Notes from CloudCamp PDX 2010

CloudCamp 2010
Portland, Oregon
#oscon #cloudcamp #pdx
CloudCamp is a free birds of a feather session at OSCON, the O’Reilly Open Source Conference. I came out of general interest, and because one of the promised tracks is deploying your own cloud using open source tools.
Promo: New user group: pdxdevops
Lightning Talks
open cloud
Sam Johnson
Google, Zurich
  • open source / open cloud: freedom. You can move from one cloud to another. avoids lock-in.
  • unfettered competition leads to commoditization leads to utility computing.
  • case study: free software 
    • open source is a happy medium between free software and proprietary software that leads to useful stuff, good for business.
    • open source is trademarked, giving it some instant recognizability and specific criteria for being open source
  • criteria for open cloud
    • open interfaces (atompub)
    • open formats (open document)
  • http://opencloudinitiative.org
Adrian Cole
Ops Code
@adrianfcole
5 APIs for Provisioning
  • Provisioning
    • Allows access to cheap resources
    • APIs -> automation
    • Tools exists
  • Manage Complexity
    • multi-cloud APIs
      • abstract what is commoditized
      • provide a consistent substrate
      • reduce complexity and lock-in
  • Dasein Cloud
    • Written by guy who did first JDBC
    • Focuses on services
  • Apache Deltacloud http://deltacloud.org
    • Ruby implementation
    • provides REST endpoint. Can use curl to manipulate the clouds.
  • fog
    • ruby cloud computing library
    • compute an storage across many providers (about 6)
  • jclouds
    • multi-cloud framework
    • zero lock-in to cloud apis
    • written in java
    • runs in google app engine
  • libcloud http://libcloud.org 
    • was a python library, with java coming soon
    • is about compute
    • works with 16 providers
The Simple Cloud API
Doug Tidwel
The Simple Cloud API brings cloud technologies to PHP and the PHPilosophy to the cloud, starting with common interfaces for three cloud application services: File Storage Services, Document Storage Services, Simple Queue Services.
  • Joint effort of Zend, GoGrid, IBM, MS, Nirvanix, and Rackspace.
    • But you can build libraries to support other clouds
  • Supports 3 areas:
    • File storage (s3, nirvanix, azure blob, rackspace)
    • Document storage (s3 doc, azure doc)
    • Simple queues (sqs, ...)
  • Uses Factory and Adapter design patterns
Eric
Principal consultant with Center Stance
Cloud Consultants: do implementations in the cloud
Not much of an open source person, more of a cloud person.
  • SalesForce.com, SAAS.
  • VisualForce is a templating language + Apex (java like) = to do addons for SalesForce.
  • App Exchange: app marketplace. 
  • managed and unmanaged packages.
    • managed packages are controlled, no code.
  • 940 packages in the app exchange.
  • less than 10% of those are open source: about 80 packages.
Cory 
Dyn, Inc.
DynDNS.org
  • Doing DynDNS for over 12 years. 3.5M people using it.
  • Dynect Platforms: hosts companies like twitter, 37signals, zappos.
  • Geotarget multiple clouds
    • Users in EU, go to Amazon EU, users in the Western USA go to GoGrid, users in the Eastern USA go to ...
    • Automatically redirect traffic to servers that are running (active failover)
  • DNS can give you a slider for your traffic: how much do you want to send to the cloud vs. your own servers? you can base it on latency, on location, on etc.
  • DNS resolution time is part of overall latency for users. DynDNS is faster (like 32 ms vs 120 ms in example.) that’s 90ms you’re getting back to be able to do more in your own server.
Unpanel
Hahahaha: They asked “who considers themselves an expert on the topic of open source and cloud computing?” Five people raised their hands. “OK, you’re the panel. Come on up.”
  • How is CC going to change the choice of the dev platform?
  • Is open source still relevant in cloud computing?
  • Will open source save us from a handful of monopolies?
  • What are the implications on hardware? What will change for hardware?
Stuart Smith, Rackspace: Is open source still relevant?
  • Only if you value freedom.
  • In fact, it is even more important.
  • When your proprietary software vendor goes out of business, you still have the software, you still have the license key.
  • When your proprietary cloud vendor goes out of business, your company is fucked.
Will open source save us from monopolies?
  • Just being free isn’t enough. There have been other free efforts that have been crushed by monopolies.
  • You have to have people adopt it.
  • The only way it is going to work is if everyone gets involved. otherwise cloud computing will be dominated by a few proprietary stacks.
How does this influence our choice of platforms?
  • With some platforms, like Google App Engine, you either drink the koolaid, or you don’t.
We’re going through this change between latency sensitive and bandwidth sensitive. Everything moving to data centers. highly multicore systems. now losing in the market place to classic out of order design. we’re going to see lots more cores, lots more latency sensitive. gpu assisted. more message passing hardware to avoid going through the OS.
Breakout Discussions
Why open? Open stack. Open cloud.
Open is:
  • creative commons license on the specs themselves. if the specs themselves are copyrighted, you can’t even tell your customers about them.
  • patents: you can’t have key technology locked up.
  • trademarks: when you start talking about “amazon compatibility”, you have problems. so the relevant names must be open for use.
  • implementations: you need to have multiple implementations.
  • open design / transparency / open process: so the community can participate, so i can understand the design, what is going on.
    • open process is hard: because standards bodies are in theory open, but they cost $12,000 to join, so it;’s not really open.
    • if it’s not open, then other people can’t innovate and move things forward. that’s limited to the standards setters.
  • then what are the options? a different standards body?
    • we had an unconference, and invited people to participate, and we were able to learn from each other and move things forward.
      • (this was on the format used for virtual machines)
  • Open cloud is:
    • open formats
    • open interfaces
    • open source
    • open data
  • “multiple, interoperable implementations, at least one of which is open source”
    • having an open source implementation does give you a real viable alternative. 
    • example: if there was an open format for microsoft office, and they said, well all you have to do is implement microsoft office yourself, then it isn’t really viable, unless there really is an existing open source implementation.
  • part of the core of open source is the right to fork.
    • if you don’t have the right to go, then you are married to the solution (e.g. whoever will buy MySQL)
    • this would include the right to fork a spec
      • let the best API float to the top.
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