Wes, Good point and you are right - IaaS will offer different OS layers. But the question is "Is that OS layer (and associated attributes) part of IaaS" and the answer is Yes. The OS can be pre-built by the Cloud Service Provider, it could be a reference (local or remote) in an OVF manifest, it could be a binary disk image file in an OVF parcel and it could be a multi-tiered application in an OVF parcel - which is more interesting because it will have interesting internal firewall rules, load balancing attributes et al. So including the OS layer in the IaaS does not (and should not) preclude selection of the OS et al. Cheers <k/> |-----Original Message----- |From: occi-wg-bounces@ogf.org [mailto:occi-wg-bounces@ogf.org] On Behalf |Of Wes Felter |Sent: Sunday, June 14, 2009 1:44 PM |To: occi-wg@ogf.org |Subject: Re: [occi-wg] Opinion Poll: IaaS or PaaS ? | |On Jun 14, 2009, at 6:35 AM, Gary Mazz wrote: | |> Sam Johnston's timely IaaS feature matrix brings up some interesting |> issues, one in particular, what are the specific features that can be |> included in an IaaS. |> |> Many of the IaaS provider are also providing one or more operating |> systems while other are providing closer to bare metal. Is the OS part |> of the Infrastructure or part of the Platform ? | |IMO IaaS is about flexibility and thus should provide bare metal (or |virtual bare metal) so that customers can use any OS they choose. OVF |seems to require this, since an OVF image can contain any OS; thus if |your IaaS claims to support OVF then you should be able to run *any* |OVF image containing *any* OS. I think this also requires full |virtualization since paravirtualization is neither standardized nor |widespread. | |IaaS providers can provide optional prebuilt OS images, but it |shouldn't be part of the infrastructure. | |Wes Felter - wesley@felter.org - http://felter.org/wesley/ | |_______________________________________________ |occi-wg mailing list |occi-wg@ogf.org |http://www.ogf.org/mailman/listinfo/occi-wg