Subject: [clouds] Cloudy focus

From: Dave CROCKER <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 Feb 2010 16:52:05 -0800

> From: Bhumip Khasnabish <vumip1 at gmail.com>
>
> Some of the discussion will focus on developing a reference framework and
> defining the use cases for emerging cloud services. We also plan to talk
> about interfaces and protocol profiles including extensions (if needed) for
> implementing (provisioning/maintaining) these services over cloud-based
> systems.

I think that the few postings, so far, underscore the need to have significant 
clarity and focus about the interest in pursuing any cloud work in the IETF.

First, even basic definitions are already being debated.  Second, as noted, 
there is already quite a bit of cloud standardization work being done elsewhere. 
  This includes an entire mailing list devoted to use cases.  So we probably do 
not need an IETF working group for that...

Even if the initial set is discarded, we should start discussions with a 
statement of specific problems that need to be solved in the IETF, and why the 
existing efforts elsewhere are either inappropriate for the work or insufficient 
to them.

Starting with something as general as you posted yesterday is likely to do 
little more than wander down paths of debate about definitions, theory and 
whether the bubbles in the beer constitute a cloud.

I could imagine a number of pragmatic choices that are reasonable for the IETF, 
but don't know what you have in mind (and also, I don't know enough about 
existing cloud work to navigate choices.)

d/

-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net

---

From: Sam Johnston <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Feb 2010 02:31:56 +0100

On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 1:52 AM, Dave CROCKER <[email-masked]> wrote:

I think that the few postings, so far, underscore the need to have
> significant clarity and focus about the interest in pursuing any cloud work
> in the IETF.
> <...>
> statement of specific problems that need to be solved in the IETF, and why
> the existing efforts elsewhere are either inappropriate for the work or
> insufficient to them.
>

Thanks for the pragmatism Dave.

I've been patiently waiting for the IETF to take an interest in cloud while
working on the OGF's OCCI <http://www.occi-wg.org/> for the best part of a
year now. Having stared at the problem from every angle it occurs to me that
there are two sensible ways forward:

a. Treat everything as a feed (as we do at Google with GData aka AtomPub)
and/or
b. "Enhance" HTTP such that resources can be annotated (attributes),
correlated (categories) and interrelated (links) out-of-band, without
resorting to Atom/SOAP-style envelopes.

Having had limited success selling Atom to the working group I later found
that a lot of what we need can be done by tweaking HTTP, for example with
Mark's draft-nottingham-http-link-header<http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-nottingham-http-link-header>,
my
draft-johnston-http-category-header<http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-johnston-http-category-header>
and
either raw headers or a Set-Cookie style draft for attributes.

This would allow others (like the OGF, DMTF, etc.) to create and animate
arbitrarily complex models, leaving the payload "clean" for existing
standard formats like OVF (in much the same way as the Internet currently
caters for multiple image formats). It would also be incredibly useful for
other traditional applications such as content management.

Hopefully this gives you some ideas as to how the IETF might engage without
treading on the toes of the (many) existing standards efforts.

Sam