to do was reinventing the [Atom] wheel. The actual content itself (cpu, memory, etc.) is simple, easily readable, and in all cases so far, flat... as such it's more a question of whether we use angle brackets or curly braces :) So why go for angle brackets (XML) over curly braces (JSON) given most of the action is going on in the latter camp? In addition to the reasons given above, Google. That is, if we essentially rubber stamp GData (a well proven protocol) in the form of OCCI core then it's just a matter of changing (or supporting multiple) namespaces and we may well be able to get Google on board along with a raft of running code. I've already been discussing this with Google's API gurus and product managers this week and while there's no commitment there is some amount of interest. As for WS-Cloud, I assure you this is nothing like it... I wonder when reading the WS-[death]* specs whether they weren't deliberately obfuscated in some cases and even the better ones like WS-Agreement<http://samj.net/2009/05/www.ogf.org/documents/GFD.107.pdf>are [over]complicated, in this case running out to dozens of pages. Sam Wednesday, 6 May 2009 11:49:00 AM CEST <http://samj.net/2009/05/is-occi-http-of-cloud-computing.html?showComment=12…> <http://www.blogger.com/delete-comment.g?blogID=6834535&postID=7503506562813…> William Vambenepe <http://stage.vambenepe.com/> said... Speaking of WS-*, I don't think it's a selfish plug for me to point you towards the post in which I examine how previous efforts (mainly around WS-*) can inform Cloud standards going forward. It is very relevant to what you write here. When I read this paragraph: "Enter the OGF's Open Cloud Computing Interface (OCCI) whose (initial) goal it is to provide an extensible interface to Cloud Infrastructure Services (IaaS). To do so it needs to allow clients to enumerate and manipulate an arbitrary number of server side "resources" (from one to many millions) all via a single entry point. These compute, network and storage resources need to be able to be created, retrieved, updated and deleted (CRUD) and links need to be able to be formed between them (e.g. virtual machines linking to storage devices and network interfaces). It is also necessary to manage state (start, stop, restart) and retrieve performance and billing information, among other things." ... I am a bit worried because you describe the whole field of IT modeling and interoperability as we've tried to capture it for the last decade. So when I see that you plan to "deliver an implementable draft this month" I get a little worried. Anyway, here is the "lessons to learn" post, titled "A post-mortem on the previous IT management revolution": http://stage.vambenepe.com/archives/700Among other things, beware on focusing on protocols rather than models, beware of working without clear use cases and beware of trying to address broad problems rather than constrained problems. BTW, I am not saying that you are doing these things and I haven't looked at the working documents on the OCCI site. These are just thoughts that come to mind from reading this blog entry. Wednesday, 6 May 2009 11:59:00 AM CEST <http://samj.net/2009/05/is-occi-http-of-cloud-computing.html?showComment=12…> <http://www.blogger.com/delete-comment.g?blogID=6834535&postID=8765972353953…> James Broberg <http://www.metacdn.org/> said... Interesting post Sam. As someone spectating the process it seems that there is so much duplicate work going on in cloud standards. Just to name a few of the many ongoing “open” standards efforts: 1. Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum; 2. Open Grid Forum (OGF) Open Cloud Computing Interface Working Group; 3. DMTF Open Cloud Standards Incubator 4. GoGrid API (CC licensed) 5. Sun Cloud API (CC licensed) 6. Amazon Web Services as “de-facto” (i.e. as Euc. and Nimbus have proceeded). Someone more cynical than I could take the next step, creating another standard / working group that sits on top of them all :) Monday, 11 May 2009 4:21:00 PM CEST <http://samj.net/2009/05/is-occi-http-of-cloud-computing.html?showComment=12…> <http://www.blogger.com/delete-comment.g?blogID=6834535&postID=3790762555822…> pcalcada <http://www.cloudviews.org/author/pcalcada/> said... What James has just said is definitely result of the growing interest on Cloud Computing, and is something we all have seen happening on other emerging technologies. It could be a problem only if those who are working on the projects became out of focus, and specially if they became in any kind of collision route :). And that, I think, is something is not happening with the work promoted here. I'm not a XML or JASON expert, but I think this is not the time for the OCCI guys to discuss it, there work is already on top of XML and they should focus it, specially, on its simplicity. Regarding the OAuth security problems, I leave here a reference to an interesting document done by Nat Sakimura about it, and about OpenID CX could be a "perfect" solution: http://www.sakimura.org/en/modules/wordpress/index.php?p=77 Sunday, 17 May 2009 1:17:00 PM CEST <http://samj.net/2009/05/is-occi-http-of-cloud-computing.html?showComment=12…> <http://www.blogger.com/delete-comment.g?blogID=6834535&postID=2803257747027…> Sam Johnston <http://www.blogger.com/profile/13816529874906993705> said... @William: Thanks for the feedback and for taking the time to write your excellent post-mortem <http://stage.vambenepe.com/archives/700>. I'm quite convinced that one of the primary causes for WS-[death]*'s failure was the formation of various groups trying to deal with problems in a vacuum. If you put the blinkers on you're going to end up with a myriad disparate and/or overlapping standards, all of which need to be understood and implemented for the resulting system to succeed. The concern I have now is that by seeking to stick to the [hastily created] charter word for word and ignoring the context of other working groups we could be setting the wheels in motion for an equally catastrophic CC-[death]*, only with different people and the formats du jour. Granted, the [over-]complexity of SOAP et al raised the barriers to entry (some [vendors] would say that's a GoodThing™) but over-simplification can just as easily result in the same outcome. I'd very much like to see us build on work already done (e.g. AtomPub) but if there's a simpler way that doesn't involve rolling a new protocol for each itch that needs scratching then I'm all ears. Watch this space... Sam Sunday, 24 May 2009 12:07:00 PM CEST <http://samj.net/2009/05/is-occi-http-of-cloud-computing.html?showComment=12…> <http://www.blogger.com/delete-comment.g?blogID=6834535&postID=8385478345760…> Sam Johnston <http://www.blogger.com/profile/13816529874906993705> said... @James: There has been some talk about creating a meta-standard group of some sort - what could possibly go wrong? *cough*WS-I*cough* My preference is to forge links between working groups as I have done already with SNIA (the last OCCI call was joint with an SNIA face-to-face meeting). And by links I don't mean worthless MoU style documents, rather real intergeek working relationships. I'd happily do this myself were it not for the cumulative expense/effort of joining the various SSOs, but I will anyway for the stuff I care about (e.g. OCCI) Sam Sunday, 24 May 2009 12:12:00 PM CEST <http://samj.net/2009/05/is-occi-http-of-cloud-computing.html?showComment=12…> <http://www.blogger.com/delete-comment.g?blogID=6834535&postID=5428022229359…> Sam Johnston <http://www.blogger.com/profile/13816529874906993705> said... @Paulo: The XML-xenophobes/JSON-junkies made it perfectly clear in London last week that their position is immutable. I'm busying myself this weekend working out a solution so this unnecessary religious war doesn't jeopardise the whole project. XML is certainly well established and an obvious choice [to me], but the stuff I'm looking at now may be able to dispense with it altogether... watch this space. Looking forward to exploring the identity issues in Portugal this week. Sam Sunday, 24 May 2009 12:40:00 PM CEST <http://samj.net/2009/05/is-occi-http-of-cloud-computing.html?showComment=12…><http://www.blogger.com/delete-comment.g?blogID=6834535&postID=3640945663217…> <http://www.blogger.com/delete-comment.g?blogID=6834535&postID=3640945663217…>

