Did you ever
have the invisible dream? I don’t like
it. It’s the one where I have “the
answer” to a big problem (usually involving giant, malevolent aliens) but
everyone walks right past me because I’m invisible. I had that feeling
yesterday reading James
Urquhart’s blog titled, “Application
packaging for cloud computing: A proposal”.
He’d written
a series of posts
considering deployment and operations in infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and
platform-as-a-service (PaaS) environments. Looking at the impact of cloud
computing on the use of virtual machines and operating systems, Urquhart wrote,
“The very heart and soul of software systems
design is being challenged by the decoupling of infrastructure architectures
from the software architectures that run on them.”
Yes. Exactly what I’ve been saying. Exactly what AppZero does in
divorcing server applications from the underlying OS in virtual application
appliances (VAA).
Urquhart
goes on to say that the more he explores the question of IaaS/PaaS server
application packaging in light of what he calls his “big rethink,” the more he
thinks…” there is an opportunity to simplify cloud computing through changing
the focus from infrastructure to applications.”
Yes, again.
He suggested
that the answer might be found in, “a uniform description of an application,
its configuration, and its operational requirements that can be used to
describe any software deliverable to the cloud, whether meant for IaaS or
PaaS.” He allows as how “such a packaging format would have to be open and
standard,” (read, in the land of distant future where most visions live.)
My take is
that Urquhart has proposed far more than standardized application packaging. What
he has sketched is a proposal for a cloud system application lifecycle. To that
notion, I give James two thumbs up. But no smart proposal changes the basic
fact that when an installation inter-mixes an application with the OS,
complexity follows with inflexibility and cloud lock-in. And its cousin
datacenter lock-out.
So here’s
where that bad dream feeling starts to sneak up on me: The world has embraced
the great benefit that comes from decoupling the OS from hardware but leaves
the rest of the software stack as a giant, monolithic black box. And it doesn’t have to.
If the cloud
as IaaS or PaaS provided separation of server application and OS we’d:
- Enjoy
the cost savings of using the OS license provided by the likes of Amazon and
GoGrid instead of building our own image with our own OS license
- Expect
the cloud provider to stay current with OS and security updates instead of
doing our own patch management in the cloud
- Have
the option of moving up the stack to use cloud provider middleware like SQL
Server, MySQL, WebSphere, or Oracle WebLogic Server, adding the rest of the
pieces I need to make my application sing like a springtime robin. The way I see
it cloud users going up the stack and using other middleware components are
building new apps, not leveraging the cloud stack to its fullest potential
- Move
more responsibility, cost, and management overhead from our side of the ledger
to that of the cloud providers. Why would
you want to do anything that your cloud vendor can do and is already charging
you to do?
- Avoid
cloud lock-in and enable where to run flexibility. Applications can move from data center to
cloud to cloud in a matter of minutes
- Get
the benefits of VM’s decoupling and isolation at the application/application
component layer -- mobility and consolidation at the software stack level, not
just hardware.
Just as good
fences make good neighbors, the isolation that comes with server application
virtualization makes crystal clear who is responsible for what – lines of
demarcation that can get really cloudy (yes, pun) once you move up the stack from
basic machine provisioning. What’s more, application virtualization is perfect
for moving all or any part of an app from a data center to a cloud to another
cloud and back to the datacenter.
Today. With AppZero.
Can you hear me now?
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