Rational Survivability

I was very interested and excited to learn what NIST researchers and staff had come up with when I saw the notification of the “Draft Interagency Report 7904, Trusted Geolocation in the Cloud: Proof of Concept Implementation.”

It turns out that this report is an iteration on the PoC previously created by VMware, Intel and RSA back in 2010 which utilized Intel’s TXT, VMWare’s virtualization platform and the RSA/Archer GRC platform, as this one does.

I haven’t spent much time to look at the differences, but I’m hoping as I read through it that we’ve made progress…

You can read about the original PoC here, and watch a video from 2010 about it here.  Then you can read about it again in its current iteration, here (PDF.)

I wrote about this topic back in 2009 and still don’t have a good firm answer to the question I asked in 2009 in a blog titled “Quick Question: Any Public Cloud Providers Using Intel TXT?” and the follow-on “More On High Assurance (via TPM) Cloud Environments”

At CloudConnect 2011 I also filmed a session with the Intel/RSA/VMware folks titled “More On Cloud and Hardware Root Of Trust: Trusting Cloud Services with Intel® TXT”

I think this is really interesting stuff and a valuable security and compliance capability, but is apparently still hampered with practical deployment challenges.

I’m also confused as to why RSA employees were not appropriately attributed under the NIST banner and this is very much a product-specific/vendor-specific set of solutions…I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a NIST-branded report like this.

At any rate, I am interested to see if we will get to the point where these solutions will have more heterogeneous uptake across platforms.

/Hoff

Randy Bias (@randybias) wrote a very interesting blog titled Cloud Computing Came To a Head In 2011, sharing his year-end perspective on the emergence of Cloud Computing and most interestingly the “…gap between ‘enterprise clouds’ and ‘web-scale clouds’”

Given that I very much agree with the dichotomy between “web-scale” and “enterprise” clouds and the very different sets of respective requirements and motivations, Randy’s post left me confused when he basically skewered the early works of NIST and their Definition of Cloud Computing:

This is why I think the NIST definition of cloud computing is such a huge FAIL. It’s focus is on the superficial aspects of ‘clouds’ without looking at the true underlying patterns of how large Internet businesses had to rethink the IT stack.  They essentially fall into the error of staying at my ‘Phase 2: VMs and VDCs’ (above).  No mention of CAP theorem, understanding the fallacies of distributed computing that lead to successful scale out architectures and strategies, the core socio-economics that are crucial to meeting certain capital and operational cost points, or really any acknowledgement of this very clear divide between clouds built using existing ‘enterprise computing’ techniques and those using emergent ‘cloud computing’ technologies and thinking.

Nope. No mention of CAP theorem or socio-economic drivers, yet strangely the context of what the document was designed to convey renders this rant moot.

Frankly, NIST’s early work did more to further the discussion of *WHAT* Cloud Computing meant than almost any person or group evangelizing Cloud Computing…especially to a world of users whose most difficult challenges is trying to understand the differences between traditional enterprise IT and Cloud Computing

As I reacted to this point on Twitter, Simon Wardley (@swardley) commented in agreement with Randy’s assertions, but strangely what I found odd again was the misplaced angst by which the criterion of “success” vs “FAIL” that both Simon and Randy were measuring the NIST document against:

Both Randy and Simon seem to be judging NIST’s efforts against their lack of extolling the virtues, or “WHY” versus the “WHAT” of Cloud, and as such, were basically doing a disservice by perpetuating aged concepts rooted in archaic enterprise practices rather than boundary stretch, trailblaze and promote the enlightened stance of “web-scale” cloud.

Well…

The thing is, as NIST stated in both the purpose and audience sections of their document, the “WHY” of Cloud was not the main intent (and frankly best left to those who make a living talking about it…)

From the NIST document preface:

Image via Wikipedia

In case you weren’t aware, NIST has a WIKI for collaboration on Cloud Computing.  You can find it here.

They also have a draft of their v1.0 Cloud Computing Reference Architecture, which builds upon the prior definitional work we’ve seen before and has pretty graphics.  You can find that, here (dated 3/30/2011)

/Hoff

Related articles

• NIST Issues Cloud Security Guidelines (informationweek.com)
• NIST formalizes cloud computing definition, issues security and privacy guidance – CSO (sectorprivate.wordpress.com)

How many of you have seen the Draft NIST Working Definition Of Cloud Computing?  It appears to have been presented to government CIO’s at the recent Federal CIO Cloud Computing Summit in Washington DC last week.

I saw the draft NIST Working Definition of Cloud Computing shown below (copied from Reuven Cohen’s blog) about a month and a half ago, but have not seen it presented in its entirety outside of the copy I was sent until now and didn’t know how/when it would be made “public,” so I didn’t blog directly about its content.

The reason I was happy to see it when I did was that I had just finished writing the draft of the Cloud Security Alliance Security Guidance for Critical Areas of Focus In Cloud Computing — specifically the section on Cloud architecture and found that there was a very good alignment between our two independent works (much like with the Jericho Cloud Cube model.)

