[occi-wg] Resource Types: Compute / Network / Storage

[Sam Johnston]

One recent post by one analyst which concedes that it's a "*problematic
term, perhaps, because a few of the vendors employ it towards different ends
*" isn't reason enough to scuttle it (which has been in fairly widespread
use for well over a
decade<http://www.dominopower.com/issuesprint/issue199810/fabric.html>),
especially in the absence of an alternative proposal. Appistry have dropped
the term and Microsoft's Azure is now a "Services
Platform<http://www.microsoft.com/azure/default.mspx>"
(someone's dyslexic perhaps), even if they still use fabric sporadically
with developers.

This is what Cisco have to say about Unified
Fabrics<http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns945/index.html>
:

> *
>
> The typical data center environment supports two to three parallel
> networks: one for data, one for storage, and possibly one for server
> clustering. In addition, servers often have dedicated interfaces for
> management, backup, or virtual machine live migration. Supporting these
> interfaces imposes significant costs related to interfaces, cabling, rack
> space, upstream switches, and power and cooling.
>
> Unified fabric consolidates these different types of traffic onto a single,
> general-purpose, high-performance, highly available network that greatly
> simplifies the network infrastructure and reduces costs. To do all this, a
> unified fabric must be intelligent enough to identify the different types of
> traffic and handle them appropriately.
>
> In addition to reducing total cost of ownership, unified fabric supports
> broader data center virtualization by providing consistent, ubiquitous
> network and storage services to all connected devices.
> *

I'd like to see us get some clarity here one way or another because it's a
source of significant confusion (if we can't get it right between us then
what are customers meant to think?).

Sam

On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 6:38 PM, Alexis Richardson <
alexis.richardson at gmail.com> wrote:

> Fabric is also used to refer to PaaS:
> http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2008/11/14/cloud-types/
>
> I suggest we drop the word 'fabric'.
>
>
> On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 5:37 PM, Sam Johnston <samj at samj.net> wrote:
> > On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 6:14 PM, Krishna Sankar (ksankar)
> > <ksankar at cisco.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> But then SaaS is Software over PaaS; PaaS is fabric over IaaS; IaaS is
> >> compute, storage and network. Isn't fabric the P is PaaS ? and in IaaS,
> we
> >> see raw compute/storage/network ?
> >>
> >> If we want to maintain the Software-Platform-Infrastructure terminology
> >> hierarchy I am fine with that. Then we should switch the fabric and the
> >> Compute-Storage-Network.
> >
> > [Ab]use of the term "fabric" to refer to software platforms like Azure is
> so
> > far as I can tell a fairly recent trend (and one I'm relatively
> unconvinced
> > by). Granted the contept (whereby many interconnected nodes, when viewed
> > from a distance, appear to be a single coherent "fabric") could be
> applied
> > to both hardware and software, but it is most often applied to low level,
> > interconnected hardware such as SANs and InfiniBand... and servers:
> >
> >> What is fabric computing and how does it improve upon current server
> >> technology?
> >> The simplest way to think about it is the next-generation architecture
> for
> >> enterprise servers. Fabric computing combines powerful server
> capabilities
> >> and advanced networking features into a single server structure.
> >
> > We do need something to refer to the underlying hardware/firmware but I'm
> > even less convinced by proposed alternatives ("unified computing" being
> the
> > most obvious example). Perhaps "Hardware Fabric" would clarify?
> >
> > Sam
> >
> >
>
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