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Cloud and Dependability

andy — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 15:49:22 +0000

In future, large-scale Internet-based service deployments (/cough cloud), the current and contemporary issues beneath it encountered by consumers will and must be tackled.

Current Internet services are not a “cure-all” and are not fully cognisant of end-user requirements, especially for enterprises and mission critical applications.
Current Internet services operate on a “best-effort” basis: there is little consideration for quality, e.g. of service, of experience, etc. Indeed in certain parts of a service stack there no comprehension of quality guarantees.
There are little or no service guarantees to the consumer: if any, they are static, inflexible and not negotiable. Often it is left up to the consumer to implement their own systems to ensure guaranteed service.

To address this, the services must be imbued with the principle of Dependability. Dependability is a set of attributes that a service SHOULD (requirement) exhibit in order to be deemed dependable. It should be noted that only a subset of those attributes MUST be exhibited (Reliability and Availability) as these are quantifiable. The other attributes are somewhat more subjective. For all Internet services to be dependable they will share new common requirements or constraints and as Eames said, “Design depends largely on constraints” and “design is an expression of the purpose”, where the purpose is dependability. To be dependable a service must exhibit/implement the following attributes as defined by an IEEE group,which is the embodiment of 24 years of work in the IEEE:

Availability: readiness for correct service.
Reliability: continuity of correct service.
Safety: absence of catastrophic consequences on the user(s) and the environment.
Integrity: absence of improper system alteration.
Maintainability: ability for a process to undergo modifications and repairs.
Confidentiality: absence of unauthorised disclosure of information.

This taxonomy was formed in 2004, however in the age of the Internet of services, where end-users are service- and not product-oriented, this list needs to be updated to better reflect the need for trustworthiness through such capabilities as service inspection, introspection and ultimately a service-aware Future Internet. For this we propose the additional attribute of Transparency:

Transparency: the ability to inspect and introspect a service so that the delivered and guaranteed quality of the service agreement can be verified and observed.

This is essential to tackle the issue of lack of trust many enterprises have with placing their workloads on today’s service offerings (be they IaaS, PaaS or SaaS). What these service-oriented customers (e.g. service broker or an end-user) require are all of the above comprised by guarantees that the service provider offers. Service providers may offer and many do today guarantees however currently it is very difficult for the customer to verify these guarantees. It is why the ability to inspect and introspect a service should be offered by the provider, (embodied as transparency) to the customer so that they can indeed validate the guarantee that has been agreed upon between the two parties and compare the agreed versus the observed behaviours of a service. This would avoid such cases where a curious consumer suddenly realises they’re not getting what they paid for. It is also recognised by the UK that such needs should be satisfied especially in the areas of converged Future Internet services.

Footnote: Oh yea, OCCI and cloud interoperability does fit into this picture…

So much to read, so little time

andy — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 21:57:04 +0000

The great thing about the web, is all the great minds out there. So much to read! This is just my persistent google reader list of things to read, including tabs. Heaven forbid I display my instapaper account and all of my papers that I’ve finally organised using the fabulous Papers2 (just recently released – btw: there’s a great macupdate offer at the moment). Busy, but great times!

Analogue Infrastructure

andy — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 20:00:24 +0000

Data center peeps out there will appreciate this.

Courtesy of Victor: “In the UK Computer museum, an ICL 2900 series (mainframe class, mid 70′s). They said that they had these displays to show customers that their computer were doing 4 things at the same time (P1…P4) and still have some juice left.”

App meme

andy — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 18:10:08 +0000

Geee arrr, seems I got tagged by Costas to bolster up the mac-heads contributions on a random application meme

So just like Costas, I’ve been running Mac OS X full time. In fact now that I think about it, I’ve been using it for almost 5 years! Blummin heck, how time rolls by! One of the reasons for going with Mac back then was the opportunity to work with a well designed user interface, whilst allowing me access to pretty much all the goodness of a *NIX. So onward to the questions:

Which desktop manager do you use more often? Straight out of the box, Gnome has always offered a friendlier and more welcoming UI to those trying to escape from a MS-style desktop. Hence, any time I need a desktop-type framework it’s Gnome for me. However, most the time when working with linux I’m living in the terminal.
Which desktop application you would not like to see implemented again on linux? And why? Ummm, Office Well I can’t really claim that seeing as OpenOffice has been doing a terrific job is providing great interoperability. Unfortunately it’s emulated and hence brought all of Office’s bloat with it.
Which desktop application you definitely would like to see implemented on linux? Describe it briefly or point out to a similar application. Don’t think I really have a need for anything implemented on linux. Most applications I use now either run on linux or are web-based.
Write the name of the last project (not the very best, the last!) that made you wish to thank their developers so you can thank them now! Ah… we use libvirt alot in work at the moment. We’re using it as an abstraction layer to virtualisation in SLA@SOI. So big up them!

Flickr

andy — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 11:36:31 +0000

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

благодарю вас, но…

andy — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 10:44:27 +0000

Большое спасибо за замечания, но вы можете писать на английском пожалуйста

Feed URL change

andy — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 10:32:05 +0000

In case ur mad enough to subscribe to me, I’ve updated the feed URL to use the services of feedburner. The new URL in case the Feedburner plugin doesn’t redirect is:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/andyedmondsbe

Holliers!

andy — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 08:18:23 +0000

There won’t be much going on here for another week or so… Been travelling on holidays. Started off in Rome, moved on to Bari by train. Bari’s a great little (or what we thought) town, definately worth more than a day’s vist. Next on was Athens by air. I prefered Athens over Rome for its madness and craziness and a big thanks must be said for Costas’ superb suggestions! Next up is Patmos followed by Kusadasi, Istanbul, Velika, Bourgas and finally ending up in Sofia before jetting back to fair auld Dublin. Pics to be uploaded to flickr…

Apple TV

andy — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 18:10:32 +0000

Ya wanna review on appletv? Google it! :p
My opinion? Great little piece of hardware… only once hacked! Once hacked it’s such a great bargain at around €300! If you’re anyway familiar with a terminal session over ssh prepare to be very pleased!

Technorati Tags: apple, appletv, harware, hack

2 Points…

andy — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 18:01:24 +0000

Excellent post on data portability and control that captures important issues that we’ve talked about:

Different understanding of privacy between generations
Recognition of a conditional need for total data control

Technorati Tags: control, data, portability, privacy, open