ICCLab attended the OpenCloudDay in Bern en masse. Being one of the most known (infamous?) cloud computing groups in Switzerland, we had to show our strength at one of Switzerland’s most prestigious cloud events!
This blog post gives an overview of the InfiniBand functionality that is offered by the transport stack of KIARA. KIARA is a new and advanced middleware and a part of the FI-WARE project which is in turn part of the very large European FI-PPP programme. Several team members of the ICCLab are currently working on the implementation of this middleware.
This fifth edition of the OpenStack CH User Group has been dedicated to the networking aspects of OpenStack but not only.
More then 40 people attended the meeting on 24-Oct. from 18.00 to 21.00 at the University of Zurich, Irchel campus
Sergio Maffioletti (GC3 project director, University of Zurich) gave a short welcome before the presentations started.
The agenda included four talks, of about 30 minutes, in the following order:
OpenStack Networking Introduction by Yves Fauser, System Engineer VMware NSBU
The talk encompassed this topics: Traditional Networking – refresher, OpenStack integrated projects big picture, Why OpenStack Networking is called Neutron now, Networking before Neutron, Nova-Networking, Drawbacks of Nova-Networking that led to Neutron, OpenStack Networking with Neutron, Neutron Overview, Available Plugins, Neutron Demo and Neutron – State of the Nation.
NFV and Swisscom’s Openstack Architecture by Markus Brunner – Swisscom
Markus Brunner gave an introduction to Network Function Virtualization and how Swisscom sees how its implementation in the service chain could help to overcome the increasing traffic vs. decreasing customer fees dilemma, by offering value added networking virtual services (firewall, IP-TV, …). Another major aspect is to minimize the number of different hardware boxes by using virtualized components running on cloud infrastructure and reduce vendor lock-in.
Mirantis Fuel and Monitoring and how it all powers the XIFI FI PPP Project by Federico Facca – Create-Net – Italy
Federico gave a presentation on the XIFI project, XIFI architetcure and Infrastructure TOOLBOX which has the objectives of automating the installation of host operating system, hypervisor and OpenStack software through the Preboot eXecution Environment (PXE). The TOOLBOX also defines and selects a deployment model among the ones available and discovers the servers where to install the software.
XIFI federation allows to specify a “role” (controller, storage, compute etc) for each server and makes set up & network configuration (vlan etc), supports registration of the infrastructure into the federation and finally tests the deployment so to verify that everything has been installed correctly.
Ceph Storage in OpenStack by Jens-Christian Fischer SWITCH
The presentation gave interesting hints on Ceph Design Goals, Ceph Storage options, Ceph architecture, CRUSH Algorithm, Monitor – MON and Metadata Server MDS. Jens-Christian then concluded with information about OpenStack at SWITCH and Test Cluster.
ZHAW ICCLab – Winterthur 24/10/2013
ICCLab invited Federico Facca, from Create-Net, to give an overview of the research activities, of his lab, and relevant projects in execution.
Around two hours were dedicated to this event to exchange reciprocally information about the activities and innovation interests.
The first part of the presentation, of Federico, was dedicated to introduce how Create-Net is organised and areas of competences:
CREATE-NET, headquartered in Trento – Italy, is an international research center which operates as a non-profit association and with a mission to built around four key points: Achieve Research excellence in ICT, promote technology & innovation transfer and have a focus on key application areas and services. One of key goals is to provide significant benefit to the Autonomous Province of Trento. It is mainly structured in the following application domains:Intelligent transportation and sustainable mobility, Interactive and mobile social media, Smart Energy Systems and Well being and e-health.
After this introductory speech, most of the time was dedicated to the FI-PPP XI-FI project and Mirantis FUEL tool that is used to automate the introduction and configuration of new nodes in the federated cloud XI-FI. Mirantis opened its private library, of configuration and deployment tools for OpenStack, to the public. The library, called FUEL, has already been used in many OpenStack projects that the company completed for its business customers. ZHAW ICCLab is very interested in Fuel because it will be used in its datacenter.
The event was concluded with a round table with introduction of reseach interests and projects by each researcher of ICCLab.
ZHAW ICCLAB and Create-Net are contributing to the FI PPP programme with their participations to FI-WARE and XI-FI respectively. Nevertheless, both the organisations are participating to the CONCORD supporting and coordination action of FI PPP.
The 11th Future Internet Assembly will take place from 18 to 20 March 2014 in Athens, Greece.
This year the focus will be on “Reshaping the Future Internet infrastructure for innovation”.
Open call has been launched to select the best 9 FIA working sessions for the conference, selecting the proposals that cover aspects related to:
These sessions should:
The working session proposals can be submitted following the template available at https://osqa.eurescom.eu by Tuesday, 15th October 2013.
Campus Party is an annual week long, 24-hours-a-day technology festival where thousands of “Campuseros” (hackers, developers, gamers and technophiles), equipped with laptops, camp on-site and immerse themselves in a truly unique environment.
It is the biggest electronic entertainment event in the world which unites the brightest young minds in technology and science under the idea that “the Internet is not a network of computers, it’s a network of people.”
The event of this year is strongly supported by the EU Commission (see photos) with the participation of FI PPP FI-WARE project (ZHAW ICCLAB is a partner) challenges that will be launched to promote the exposure, dissemination, and possible take-up of the FI-WARE technologies. All big names from the business sectors and gaming are present as well with respective platforms.
With Phase II getting into full force it is a particular honor for us to host the first Phase II face-to-face Architecture Board meeting of the Future Internet Public-Private Partnership.
Important topics were addressed, like the previous SB meeting, the status of the current FI-PPP projects, first architecture discussions, status of FI-PPP capacities, and many more topics related to technical management and coordination.
The FI-PPP is a pioneering endeavor and brings together very different communities and respective stakeholders. A trustworthy partnership is key for the success of such a research program. It is thus the even more delighting to see the very open and constructive spirit that drove the Phase I Architecture Board to be continued seamlessly into Phase II with all the new partners. The meeting provides further support for the well-functioning operation of the FI-PPP AB. Great thank to all the participants.
Concord is a supporting action of the FI PPP programme having as main EC objective the harmonisation, dissemination, facilitation and content of the core platform (FI-WARE), the Cloud Infrastructure (XIFI) and Use Case Projects.
From Phase 2 onward , one of the challenge of FI PPP, and therefore of Concord, is the deployment of the Generic Enablers (i.e IoT, QoS, Cloud, Bigdata etc..) of FI-WARE by Use Case Projects above the Cloud Infrastructure of XIFI available by telcos.
To support and kick the activities off in Germany most of the agenda of the boards (Architecture, Advisory and Steering) have been drafted together with the plan for dissemination and events. Most of the partners of Concord shall meet at the FIA in Dublin from 8 to 10 May.
FI-PPP programme will assume relevance from the phase 3 when most of the projects will be sustainable and in operation involving Small & Medium Enterprises selected by Concord project.