Binh-Minh Nguyen presented an approach for migrating applications to interoperable clouds using a Cloud Abstraction Layer (CAL). CAL provides a generalized interface that abstracts away differences between cloud providers and allows applications to be deployed across multiple cloud platforms. It aims to address issues like vendor lock-in and allow easier migration of applications between clouds. A prototype was demonstrated using CAL to deploy a bioinformatics workflow as a service across OpenStack clouds.

1. Binh-Minh Nguyen
An Approach for Migrating Applications
to Interoperability Cloud
Binh-Minh Nguyen Ph.D.
2/27/2016 Hanoi 8th VietOpenStack Meetup 1

2. Binh-Minh Nguyen
Agenda
Cloud Vendor Lock-In
Portability and Interoperability
Interoperability Approaches
Cloud Abstraction Layer (CAL)
Workflow-as-a-Services
2/27/2016 Hanoi 8th VietOpenStack Meetup 2

3. Binh-Minh Nguyen
User stories:
We (SMB) used AWS and we had private OpenStack
cloud, how can we centralize-manage both of
them?
We used AWS, RackSpace cloud … how can we
migrate data between 2 services on-demand?
Stories
2/27/2016 Hanoi 8th VietOpenStack Meetup 3

4. Binh-Minh Nguyen
From Cloudonomics
There are hundreds of cloud vendors …
Due to
Differences among the stacks: hypervisor, networking
infrastructure, data storage facilities, management means, …
Vendor lock-in issue:
Lock cloud users into services provided by only one vendor!
Can you transfer data and applications to and from the clouds at the same
time?
•Business competition
•Lack of official standards
Each vendor imposes its own stack
of technologies
Some critics, such as Richard Stallman*, have called it “a trap aimed at forcing
more people to buy into locked, proprietary systems that will cost them more
and more over time”
*Richard Stallman is founder of GNU Project and Free Software Foundation
2/27/2016 Hanoi 8th VietOpenStack Meetup 4

5. Binh-Minh Nguyen
Impacts of Lock-in on Cloud Actors
Strategy to avoid
customer loss
Promoting
Particular
Technologies
Pricing Power
(monopoly)
High Cost for
Poor Services
(no choice)
Incompatible
Technologies
Entry Barriers
for New
Entrants
Detrimental to
Cloud
Computing
Adoption
Cloud Users Cloud Providers Cloud Market
2/27/2016 Hanoi 8th VietOpenStack Meetup 5

6. Binh-Minh Nguyen
Need of innovative solutions => appear keywords in context of cloud computing
Interoperability
Portability
Federation
Vendor Lock-in Figures
Avoid Vendor Lock-in = > More Service Choices => Lower Cost
Source: RighScale Report [1]
2/27/2016 Hanoi 8th VietOpenStack Meetup 6
[1] http://www.rightscale.com/blog/cloud-management-best-practices/skinny-cloud-lock

7. Binh-Minh Nguyen
Why Interoperability?
Avoid vendor lock-in
Take full advantages of the different clouds
Develop applications/services once, deploy anywhere
Open research directions:
Enable hybrid clouds
Brokering cloud services
Cloud service marketplace
2/27/2016 Hanoi 8th VietOpenStack Meetup 7

8. Binh-Minh Nguyen
Concepts
Interoperability: Ability for
different cloud to talk to
each other
Portability: Ability to move
application, data, tools from
one cloud to another
Federation: Ability to bring
together services from
various cloud vendors to
provide a solution
Cloud A Cloud B
Federated Cloud
A
B
E D
C
App
Development
and
Deployment
App App
Move for
Deployment
Understandi
ng
Cloud B
Cloud
A
2/27/2016 Hanoi 8th VietOpenStack Meetup 8

9. Binh-Minh Nguyen
Interoperability between Clouds?
Ability to use the cloud services provided by multiple vendors
Across vendors within a cloud model
Across cloud service models
Ability to move data and code from one cloud to another or back to
the enterprise (portability)
Across Cloud Service Models
Across Vendors
within a Cloud
Model
IaaSSaaS PaaS
Amazon Web Svcs
ElasticHost
Teremark
GoGrid
Rackspace
OpenStack
OpenNebula
Salesforce
Gmail
DeskAway
Google App Engine
Force.com
Rails One
Azure
A Cloud Standardization? A Solution does not depend on Cloud providers?
Or both?
2/27/2016 Hanoi 8th VietOpenStack Meetup 9

