Sun's Mark Carlson and Gary Mazzaferro have written a new white paper on storage for cloud computing. The 12-page paper "Cloud Storage for Cloud Computing" provides an overview of cloud computing, information on standarizing cloud computing interfaces, and a cloud storage overview.

Sponsored by the Open Grid Forum (OGF) and Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA), the latter of which recently published a Work-in-Progress draft version of the Cloud Data Management Interface (CDMI) for public review and feedback, the paper introduces CDMI as well as the Open Cloud Computing Interface (OCCI), and how to use the two for a cloud computing infrastructure.

In the paper, the authors assert that a vendor neutral, standard API for cloud computing is needed, writing, "This will allow customers to move their application stacks from one cloud vendor to another, avoiding lock-in and reducing costs."

OCCI is defined as a free, open, community consensus driven API, targeting cloud infrastructure services. Its reference architecture is outlined along with how the components of an OCCI URI aligns to Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) resources. Carlson and Mazzaferro explain that CDMI is meant to enable interoperable cloud storage and data management. In describing the two together, they write, "To achieve interoperably, CDMI provides a type of export that contains information obtained via the OCCI interface. In addition, OCCI provides a type of storage that corresponds to exported CDMI containers. OCCI and CDMI can achieve interoperability initiating storage export configurations from either OCCI or CDMI interfaces as starting points."

OCCI and CDMI are being coordinated through an alliance between the OGF and the SNIA as well as through a cross-SDO cloud standards collaboration group at http://cloud-standards.org. According to the paper, OCCI will take advantage of the storage that CDMI has provisioned and configured. The authors note that since both interfaces use similar principles and technologies, it is likely that a single client could manage both the computing and storage needs of an application, scaling both to meet the demands placed on them.

More Information

Cloud Storage for Cloud Computing

Cloud Standards Wiki

SNIA Web Site

OGF Web Site

Cloud Data Management Interface (CDMI), Version 0.8 [...read more...]

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