These components will continue evolving and put into a “production” status by Telefónica I+D. Each component will be released with its own Open Source License (GPL, Apache, MPL, etc.). Telefónica I+D will also provide commercial support following a dual-license schema.

The Claudia Platform is aligned with the Morfeo’s Cloud Technologies Chapter vision of integrating a complete Open Source Stack for managing a IaaS Cloud. In this way, Claudia will be fully integrated with OpenNebula through the OCCI API as both are members of the chapter.

More details: http://claudia.morfeo-project.org/

Ignacio Martin Llorente

Future enterprise data centers will look like private clouds supporting a flexible and agile execution of virtualized services, and combining local with public cloud-based infrastructure to enable highly scalable hosting environments. The key component in these cloud architectures will the cloud management system, also called cloud operating system (OS), being responsible for the secure, efficient and scalable management of the cloud resources. Cloud OS are displacing “traditional” OS, which will be part of the application stack.

Flexibility in Cloud Operating Systems

A Cloud OS administers the complexity of a distributed infrastructure in the execution of virtualized service workloads. The Cloud OS manages a number of servers and hardware devices and their infrastructure services which make up a cloud system, giving the user the impression that they are interacting with a single infinite capacity and elastic cloud. In the same way that multi-threaded OS define the thread as the unit of execution and the multi-threaded application as the management entity, supporting communication and synchronization instruments; multi-tier Cloud OS define the VM as the basic execution unit and the multi-tier virtualized service (group of VMs) as the basic management entity, supporting different communication instruments and their auto-configuration at boot time. This concept helps to create scalable applications because you can add VMs as and when needed. Individual multi-tier applications are all isolated from each other, but individual VMs in the same application are not as they all may share a communication network and services as and when needed.

A Cloud OS has a number of functions:

• Management of the Network, Computing and Storage Capacity: Orchestration of storage, network and virtualization technologies to enable the dynamic placement of the multi-tier services on distributed infrastructures
• Management of VM Life-cycle: Smooth execution of VMs by allocating the resources required for them to operate and by offering the functionality required to implement VM placement policies
• Management of Workload Placement: Support for the definition of workload and resource-aware allocation policies such as consolidation for energy efficiency, load  balancing, affinity-aware, capacity reservation…
• Management of VM Images: Exposing of general mechanisms to transfer and clone VM images
• Management of Information and Accounting. Provision of indicators that can be used to diagnose the correct operation of the servers and VMs and to support the implementation of the dynamic VM placement policies
• Management of Security: Definition of security policy on the users of the system, guaranteeing that the resources are used only by users with the relevant authorizations and isolation between workloads
• Management of Remote Cloud Capacity: Dynamic extension of local capacity with resources from remote providers

OpenNebula is an open cloud OS that provides the above functionality on a wide range of technologies. However, in my view, the main differentiation of OpenNebula is not its leading edge functionality but its open, modular and extensible architecture that enables its seamless integration with any service and component in the ecosystem. The open architecture of OpenNebula provides the flexibility that many enterprise IT shops need for internal cloud adoption. Cloud computing is about integration, one solution does not fit all. Moreover, as pointed out in the CloudScaling “Infrastructure-as-a-Service Builder’s Guide“, the right configuration and components in a Cloud architecture also depend on the execution requirements of the service workload.

Interoperability at the Cloud Management Level

The IEEE defines interoperability as “the ability of two or more systems or components to exchange information and to use the information that has been exchanged” and Wikipedia introduces  interoperability as “the property referring to the ability of diverse systems and organizations to work together (inter-operate)“. Being the core component in any cloud solution, interoperability is crucial for the success of a cloud management system. We can compare the cloud OS with a the kernel in “traditional” operating systems. The cloud OS represents the basic functions in a cloud and requires a well defined communication with underlying devices and interface to expose administration and user functionality.

