[dcifp-bof] Group charter proposal

Tue Aug 10 07:57:10 CDT 2010

Folks,

after a rather long period of silence, covering holidays, the epic search for a co-chair and secretary, and document polishing, I am happy to send around the final draft for the group charter.

Major changes include the fixation to the "Management" area (thanks Andre), the name change (as discussed in Chicago), the contribution to the reference model (thanks Craig), and volunteers for chair and secretary positions (BIG thanks, Gary and Andrew).

Here you go:
--8<-- snip --8<--
Charter for DCIfed-WG

Group Abbreviation
DCIfed-WG

Area
Management

Group Leadership
    Alexander Papaspyrou    alexander.papaspyrou at tu-dortmund.de     Chair
    Gary Mazzaferro.        garymazzaferro at gmail.com                Chair
    Andrew Edmonds          andrewx.edmonds at intel.com               Secretary

Group Summary:
The purpose of this group is the development and spread-out of a practical set
of protocols and formats to interface between different types of Distributed
Computing Infrastructures in a secure, SLA-managed manner. We will focus on the
federation of such DCIs for two usage scenarios: (1) delegation of workload from
one domain into the other, covering job description, submission, and monitoring;
and (2) leasing of resources, including resource definition, provisioning, and
monitoring. The work of this group will base on existing protocols and standards
in order to ensure fast delivery and highest possible synchronization with other
groups.

Charter Focus / Purpose and Scope:
Infrastructure federation is becoming an increasingly important issue for modern
Distributed Computing Infrastructures (DCIs): Dynamic elasticity of quasi-static
Grid environments, incorporation of special-purpose resources into commoditized
Cloud infrastructures, cross-community collaboration for increasingly diverging
areas of modern e-Science, and Cloud Bursting pose major challenges on the
technical level for many resource and middleware providers. Especially with
respect to increasing cost of operating data centers, the intelligent, yet
automated and secure sharing of resources is a key factor for success.

The DCI Federation Working Group (DCIfed-WG) will, after initial research,
deliver a specification for the automatically negotiated, SLA-secured,
dynamically provisioned federation of resources and for Grid- and Cloud-type
infrastructures. The scope of the specification will include (1) the delegation
of workload from one domain into the other, covering job description,
submission, and monitoring; and (2) leasing of resources, including resource
definition, provisioning, and monitoring.

This group will focus on the creation of a specification for compute-centric
federation. This is both necessary and sufficient to allow for interoperable
implementations.

DCIfed aims to address the needs of different stakeholders:
 * Providers to incorporate dynamic elasticity into their DCI based on current
   demand;
 * Aggregators to provide a simplified view on infrastructure federations;
 * Integrators to offer advanced management services beyond the boundaries of
   current infrastructure types;
 * Vendors to use DCI-abstracted data centers in an application-driven,
   on-demand fashion;
 * Users to benefit from otherwise separate infrastructures in a coherent,
   unified, and transparent way.

The scope will be limited to the high-level federation of DCIs with respect
to delegation of workload and leasing of resources. This includes means for
describing, negotiating, and agreeing upon the service provided and consumed by
the federated systems; the description, submission, and monitoring of workload;
the definition, provisioning, and monitoring of resources. Data management
details beyond providing endpoints for transfer are excluded; the same holds for
network management details beyond the absolute necessities for leasing a
resource (i.e. providing a publicly accessible IP).

There are a number of existing standards within OGF which shall serve as basis
for the full protocol, interface, and data representation documents for DCIfed:

 * WS-Agreement
 * JSDL
 * GLUE
 * OGSA-BES
 * OCCI
 * UR

Exit Strategy:
The work of this group will be deemed complete with the finalization of the
documents.

Goals/Deliverables:
  Title: DCI Federation Use Cases
  Abstract:
    Use cases for DCI federation, including stakeholders, entities, the
    delegation/leasing lifecycle, and associated management tasks.

  Type: Informal Document
    Milestones:
      Draft           -- 2010-11 (post-OGF30)
      Public Comment  -- 2011-03 (pre-OGF31)
      Publication

  Title: DCI Federation Specification
  Abstract:
    Technical specification of protocols, interfaces, and data representation
    for the DCI Federation specification with one transport rendering.

