Oracle recently published a Cloud Management API, which was based on the former Sun Cloud specification. William Vambenepe discusses the recent release, explaining why two specifications were published - one on Oracle Technology Network (OTN) and another on the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) Cloud Management site - and the differences between the two.

First, it should be stated that the DMTF works to develop management standards and promote interoperability for enterprise and Internet environments. This is important because the specification submitted to the DMTF, which is basically a subset of the specification on OTN, was done with the goal of standardization in mind.

Both specifications share the exact same protocol aspects, RESTful and JSON serialization. As noted above, Vambenepe states that the two different issuances of the specification were done because they serve different purposes:

• The Elemental Resource Model, submitted to DMTF, represents the technical foundation for the IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) layer. It’s not all of IaaS, just its core. Vambenepe suggests viewing its scope as that of the base EC2 service (boot a VM from an image, attach a volume, connect to a network). It’s the part that appears in all the various IaaS APIs out there, and that looks very similar, in its model, across all of them, he writes.

• The Oracle Cloud Resource Model API available on OTN has more application-aware aspects and other features that go beyond the scope of the early work being done toward IaaS standardization.

Bottom line, the specifications are basically the same except for:

• licensing, with one tying a license grant to DMTF instead of the OTN license
• some resources in the list of resource types (sections 9.2, 9.4, 9.6, 9.8, 9.9 and 9.10), which are not in the DMTF version
• support for assemblies (groups of VMs that jointly participate in the delivery of a composite application). To support this approach, the Cloud Resource Model adds resource types such as AssemblyTemplate, AssemblyInstance and ScalabilityGroup.

Oracle's Cloud API, which can be used via the HTTP protocol, enables an infrastructure provider to service their customers by allowing them to:

• Browse templates that contain definitions and metadata of a logical unit of service
• Deploy a template into the cloud and form an IT topology on demand
• Perform operations (such as ONLINE, OFFLINE) on the resources
• Take backups of the resources

Vambenepe goes into more detail behind the development of the API, the two models, and the surrounding environment of cloud standardization.

More Information

Introducing the Oracle Cloud API - Vambenepe's blog entry

Oracle Cloud Resource Model API - documentation

DMTF Web site

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