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Events ?
by Gary Mazz 22 May '09

22 May '09

Hi, From the current discussions, there has been no mention of events. Will the occi support events ? What will the model look like ? -gary mazzaferro

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"Approachability" of API
by Sam Johnston 20 May '09

20 May '09

Afternoon all, The reason we want a simple API is that it be approachable. It's easier for people write to SMTP, HTTP, etc. because they can kick the tyres and learn the ropes with telnet: *$ telnet www.google.com 80* > Trying 209.85.227.103... > Connected to www.l.google.com. > Escape character is '^]'. > *GET / HTTP/1.1* > *Host: www.google.com* > > HTTP/1.1 302 Found > Location: http://www.google.fr/ > <snip> > This is good, and a strong motivator for us to make it easy for implementors to provide a text rendering. That said it just dawned on me that with both Microsoft and Google (among others) strategically backing AtomPub, it will be impossible to claim with a straight face to be a cloud developer if you don't know it yourself. IOW, cloud developers will already necessarily have exposure to, and in many cases intimate knowledge of, AtomPub. Regardless of how simple our simple protocol is, everyone's going to be starting from scratch. Yet again oversimplification could well raise the bar... we need to be as simple as possible but no more. Whatever we do we need to make sure the very first step is as low as possible. Sam

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Open Cloud Computing Interface Prague Presentation
by samj＠samj.net 19 May '09

19 May '09

I've shared a document with you called "Open Cloud Computing Interface Prague Presentation": http://docs.google.com/Presentation?id=ddqm27m2_298fsf9mqdg&invite=19887284… It's not an attachment -- it's stored online at Google Docs. To open this document, just click the link above. --- As promised, here is the presentation... you can join it to follow the slides automatically. Sam

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Last minute dail-in details for Cloud Computing Expo (in 5 minutes!)
by Sam Johnston 19 May '09

19 May '09

Afternoon all, I'll shortly be presenting OCCI at the Cloud Computing Expo in Prague and it turns out we may be able to include you by way of a dial-in to the usual conference bridge as well as a Google Docs presentation which I'll share directly. Apologies for the late notice - we didn't have access to the cloud yesterday (at a cloud computing conference no less) and there's no guarantees Skype will work as intended but we'll soon see - anyway I've joined the call already so hope to see some of you soon. So it's from 6:30pm through 7:15pm and there'll be some time for questions at the end. Sam Passcode: Participant: 9032568 Dial in numbers: Country Toll Numbers Freephone/Toll Free Number ARGENTINA 0800-777-0463 AUSTRALIA ADELAIDE: 61-8-8121-4868 1-800-249-288 AUSTRALIA BRISBANE: 61-7-3102-0970 1-800-249-288 AUSTRALIA CANBERRA: 61-2-6100-1970 1-800-249-288 AUSTRALIA MELBOURNE: 61-3-9010-7739 1-800-249-288 AUSTRALIA PERTH: 61-8-9467-5249 1-800-249-288 AUSTRALIA SYDNEY: 61-2-8205-8125 1-800-249-288 AUSTRIA 43-1-92-86-506 0800-005-029 BELGIUM 32-1-150-0314 0800-4-8680 BRAZIL 0800-7610674 CHILE 1230-020-2867 CHINA* 86-400-810-4766 10800-712-1433 10800-120-1433 COLOMBIA 01800-9-156430 CZECH REPUBLIC 420-2-25-98-56-54 800-700-173 DENMARK 45-7014-0280 8088-6132 ESTONIA 800-011-1089 FINLAND Land Line: 106-33-146 0-800-1-10100 FINLAND Mobile: 09-106-33-146 0-800-1-10100 FRANCE LYON: 33-4-26-69-12-81 080-563-9647 FRANCE MARSEILLE: 33-4-86-06-00-81 080-563-9647 FRANCE PARIS: 33-1-70-70-74-20 080-563-9647 GERMANY 49-69-2222-2566 0800-000-3441 GREECE 30-80-1-100-0683 00800-12-6973 HONG KONG 852-2286-5731 800-930-705 HUNGARY 06-800-18013 INDIA 000-800-852-1266 INDONESIA 001-803-011-3787 IRELAND 353-1-247-5253 1800-932-145 ISRAEL 1-80-9214916 ITALY 39-02-3600-3642 800-986-570 JAPAN OSAKA: 81-6-7739-4769 0034-800-400828 JAPAN TOKYO: 81-3-5539-5189 0034-800-400828 LATVIA 8000-3025 LUXEMBOURG 352-27-000-1360 MALAYSIA 1-800-80-2812 MEXICO 001-866-627-0574 NETHERLANDS 31-20-718-8533 0800-020-1392 NEW ZEALAND 64-9-970-4769 0800-449-823 NORWAY 47-21-59-00-59 800-15414 PANAMA 011-001-800-5072129 PERU 0800-53733 PHILIPPINES 63-2-858-3715 POLAND 00-800-1212021 PORTUGAL 8008-14061 RUSSIA 8-10-8002-9683011 SINGAPORE 65-6883-9228 800-120-4662 SLOVAK REPUBLIC 421-2-322-422-21 SOUTH AFRICA 080-09-80416 SOUTH KOREA 82-2-6744-1081 00798-14800-6860 SPAIN 34-91-414-62-98 800-099-810 SWEDEN 46-8-505-78-524 0200-890-106 SWITZERLAND 41-44-580-4389 0800-001-523 TAIWAN 886-2-2795-7377 00801-137-766 THAILAND 001-800-1206-65656 UNITED KINGDOM BIRMINGHAM: 44-121-210-9021 0808-238-6025 UNITED KINGDOM GLASGOW: 44-141-202-3221 0808-238-6025 UNITED KINGDOM LEEDS: 44-113-301-2121 0808-238-6025 UNITED KINGDOM LONDON: 44-20-7075-3246 0808-238-6025 UNITED KINGDOM MANCHESTER: 44-161-601-1421 0808-238-6025 URUGUAY 000-413-598-3415 USA 1-203-418-3122 866-692-3163 VENEZUELA 0800-1-00-3733