10. Binh-Minh Nguyen
Standard deployment packaging format
IaaS level: standard images for vendor hypervisors
PaaS level: application packaging standards for programming languages
Standard common cloud API
For both IaaS and PaaS level: standard interface for service managements (access,
control and operation)
Current Standardization Approaches
Standard Access
Services
Virtualization
Resources
Security
Management
Standard Access
Services
Resources
Security
Management
Users
Virtualization
Cloud A Cloud B
Image Transfer
Service Move
2/27/2016 Hanoi 8th VietOpenStack Meetup 10

11. Binh-Minh Nguyen
Vendor Independence Approach
Abstraction API
Proprietary Access
Services
Virtualization
Resources
Security
Management
Proprietary Access
Services
Resources
Security
Management
Users
Virtualization
Cloud A Cloud B
• Program library in various language (e.g. PHP, Ruby, Java,
Python)
• Abstracting different APIs to provide single unified interface
• Do not require support and acceptance from cloud vendors
2/27/2016 Hanoi 8th VietOpenStack Meetup 11

12. Binh-Minh Nguyen
Cloud Federation
Cloud Orchestration
Access
Services
Virtualization
Resources
Security
Management
Access
Services
Resources
Security
Management
Users
Virtualization
Cloud A Cloud B
Cloud-Cloud Interconnection
Component Interconnection
Regulation & Policy Impacts,
especially Enterprise
clouds
Standardization + Independent Solutions => More Easily in Building Cloud Federation
2/27/2016 Hanoi 8th VietOpenStack Meetup 12

13. Binh-Minh Nguyen
Our Motivation
Actual IaaS clouds are too low-level
Cloud users are forced to be admins of their virtual
machines and have to install and configure
everything by themselves
PaaS are special purposed and limited to
concrete platforms
e.g. Google App Engine can be used only for short
requests, need to re-implement legacy apps while
deploying into clouds
2/27/2016 Hanoi 8th VietOpenStack Meetup 15

14. Binh-Minh Nguyen
Example
User: I need to create a cluster with shared home
directory and MPI
Provider: You are admin of your VMs, you can
install/configure whatever you want (and do it
yourself)
Options for users:
Learn how to install and configure clusters
Hire experts (IT support staffs) to do it
Use services from third-party companies
2/27/2016 Hanoi 8th VietOpenStack Meetup 16

15. Binh-Minh Nguyen
Objectives of CAL
General-purposed easy-to-use interface for cloud
users (IaaS)
Abstraction of cloud resources
Design complex system and deploy it by single
command
Platform independent, interoperability
Automatic optimization in background
2/27/2016 Hanoi 8th VietOpenStack Meetup 17

16. Binh-Minh Nguyen
Design and implementation
Object-oriented approach: resources are represented
by objects
Inheritance and compound objects for creating
complex systems
Enable default parameters: users have to specify only
their special requirements
Implemented in Python
2/27/2016 Hanoi 8th VietOpenStack Meetup 18

17. Binh-Minh Nguyen
Abstraction of a Virtual Machine
Represented by Instance object
t = Instance() // create a default instance
t.start() // start the instance
t.upload(“myapp.exe, input.dat”, “”)
t.execute(“app.exe input.dat output.dat”)
t.download(“output.dat”)
t.shutdown()
t.delete()
2/27/2016 Hanoi 8th VietOpenStack Meetup 19

18. Binh-Minh Nguyen
Using default parameters
Users should specify only parameters they
need to change
t = Instance() // create a default instance
t = Instance(type=large) // create a strong VM
t = Instance(type=large, os=linux, version=“ubuntu-
12.04”)
// and this is a very concrete machine
t = Instance(image=myimage, keypair=mykeypair,
cloud=openstack)
2/27/2016 Hanoi 8th VietOpenStack Meetup 20

19. Binh-Minh Nguyen
Inheritance and customization
Via inheritance, developer can create new abstract
class for concrete type of virtual machine.
E.g MySQLServer is an instance with image containing
MySQL server, and new method upload_database()
MySQLServer: Instance
__init__
Instance(image=“mysql-server”)
config()
……………
upload_database(data)
Instance.upload(data, “”)
Instance.exec(“mysql ….”)
2/27/2016 Hanoi 8th VietOpenStack Meetup 21

20. Binh-Minh Nguyen
MySQLServer: Consideration
Generic images
Developers can choose to create new image with MySQL
server or use generic images and install mysql-server
package:
__init__
t =Instance() //generic machine
t.install(“mysql-server”) //install the package
• Advantage of generic images: maintained by
provider/developers, always up-to-date, portability
• Disadvantages: additional overhead at start
2/27/2016 Hanoi 8th VietOpenStack Meetup 22

