Latest News from Ignacio M. Llorente

OpenNebula Implements the OGF Open Cloud Computing Interface Draft Spec

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 12:15:00 EDT

Last Friday, the OpenNebula project announced the implementation of the OGF OCCI draft specification. The release, that will be part of OpenNebula 1.4, includes a server implementation, clients command for using the service and enabling access to the full functionality of the OCCI interface, and several supporting documents. The last version of this open source toolkit for cloud computing, available for download in beta release, also brings libvirt, EC2 Query API, and a powerful CLI, and all of them can be used on the same OpenNebula instance, so users can use their favorite interface. In fact, OpenNebula brings support to develop other Cloud interfaces. Moreover all those interfaces can be used on any of the virtualization technologies supported, Xen, KVM and VMware.

Grid, Cloud and Green Computing

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 14:31:45 EDT

Innovations in OpenNebula 1.4

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 22:15:00 EDT

This is the first post I am writing to illustrate the main novelties of the new version of the OpenNebula Virtual Infrastructure Manager. OpenNebula is an open-source toolkit for building Public, Private and Hybrid Cloud infrastructures based on Xen, KVM and VMware virtualization platforms.OpenNebula v1.4 is available in beta release, incorporating bleeding edge technologies and innovations in many areas of virtual infrastructure management and Cloud Computing.

The Open-Source Toolkit for Building any Type of Cloud Deployment

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 16:00:00 EDT

The OpenNebula team has just announced the availability of OpenNebula 1.4 Beta Hourglass (1.3.80).This is the first preview of next stable release of the OpenNebula Virtual Infrastructure Manager. The new OpenNebula version incorporates bleeding edge technologies and innovations in many areas of virtual infrastructure management and Cloud Computing. OpenNebula 1.4 aims to be the swiss-army knife of Cloud Computing, being an open and flexible tool that fits into existing data center environments to build any type of Cloud deployment. OpenNebula can be primarily used as a virtualization tool to manage your virtual infrastructure in the data-center or cluster, which is usually referred as Private Cloud. OpenNebula supports Hybrid Cloud to combine local infrastructure with public cloud-based infrastructure, enabling highly scalable hosting environments. OpenNebula also supports Public Clouds by providing Cloud interfaces to expose its functionality for virtual machine, storage and network management.

Europe’s Largest Grid Project Moves Closer to Cloud-style Computing

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 22:00:00 EDT

The integration of two clans of computation, ‘grid’ and ‘cloud’ computing, is moving closer through collaboration between the projects Enabling Grids for E-sciencE (EGEE) and Resources and Services Virtualisation without Barriers (RESERVOIR).

Energy Efficiency in Virtualized Distributed Environments

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:30:00 EDT

The agenda included a presentation about "VM Management for Green Data Centers with the OpenNebula Virtual Infrastructure Engine". The talk presented and demonstrated a first prototype of the functionality provided by the OpenNebula Virtual Infrastructure Engine to reduce energy demands through consolidation and dynamic management of virtual machines across a distributed infrastructure. OpenNebula provides a framework for the implementation of a reference model for the management of energy efficiency in virtualized distributed environments; monitoring energy attributes in the physical resources, orchestrating virtual machines, and controlling physical resources to meet energy requirements and policies.

Interfacing Private Clouds with the libvirt Virtualization API

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:15:00 EDT

In my post "Interfaces for Private and Public Cloud Computing", I briefly described the main differences between public and private cloud computing from the perspective of their different application scope and interfaces. My position was that a private cloud interface should provide rich enough semantics, far beyond of that provided by public clouds (such as Amazon EC2 APIs), to ease the integration of the distributed virtual infrastructure in the data-center management stack, including user and administration support. Such interface should provide additional functionality for virtualization, networking, image and physical resource configuration, management, monitoring and accounting, not exposed by pubic cloud interfaces.

High Performance and Grid Computing in the Cloud

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:00:00 EDT

The HPCcloud discussion group has been created in order to address the growing interest in High Performance Computing and Grid Computing in the Cloud. The purpose of this group is to present experiences and scenarios by individuals, organizations and projects to illustrate how Cloud computing can enhance the different types of distributed and high performance computing infrastructures in science and engineering.

