Cloud Storage for Cloud Computing

From Server Consolidation to Cloud Computing

The needed changes to applications, in
order to take advantage of this model, are the
same as those required for server consolidation –
which had already been taking place for several
years prior to the advent of the Cloud.
The increased resource utilization and
reduction in power and cooling requirements
achieved by server consolidation are now being
expanded into the cloud.
The role of server virtualization software
The new technology underlying this is the system virtual
machine that allows multiple instances of an operating system and
associated applications to run on single physical machine.
Delivering this over the network, on demand, is termed
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).
The IaaS offerings on the market today allow quick provisioning
and deployment of applications and their underlying operating
systems onto an infrastructure that expands and contracts as
needed to handle the load.
Thus the resources that are used can be better matched to the
demand on the applications.
How is all this managed?
IaaS offerings typically provide an interface that allows the deployment and
management of virtual images onto their infrastructure.

In many cases, this interface is based on REST (short for REpresentational State
Transfer) HTTP operations.
Every resource is uniquely addressed using a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI).
𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒂𝒈𝒆,
Currently three types of resources –ൽ𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒑𝒖𝒕𝒆 𝒂𝒏𝒅 ඁ−are considered.
𝒏𝒆𝒕𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒌

Based on a set of operations –– resources can be managed.

 Those resources can be linked together to form a virtual machine
with assigned attributes.
For e.g., it is possible to provision a machine that has 2GB of
RAM, one hard disk and one network interface.

Standardizing Cloud Computing Interfaces

Having a application programmable interface (API) to
the IaaS infrastructure means that we can write client
software that uses this interface to manage our use of the
Cloud. Many cloud providers have licensed their
proprietary APIs freely allowing anyone to implement a
similar cloud infrastructure.
So if we have a vendor neutral, standard API for cloud
computing all customers can move their application
stacks from one cloud vendor to another, avoiding lock-in
and reducing costs.
Introducing OCCI
The Open Grid Forum™ has created a
working group to standardize such an
interface. The Open Cloud Computing Interface
(OCCI) is a free, open, community consensus
driven API, targeting cloud infrastructure
services.
The API shields IT data centers and cloud
partners from the disparities existing
between the lineup of proprietary and open
cloud APIs.
The OCCI Reference Architecture
The OCCI has adopted a "Resource
Oriented Architecture (ROA)" to represent key
components
comprising cloud infrastructure services. Each
resource (identified by a canonical URI) can
have multiple representations that may or
may not be hypertext (e.g. HTML). Interfaces
expose "nouns" which have "attributes" and
on which "verbs" can be performed.
Figure shows The OCCI API reference architecture
Figure shows how the components of an OCCI URI aligns
to IaaS Resources:
Attributes are exposed as key-value pairs and the appropriate verbs as
links. The attributes may be described as a URI. Adopting URI
support affords the convenience of referencing (linking to) other
interfaces including SNIA’s Cloud Data Management Interface
(CDMI), for example.( SNIA-Storage Networking Industry
Association™ ).
The API implements CRUD operations:
Each is mapped to HTTP verbs POST, GET, PUT and DELETE
respectively
 HEAD and OPTIONS verbs may be used to retrieve
metadata and valid operations without the entity
body to improve performance.
All HTTP functionality can take full advantage of
existing
internet infrastructure including and other
advanced functionality.
All metadata, including associations between resources is
exposed via HTTP headers (e.g. the Link: header). The
interface, natively expressed as Atom, executes as close as
possible to the underlying HTTP
 OCCI provides the capabilities to govern the of
infrastructures services.
Cloud providers, can comply with the OCCI service life
cycle recommendations.

With OCCI, cloud computing clients can invoke a new application

stack, manage its lifecycle and
manage the resources that it uses. The OCCI interface can also be
used to assign storage to a virtual
machine in order to run the application stack such as that exported
by SNIA’s CDMI interface.
Figure : The OCCI Lifecycle Model
Cloud Storage Overview
Just like Cloud Computing, Cloud Storage
delivers virtualized storage on demand, over a
network based on a request for a given quality of
service (QoS). There is no need to purchase
storage and only pay for the amount of storage
that the data is actually consuming.
Some of the Use cases
Cloud storage is used in many different ways.
For example: local data (such as on a laptop) can
be backed up to cloud storage; a virtual disk
can be “synched” to the cloud and distributed
to other computers; and the cloud can be used
as an archive to retain (under policy) data for
regulatory or other purposes.
 Web facing applications
For applications that provide data directly to their clients via the
network, cloud storage can be used to store that data and the client can
be redirected to a location at the cloud storage provider for the data.
Media such as audio and video files are an example of this, and the
network requirements for streaming data files can be made to scale in
order to meet the demand without affecting the application.
The type of interface used for this is just HTTP.
Fetching the file can be done from a browser without having to do any special
coding, and the correct application is invoked automatically

Figure shows HTTP Web facing

Again many offerings expose an interface for these
operations, use REST principals.
This is typically a data object interface with

operations for the individual data

objects via HTTP operations.
Storage for Cloud computing
For cloud computing boot images, cloud storage is almost always offered via
traditional block and file interfaces such as iSCSI or NFS.
iSCSI means -map the storage over TCP/IP.
- typically put in dedicated Ethernet network cards and a
separate network switch.
-each server and each storage device has its own IP
address(es), and you connect by specifying an IP address where your drive
lives.
-in Windows, each drive shows up in Computer Manager as
a hard drive, and we can format it. This is called block storage.