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OCCI-wg concall Wednesday May 20, 2009 @ 5pm CET
by Thijs Metsch 19 May '09

19 May '09

Hi guys, We meet again tomorrow for our weekly concall at 5pm CET. For other timezones and dialin details visit: http://forge.ogf.org/sf/go/wiki2128 The agenda is currently set to: 1. OGF preparation 2. first final discussion on formats in the API. Feel free to add more topics at: http://forge.ogf.org/sf/wiki/do/viewPage/projects.occi-wg/wiki/Concall20090… All the best, -Thijs -- Thijs Metsch Tel: +49 (0)941 3075-122 (x60122) http://blogs.sun.com/intheclouds Software Engineer Grid Computing Sun Microsystems GmbH Dr.-Leo-Ritter-Str. 7 mailto:thijs.metsch@sun.com D-93049 Regensburg http://www.sun.com

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Future OCCI extensibility: compute, storage, network, service, application
by Sam Johnston 18 May '09

18 May '09

Evening all, According to NIST<http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/SNS/cloud-computing/index.html> : *Cloud computing is a pay-per-use model for enabling available, convenient, > on-demand > network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., > networks, > servers, storage, applications, services) that can be rapidly provisioned > and released with > minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model > promotes > availability and is comprised of five key characteristics, three delivery > models, and four > deployment models.* > Is it obvious to anyone else what the next resource extensions after compute, network and storage should be? Is there still someone who needs convincing that we need to have extensibility at the heart of the protocol and build incrementally? Sam

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Is OCCI the HTTP of Cloud Computing?
by Sam Johnston 15 May '09