Interfaces for Private and Public Cloud Computing

Mon, 04 May 2009 21:45:00 EDT

An entire ecosystem is evolving around cloud computing. Interface standardization efforts, commercial products, cloud infrastructure and management services, virtual appliance providers and open-source solutions are filling niches in the cloud ecosystem. The role and position of a component or a service in the ecosystem are defined by its capabilities, the consumers of those capabilities and its relationship with other components and services.

New OGF Working Group to Create an API for Cloud Computing

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 22:15:00 EDT

The OGF Open Cloud Computing Interface (OCCI) working group will deliver an API specification for remote management of cloud computing infrastructure, allowing for the development of interoperable tools for common tasks including deployment, autonomic scaling and monitoring. The scope of the specification will be all high level functionality required for the life-cycle management of virtual machines (or workloads) running on virtualization technologies (or containers) supporting service elasticity.

Building Private and Hybrid Clouds with Ubuntu 9.04

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 20:00:00 EDT

Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) has been released today bringing highly interesting new features, specially in the Cloud Computing and Virtualization area. The new Ubuntu server distribution includes two complementary cloud tools, OpenNebula and Eucalyptus, so providing the technology required to build the three types of Cloud architectures, namely private, hybrid and public clouds.

BoF Session on Cloud Computing API at Open Grid Forum 25

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 09:10:00 EST

A BoF ("birds of a feather") session on Cloud Computing API was organized at Open Grid Forum 25 in Catania (Italy). The session focused on the charter and the creation of a Group inside OGF to work on the development of an API specification for the dynamic deployment, using an appropriate descriptor language, control and monitor of virtual machines.

Researching Cloud Resource Management and Use: The StratusLab Initiative

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 04:21:00 EST

Formed by CNRS/LAL, GRNET, SixSq Sàrl, and UCM, StratusLab is an informal, open collaboration that focuses on the use cloud technologies in research and commercial environments and on the management of cloud resources in those environments.

Advance Reservation of Capacity in Virtualized and Cloud Infrastructures

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 09:15:00 EST

Haizea is an open source lease management architecture that OpenNebula can use as a scheduling backend. Haizea can also be run in simulation, providing a platform for experimenting with scheduling algorithms that depend on VM (Virtual Machine) deployment or on the leasing abstraction. Haizea uses leases as a fundamental resource provisioning abstraction, and implements those leases as virtual machines, taking into account the overhead of using virtual machines (e.g., deploying a disk image for a VM) when scheduling leases. Using OpenNebula with Haizea allows resource providers to lease their resources, using potentially complex lease terms, instead of only allowing users to request VMs that must start immediately.

Interoperation Between Cloud Infrastructures

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 17:15:00 EST

A Distributed Virtual Infrastructure (VI) Manager is responsible for the efficient management of the virtual infrastructure as a whole, by providing functionality for deployment, control and monitoring of groups of interconnected Virtual Machines (VMs) across a pool of resources. An added functionality of these management tools is the dynamic scaling of the virtual infrastructure with resources from remote providers, so seamless integrating remote Cloud resources with in-house infrastructures. This novel functionality allows to add and remove capacity in order to meet peak or fluctuating service demands, so providing the foundation for interoperation between Cloud infrastructures. The distributed virtual infrastructure would run on top of a geographically distributed physical infrastructure consisting of resources from the private cloud and several external cloud providers.

Building Your Open Source Private Cloud

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 06:00:00 EST

Ruben S. Montero has published a series of posts in the DSA-research blog on the benefits of virtualizing a distributed infrastructure with the OpenNebula Virtual Infrastructure Engine: In "The Private Clouds", Ruben discusses the motivations for building a private cloud using open-source technology. In "When 8 are 26 (or even more)", he shows a real case of server consolidation using OpenNebula to orchestrate a distributed infrastructure running Xen and KVM nodes.

Cloud Computing in Ubuntu

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 05:50:00 EST

The Ubuntu team announced one month ago their plan to offer a set of new software packages related to cloud computing in Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope), due to be released in April 2009. One of the target packages, the OpenNebula Virtual Infrastructure Engine, is available for download from the Ubuntu repository. Ruben S. Montero has published a very nice "mini how-to" describing how to set up your own private cloud in only five steps with Ubuntu and OpenNebula.

OpenNebula 1.2 for Data Center Virtualization & Private Cloud Computing

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 09:45:00 EST

The OpenNebula virtual infrastructure engine provides efficient, dynamic and scalable management of groups of interconnected VMs within datacenters involving a large amount of virtual and physical servers. OpenNebula supports Xen and KVM platforms and can interface with remote cloud sites, being the only tool able to access on-demand to Amazon EC2 to dynamically scale the local infrastructure based on actual usage.

