The OpenStack Developer’s Summit held in Boston was a display of how the open-source community makes serious efforts to create a statement in the cloud community. This was clearly displayed by the jam-packed rooms when the Quantum network services project was introduced.
Quantum is relevant to cloud computing because of its virtual networking platform. Virtual networking is a platform that represents the OSI Model, which has network interfaces and segments on its second layer and subnets and gateways on the third layer. These layers automatically remove the users from actual interactions with physical routers and switches.
Cloud networking continues to cause wobbles due to the following loopholes:
- The network is growing to be a huge, flat and dumb platform – The network now simply provides the connectivity and fewer interactions from applications that are just provided by third-party cloud services.
- The network simply provides the physical infrastructure while service providers deliver automation and varying levels of intelligence – This makes applications highly capable of expanding migration and operations. A reliable network infrastructure should be able to do that instead of the applications doing the programming.
The OSI Model with its second and third level capabilities should be able to perform like an electricity conduit that allocates power conduction and generation. It should operate with features like efficiency, cost-effectiveness and eco-friendly.
The new network models still have to do a lot of modifications and upgrades to provide the most effective cloud infrastructure. This includes abstraction capability of the physical network at it is implemented by enterprise users.
Public cloud computing requires sharing of physical networking resources from several independent users. This scenario requires stability, security and reliability, and the best way to address these needs is to provide virtualization from cloud computing.
This is the same reason why cloud service providers provide users some sense of control using virtual machine applications. Examples of this application are Amazon’s Security Zones, GoGrid and Amazon’s Virtual Private Cloud.