15 May '09

Morning all, I'm going to break my own rules about reposting blog posts because this is very highly relevant, it's 03:30am already and I'm traveling again tomorrow. The next step for us is to work out what the protocol itself will look like on the wire, which is something I have been spending a good deal of time looking at over many months (both analysing existing efforts and thinking of "blue sky" possibilities). I am now 100% convinced that the best results are to be had with a variant of XML over HTTP (as is the case with Amazon, Google, Sun and VMware) and that while Google's GData is by far the most successful cloud API in terms of implementations, users, disparate services, etc. Amazon's APIs are (at least for the foreseeable future) a legal minefield. I'm also very interested in the direction Sun and VMware are going and have of course been paying very close attention to existing public clouds like ElasticHosts and GoGrid (with a view to being essentially backwards compatible and sysadmin friendly). I think the best strategy by a country mile is to standardise OCCI core protocol following Google's example (e.g. base it on Atom and/or AtomPub with additional specs for search, caching, etc.), build IaaS extensions in the spirit of Sun/VMware APIs and support alternative formats including HTML, JSON and TXT via XML Stylesheets (e.g. occi-to-html.xsl<http://code.google.com/p/occi/source/browse/trunk/xml/occi-to-html.xsl>, occi-to-json.xsl<http://code.google.com/p/occi/source/browse/trunk/xml/occi-to-json.xsl>and occi-to-text.xsl<http://code.google.com/p/occi/source/browse/trunk/xml/occi-to-text.xsl>). You can see the basics in action thanks to my Google App Engine reference implementation<http://code.google.com/p/occi/source/browse/#svn/trunk/occitest>at http://occitest.appspot.com/ (as well as HTML<http://www.w3.org/2005/08/online_xslt/xslt?xslfile=http%3A%2F%2Focci.google…>, JSON<http://www.w3.org/2005/08/online_xslt/xslt?xslfile=http%3A%2F%2Focci.google…>and TXT<http://www.w3.org/2005/08/online_xslt/xslt?xslfile=http%3A%2F%2Focci.google…>versions of same), KISS junkies bearing in mind that this weighs in under 200 lines of python code! Of particular interest is the ease at which arbitrarily complex [X]HTML interfaces can be built directly on top of OCCI (optionally rendered from raw XML in the browser itself) and the use of the hCard microformat <http://microformats.org/> as a simple demonstration of what is possible. Anyway, without further ado: Is OCCI the HTTP of Cloud Computing? http://samj.net/2009/05/is-occi-http-of-cloud-computing.html The Web is built on the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP>, a client-server protocol that simply allows client user agents to retrieve and manipulate resources stored on a server. It follows that a single protocol could prove similarly critical for Cloud Computing<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing>, but what would that protocol look like? The first place to look for the answer is limitations in HTTP itself. For a start the protocol doesn't care about the payload it carries (beyond its Internet media type <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_media_type>, such as text/html), which doesn't bode well for realising the vision<http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Activity.html>of the [ Semantic <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web>] Web<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web>as a "universal medium for the exchange of data". Surely it should be possible to add some structure to that data in the simplest way possible, without having to resort to carrying complex, opaque file formats (as is the case today)? Ideally any such scaffolding added would be as light as possible, providing key attributes common to all objects (such as updated time) as well as basic metadata such as contributors, categories, tags and links to alternative versions. The entire web is built on hyperlinks so it follows that the ability to link between resources would be key, and these links should be flexible such that we can describe relationships in some amount of detail. The protocol would also be capable of carrying opaque payloads (as HTTP does today) and for bonus points transparent ones that the server can seamlessly understand too. Like HTTP this protocol would not impose restrictions on the type of data it could carry but it would be seamlessly (and safely) extensible so as to support everything from contacts to contracts, biographies to books (or entire libraries!). Messages should be able to be serialised for storage and/or queuing as well as signed and/or encrypted to ensure security. Furthermore, despite significant performance improvements introduced in HTTP 1.1 it would need to be able to stream many (possibly millions) of objects as efficiently as possible in a single request too. Already we're asking a lot from something that must be extremely simple and easy to understand. XML It doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out that this "new" protocol is going to be XML based, building on top of HTTP in order to take advantage of the extensive existing infrastructure. Those