[occi-wg] Networks: attributes and verbs

[Alexis Richardson]

Richard

Good email!

For the benefit of people catching up ... can we treat this as
"Proposed completion work on the Model"?  Ignacio is leading the
document creation process here - see his email about the wiki page.
If there is stuff that is under the "Still under discussion" flag then
mark it out as such.  I don't see any but I may be wrong ;-)

alexis





On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 3:16 PM, Richard Davies
<richard.davies at elastichosts.com> wrote:
> All,
>
> For me, the largest gap in the nouns, verbs and attributes is with regards
> to networks. Here are some thoughts on capabilities which I believe we need
> and options to implement these - feedback please!
>
> Basics
> ------
> Networks will be a top level noun, along with servers and storage. Users
> will link a server to a network to specify that the server is attached to
> that network. There will be one special network presenting the public
> internet, and users can create additional private networks for themselves.
>
>
> The open questions are:
>
>
> Public static IPs
> -----------------
> On all public clouds, customers can purchase static IPs (e.g. Amazon Elastic
> IP) for uses where a constant server location is helpful (e.g. typical web
> hosting).
>
> We'll need a means for customers to create, list and destroy the public
> static IPs which they own.
>
> Two options:
> a) Public static IPs are first-class nouns
> b) They are listed inside the public internet network
>
> I'd favour a), which is the case with most public clouds today.
>
>
> Active networks
> ---------------
> At its most basic, a network should behave like a plain ethernet switch - it
> provides no services at all, and simply connects all the servers which
> attach to it. Servers are free to chose their own IP addresses, etc.
>
> There are a number of active services which are possible on a network:
> - Central DHCP server
> - Bridge to a physical VLAN (e.g. containing physical dedicated servers in
>  colocation with the cloud provider)
> - Load balancer between several web servers on a private network across to a
>  single IP on the public internet.
> - etc.
>
> Two options:
>
> a) The network object itself can optionally provide these. They are
>   configured using attributes and verbs on the network.
> b) There are separate 'appliance' objects which provide these services, and
>   are linked onto the network just as a server would be (e.g. a 'DHCP
>   server' appliance and or 'load balancer' appliance).
>
> a) feels lighter-weight, but I suspect b) is more powerful. As such the
> choice depends on how far OCCI wants to go down this route.
>
>
> Linking to a network
> --------------------
> Finally, there are a few attributes which can specified on the link when a
> server is linked to a network:
> - The physical interface on the server (nic:0, nic:1, etc.)
> - Port firewalling rules (e.g. connect server to the internet network, but only
>  allow port 80 inbound)
> - IP firewalling rules (e.g. connect server to the private network, and
>  allow it to communicate on 192.168.0.0-23 but no others)
> - Local DHCP (e.g. the server operating system is internally configured
>  to DHCP. I am connecting it to the public internet, and want it to appear
>  with my assigned public static IP. Please send a DHCP response with that
>  specific IP address).
>
> I think that all of these are best implemented as attributes on the link.
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