At the cloud management level, interoperability means:

• Modularity and flexibility to easily interface with any service or technology in the virtualization and cloud ecosystem, and
• Standardization to avoid vendor lock-in and to create a healthy community around

In fact interoperability should be evaluated from three different angles:

• Infrastructure User Perspective: Users, application developers, integrators and aggregators are requiring a standard interface for the management of virtual machines, network and storage. OCCI is a simple REST API for Infrastructure as a Service based Clouds that is being defined in the context of OGF. This interfaces represents the first standard specification for life-cycle management of virtualized resources. OpenNebula has been the first referent implementation of this open cloud interface, and also implement the Amazon EC2 API.
• Infrastructure Management Perspective: Administrators are requiring cloud OS to inteface into existing infrastructure and management services, so fitting into any data center. OpenNebula provides a flexible back-end that can be integrated with any service for virtualization, storage and networking.
• Infrastructure Federation Perspective: Administrators are requiring cloud OS to manage resources from partner and commercial clouds

With high-end computing demands, cloud operating systems will continue to be a very active field of research and development. An open and flexible approach for cloud management ensures uptake and simplifies adaptation to different environments, being key for interoperability. The existence of an open and standard-based cloud management system like OpenNebula provides the foundation for building a complete cloud ecosystem, ensuring the new components and services in the ecosystem to have the widest possible market and user acceptability.

OpenNebula is being enhanced in the context of the RESERVOIR project, flagship of European research initiatives in virtualized infrastructures and cloud computing.

Ignacio M. Llorente

The first stable version of the Haizea Lease Manager was released a few days ago and is available for download at http://haizea.cs.uchicago.edu/

Haizea can be used as a drop-in replacement for OpenNebula’s scheduling daemon, providing OpenNebula with more advanced scheduling capabilities such as advance reservations and queueing of requests when there are no resources available.

Haizea 1.0 is compatible with the recently released OpenNebula 1.4 and, compared to the last major release of Haizea (Technology Preview 1.3 in February 2009), introduces many new features focused on:

• Extensibility: A new modular scheduler design that makes it easier to choose between different scheduling policies, or to write custom policies that can be “plugged into” Haizea. Writing a custom policy only requires writing a Python module implementing a set of methods described in the Haizea documentation.
• Stability: Many internal changes, including a larger number of unit tests, that make Haizea more stable.
• Documentation: More documentation, including developer documentation for users interested in extending Haizea or writing custom scheduling algorithms or policies.

For a list of all the new features, take a look at the Haizea Changelog

Work on Haizea 1.2 is already under way, and will include the following features:

• Support for leases with deadlines. Haizea will include deadline-driven scheduling algorithms such that, if a user specifies a deadline for a lease, Haizea will only accept if it can be scheduled before that deadline. Furthermore, preemptions (if allowed by the lease) will only be done if the deadline restriction is still met.
• Lease negotiation. The lease lifecycle will be expanded to incorporate a negotiation phase before a lease is accepted. In this negotiation, it will be possible for Haizea to reply to a lease request with multiple possible leases which the user can accept or reject. The initial focus in this work will be on supporting lease pricing.
• Lease pricing. Haizea will be able to price leases, based on pluggable pricing leases.

Since most of the work for 1.2 is driven by research efforts, the focus for the next couple of months is going to be mostly on the simulation side of Haizea. Nonetheless, improving the integration between Haizea and OpenNebula, particularly in regards to making Haizea more aware of unscheduled changes in the VMs (an issue that several users have brought to our attention), is still part of our long-term goals. However, we don’t anticipate we”ll be able to work on improving that part of Haizea until, at least, the summer. Nonetheless, if there are developers who would be interested in helping to improve the Haizea/OpenNebula integration (specially those who have a stake in this integration), please don’t hesitate to let us know, as we’d be happy to provide assistance.

We want to thank the people actively using beta versions that provided us feedback to polish features and get rid of bugs before releasing this stable version.

Highlights of OpenNebula 1.4 are…

• EC2 Query API interface for building OpenNebula-based clouds
• OCCI interface for building OpenNebula-based clouds
• Support for the VMware Hypervisor family
• Multiple user support and access-right control for Virtual Machines and Virtual Networks
• Advance contextualization support to integrate VM packs and implement multi-component services
• Easy integration with your data-center services and procedures with a new hook system
• Support block devices as VM images.
• Support for LVM storage
• Many bug fixes, and scalability and performance improvements in several components of the OpenNebula system
• A whole new set of documentation pages, guides and examples

Quick Links

• Download OpenNebula 1.4.0!
• Download binary packages
• Complete Release notes
• Documentation
• About OpenNebula
• FAQs

The OpenNebula Team!