21. Binh-Minh Nguyen
MySQLServer: Consideration
Code reuse:
No need to low-level coding (IP address, manual
login to server)
Easy to maintain and extend
Use of the abstract object is very simple
m = MySQLServer()
m.start()
m.config()
m.upload_database()
2/27/2016 Hanoi 8th VietOpenStack Meetup 23

22. Binh-Minh Nguyen
Optimization capabilities in background
There are many places we can do optimization in
background
compress data before transfer to save bandwidth
choose best provider (availability, price, …)
search and choose suitable images, cloud
All optimization can be done automatically without
user interference
2/27/2016 Hanoi 8th VietOpenStack Meetup 24

23. Binh-Minh Nguyen
Compound objects: cluster
Complex systems e.g. clusters can be
implemented using compound objects:
c = Cluster(worker=8) // create a cluster with
c.start() // start the cluster
c.upload_and_distribute(“additional_software”, “”)
c.execute(“mpirun ...”)
c.shutdown()
c.delete()
2/27/2016 Hanoi 8th VietOpenStack Meetup 25

24. Binh-Minh Nguyen
Inheritance
2/27/2016 Hanoi 8th VietOpenStack Meetup 26
Basic instance
Init Start/Stop Backup/Restore Install/Exec Put/get data
Init
base.init()
Install_app()
Start/Stop Backup/Restore
base.backup()
backup_app_config()
Backup_app_data()
Put/get data
put(data, app_dir)
Exec
Exec(app)
Cloud application layer 1
App specific method

25. Binh-Minh Nguyen
Software Layering
IMPLEMENTATION
IMPLEMENTATION
IMPLEMENTATION
MUITI-CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURES
INTERFACE
INTERFACE
INTERFACE
Service Users
Service
Developer 2
Service
Developer 1
APPLIANCE
APPLIANCE
CAL
Software Layer 1
Software Layer 2
Service Users
Service Users
2/27/2016 Hanoi 8th VietOpenStack Meetup 27

26. Binh-Minh Nguyen
Example 1 – Service Development
Develop once
2/27/2016 Hanoi 8th VietOpenStack Meetup 28

27. Binh-Minh Nguyen
Example 2 – Service Deployment and Usage
 Developers/users choose base software with OS and
deploy the installation packages.
 Simple service deployment and use: automatic app.
installation after VM start.
Such service can work regardless of cloud middleware
or hypervisor (deploy anywhere)
=> enabling service interoperability
2/27/2016 Hanoi 8th VietOpenStack Meetup 29

28. Binh-Minh Nguyen
Comparison Between CAL and other Solutions
A – Abstraction approach; S –Standardization approach;
X – major feature; x – support feature
Solution
Feature
CAL OVF OCCI
Simple
Cloud
API
Apache
Libclou
d
Deltacloud jclouds boto
Apache
Cloudstac
k
General
approach
A S S A A A A A A
Resource
management
x X X X X X X X
Service
development
X
Service
deployment
X x x x x x
Interoperability X X x x x x x x x
 IaaS tools
2/27/2016 Hanoi 8th VietOpenStack Meetup 30

29. Binh-Minh Nguyen
Comparison Between CAL and other Solutions (contd.)
 Distributed Computing Configuration Tools
X – major support; x – support feature
Solution
Feature CAL CFEngine Puppet Chef Bcfg2
Configuring easily
legacy applications
X X X X X
Resource
management
x
Service development
and deployment
X x x x x
Interoperability X x x x x
2/27/2016 Hanoi 8th VietOpenStack Meetup 31

30. Binh-Minh Nguyen
Prototype model using CAL, aim at migrating formal
Bio-Informatics workflow to cloud env.
Bio tools: clustalw, BLAST ..
BIMI: Bio-Informatics Management Interface
Another approaches for migrating apps into
Cloud: Open Service Catalog Manager (OSCM)
Workflow-as-a-Service
2/27/2016 Hanoi 8th VietOpenStack Meetup 32

31. Binh-Minh Nguyen
BIMI High Level Design
CAL
Workflow
engine
(appliance)
2/27/2016 Hanoi 8th VietOpenStack Meetup 33

32. Binh-Minh Nguyen
Current Design Status (contd.)
Cross-Cloud Infra
2/27/2016 Hanoi 8th VietOpenStack Meetup 34

33. Binh-Minh Nguyen
DEMO
Bio-Informatics Workflow-as-a-
Service on OpenStack
(Work-in-progress)
2/27/2016 Hanoi 8th VietOpenStack Meetup 35

34. Binh-Minh Nguyen
Discussion
Thank for your attention!
Q&A
minhnb@soict.hust.edu.vn
2/27/2016 Hanoi 8th VietOpenStack Meetup 36