Saturday, June 26, 2010
8:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Washington Convention Center – 143A
Twitter hashtag – #litacloud
This session was presented as a panel discussion followed by a lightning round followed by another panel discussion. Some of the panelists included:
Marshall Breeding, Vanderbilt
Karen Coombs, OCLC
Terry Reese, Oregon State University
Cloud computing: characteristics
NIST Definition – http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/SNS/cloud-computing/
on-demand self-service
broad network access
resource pooling
rapid elasticity
measured services
Gartner definition
service based
uses internet technologies
shared
scalable and elastic
metered by use
Cloud computing is not merely a delivery method.
Cloud based software-as-a-service
software delivered via the cloud
Cloud based platform-as-a-service
platforms (LAMP stack, Ruby on Rails stack, etc.) delivered via the web
Cloud based infrastructure-as-a-service
www.heroku.com – Heroku provides an online development/testing platform
Requires a Ruby on Rails application that you’re uploading.
Heroku is using Amazon’s online services as the infrastructure for their own platform as service.
Marshall Breeding, Vanderbilt University
Continuum of Abstraction
Locally owned and installed servers
Co-located servers
Co-located virtual servers
Web hosting
Server hosting services
Application service provider
Software as-a-service
Platform-as-a-service
Cloud computing – formal definitions
Highly abstracted computing model
Utility model
Provisioned on demand
Scaled according to variable needs
Discrete virtual machines
Compute cycles on demand
Storage on demand
Elastic – consumption of resources can grow and contract on demand
Hosting Services
Web Hosting
Web site only
Standard support for PHP, Perl, and other dynamic page generation
Dedicated Server
Appropriate for applications that have not been tested and deployed in a virtual environment
Advantages
Increasing opportunities to eliminate local servers and tech support
All of Serials Solutions’ offerings are delivered as software-as-a-service
Liblime Enterprise Koha deployed in Amazon EC2
LAMP stack implemented on Virtual Machine Image
Ability to meet larger site requirements through high-performance cloud-delivered platform
Cloud, Community, Collaboration
Collaboration in the Cloud
Infrastructure and tools exist to facilitate better collaboration across libraries
Beak down boundaries between developers in different libraries
Infrastructure alone is not enough. We have to change the ways libraries collaborate.
Transparency and the Cloud
Documentation of cloud application’s infrastructure and capabilities
Web services to as many aspects of the application as possible
Standards based systems (web standards, not library standards)
Blackboxes in the cloud diminish the real power of the cloud – collaborative innovation
Software in the Cloud
Ability to develop in potentially a device and platform independent way
computers, smart phones, single-purpose devices like e-readers
Creates opportunity for geater scalability
Relives the burden of installation and updates
Shared software, libraries, and infrastructure
Don’t have to develop all of these core services locally
Software Development and the Cloud
Cooperative development
Open source projects have been doing this for some time
Shared development effort
Ability for institutions and individuals to participate in different ways
Crowd Sourcing
Testing
Coding
Systems are designed in a modular fashion to allow developers to extend them.
Terry Reese, Oregon State University
Moving Library IT to “International Waters”
International waters – the idea that in some environments, a completely different set of rules apply.
Shared IT Resources Are Hard
IT resources (staff and hardware) represent a finite and expensive resource
Disks are cheap until you get a lot of them
Server cycles are expensive because they are finite within a given infrastructure
Possibly the biggest barrier is organizational
While projects will have multiple partners, one partner has the responsibility for managing and support the infrastructure.
With cloud computing you can move the project outside the organizational bureaucracy and into international waters where projects can function unencumbered.
With freedom comes options:
Add new partners at will
Partners determine how resources are managed; if you change you mind, that’s fine.
Allows a project to “think bigger” because most cloud resources will scale almost at will.
DuraCloud – DuraSpace
A hosted service and open technology to help organizations and end users effectively utilize public cloud services.
Built upon existing cloud services.
The service can work on Amazon, Atmos, Sun, Rackspace, and other cloud services.
LOCKSS in the cloud based on DuraCloud.
Chronopolis Project – designed primarily as a preservation storage system
Chronopolis Tools also monitors files and does auditing.
IRODS
TerraPod – digital video library
Allows you to outsource upload and data creation to the creators of the content.
Disadvantages
Data in the cloud – loss of control
Terms of service
API lag
Varying support