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Experiences, performance and reliability running scientific applications in Clouds
• Grid, Cluster and data-intensive computing in Clouds
• Limitations of Cloud services and technologies for capability and capacity computing
• Impact of virtualization on the performance of memory, CPU and I/O intensive, and latency sensitive applications, and virtualization support for specialized communication transports
• Scientific Clouds offering services for the scientific and technical communities
• Architectures for integration of Cloud technologies and services with Cluster and Grid infrastructures
• On-demand and utility resource provision models
• Service and infrastructure scalability and elasticity management for the efficient execution of virtualized Cluster and Grid platforms
• New paradigms for computing on Cloud
• Federation, interoperability and portability between Clouds
• Cloud interfaces, programming models and tools

Paper Submission & Important Dates
The submitted paper must be formatted according to Journal of Grid Computing rules, check the website for more information

Submission: 28 February 2010
Review: 30 April 2010
Revision: 20 June 2010
Final acceptance decision: 10 July 2010
Publication: Sep 2010

Guest Editors
Ignacio M. Llorente
DSA-Research
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Madrid, 28040, Spain
llorente@dacya.ucm.es

Ruben S. Montero
DSA-Research
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Madrid, 28040, Spain
rubensm@dacya.ucm.es

Ruben S. Montero

• Dummy cloud. This cloud offers an interface to an OpenNebula instance configured using dummy drivers. This means that it will offer a seemingly infinite capacity to run VMs, but it actually won’t ever run any VM instance. This ‘dummy’ cloud is offered to test the OCCI and EC2 inte rfaces

• Real cloud. The OpenNebula instance that supports this clouds has access to physical server, and will offer the possibility of configure virtual networks, launching real VMs and access them using public IPs. This ‘real’ cloud VMs will have a limited capacity and is not meant to provide VMs on demand for personal uses, but rather to test OpenNebula cloud functionality.

The aim of these clouds is to allow for interface testing and foster the creation of an ecosystem built on top of OpenNebula clouds.

More information on configuration of the clients and usage of the two clouds can be found here.

Tino Vázquez

But, what’s CloudCamp? CloudCamp is an unconference where attendees can exchange ideas, knowledge and information in a creative and supporting environment, advancing the current state of cloud computing and related technologies. As an informal, member-supported gathering, it relies entirely on volunteers to help with meeting content, speakers, meeting locations, equipment and membership recruitment.

So, are you interested? Get more info and register now!

After nearly three months has passed since the feature freeze for OpenNebula 1.4, the OpenNebula team has been working hard on polishing the new features, and solving bugs. While there could be some issues that need to be fixed before the stable release, OpenNebula 1.4 beta 2 shapes up nicely and brings an important number of improvements and innovations in Cloud computing.

Highlights of OpenNebula 1.4 are…

• EC2 Query API interface for building OpenNebula-based clouds
• OCCI interface for building OpenNebula-based clouds
• Support for the VMware Hypervisor family
• Multiple user support and access-right control for Virtual Machines and Virtual Networks
• Advance contextualization support to integrate VM packs and implement multi-component services
• Easy integration with your data-center services and procedures with a new hook system
• Support block devices as VM images.
• Many bug fixes, and scalability and performance improvements in several components of the OpenNebula system
• A whole new set of documentation pages, guides and examples

Quick Links

• Download OpenNebula 1.4 Beta 2!
• Complete Release notes
• Documentation
• About OpenNebula
• FAQs

The OpenNebula Team!

Ignacio Martin Llorente

Yesterday we had a couple of quite interesting sessions about how people is using Cloud computing in Grids at the EGEE09 Conference. The speakers addressed two basic points:

• The use of virtual machines and Clouds as an effective way to provide Grid users with custom execution environments. So the same Grid site can easily support VOs with different (or conflicting) configurations. Obviously, this will improve the quality-of-life of both the users and site admins.
• Let the users access the Grid resources in a Cloud-way. After more than ten years of large Grid deployments we find out that some user communities just do not get used to the “official” execution work-flow. This users can greatly benefit from accessing “raw” computing capacity. This led to a very interesting discussion on Cloud federation, and the integration of current Grid services (e.g. authorization systems).

The material is available on-line in case you want to find out more.

The closing part of these sessions was about the integration of the RESERVOIR cloud stack  within the EGEE project. This integration would allow EGEE sites to easily meet the users demands (i.e. worker node configurations) or to scale up services to meet peak loads. In other words, to “shape” a EGEE site to meet the highly dynamic demands of the researchers.

Ruben S. Montero