Why we need open systems, and how to create them in the era of the Cloud (OpsCon 10.2015)

| kbarone@igalia.com | www.igalia.com
Why we need open systems
… and how to
create them in
the era of the
Cloud

2
About Igalia/my team/our use of Snabb
●Primarily, for IPv6 transition
● No fast open source tools implementing RFC 7596
(lw4o6) lwaftrs
● ... so my team built one
● Let's talk about why the future should be more like
Snabb

3
Things to think about
● What should the next 10 years of cloud computing look
like?
● What benefits do open systems bring?
● An example of an open cloud tool: Snabb

4
● "The best way to predict the future is to invent it"
● What will help us invent it?

5
Background: where the cloud is leading us
● Centralization: a handful of large providers
● This is not inevitable
● We can choose to build open infrastructure

6
Why open infrastructure is crucial
● Vendor independence
● Freedom to make new things, without having to
convince/wait for large providers
● Creating infrastructure, not just consuming/building on
it
● Data protection

7
Can we have open infrastructure and the cloud?
● Yes.
● Earlier presentations today: OpenStack, Ansible, …
● How can we make the combination even better?

8
Looking at the open future: Snabb
● Let's get more concrete and less philosophical
● Snabb: illustrating what I'd like to see more of in cloud
computing

9
What is Snabb?
● A toolkit for writing networking software
● … that runs at line speed on 10gb NICs

10
Why use Snabb?
● It's a tool that lets individuals and small teams invent
the future
● ... not just large hardware or cloud companies
● Being able to modify our infrastructure, not just build on
it
● Sound familiar? :-)

11
Why Snabb?
The usual Open reasons:
● Flexibility
● Vendor independence
● Open source (APL v2)
● Those are important, but not what makes it so
interesting

12
Vendor independence
● Runs with hardware (NICs) from multiple vendors
● No proprietary dependencies
● Community of developers/consultants, not just one
company
● Let's make the cloud look more like this

13
Empowering tools
● Snabb is a small system
● Lets individuals (and small teams) do rapid
development

14
Snabb as a small system
● Tool: 'code budget'
● Keeping systems comprehensible to individuals
● Keeping systems cohesive
● Keeping systems cleanly extendable

15
Snabb and rapid development
● Comprehensibility + clean concepts = fast dev
● Snabb itself is fast and powerful (10gb userspace
networking)
● Small and production-ready can coexist

16
Autonomy
● Expand what individuals can quickly build
● Let individuals build line-speed userspace networking
tools
● What else would it be useful to build faster?

17
Using powerful ideas from the history of computing
● “The best way to predict the future is to invent it”
● Vendor independence, open systems: sounds like Unix
● Small, comprehensible systems – long history
● These concepts are important for the future of cloud
computing

18
What does your team wish it had?
● Tools like Snabb might help you build it
● What small, comprehensible, powerful, fast tools do you
wish you had?
● Can you build and share them?

19
The future of cloud computing is in our hands
● Who defines the future of cloud computing?
● We can, if we choose to
● We can, if we build the tools

20
Let's imagine a future where our tooling is like Snabb:
comprehensible by individual human beings, rapid to
develop with, vendor-independent, and open source. A
future where our teams can have the tools they want and
need, quickly.
● Questions?

Why we need open systems, and how to create them in the era of the Cloud (OpsCon 10.2015)

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