[occi-wg] Opinion Poll: IaaS or PaaS ?

Fri Jul 3 14:22:55 CDT 2009

Two points (actually four ;o)):

a) 	If OS is not part of an IaaS, then IaaS effectively is HaaS (Hypervisor as a Service); a virtual version of the hardware - nothing more, nothing less

b)	Which is not quite true ( as Randy mentions); in effect IaaS = HaaS + Cloud Infrastructure Services(compute, network, storage)
	VPNs, DNS, DHCP, MAC Address all come under this moniker of Cloud Infrastructure Services

b) 	I think the question is not running any OS on any HaaS (which would be nice, but most probably is not totally practical) but the ability to customize the *supported* OS layer, rather than use whatever configuration the IaaS provider has setup. 
	For example, if an IaaS/HaaS supports Ubuntu, a cloud service consumer still would like to run its version of Ubuntu, customized for the application it wants to run. Remember, Andre talks about arbitrary OS-images not arbitrary OSs ! 

c)	And this makes more sense when we want to move the cloud application stack around or run a pickled cloud application stack. 

Cheers
<k/> 	

|-----Original Message-----
|From: occi-wg-bounces at ogf.org [mailto:occi-wg-bounces at ogf.org] On Behalf
|Of Edmonds, AndrewX
|Sent: Friday, July 03, 2009 7:53 AM
|To: Andre Brinkmann; Randy Bias
|Cc: occi-wg at ogf.org
|Subject: Re: [occi-wg] Opinion Poll: IaaS or PaaS ?
|
|Regarding:
|"I do not want to split hairs, but I am interested (from a customer
|perspective) to be able to deploy arbitrary OS-images inside my virtual
|machine, so the OS is not part of the service offered by the Iaas-
|provider."
|
|The OS selection may have dependencies on the IaaS owing to hardware
|architectures it supports (i386, x86_64, PPC, MIPS etc) so it may not be
|possible to run arbitrary OS that assume a particular h.architecture.
|Currently the only sure way to guarantee arbitrary OS deployment could
|be the provisioning of instruction set emulation within a hypervisor.
|Other than that as a simpler solution, the IaaS provider would have to
|state what hardware architectures it could support (though would limit
|arbitrary OS deployment).
|
|.2c
|
|Andy
|
|-----Original Message-----
|From: occi-wg-bounces at ogf.org [mailto:occi-wg-bounces at ogf.org] On Behalf
|Of Andre Brinkmann
|Sent: 03 July 2009 15:35
|To: Randy Bias
|Cc: occi-wg at ogf.org
|Subject: Re: [occi-wg] Opinion Poll: IaaS or PaaS ?
|
|Hello Randy,
|
|thank you for the explanations. Nevertheless, there are still some
|open issues (at least from my side);
|
|Am 30.06.2009 um 19:59 schrieb Randy Bias:
|
|>
|> On Jun 14, 2009, at 11:10 AM, André Brinkmann wrote:
|>> sorry for interfering with your discussion, but I am only reading
|>> your Email list since a week. From my perspective, IaaS (and OCCI)
|>> only deals with an execution platform for (a collection of) virtual
|>> images. The operating system itself and the "virtual" hardware
|>> (Virtual MAC, ...) is part of the virtual image and therefore does
|>> not belong to an IaaS environment.
|>
|> Actually, I think this is provably untrue.  The virtual hardware
|> will almost certainly belong to the infrastructure and not the VM
|> itself.  For example, right now GoGrid provides 3 NICs, but Amazon
|> provides 1.  Both are Xen-based platforms.  Other systems provide
|> arbitrary numbers of NICs.  Since the virtual hardware is supplied
|> by the underlying hypervisor layer and it's configuration the
|> virtual hardware is part of the IaaS platform.
|>
|
|Your point is (in this case unfortunately) correct. I think that this
|is a drawback of current IaaS providers. In principle, the restriction
|to a limited number of NICs leads to vendor lock-in, e.g. it might
|become difficult to port applications from GoGrid back to Amazon.
|
|> In addition, most of the hypervisors request you to use Ethernet
|> MACs that have Vendor IDs relevant to the hypervisor under which
|> they are used.  For example, VMware uses 00:0c:29 for dynamically
|> assigned MACs.  This leaves only 16M possible Ethernet MACs across
|> all VMware installations.  The risk of collision when moving a
|> VMware VM from one cloud to another is very high.  Because of this
|> vendors will almost certainly provide (and hardcode for security
|> reasons) the MAC addresses for servers.
|>
|> In other words, the virtual hardware and the virtual MAC are tied to
|> the IaaS platform and not the VM.
|>
|
|Correct and it also makes sense, as the MAC address in a conventional
|system is also part of a physical machine and therefor part of the
|infrastructure.
|
|> One can certainly argue whether the OS is the bottom layer of PaaS
|> or the top layer of IaaS, but there is absolutely no doubt that it's
|> the primary interface between the two.
|>
|> I would argue that the traditional notion of OS as a platform comes
|> from the idea that the OS provides a set of runtimes (libraries,
|> resources, and facilities) upon which you can 'load-your-code-and-go'.
|>
|> So, if platforms are 'load-your-code-and-go' systems, then an OS
|> itself is not a platform.  By default not every OS is ready to have
|> code loaded and ready to go after a fresh install.  Most require
|> some significant configuration.
|>
|> So if we want to split hairs, an 'OS' is probably the top layer of
|> an IaaS platform and a 'configured OS' is probably the bottom layer
|> of a PaaS.
|>
|
|I do not want to split hairs, but I am interested (from a customer
|perspective) to be able to deploy arbitrary OS-images inside my
|virtual machine, so the OS is not part of the service offered by the
|Iaas-provider.
|
|> BUT, if we dig deeper and look at runtimes that don't sit on a
|> specific OS (JVM, Mono, CLR, etc.) then one has to assume that while
|> the run times are typically attached to an OS, they don't have to be.
|>
|>> Nevertheless, services like VPNs, DNS, and DHCP are services, which
|>> are typically provided by the infrastructure outside of the virtual
|>> machines and I would be happy if you would include a description of
|>> these services inside OCCI.
|>
|>
|> I wrote this up fairly extensively here:
|>
|> Defining Infrastructure Clouds | Cloudscaling
|>
|
|Thank you for your comments
|
|André
|
|>
|> Thanks,
|>
|>
|> --Randy
|>
|>
|> Randy Bias, Cloud Strategist
|> +1 (415) 939-8507 [m], randyb at neotactics.com
|> BLOG: http://cloudscaling.com
|>
|
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