Connecting to the Clouds
Cloud Brokers and OCCI.
Raffaele Di Fazio
Overview
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The Broker, components and architecture
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jOCCI: an OCCI Java implementation
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The “Connector Project”
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A full overview
Raffaele Di Fazio
November 2012 - 2
Disclaimer
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My visibility on the projects was limited.
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I was just asked to design and develop with a general overview
of the goals.
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I do NOT have any details about European projects involved
with the cloud broker nor any of the other parts I will show to
you.
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November 2012 - 3
The Broker
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November 2012 - 4
The Broker: a cloud perspective
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A cloud broker is an intermediary between the customer and a
cloud provider.
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The goal of a Cloud Broker is:
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To be able to provide a unified interface to manage multiple
cloud providers.
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To simplify the choice for the customer.
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To try to understand the need of the customer and to find
the provider that best suits its needs.
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November 2012 - 5
The Broker: a cloud perspective
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Can have different goals based on the user request:
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Try to minimize the costs.
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Try to give the fastest service (i.e. deploying in EU instead of
US)
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The Broker, essentially: propose the user a service.
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November 2012 - 6
Cloud Platforms
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At the beginning: one player (Amazon)
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Now: multiple players, variegated offer.
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Several cloud providers:
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Amazon
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VCloud
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HP Cloud
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Eucalyptus
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…
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November 2012 - 7
Amazon Web Services
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November 2012 - 8
HP Cloud
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November 2012 - 9
OpenStack
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A scalable “operating system” for cloud computing.
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It is used to control “compute, network, storage” resources.
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A “compute” is any information processing resource (i.e. a VM).
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It can be used to control cloud infrastructures. It is a software
suite.
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This leads to multiple custom clouds ( see
http://www.openstack.org/user-stories/)
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November 2012 - 10
Differences btw cloud providers
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Interfaces
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APIs
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Costs
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Way of managing the VMs (i.e. different functionalities)
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Even the terminology used can be different.
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GOAL: simplify this mess!
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November 2012 - 11
Broker + OCCI + Proactive
Cloud
Provider
OCCI Server
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ProActive
Broker
November 2012 - 12
Broker + OCCI + Proactive: 2nd architecture
Cloud
Provider
OCCI Server
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Broker
ProActive
November 2012 - 13
Broker + OCCI + Proactive: expanded
OCCI Server
ProActive
Broker
PROCCI
jOCCI
Cloud
connectors
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November 2012 - 14
JOCCI: AN OCCI JAVA
LIBRARY
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November 2012 - 15
Dictionary… pay attention!
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OCCI has a particular naming convention we must follow.
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There are very common words that are keywords when
speaking about OCCI.
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Kind, Link, Resource, Attributes, Category are some of them.
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Other classes are: Parser, Server, Model.
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Please be careful!
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November 2012 - 16
OCCI
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OCCI: Open Cloud Computing Interface
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It is a standard for interoperability between cloud platforms.
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GOALS:
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Interoperability: between cloud providers
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Portability: avoid vendor lock-in
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Integration: possibility to support multiple platforms
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Extensibility
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November 2012 - 17
OCCI continued
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Currently focus on IaaS.
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•
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An extension to support PaaS, SaaS is possible.
It is a set of specifications:
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Core: Model specification
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Rendering: How to structure the OCCI requests
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…
IN PRACTICE: RESTful protocol for cloud management tasks
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November 2012 - 18
OCCI Core Model
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November 2012 - 19
OCCI implementation – core
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Main classes reflect the OCCI core model:
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Category: basic classes to identify OCCI types
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Kind: type identification system for all the Entities.
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Mixin: extension mechanism for a Kind.
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Action: …
Entity: abstract type of resource and link types
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Resource: represent a concrete resource and represents
real world instances of VMs, etc.
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Link: association between two resources.
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November 2012 - 20
jOCCI
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It is a OCCI server written in Java.
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Born because of the necessity to replace occi4java
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Unsupported, unmaintainable, ugly code.
