On Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 8:01 PM, Richard Stallman <[email protected]> wrote: > > Would the term "convenient management of VMs" fit these features? > > It seems that way. > > Richard, > > I think the end goal of all these frameworks, is to leverage a small > sysadmin/networking team to manage a large pool of resources, that > could include, but is not limited to: > > 1) Physical servers > 2) Hypervisors > 3) Networking equipment > 4) OS installation > 5) Block storage (drives) > 6) DNS/DHCP > 7) TFTP (and any other services required to support provisioning of > bare metal servers and VMs) > > "Convenient management of VMs" seems to fit all these. > Do you think that expression is wrong?
Ignoring the fact the "Iaas Cloud" can also cover management of resources like load balancer instances, databases, firewalls and physical machines via the same APIs, I don't think that "Convenient management of VMs" is entirely "wrong" per se. Nor would I say that the statement "Free Software is software that doesn't cost money and gives you access to the source" is wrong either. Both statements are largely factually true. (but miss the point.) Both "IaaS Cloud" and "Free Software" have a lot of meanings that are not necessity apparent to casual readers. We need to agree on terms, and live by them, even when they are not very explicit, and not readily apparent. This is addressed through education. (In both cases we should consider ourselves lucky as many readers know what we mean.) "Iaas Cloud" does allow "convenient management of VMs", but so do other technologies, including libvirt, vsphere, ovirt, and a number of other technologies that are aimed specifically at "convenient management of VMs". What makes "IaaS Cloud" unique, is: 1) It can manage the whole infrastructure and not just the hypervisor 2) It *can* also allow the allocation of resources other than VMs 3) It provides an API and self service interface to consumers of the resources, to allow them to manage their consumption of these resources, without needing those who built the infrastructure to assist in allocation. I'll bring up the NIST definition of IaaS cloud, which I believe is about as accurate and precise of a phrase that we could use as as an alternative: "The capability provided to the consumer is to provision 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, and deployed applications; and possibly limited control of select networking components (e.g., host firewalls)." I prefer to use "IaaS cloud" where it will be understood, and where it isn't, I educate. (As I do with "Free Software") Thanks, -Brian > > -- > Dr Richard Stallman > President, Free Software Foundation > 51 Franklin St > Boston MA 02110 > USA > www.fsf.org www.gnu.org > Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. > Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call > -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] Archive: http://lists.debian.org/CACFaiRzaWqCuGMwJ=kdekilmjmzrc_pjenwhxgnc3f8hkxf...@mail.gmail.com