In fact, you’ll see that I liked the definitions for the SPI model components so much, I used them and directly credited  Peter Mell from NIST, one of the authors of the work.

I sent a very early draft of my work along with some feedback to Peter on some of the definitions, specifically since I noted some things I did not fully agree with in the deployment models sections. The “community” clouds seem to me as being an abstraction or application of of private clouds. I have a “managed cloud” instead.  Ah, more fuel for good discussion.

I hoped we could have discussed them prior to publishing either of the documents, but we passed in the ether as it seems.

At any rate, here’s the draft from our wily Canadian friend:

4-24-09

Peter Mell and Tim Grance – National Institute of Standards and Technology, Information Technology Laboratory

Note 1: Cloud computing is still an evolving paradigm. Its definitions, use cases, underlying technologies, issues, risks, and benefits will be refined in a spirited debate by the public and private sectors. These definitions, attributes, and characteristics will evolve and change over time.

Note 2: The cloud computing industry represents a large ecosystem of many models, vendors, and market niches. This definition attempts to encompass all of the various cloud approaches.

Definition of Cloud Computing:

Cloud computing is a pay-per-use model for enabling available, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model promotes availability and is comprised of five key characteristics, three delivery models, and four deployment models.

Key Characteristics:

• On-demand self-service. A consumer can unilaterally provision computing capabilities, such as server time and network storage, as needed without requiring human interaction with each service’s provider.
• Ubiquitous network access. Capabilities are available over the network and accessed through standard mechanisms that promote use by heterogeneous thin or thick client platforms (e.g., mobile phones, laptops, and PDAs).
• Location independent resource pooling. The provider’s computing resources are pooled to serve all consumers using a multi-tenant model, with different physical and virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned according to consumer demand. The customer generally has no control or knowledge over the exact location of the provided resources. Examples of resources include storage, processing, memory, network bandwidth, and virtual machines.
• Rapid elasticity. Capabilities can be rapidly and elastically provisioned to quickly scale up and rapidly released to quickly scale down. To the consumer, the capabilities available for rent often appear to be infinite and can be purchased in any quantity at any time.
• Pay per use. Capabilities are charged using a metered, fee-for-service, or advertising based billing model to promote optimization of resource use. Examples are measuring the storage, bandwidth, and computing resources consumed and charging for the number of active user accounts per month. Clouds within an organization accrue cost between business units and may or may not use actual currency.

Note: Cloud software takes full advantage of the cloud paradigm by being service oriented with a focus on statelessness, low coupling, modularity, and semantic interoperability.

Delivery Models:

• Cloud Software as a Service (SaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to use the provider’s applications running on a cloud infrastructure and accessible from various client devices through a thin client interface such as a Web browser (e.g., web-based email). The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure, network, servers, operating systems, storage, or even individual application capabilities, with the possible exception of limited user-specific application configuration settings.
• Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to deploy onto the cloud infrastructure consumer-created applications using programming languages and tools supported by the provider (e.g., java, python, .Net). The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure, network, servers, operating systems, or storage, but the consumer has control over the deployed applications and possibly application hosting environment configurations.
• Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to rent processing, storage, networks, and other fundamental computing resources where the consumer is able to deploy and run arbitrary software, which can include operating systems and applications. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure but has control over operating systems, storage, deployed applications, and possibly select networking components (e.g., firewalls, load balancers).

Deployment Models:

• Private cloud. The cloud infrastructure is owned or leased by a single organization and is operated solely for that organization.
• Community cloud. The cloud infrastructure is shared by several organizations and supports a specific community that has shared concerns (e.g., mission, security requirements, policy, and compliance considerations).
• Public cloud. The cloud infrastructure is owned by an organization selling cloud services to the general public or to a large industry group.
• Hybrid cloud. The cloud infrastructure is a composition of two or more clouds (internal, community, or public) that remain unique entities but are bound together by standardized or proprietary technology that enables data and application portability (e.g., cloud bursting).

Each deployment model instance has one of two types: internal or external. Internal clouds reside within an organizations network security perimeter and external clouds reside outside the same perimeter.

Now, Reuven Cohen mentioned on his blog:

In creating this definition, NIST consulted extensively with the private sector including a wide range of vendors, consultants and industry pundants (sic!) including your (sic!) truly. Below is the draft NIST working definition of Cloud Computing. I should note, this definition is a work in progress and therefore is open to public ratification & comment. The initial feedback was very positive from the federal CIO’s who were presented it yesterday in DC. Baring any last minute lobbying I doubt we’ll see many more major revisions.

…which is interesting, because for being “…open to public ratification & comment,” I can’t seem to find it anywhere except for references to its creation as a deliverable in FY09 in a presentation from December, 2008.  I searched NIST’s site, but perhaps I’m just having a bad search day.

Clearly at least I have a couple of comments.  I could send them to Peter directly, but I’d rather discuss them openly if that’s appropriate and there is a forum to do so.  At this rate, it looks as though it may be too late, however.

/Hoff