Is the Operating System part of the IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) in cloud computing?

I’ve recently debated about if Operating System (in a real Cloud Environment) is part, or not, of the IaaS, and therefore, if its control (management, monitoring and so on) is customer’s responsibility or provider’s.

 

On the one hand, according to the NIST definition of Cloud Computing (the most widely accepted, “The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing“, “Special Publication 800-145“) and quoting from it: “IaaS: “The capability provided to the consumer is to provision processing, storage, network and other fundamental computing resources where the consumer is able to able to deploy and run arbitrary software, wick can include operating system and applications. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure, bur has control over operating systems and deployed applications …”. So, puristically speaking, the Operating System is not part of IaaS, as it’s showed in the next picture emphasizing the control scope of the consumer and provider in an IaaS service:

 

  

On the other hand, in the practice some Cloud Providers, in their IaaS provision dashboards let you chose the operating system (“image”) to deploy in the Virtual Machine (VM) you provision. So they are responsible of guaranteeing the Operating System “image” is good; so in some way they have a partial responsibility on the Operating System level (crossing the border of the IaaS) but it’s only in the first deployment of the operating system in the VM; after then the customer gets the control of the operating System so he’s full responsible of it and software built up or installed on. This other picture shows this fuzzy border for the initial step in the VM provisioning responsibilities:

 

 

Note, of course, other (most) IaaS cloud providers let you to upload you own Operating System images, so they are responsible for providing you the VM on the hypervisor  (or container) chosen by them, but nothing else, matching the purist definition of IaaS. Note: this is the case of Tissat, we offer wide catalogue of operating system images but our Cloud Platform (called Nefeles, and based on OpenStack) let customer to upload its own images too.

 

Besides the first picture, the next one shows the PaaS and SaaS scope control of consumer and provider according to NIST definition:

 

 

 

Finally, the border between IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS, can be summarized in the following picture:

 

 

 

Or in a simplified way in this one:

 

 

Se inaugura el web-site dedicado al proyecto “RealCloud” (programa INNPACTO)

Logo del Proyecto "Real Cloud"

Tissat lidera un cosorcio integrado por la Universitat Jaume I, la Universtat Rovira i Virgili, el AIMME (el Instituto Tecnológico Metal-Mecánico) y la empresa Corex que está desarrollando el proyecto “Real Data Center Cloud Services and Environment”, abreviado como “RealCloud” que, con Nº. Exp.: IPT-2011-1232-430000, ha recibido financiación del hasta hace poco Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación dentro de la dura convocatoria del program INNPACTO del 2011.

El proyecto, al que le dedicaremos más tiempo otro día, tiene una duración de 30 meses y plantea el desarrollo experimental de un entorno completo y auténtico de Cloud Computing basado en Data Center, compuesto por:

• Una plataforma auténcita de cloud computing, es decir, que soporte el autoservicio bajo-demanda, tenga elasticidad rápida, permita ofrecer servicios medibles, accesibles por Internet, y basada en general en el principio de “multitenancy” – recursos compartidos – aunque permita también la adscripción fija basada en software libre.
• Servicios reales de Cloud Computing orientados al mercado y basados en la demanda, orientados principalmente a PYMES y autónomos quienes participarán en su definición y serán probados por ellos mismos.
• Distintas herramientas para la gestión y operación de dicha plataforma cloud necesarias para hacer un uso eficaz y eficiente de la plataforma y recursos subyacentes.

El proyecto acaba de inaugurar su página web dedicada esta semana:

http://www.realcloudproject.com

donde se pueden consultar más datos sobre su evolución, los eventos que se organizan entorno al mismo, etc.

Los resutlados de este proyecto potenciarán la plataforma “Néfeles” de Tissat con la que ofrece su servicios “CloudCentre”, catálogo de servicios que cubre una amplia gama de servicios de Cloud Computing.

Logo de RealCloud incluyendo los de los integrantes del Consorcio