Before we go down the path of creating twice as much work for half the gain
let me challenge a core assumption here: contrary to what is being assumed,
the PaaS model will not work for education unless structured within an IaaS
framework! This is not because of elegant technical considerations but
rather the most basic and practical of considerations--within the
educational domain the achievable economics of the two models are
significantly different with the decisive advantage going to the IaaS model!
The proof is somewhat tedious but I will work it up.
In the meantime, could we do this in a way that minimizes the reverse
engineering necessary to port the key functionality of what you are
purposing to do back into a more viable economic framework? I will concede
up front and without debate that what you are proposing is a better solution
for certain service provider scenarios. But with that said, it is NOT a
better solution for the grossly underserved educational community where cost
is a tradeoff between free lunch and technology facilitated learning
opportunities. The harsh reality is that cost is the single most, and
sometimes the only, relevant criteria in making educational decisions.
Absent affordability it doesn't much matter what the solution looks like
because the underserved will not be using it.
If we want a different outcome, this is where it has to begin.
Sam Averitt
-Original Message-
From: John Bass [mailto:jcbassoma...@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 14, 2009 4:16 PM
To: vcl-dev@incubator.apache.org
Subject: Re: VCL Experimental Architecture
I agree. Here is a starter list of high level issues:
- architecture modularity
. core
. resource management
. gui/api
. operational metrics and logging
. component templating
- security model
- database independence/abstraction
- language independence
- storage implementation (user and image)
- virtualization management
- future extensibility
- experimental development branch
I'm working on a summary of security model issues. The idea behind the vcl
security model is to list and encapsulate each of the components, objects,
roles, etc in the architecture so that most any security model can be
implemented instead of locking the project into a particular security model
(although we'll have to start with one model). Currently, the security model
is undefined and 'hard-wired' into the architecture. This greatly limits the
ability for vcl to be deployed into new environments with different security
policies or to adapt to future security policies in currently deployed
environments. More on this later.
Please feel free to jump in on a topic. There is lots to discuss.
John Bass
john_b...@ncsu.edu
www.sosi.ncsu.edu
www.cnl.ncsu.edu
(919) 515-0154
On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 3:40 PM, Josh Thompson
josh_thomp...@ncsu.eduwrote:
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I really think that before any more implementation design work is done
toward
long term restructuring, a lot of high level discussion and design work
needs
to be done. It causes a fractured community if a few people in the
community
decide to redesign large parts of the codebase without having discussions
about it on this list.
Josh
On Thursday May 14, 2009, Andrew Brown wrote:
I've just made a clarification on the vcl experimental architecture
document:
In regards to the core's frontend API interface about values including
image_id, ticket_id, and so fourth, the frontend needs to map which
resource manager corresponds to those values, but they may or may not be
unique. To solve this, it needs to be paired with its resource manager
id.
Here's how that will work:
Above the core, i.e. in communication with a frontend, values such as
image_id and ticket_id will be a tuple: (resource_manager_id, actual_id)
Below the core, i.e. in communication with a resource manager, these
values will be just a single integer.
This way the core won't need to keep some kind of mapping (which
wouldn't
work anyways since the ids are only unique to a single resource manager)
nor will it need to poll all resource managers for the right one. The
frontend will be responsible for passing both values back to the core.
-Andrew
- --
- ---
Josh Thompson
Systems Programmer
Virtual Computing Lab (VCL)
North Carolina State University
josh_thomp...@ncsu.edu
919-515-5323
my GPG/PGP key can be found at pgp.mit.edu
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