Archiv der Kategorie: ICCLab

Talk: OpenStack Technology and Ecosystem, Datacenter Dynamics Converged 2013

Was invited to talk at Datacenter Dynamics Converged 2013.

DC Dynamics 2013

Very interesting conference, indeed. Latest trends, issues, solutions, hard and software based around Data Centers – all from the perspective of Data Center Operators.

Cloud Computing in this case is the workload and there was frequent mentioning of Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM), a topic that we, the ICCLab, address in our new project GEYSER from an integrated Cloud Computing and Energy Efficiency perspective. This is a hot (pun?) topic these days and I am quite keen to see substance around this. Can’t tell much more at this stage, but with GEYSER and a new and excellent chap joining our team for that topic we should have all things together.

Here are the slides of the talk for download.

Talk at the “INTEL European Research and Innovation Conference 2012″

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The ICCLab was invited to speak at the Intel European Research & Innovation Conference incorporating Research@Intel Europe, 22 October 2012 – 23 October 2012

Andy Edmonds was talking about „Open Cloud Standards“ and Thomas M. Bohnert was reviewing „Dependability in the World of Clouds“ (slides are available here).

About ERIC 2012

The 2012 Intel European Research and Innovation Conference will take place at the UPC campus/Princesa Sofia Gran Hotel in Barcelona, Spain, from October 22-23. The theme of this year’s conference is ‘Building a Smart, Sustainable and Inclusive society through Research and Innovation partnership’ and there will be a number of distinct focus areas included within the event. Additionally we celebrate the 10th anniversary of Intel Labs Barcelona.

Conference Goals

Promote a world class research and innovation ecosystem in Europe through focused research and innovation between enterprise, academia and policy makers and advance further understanding of applied strategic research in the following areas;

  • Computer Architecture – New trends in computer architecture on a broad set of topics including Processor, Memory, Interconnects, SoC, Dependability, Parallelism, Power and Performance Modeling among others.
  • Social Innovation – A new mindset and a new strategic direction which holds a great potential to transform economies, to fuel innovation and to improve the lives of people around the world.
  • Securing Clouds and Mobility – The convergence of mobile, automotive, and the cloud from a security and risk perspective.
  • Sustainable Connected Cities – Advancing compute, communication and social constructs to deliver breakthrough innovations in system architecture, algorithms, and societal participation

Presenting ICCLab, FI-WARE and the FI-PPP at ICTProposer’s Day 2012

After some hesitation I decided to attend the ICTProposer’s day 2012. This time in Warsaw.

At the end, tt was absolutely worth it. Sure, not so much for the presentations and proposal ideas presented – I doubt that any one with a good idea needs to stand up in front of 100 people in order to find partners. But the ICTProposer’s day is a perfect place to keep in touch with your community – only paralleled by the Future Internet Assembly, the Future Networks and Mobile Summit (my most preferred EC event) and the ICT Summit.

Most of my time I spent at the FI-PPP booth (little surprise). Good discussions, fairly controversial, and nice to see that community interest is still high.
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The FI-PPP intro session was well-attended but, in fairness, only few questions were raised. Perhaps due to the fact that there was a dedicated FI-PPP Call 2 Info Day just two weeks earlier.

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The slides of my talk are available for download at the ICPProposer’s Day website (local copy).

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P.S. Greetings to the Ambassador, Teacher, the Priest/Jesus/God, and the Artist.

Open- or NotSo-OpenStack? – Comments on the OpenStack Foundation

An analysis of the OpenStack Foundation and its technical governance approach. Originally published at the ICCLab

Contributions to Open Source Software (OSS) projects are an excellent means to foster broad uptake of  innovations and has therefore become indispensable for research and development in computer science.

With the Internet allowing ubiquitous collaboration (e.g. between OSS software developers, OSS community managers, OSS document editors, etc) of all sorts, across all backgrounds, and locations spread over the entire globe, some OSS projects are so successful that they reach sizes (and budgets) that are comparable to full-blown companies.

Contributing to OSS is also an unparalleled frank (and in times brutal) means for receiving feedback by an expert community. OSS communities are commonly governed by technical meritocracy, a term inherently subjective and thus reliable warrant of controversy. Contributions are in turn relentlessly scrutinized, the latter not seldom amplified by the fact that the motivation for OSS contribution is reward by community appreciation (instead of financial compensation), a principle that renders OSS environments highly competitive, in particular for highly popular projects like Linux, Apache, OpenStack and the likes.

We, at the ICCLab, consider it paramount to deliver our ideas and innovations as running code to a few carefully selected and relevant OSS projects to get receive feedback that validates our ideas and to ensure that our ideas and innovations gain support and uptake by the community. This is an inherent element of our impact-centric research methodology.

The powers of OSS is exemplified by the OpenStack project. It emerged out of a merger between NASA and Rackspace, who both have developed their own IaaS framework but decided to cooperate for the sake of creating a serious competitor to existing incumbents, like Amazon and VMWare. This initial motivation of the founders continues to materialize and the project enjoys comprehensive community support backed up by significant financial and organizational backing by some of the most influential industry incumbents.