of us who know even a little about XML will be ready to point out that the "X" in XML means "eXtensible" so we need to be specific as to the schema for this assertion to mean anything. This is where things get interesting. We could of course go down the WS-* route and try to write our own but surely someone else has crossed this bridge before - after all, organising and manipulating objects is one of the primary tasks for computers. Who better to turn to for inspiration than a company whose mission<http://www.google.com/corporate/>it is to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful", Google. They use a single protocol for almost all of their APIs, GData <http://code.google.com/apis/gdata/>, and while people don't bother to look under the hood (no doubt thanks to the myriad client libraries <http://code.google.com/apis/gdata/clientlibs.html> made available under the permissive Apache 2.0 license), when you do you may be surprised at what you find: everything from contacts to calendar items, and pictures to videos is a feed (with some extensions for things like searching<http://code.google.com/apis/gdata/docs/2.0/basics.html#Searching>and caching<http://code.google.com/apis/gdata/docs/2.0/reference.html#ResourceVersioning> ). OCCI Enter the OGF's Open Cloud Computing Interface (OCCI)<http://www.occi-wg.org/>whose (initial) goal it is to provide an extensible interface to Cloud Infrastructure Services (IaaS). To do so it needs to allow clients to enumerate and manipulate an arbitrary number of server side "resources" (from one to many millions) all via a single entry point. These compute, network and storage resources need to be able to be created, retrieved, updated and deleted (CRUD) and links need to be able to be formed between them (e.g. virtual machines linking to storage devices and network interfaces). It is also necessary to manage state (start, stop, restart) and retrieve performance and billing information, among other things. The OCCI working group basically has two options now in order to deliver an implementable draft this month as promised: follow Amazon or follow Google (the whole while keeping an eye on other players including Sun and VMware). Amazon use a simple but sprawling XML based API with a PHP style flat namespace and while there is growing momentum around it, it's not without its problems. Not only do I have my doubts about its scalability outside of a public cloud environment (calls like 'DescribeImages' would certainly choke with anything more than a modest number of objects and we're talking about potentially millions) but there are a raft of intellectual property issues as well: - *Copyrights* (specifically section 3.3 of the Amazon Software License<http://aws.amazon.com/asl/>) prevent the use of Amazon's "open source" clients with anything other than Amazon's own services. - *Patents* pending like #20070156842<http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p…>cover the Amazon Web Services APIs and we know that Amazon have been known to use patents offensively<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click#Barnes_.26_Noble>against competitors. - *Trademarks* like #3346899<http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=77054011>prevent us from even referring to the Amazon APIs by name. While I wish the guys at Eucalyptus <http://open.eucalyptus.com/> and Canonical <http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-292296.html> well and don't have a bad word to say about Amazon Web Services, this is something I would be bearing in mind while actively seeking alternatives, especially as Amazon haven't worked out<http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2009/01/20/Cloud-Interop>whether the interfaces are IP they should protect. Even if these issues were resolved via royalty free licensing it would be very hard as a single vendor to compete with truly open standards (RFC 4287: Atom Syndication Format<http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4287>and RFC 5023: Atom Publishing Protocol <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5023>) which were developed at IETF by the community based on loose consensus and running code. So what does all this have to do with an API for Cloud Infrastructure Services (IaaS)? In order to facilitate future extension my initial designs for OCCI have been as modular as possible. In fact the core protocol is completely generic, describing how to connect to a single entry point, authenticate, search, create, retrieve, update and delete resources, etc. all using existing standards including HTTP, TLS, OAuth and Atom. On top of this are extensions for compute, network and storage resources as well as state control (start, stop, restart), billing, performance, etc. in much the same way as Google have extensions for different data types (e.g. contacts vs YouTube movies). Simply by standardising at this level OCCI may well become the HTTP of Cloud Computing.

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interop is hard
by Alexis Richardson 15 May '09

15 May '09

Example: http://twitter.com/crucially/statuses/1797948271

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