Re: [dc] draft-khasnabish-vmmi-problems-00.txt

I think it is fair to say that there is a difference between mobility
and portability. Mobility is live migration, but portability is
specifying a VM's properties, delete in one location and create in
another. The new location can be another hypervisor. In many cases, you
don't need mobility, just portability. E.g. if you have a disaster
recovery situation, then you aren't going to get mobility anyway.

DMTF has specified a standard called OVF (Open Virtualization Format)
that addresses the "description" of the VM. This format is supported by
various hypervisor vendors. So, some level of VM migration
standardization has already happened (albeit portability and not
mobility). 

The questions are:

- Do we need a "control plane" to transfer VM state from point A to B -
the mobility problem?
- Do we need a "control plane" to transfer OVF specification from point
A to B - the portability problem?

The problem is relevant in the inter-datacenter, public-private, or
inter-cloud spaces, where there will be more than one hypervisor
controller by definition. Are we hitting the live migration issue today?
Maybe not. Is it conceivable that we will hit this issue? I think so.

However, the question has to be asked to the provider/operators and not
to the vendors.

Thanks, Ashish

-----Original Message-----
From: dc-bounces@ietf.org [mailto:dc-bounces@ietf.org] On Behalf Of
Thomas Narten
Sent: Thursday, January 19, 2012 11:17 PM
To: Steven Blake
Cc: dc@ietf.org
Subject: Re: [dc] draft-khasnabish-vmmi-problems-00.txt

Steven,

> Several system vendors (myself included) stood up in Taipei and said
> "one encapsulation, please".  If IETF can facilitate industry
> convergence on a small set of NVO3 encapsulations (preferably one),
that
> would be a big win for Ethernet switch vendors.

I agree completely.

But my questions were asking about the apparent lack of  interest from
operators/implementers/market players regarding Bhumip's draft and the
apparent desire to have some sort of standards work related to the
general VM migration problem.

Is there such interest?

Thomas

_______________________________________________
dc mailing list
dc@ietf.org
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/dc