Inspired by the design of rOCCI, a ruby based OCCI
implementation.
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November 2012 - 21
jOCCI design goals
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Be extensible
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Model expressed by means of JSONs, defined at runtime.
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Extendible, following OCCI principles.
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No assumption on the backend (more about this later)
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Only supporting OCCI core model by default
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November 2012 - 22
jOCCI implementation
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Made up of two components:
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OCCI Core: contains the definitions of all the classes
representing the OCCI core specifications
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OCCI Server: contains the server, the parser and all the
other classes with functionalities to handle OCCI
requests/responses.
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This makes the development of the specification (CORE) and
the server, decoupled.
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November 2012 - 23
jOCCI core – features
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jOCCI implements only the core classes of the OCCI Model.
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Rough example:
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It defines what are the fields of the Kind class
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It does NOT define which types of Kind we can use (i.e.
Compute)
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This approach makes jOCCI independent from a specific
definition of the instances.
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November 2012 - 24
jOCCI – Server
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Developed using the following technologies:
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Apache Tomcat
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RESTEasy
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Jackson (JSON parsing)
Completely independent of the backend implementation. This is
loaded at runtime (more about this later).
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November 2012 - 25
jOCCI - Server
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REST interfaces supporting HEAD, GET, POST, PUT, DELETE
HTTP methods.
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OCCI requests are HTTP requests that can be expressed in
different formats.
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Request formats: text/occi, text/plain, application/json, etc.
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The server should be flexible enough to support these different
types.
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November 2012 - 26
Example of OCCI request
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curl -X POST --header 'Content-type:text/occi' --header 'XOCCI-Attribute: method=start'
http://localhost:8080/jocci/compute/8432c343-15ec-40ff-bb191a7062a1aa5b?action=start --header 'Category: start;
scheme="http://schemas.ogf.org/occi/infrastructure/compute/acti
on#"; class="action"' -u demo:demo
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November 2012 - 27
Broker + OCCI + Proactive: an Expanded
view
OCCI Server
ProActive
Broker
PROCCI
jOCCI
Cloud
connectors
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November 2012 - 28
Connecting to ProActive:
PROCCI
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November 2012 - 29
PROCCI
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Procci was created to be integrated with occi4java to allow
ProActive to process OCCI requests.
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These requests are mainly intended to be used to manage
virtual machines.
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The final goal of this interconnection is to be able to speak with
the broker.
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November 2012 - 30
PROCCI
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jOCCI parses OCCI requests.
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Methods exposed by PROCCI are called directly by jOCCI.
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Under the hood, a job is created and it is submitted to the
scheduler.
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After the job is executed, a response is shown to the user
through jOCCI by means of HTTP response.
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November 2012 - 31
PROCCI Connection
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When jOCCI is started, it executes the setup phase.
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In each Action class attach the method implemented by the
backend.
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This allow us to plug the actions to be executed.
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Does not force jOCCI to know the backend.
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November 2012 - 32
PROCCI connection
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November 2012 - 33
THE CONNECTOR PROJECT
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November 2012 - 34
Broker + OCCI + Proactive: an Expanded
view
OCCI Server
ProActive
Broker
PROCCI
jOCCI
Cloud
connectors
Raffaele Di Fazio
November 2012 - 35
The connector project
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We wanted to write several connectors to be able to connect to
multiple cloud providers.
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Connectors are fundamental for the broker.
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It must talk with the cloud service providers.
Technically they are built on top of APIs to connect to the cloud
providers.
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Not much more to say here! 
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November 2012 - 36
A complete example
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A user submit a OCCI request to start an already created virtual
machine.
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jOCCI receives the request. Once processed, it calls PROCCI.
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PROCCI creates a job. The job is submitted to ProActive
scheduler.
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The job is executed. A remote cloud provider is called using a
connector.
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November 2012 - 37
That’s it!
Thank you!
Raffaele Di Fazio
November 2012 - 38