I have been working for more than two years now in the DMTF
working group tasked with creating a Cloud Management standard. That work has
culminated in the release today of the Cloud
Infrastructure Management Interface (CIMI) version 1.0 by the DMTF.
CIMI is a single interface that a cloud consumer can use to
manage their cloud infrastructure in multiple clouds. As CIMI is adopted by the
cloud vendors, no more will you need to adapt client code to each of the
proprietary interfaces from these multiple vendors.
Unlike a de facto standard where typically one vendor has
change control over the interface, and everyone else has to reverse engineer
the inner workings of it, CIMI is a de jure standard that is under change
control of a standards body. One reason the standard took two years to create
is that we factored in use cases, requirements and contributed APIs from
multiple vendors. These vendors have products shipping today and as a result
CIMI has a strong foundation in real world experience.
What does CIMI allow?
CIMI is both a model for the resources (computing, storage
networking) in the cloud as well as a RESTful protocol binding to HTTP. This
means that to create a Machine (guest VM) for example, the client creates a
“document” that represents the Machine resource and sends it to the server
using HTTP. CIMI allows the resources to be encoded in either JavaScript Object
Notation (JSON) or the eXentsible Markup Language (XML).
CIMI provides a model for the resources that can be mapped
to any existing cloud infrastructure offering on the market. There are some
features in CIMI that may not be supported by every cloud, but CIMI also
supports the discovery of which features are implemented. This means that you
can still have a client that works across multiple clouds and is able to take
full advantage of the features in each of them.
Isn’t it too early for a standard?
A key feature of a successful standard is that it allows for
compatible extensions to occur within the core framework of the interface
itself. CIMI’s feature discovery (through metadata) is used to convey to the
client that additional features that may be vendor specific have been
implemented. As multiple vendors implement such features, they become
candidates to add the future versions of CIMI.
Thus innovation can continue in the cloud space without
being slowed down by a lowest common denominator type of specification. Since
CIMI was developed in the open by dozens of stakeholders who are already
implementing infrastructure clouds, I expect to CIMI being adopted by these
same companies and others over the next year or two. Cloud Customers who can
see the benefit of this standard should start to ask their cloud vendors to
show a CIMI implementation in their roadmap.
For more information on CIMI and the DMTF's other cloud efforts, go to: http://dmtf.org/cloud