OpenStack meanwhile became (supposedly) the largest OSS project since Linux and reached a size significantly larger than Linux. Such growth pushes organizational structures of any OSS project to the limits. If also imposes a hefty burden onto founding members, for OpenStack in particular onto Rackspace who managed the project from an administrative perspective.

A common way out of this is to transform the organisation into an foundation, like for instance the Apache Foundation  or the Linux Foundation, and this was applied to OpenStack too. With the beginning of September 2012 the OpenStack Foundation is in charge of the OpenStack project. The advantages are evident; professional structures, comprehensive governance, and financial management. All this fosters trust as it leads OpenStack out of a loosly coupled community project into a trustworthy company-style enterprise.

But such industry-grade and -oriented advantages come at a price. While native (pure) OSS projects share powers based on meritocracy, derived from technical  expertise and commitment to the project, foundations are characterized by a significant financial dimension, and the OpenStack Foundation does not make an exception. The difficult part of this is the balanace between professional structures, the financial backing required, and the value (influence) provided to those that are willing to invest cash on one hand, and on the other to preserve the drive and nature of the OSS movement, that is technical liberty and community recognition.

The OpenStack compromise to this issue is documented in the OpenStack Foundation Bylaws. This document lays out the general framework (not to say powers) and thus puts any person and institution committed to OpenStack – just like the ICCLab – in an unequivocal context. The question therefore is: What are the implications of the OpenStack Foundation?

Our initial analysis goes here ICCLab : The OpenStack Project and Foundation

Feedback much welcome!

Invited to talk about Software-defined Networking at the ITU Telecom World 2012

ITU Telecom World 2012 is the leading platform for the global ICT community to connect, debate, network and share knowledge. Key stakeholders from across the entire industry ecosystem will come together in Dubai from 14 -18 October to harness the power of ICTs to create real change. This exclusive Leadership Summit will bring together global leaders responsible for shaping the ICT visions, policies and strategies of the future.

At the core of the World 2012 programme are the Panel Sessions, where leading industry figures engage in lively discussion on the key topics and future trends impacting the world of ICT and the world in general. These trends and topics will each be examined and debated from the three principle perspectives uniquely inherent to the industry: technology, business and policy.

It is therefore a special honour to be invited as Panel Speaker and a great feedback for the ICCLab as such.

From the Invitation Letter:

On behalf of Mr Blaise Judja-Sato, Executive Manager of ITU Telecom, we are pleased to enclose the official invitation letter extended to you by Dr. Hamadoun I. Touré, ITU Secretary-General, inviting you to participate in the Forum of ITU Telecom World 2012.

This is a brief description of your panel session:

Open Source Routing Monday 15 October, 15:45-17:00 One of the key drivers of the proliferation of the internet was the adoption of managed open source for the domain name infrastructure (BIND). This enabled an open, interoperable yet affordable internet for all. Today, a similar revolution is happening through trends in the virtualization of network resources such as OpenFlow. Open source routing is a new initiative that will help establish a “platform” supporting committers and communities behind the open source routing protocols. No longer will there be a reliance on equipment vendors’ proprietary hardware and closed software stacks that don’t adapt to rapid changing requirements. Virtualization and open source routing will bring a lot of disruption in the industry and also a lot of new services to the public.

Kindest regards,
ITU TELECOM Place des Nations | CH-1211 Geneva 20 | Switzerland http://world2012.itu.int/

ICCLab Presented at /ch/open

The ICCLab team presented gave a live demo of our OpenStack cluster at the /ch/open Open Cloud Day. It was an excellent day with many view points from governmental all the way down to Infrastructure as a Service and automation. We also announced the Swiss OpenStack User Group and we’re looking forward to the inaugural event.

This event is particularly important given that Cloud Computing is as ever becoming more and more important. To get the full power of clouds, in the view of /ch/open and the ICCLab, these clouds should be open according to the open cloud initiative principles. The goal is to foster open clouds and interoperability of clouds. Especially taking into account the requirements of public administrations.

Title: The OpenStack Cloud Computing Framework and Eco-System
Authors: Thomas M. Bohnert, Andy Edmonds, Christof Marti, Fabrice Mannhart
Presentation link

Abstract:
OpenStack is a global collaboration of developers and cloud computing technologists producing the ubiquitous open source cloud computing platform for public and private clouds. The project aims to deliver solutions for all types of clouds by being simple to implement, massively scalable, and feature rich. The technology consists of a series of interrelated projects delivering various components for a cloud infrastructure solution.

The InIT Cloud Computing Lab (ICCLab) of the Zurich University of Applied Sciences is researching the full cloud computing stack. Much of this work happens in the context of the OpenStack framework and the ICCLab is official coordinator of the “OpenStack Community Switzerland”.

In this talk we’ll present evolution, objectives, scope, and status of the the OpenStack project. Attendees will be briefed from an technological and eco-system perspective, thus learning what defines Cloud Computing, how OpenStack implements Cloud Computing, and how to engage with the OpenStack community. The talk will close with a short overview of research activities and services provided by the ICClab.