  Type: Recommendation Document
    Milestones:
      First Draft     -- 2011-02
      Second Draft    -- 2011-05 (post-OGF31)
      Public Comment  -- 2011-07 (pre-OGF32)
      Publication

Seven Questions:

1. Is the scope of the proposed group sufficiently focused?
Yes. The group will define a specification on top of existing interfaces and
over-the-wire formats for the federation of DCI environments. The main focus
will be to address two compute-centric use cases, namely the delegation of
workload and the leasing of resources. As far as possible, the group will reuse 
existing standards, integrate them towards a higher-level product, and
contribute back experiences, implementations, necessary modifications to the SDO
bodies embracing the specifications in question.

2. Are the topics that the group plans to address clear and relevant for the
   Grid research, development, industrial, implementation and/or application
   user community?
Yes. Current Grid deployments are usually limited to their own domain which---in
many Service Grid cases---limits the usability of resources within the own
community. Also, Cloud environments are usually constrained to a single
provider, not allowing for mix-and-match applications. Sophisticated use cases
such as elasticity, Grid-Cloud integration, cross-community collaboration, and
"Cloud Bursting" are highly relevant, yet not supported.

3. Will the formation of the group foster (consensus-based) work that would not
   be done otherwise?
Yes. Current efforts are focusing on atomic aspects, providing no integrated
profile for the aforementioned use cases. For example, GRAAP addresses the
description, establishment, and monitoring of SLAs, but provides no
domain-specific support for DCI federation; OGSA-BES/HPC-BP primarily focuses
on job submission, but supports no delegation; OCCI Infrastructure provides
means for IaaS description and provisioning, but not for cross-domain leasing.
As such, this initiative is unique within OGF and provides an opportunity to
deliver a strategic technology platform for the integration of the complementary
Grid and Cloud Computing areas.

4. Do the group's activities overlap inappropriately with those of another OGF
   group or to a group active in another organization such as IETF or W3C?
No. Although the work within the group will heavily base on existing standards,
especially from within OGF, the integration effort is unique and not interfering
with other groups' interest. On the contrary, the results from this group will
provide valuable feedback and additional input to the existing WGs in order to
drive forward the applicability and quality of their work in a relevant complex
field application. Interactions towards lower management levels will be closely
aligned with the efforts in PGI-WG.

5. Are there sufficient interest and expertise in the group's topic, with at
   least several people willing to expend the effort that is likely to produce
   significant results over time?
Yes. The group has already gathered a sufficient number of active contributors
to deliver the specification within the aspired timeline. Participants comprise
both the academic and the industrial domain. Also, both the consumer and the
provider site are represented. A significant amount of existing work can be
derived from an established project and serve as basis from which consensus
can be reached. In the BoF session at OGF28, ten out of 24 participants stated
interest in helping out.

6. Does a base of interested consumers (e.g., application developers, Grid
   system implementers, industry partners, end-users) appear to exist for the
   planned work?
Yes. Several NGIs have stated interest in connecting their national Grids
through means of DCIfed. Also, ongoing discussion with Cloud providers indicates
that federation mechanisms are of high interest. Two research projects have
shown interest in using DCIfed for adding elasticity to their existing Grid
ecosystem. In addition, the five major resource management systems within German
D-Grid have expressed their support for DCIfed and will actively contribute to
the group discussion and implement the outcome specification.

7. Does the OGF have a reasonable role to play in the determination of the
   technology?
Yes. OGF determines standards in the Grid Computing domain. In addition, ongoing
embracement of Cloud Computing efforts is shown through groups such as OCCI.
Especially with respect to increasing cost of operating data centers, there
is a strong interest in intelligent, yet automated and secure sharing of
resources beyond the boundaries of either paradigm. Moreover, most actors from
the domain of Grid space are also active in Cloud Computing. The high-level
interoperation approach of DCIfed will, in addition, significantly add to the
ongoing efforts on creating a reference model for Distributed Computing
Infrastructures.
-->8-- snap -->8--

Please go through it and flame at your discretion, but do so until

  Friday, August 13, 2010, 12:00pm (noon)

Whatever comes in, I will massage into the document and send it to GFSG on Monday morning.

Looking forward to being a real WG!

Best,
Alexander

-- 
Alexander Papaspyrou
alexander.papaspyrou at tu-dortmund.de

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