Grids and Cloud as Complementary Computing Paradigms

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 20:00:00 EST

This is the title of the new GridBriefing just released by GridTalk to introduce Grids and Clouds as complementary computing paradigms. A clear understanding of their relationship will help the development and efficient use of existing academia and commercial e-infrastructures. It is especially interesting the table comparing Grid and Clouds side by side, as well as the strategy recommended in the chapter devoted to Grids and Clouds of the new white paper by the e-Infrastructure Reflection Group to ensure a healthy future for European e-infrastructures.

Position Papers about Enterprise Usage of Clouds

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 04:56:13 EST

The workshop aimed at exploring cloud computing and its impact on enterprise IT. The workshop included presentations and round table discussions about the state of the cloud computing market; key challenges in interoperability, standardization, SLAs and security; and enterprise adoption of clouds.

Upcoming Workshops on Cloud Computing

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 04:52:03 EST

The deadlines for two new workshops on cloud computing are near. Those will allow exchanging ideas and results and discusing the research challenges in this emerging research field: International Workshop on Cloud Computing (Cloud 2009), in conjunction with IEEE International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid, May 18-21, 2009, in Shanghai, China 1st International Workshop on ...

GridWay, Globus and DRMAA at the European Space Astronomy Center

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 04:52:03 EST

The fourth edition of the ESAC GRID Workshop has just finished. Like in previous editions, the agenda included presentations about the state-of-art in the main components to build a Grid infrastructure. Although this time our contributions have been mostly related to the OpenNebula VM Manager for dynamic scaling computing clusters ...

Research Challenges in Cloud Infrastructures for 2009

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 04:52:03 EST

A couple of weeks ago I was invited to present my position on Research Challenges in Cloud Infarstructures in the panel "Beyond Amazon: Using and Offering Services in a Cloud” at Future Internet Assembly, Madrid 2008. The aim of the talk was to present key differentiators between the RESERVOIR project ...

OpenNebula on the List of Top 100 Players in the Cloud Computing Ecosystem

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 04:52:03 EST

SYS-CON's Cloud Computing Journal has just expanded its list of most active players in the fast-emerging Cloud Ecosystem. The list includes the most active cloud players, which are driving the most Enterprise-relevant innovation. Cloud computing is an opportunity for organizations to implement low cost, low power and high efficiency systems ...

Position Papers about Enterprise Usage of Clouds

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 04:52:03 EST

The Cloud Computing - Cloudscape Workshop was successfully held in Brussels on January 14th and 15th, 2009. The workshop aimed at exploring cloud computing and its impact on enterprise IT. The workshop included presentations and round table discussions about the state of the cloud computing market; key challenges in interoperability, ...

3rd International Workshop on Virtualization Technologies in Distributed Computing (VTDC-09)

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 04:52:03 EST

The third edition of the International Workshop on Virtualization Technologies in Distributed Computing will be held in Barcelona in conjunction with ICAC 2009. This year cloud computing (as enabled by virtualization) is a particular focus. The paper submission deadline is February 20th, 2009. Ignacio Martín Llorente

The Foundation of Cloud Computing Infrastructures: Virtualization

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 09:05:00 EST

One of the relevant contributions of cloud computing is the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) model. There are a number of research challenges in cloud infrastructures that, in my opinion, will need to be addressed in 2009. The open research issues are mainly related to new virtualization technologies to enable efficient, dynamic and scalable Cloud operation and interoperation.

The Role of Cloud Computing

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 23:00:00 EDT

Let me show how I see Cloud (and virtualization as enabling technology) and Grid as complementary technologies that will coexist and cooperate at different levels of abstraction in future infrastructures. I will first clearly state my position about Cloud and Grid, which are complementary technologies.

Open Cloud Computing: OpenNebula Engine for Data Center Virtualization Released

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 17:00:00 EDT

Virtualization has opened up avenues for new resource management techniques within the data center. Probably, the most important characteristic is its ability to dynamically shape a given hardware infrastructure to support different services with varying workloads. Therefore, effectively decoupling the management of the service (for example a web server or a computing cluster) from the management of the infrastructure (e.g. the resources allocated to each service or the interconnection network).