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

[Alexis Richardson]

Our current goal is to settle on an API for IaaS.  Anything remotely
confusing needs to be parked.

In the context of this goal:

"Compute", "Storage", "Network", inasmuch as they have an API, are
*infrastructure services* provided by folks who are in the IaaS
business.  They abstract the infrastructure so that it can be
consumed.  Hence I suggest that 'infrastructure' is the right word to
put below the three infrastructure services.  We don't care what
happens below that.



On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 5:52 PM, Sam Johnston <samj at samj.net> wrote:
> 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), especially in the absence of an alternative
> proposal. Appistry have dropped the term and Microsoft's Azure is now a
> "Services Platform" (someone's dyslexic perhaps), even if they still use
> fabric sporadically with developers.
>
> This is what Cisco have to say about Unified Fabrics:
>>
>> 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
>> >
>> >
>
>