WP4 – Cloud Platform & Provisioning

Technical Review Period 1

This document produced by Members of the Helix Nebula consortium is

licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License

.Permissions beyond the scope of this

license may be available at http://helix-nebula.eu/. The Helix Nebula

project is co-funded by the European Community Seventh Framework

Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under Grant Agreement no 312301

WP4 ObjectivesAssemble the resources needed to meet the requirements provided by WP3, plus the tools necessary to configure, deploy, monitor and evaluate the flagship.

Specific goalsTo produce, validate and make available a method of determining and describing a suitable service offering to meet user requirements for the Science Cloud.To produce, validate and make available a method of matching services to requirements in any specific case.To deploy that method in the three flagships, based on the specific requirement statements for each flagship (from WP3), in order to allow evaluation (by WP9) of the approach.

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Effort ContributionLead Beneficiary: Atos

WP411%

Person-Months per Participant

Participant Person-months

EGI.eu 3.00

T-Systems 3.00

Atos 10.48

CloudSigma 3.00

TOTAL 19,48PM23PM11PM1

WP4 – 10.48 pm WP4 – 1pm

Extension of WP4 into P2 requested to update D4.3: ‘Cloud Provisioning Report’ with the evaluation of the pilots after they are completed.

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Scientific/technical achievements and their impact

The main objective of Work Package 4 (service provisioning) is to produce, describe and analyse a suitable service offering. WP4 is at the centre of the project execution since it liaises:

Work Package 3 where requirements for the flagships use cases are elicited and Work Package 5 where the response to those requirements is instantiated for each of these use-case.

The main contribution of Work Package 4 to Helix Nebula has been in bringing knowledge and experience of how “services” are actually delivered. This has included, for instance, documentation of the options and recommendations regarding the establishment of a “broker” role.

Work Package 4 has documented many of the service aspects, which have also appeared in the documents produced by the Service Architecture (ServArch) team.

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Deliverables and Milestones – Period 1Type Del. no Name Nature Dissemination

levelDate Delivered

Deliverable 4.1 Access to the Services Defined for WP5 Other RE 17/01/2013

http://www.helix-nebula.eu/index.php/media-room/videos.html

Deliverable 4.2 Cloud Provisioning: Case histories of decisions taken

Report PU 30/05/2013

Deliverable 4.3 Cloud Provisioning Report Report RE 26/06/2013

Milestone 9 Supplier workshop to validate inputs and service matching as part of GA1

Report PU 18/12/2012

Milestone 10 Workshop to gather learnings and improvement opportunities

Report PU 11/03/2013

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Overall modifications, corrective actions, re-tuning of objectives

Initially WP4 followed the Waterfall approach as described in the Seventh Framework ProgrammeDuring the execution it became clear that a more iterative and innovative approach resulted in a more efficient and effective way in product delivery. Learning in relative short cycles is an efficient way to deliver products with a higher qualityFollowing an iterative approach means:

extra effort is needed to schedule additional product and review cycles;extra effort is needed for monitoring the development in requirements (Requirements management);release management must be in place in order to have control on the progress and development of versions of the deliverables.

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Exploitation and use of foreground

Knowledge and experience of how services are actually delivered and documentation of options and recommendations regarding the establishment of a “broker” role were the main contributions of Work Package 4 to Helix Nebula

Documentation of service aspects (see also documents produced by the Service Architecture (ServArch) team)

Contributed to the identification and description of the roles in the HN ‘value chain’, elaborated in Work Package 7 (business models)

Above mentioned aspects are crucial for the establishment of Helix Nebula as a viable and sustainable service, incorporating both commercial and public contributions.

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Collaboration with other beneficiaries

Collaboration between all work packages was effective:All parties delivered their effort but often based on their own interpretations on what should be delivered or was expected. More reactive than adaptive (on demand).

Collaboration between beneficiaries became more effective by introducing the monthly Work Package Leaders call (meeting):

Fixed agenda; Monitors progress by means of issues, actions and results list (minutes);Platform to discuss mutual requirements and expectations; Management participation.

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Interaction with other FP7 projects, and stakeholders outside the consortium

Taking part in the Select Industry Group (SIG) discussions, established by the EC as part of the European Cloud Partnership (ECP) programme..

Active member of the Open Data Centre Alliance (ODCA http://www.opendatacenteralliance.org/) which is developing common user requirements, leading to implementation within standards, for many of these subjects.

Use has been made of knowledge gained from the development of other cloud management projects, such as Optimis (www.optimis-project.eu), BonFire (www.bonfire-project.eu) and Stratuslab (stratuslab.eu) for interaction with FP7 projects.

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Contribution to the dissemination of project results

Most of the documents produced by Work Package 4 (and the associated documents produced by the ServArch team) have been published on the relevant web site.

Service aspects have been discussed at a number of internal Helix Nebula events and externally, most recently at IM2013 (http://www.bdim.net/2013/). WP4 has also contributed to position the HN initiative in several conferences such as EUDAT with data infrastructure providers. These have helped promulgate the services, as opposed to just technology, thinking that is necessary for such developments to succeed.

Work Package 4 has also contributed to the Communications Plan and reviewed

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Difficulties and issues

Difficulties obtaining a clear statement of the Requirements, beyond the technical configurations required, meaning that we had to make intelligent assumptions;That previously little thought had been given to service, rather than technical, aspects, especially as regards federation and brokerage;There was a need to act as ambassadors for the need to define a complete Service Architecture, most of which was eventually done outside the scope of this WP.

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Requirements perspectives

Requirements from

 

 

Requirements perspective 

 Technical

requirements 

 Service

requirements 

 Financial /

Business requirements

  Current flagships 

Requirements available

Requirements are needed

Requirements are needed

 Future flagships 

Need to allow for new requirements

Need to allow for new requirements

Need to allow for new requirements

 Potential future users 

Need to predict industry-standard requirements (e.g.

from ODCA)

Need to predict industry-standard requirements (e.g.

from ODCA)

Need to predict industry-standard requirements (e.g.

from ODCA)

[1] Open Data Center Alliance, see: http://www.opendatacenteralliance.org/

Requirements situation at the start of the project (reported in MS9)

The high level process

The matching process

Cooperation models

Blue box functions

Blue Box use in pilot