NFS means -access a file share like \\MyFileServerName\MyShareName, and

we put files on it.
- access folders and files, but you don’t see the network mapped drive in
Computer Manager as a local drive letter.
No exclusive access to NFS drives.
-No need for a separate network cable for NFS – just access the file shares
over whatever network available.
In Windows, this is a mapped network drive.
 iSCSI NFS
A storage resource located The Network File System
on an internet Small (NFS) is a client/server
Computer System application to store and
Interface (iSCSI) server. update files on a remote.

The iSCSI is a protocol used The NFS protocol is one of

to link data storage several distributed file
devices over an IP system standards for
network infrastructure. Network-Attached Storage
(NAS).
Block level protocol.
File based protocol.
The filesystem is managed by
the guest OS The filesystem is managed by
e.g., snapmanager for the NFS server;
(exchange, oracle, SAP, e.g.. the Netapp Storage
sql, etc) System
Figure shows Types of Storage for Cloud computing
If you decide not to dedicate all of the available space to a
single iSCSI target, you can assign individual LUN
(Logical Unit Number) identifiers to multiple targets
should you want to connect multiple systems to a single
NAS device or server, and give each client system its own
iSCSI target.

POSIX is a File System for the Cloud, stands for

Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) is a
family of standards specified by the IEEE Computer
Society for maintaining compatibility between operating
systems
A managed metadata service that turns any object store
(Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage) into a shared
POSIX file system.
NFS is a Unix protocol, it’s hardly ever used in
Windows, where as CIFS(Common Internet File
System) is far more commonly used in Windows
environments than in Unix environments.

Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning

(WebDAV) is an extension to Hypertext Transfer
Protocol (HTTP) that defines how basic file
functions such as copy, move, delete, and create
are performed by using HTTP.
The easiest and most cost-effective way to
access and manage data in the cloud.
 What makes Cloud Storage different?
The difference between the purchase of a
dedicated appliance and that of cloud storage
that the storage is delivered on demand. The
customer pays for either what they actually
use or what they have allocated for use.
In the case of block storage, a LUN or virtual
volume is the granularity of allocation.
For file protocols, a filesystem is the unit of
granularity
In either case, the actual storage space can be
thin provisioned and billed for based on actual
usage.
Data services such as compression and
deduplication can be used to further reduce
the actual space consumed.
The management of this storage is typically done
out of band of these standard Data Storage
interfaces, either through an API, or more
commonly, though an administrative browser
based user interface.
 Introducing CDMI
The SNIA (Storage Networking Industry
Association™ ) has created a technical work group
to address the need for a cloud storage standard.
The new CDMI (Cloud Data Management Interface)
is meant to enable interoperable cloud storage and
data management.
In CDMI, the underlying storage space exposed by
the above interfaces is abstracted using the notion
of a container.
A container is
 Figure shows The Cloud Storage Reference Model
CDMI
Using CDMI and OCCI for a Cloud Computing
Infrastructure
CDMI Containers are accessible not only via CDMI as a
data path, but other protocols as well. This is
especially useful for using CDMI as the storage interface
for a cloud computing environment as shown in Figure
below:
The exported CDMI containers can be used by the Virtual
Machines in the Cloud Computing environment as virtual
disks on each guest as shown in Figure 4.7.
With the internal knowledge of the network and the Virtual
Machine, the cloud infrastructure management
application can attach exported CDMI containers to the
Virtual Machines.
How it works?
The cloud computing infrastructure
management shown in Figure supports both
OCCI and CDMI interfaces.
To achieve interoperability, 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.
Figure : CDMI and OCCI in an integrated cloud computing environment
OCCI and CDMI can achieve interoperability initiating storage
export configurations from either OCCI or CDMI interfaces as
starting points. Although the outcome is the same, there are
differences between the procedures using CDMI’s interface over
the OCCI’s as a starting point. Below, we present examples of
interoperability initiating storage export from both CDMI and
OCCI approaches. A client of both interfaces would perform
the following operations as an example:
• The Client creates a CDMI Container through the
CDMI interface and exports it as an OCCI export type.
The CDMI Container ObjectID is returned as a result.
• The Client then creates a Virtual Machine
through the OCCI interface and attaches a
storage volume of type CDMI using the
ObjectID. The OCCI Virtual Machine ID is
returned as a result.
• The Client then updates the CDMI Container
object export information with the OCCI Virtual
Machine ID to allow the Virtual Machine
access to the container.
• The Client then starts the Virtual Machine
through the OCCI interface.