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WICSA Virtualization and Cloud BoF

WICSA Virtualization and Cloud BoF




WICSA/ECSA 2009 “Virtualization, Cloud Computing and Software Architecture" BoF Proposal

 

Paul Brebner, NICTA

Anna Liu, UNSW

 

We propose a WICSA 2009 BOF session on “Virtualization, Cloud Computing, and Software Architecture” which will look broadly at the following main areas (suggested discussion starter questions).

 

 (1) What is virtualization/cloud computing?

 

  • What is virtualization?
  • What is cloud computing?
  • What’s the connection between virtualization and cloud computing? What do they share in common? What’s different? Are there any necessary dependencies?
  • What can be virtualized? What can’t be? What could be? What shouldn’t be?

 

(2) What is relevance of virtualization/clouds to Software Architecture?

 

  • How does virtualization/cloud any impact the architecture of software? What specifically? What changes does virtualization/clouds require for software architecting? What are the benefits, issues?
  • How (well) does virtualization work with different architectural styles (such as SOA, Grid, event-based systems, etc)?
  • What architectural styles do/don’t work well on cloud computing? (E.g. Amazon EC2). What changes or additions are required to cloud computing architecture in order to address this?
  • What’s “best practice” for architecting systems with significant virtualization?
    • How should new applications be architected for virtualization/clouds?
    • Legacy applications?
    • Hybrid applications (some hosting internal to organisation, some external)
    • What methods, frameworks, standards, patterns, tool support etc is available/needed?
    • How do you determine the costs and benefits of re-architecting for virtualization/clouds?
  • What impacts (positive and negative) does virtualization have on architectural quality attributes?

 

(3) What is the Software Architecture of virtualization/clouds?

 

  • What characterises the software architecture of virtualization/clouds?
  • Are there common architectural styles for virtualization/clouds?
  • Are there any architecturally significant similarities and differences between different types and vendors virtualization products?
  • What standards exist or are under development for virtualization/clouds? What is there purposes, scope, and uptake?
  • How do you evaluate and select a virtualization/cloud solution against architectural goals?
  • What deficiencies are there in current virtualization/cloud infrastructures? For example, how extensive and important is support for load-balancing, automatic scaling (instance start/stop), monitoring and management, etc.
  • How important is web-service based management of virtualization/cloud?
  • Is virtualization and cloud computing the answer to all scalability/performance issues?
    • What performance and scalability issues does it potentially introduce?
    • What problems/solutions are there for virtualization/cloud on extremely heterogeneous resources (e.g. different speed CPUs).
    • Is the view that “just throw more virtual instances at it” to solve performance/scalability problems hopelessly naïve?
    • Are there any reliable sources of empirical evidence for virtualization and cloud performance and scalability?

 

(4) Looking back, experiences, and looking forward

 

  • What’s new/old about virtualization/cloud? What can be traced back to previous successes (or failures!), and what lessons are transferable to current software architectures and applications?
  • What experiences have people had with using virtualization/cloud and what lessons have they learnt from architectural perspectives?
  • What research has been done, and what research is needed at the intersection of software architecture and virtualization/cloud?