[occi-wg] Nouns and Verbs (was: Syntax of OCCI API)

[Richard Davies]

> network:
> *- start (aka up)
> *- stop (aka down)
> others?

Finally to networking!

There are two points here:

1) Customers need to be able to purchase static IP addresses on the public
internet. All existing clouds provide this (Amazon Elastic IP, etc) in
addition to dynamic IP, and it is essential for webhosting, etc.

So, we need a noun for a static IP address on the public internet which the
customer owns.

When the customer configures a server, then can then bind this static IP
address onto one of their server's NICs - the static IP itself doesn't need
any verbs.


2) As I understand the 'network' objects which Sam was proposing, these were
actually specifiers for different virtual ethernet networks into which
servers' NICs can be 'plugged' - one would be the internet, one would be the
a 'private network' between a customer's servers, etc.

The minimal implementation here is that the 'network' objects are simply an
identifier with no verbs and no attributes. If you link several servers to
the same 'network' then behaviour is as if they are all plugged into a plain
ethernet switch. No additional services (such as DHCP) are provided by the
network, so the servers need to either:
(a) have static IP addresses configured in their operating systems
(b) all invent their own private IPs, as Windows does
(c) one of the servers can run a DHCP server tself for the rest
(d) in each server's configuration, we can specify an IP address which the
    cloud manager can DHCP to that individual server


The current API design is heading a different route, in which the 'network'
object provides services to the servers plugged into it (e.g. a central DHCP
service in the API example, or bridging to a physical Cisco VLAN). I'm wary
about this, since it brings a whole world of networking configuration into
our cloud API (see 'man dhcpd.conf' to see how complicated full
configuration of just a DHCP server can become!).

Perhaps all services (and associated attributes and verbs) on the virtual
networks are best considered optional as extensions?

Richard.