CDMI:
An Introduction
January 2013
Big Data
“Big Data” refers to datasets whose size is beyond the ability of
typical tools to capture, store, manage and analyze
Complexity
Speed
Volume
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Trends Shaping the Big Data Market
 Scale
– 10’s PB of data, millions of users
– “Life time retention” of data
 Object Access
– Object = Data + Metadata
– APIs/Protocols to provide object access
 Automatic Data Management
– Object granular automated data mobility and management
 Distributed Access
– Multi-location repositories, data mobility, local view/access
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Cloud Storage
 Commonly used term to describe a data store
deployment
 Apt to describe a Big Data store, increasingly
characterized by:
– Object based access and APIs
– Multi-protocol support (NAS: NFS/CIFS/Object, SAN:
FC/iSCSI)
– Automatic policy-driven management based on object
metadata
– Provides services like billing, audit, security
– Globally federated clouds
 Formal term: Data Storage as a Service (DaaS)
What is CDMI?
 Cloud Data Management Interface
 CDMI is a open standard for cloud storage
– Defines client-to-cloud and cloud-to-cloud interactions
– Defines object semantics for content stored in the cloud
SNIA Cloud
Interactions
Filesystem
Clients
CIFS/
NFS
Existing Cloud APIs
CDMI
API
Cloud Federation and
Peering
Cloud API
Clients
Existing
Cloud
APIs
CDMI Notification
Feeds, Accounting,
Membership, etc...
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CDMI API
Clients
CDMI
API
Notification,
Workflow,
Audit,
Billing,
Authorization
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What does CDMI let you do?
 CDMI allows clients to store and retrieve from the cloud
– Named Objects (Accessed by name, similar to files)
– Nameless Objects (Accessed by ID)
– Queues (first-in-first-out structured storage)
 CDMI allows clients to organize stored content
– Containers (Groups of named objects, similar to directories)
 CDMI allows clients to manage stored content
– User Metadata (Structured metadata attached to objects)
– Data System Metadata (Allows clients to request storage
characteristics)
– Versions of objects
 CDMI allows clients to discover content
– Query and Notifications
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Why a standard?
 End customers want it:
– Customers want cross-cloud interoperability
– Customers want to be able to avoid vendor lock-in, switch
cloud vendors and second-source cloud solutions
 Application developers want it:
– Developers don’t want to develop custom code to talk with
each vendor’s cloud
– Developers want to leverage common libraries,
documentation, test tools, expertise, etc.
 Cloud storage vendors want it:
– Tired of inventing yet another new API that needs to be
documented, tested and maintained
– Don’t want their API to be controlled and lead by vendors
 Cloud service providers don’t want it (yet):
– They like API lock-in, and feel they can adopt CDMI later.
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Who created CDMI?
 A Technical Working Group in SNIA comprising several
major vendors in the Storage and Networking industry
 Each of the major contributors have provided at least
20 pages of spec text
And many more…
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What does CDMI look like?
 CDMI is a wire protocol, like CIFS and NFS, that
provides access to objects
 CDMI is based on RESTful HTTP, and is designed
to be a very simple protocol
 CDMI uses JSON, the Web 2.0 data format, and
can be directly accessed by any web browser
 Basic CDMI functionality includes Create, Read,
Update and Delete of objects
 Advanced CDMI functionality includes notifications,
query, snapshots, serialization, and compliance
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What does CDMI look like?
 CDMI
GET /mycontainer/photos/eqd.jpg HTTP/1.1
Host: cdmi.example.com
Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2007 19:37:58 +0000
Authorization: Basic cm9vdDpyb291
<Image Data>
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Opportunities for Partners!
 Develop CDMI clients to make legacy applications
CDMI aware
 Develop CDMI protocol conformance and
performance testing tools
 Develop tools to migrate data from non-CDMI
compliant clouds to CDMI compliant clouds
 Develop utilities/services for cloud provides using
CDMI data system metadata
 Design applications using object metadata
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How to learn more?
 CDMI specification:
– http://snia.org/sites/default/files/CDMI%20v1.0.2.pdf
 Participate in CDMI PlugFests:
– http://www.snia.org/cloud/cloudplugfest
 Use the opportunities to develop
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