Interconnected Private Clouds for Universities and Researchers
OpenCloudMesh is a joint international initiative under the umbrella of the GÉANT Association that is built on ownCloud’s open Federated Cloud sharing application programming interface (API) taking Universal File Access beyond the borders of individual Clouds and into a globally interconnected mesh of research clouds - without sacrificing any of the advantages in privacy, control and security an on-premises cloud provides. OpenCloudMesh provides a common file access layer across an organization and across globally interconnected organizations, whether the data resides on internal servers, on object storage, in applications like SharePoint or Jive, other ownClouds, or even external cloud systems such as Dropbox and Google (syncing them to desktops or mobile apps, making them available offline).
Concept document
The OpenCloudMesh concept document was produced by ownCloud Inc. and first distributed on 23 July 2015
Statement
All leading partners of the OpenCloudMesh project - GÉANT, CERN and ownCloud Inc. - are fully committed to the open API design principle. This means that - from day one - the OCM sharing API should be discussed, designed and developed as a vendor neutral protocol to be adopted by any on-premise sync&share product vendor or service provider. We acknowledge the fact that the piloting of the first working interface prototype will be carried out in an ownCloud environment that should not effect the adoption of the open API in any other vendor and provider domain.
Community effort - open for participation
A collaborative project was established under the umbrella of GÉANT called the OpenCloudMesh project on 22 October 2015. The kick-off meeting was held in Vienna, Austria.
The project is co-managed by Peter Szegedi (GÉANT), Jakub Moscicki (CERN) and Christian Schmitz (ownCloud). This combination of project management ensures that all the major stakeholders – GÉANT National Research and Education Networks, CERN research community and ownCloud Inc. as a commercial company with its open source developers community – are equally represented in the project and the technical, management and business aspects are well-covered.
The collaborative project is fully open to any participation and in-kind contributions. Interested parties can subscribe to the mailing list at:
Key stakeholders
Name | Organization | Interest / Involvement / Role | RACI | Stakeholder Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Peter Szegedi | GÉANT | Project management | A, R | Committed |
Jakub Moscicki | CERN | Project management | A, R | Committed |
Christian Schmitz | ownCloud Inc. | Project management | A, R | Committed |
Rogier Spoor | SURFnet | Contribute to the specifications and development | R, C |
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Ron Trompert | SURFsara | Contribute to the specifications and development | R, C |
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Christoph Herzog | SWITCH | Contribute to the specifications and development | R, C |
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Guido Aben | AARNet | Contribute to the specifications and development | R, C |
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Holger Angenent | Sciebo / Uni Münster | Contribute to the specifications and development | R, C |
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David Antoš | CESNET | Contribute to the specifications and development | R, C |
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Frederik Orellana | DeIC | Contribute to the specifications and development | R, C |
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Kurt Bauer | ACOnet | Contribute to the specifications and development | R, C |
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Christian Kracher | University of Vienna | Contribute to the specifications and development | R, C | |
Jari Miettinen | CSC/Funet / EUDAT | Contribute to the specifications and development | R, C |
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| Andreas Eckey | Technische Universität Berlin | Contribute to the specifications and development | R, C |
Project plan (Phase I.)
The project will be delivered in phases.
Phase I. aims at demonstrating the first working prototype of the OCM protocol (API v1.0 BETA) functionally working between two separate administrative ownCloud domains (i.e. between two NRENs).
DEADLINE: 18 January 2016.
| PHASE | DESCRIPTION | COMMENT | ASSIGNED TO | START DATE | END DATE | STATUS | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Pre-project (preparation) | Start collecting organizations and people interested in joining the initiative. | Mailing list to be created. Announcements to be made. | Peter Szegedi Christian Schmitz | 8 February 2015 | 15 June 2015 |
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| 2. Initiation | ||||||||||||||
| 2.1 | ownCloud to release the first version of the API code and documentation. | DELAYED Code v.0.002 has been released on 27 July 2015 by ownCloud Inc. Comments have been provided by CERN. | Christian Schmitz | 8 February 2015 | 27 July 2015 |
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| 2.2 | Create a project team, estimate budget and organize a kick-off meeting. | VC for coordination on 24 August 2015.
Pre-launch meeting organized by ownCloud on 28 August 2015 in Berlin. Peter (GÉANT), Guido (AARnet) and Kuba (CERN) and others.
NIF/PID to be submitted and mailing list migration to be done. Kick-off meeting: 22 October, 2015 in Vienna, Austria The slides of the event can be found here. | Peter Szegedi Christian Schmitz | 8 February 2015 | 22 October 2015 |
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| 3. Subsequent stages depending on the project (execution) | ||||||||||||||
| 3.1 | Get the API v.0.004 code and documentation, define the participating domains, initiate the first tests. | DRAFT protocol definition v.0.004 released OpenCloudMesh = ownCloudMesh | Christian Schmitz | 15 June 2015 | 28 Augustus 2015 |
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| 3.2 a) | Demonstrate the first working prototype | Uni Münster server-to-server sharing (i.e. federated cloud sharing) feature has been demonstrated by Holger to Kuba and Peter.
There was an agreement to
| Holger Angenent | 22 October 2015 | 18 November 2015 |
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| 3.2 b) | Prepare for a demonstration of the federated cloud sharing feature between two administrative domains, say SURFnet and Uni Münster | We are looking for volunteers with ownCloud server version v.8 or above to test the feature. | Holger Angenent Rogier Spoor others... | 18 November 2015 | 15 December 2015 |
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| 3.3 | Come up with recommendations for the development of the API towards a new v.1.0 according to the requirements of an open standard. | All | 22 October 2015 | 30 December 2015 |
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| 3.4 | Initiate discussions about policies, metadata release, directories, legal issues, etc. | Two main topics have been identified:
| 22 October 2015 | 18 January 2016 |
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| 3.5 | Implement the API v.1.0 code and test it in a pilot environment. | 22 October 2015 | 18 January 2016 |
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| 4. Delivery | Open API v.1.0 documented and released at least in BETA version with the intention to come up v.2.0 vendor agnostic version (IETF WG) | Cloud Services for Synchronization and Sharing (CS3) Workshop ETH Zürich, Switzerland; January 18-19 2016 | Peter Szegedi Christian Schmitz Kuba Moscicki | 15 November 2015 | 18 January 2016 |
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| 5. Closing | Final deliverable | Next steps...??? Phase II. aims and objectives.... | Peter Szegedi | 15 December 2015 | 18 January 2016 |
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Project plan (Phase II.)
The Phase II. objectives and project planning will be defined as we go. A demonstration is expected at TNC'16 in June 2016.
History
- Around early 2012, TF-Storage participants started to actively look into data storage software platforms in order to provide on-premise file-based sync&share (aka. Dropbox-like) services to their constituencies.
- Some NRENs even ventured into the development of a proof-of-concept tool called the Trusted Cloud Drive (TCD) under TERENA
- By mid 2013, ownCloud appeared to be the most promising one with a growing open-source development community behind.
- In December 2013, the GÉANT Association (formerly known as TERENA) and ownCloud Inc. made an agreement that serves to facilitate the desire of various National Research and Education Networking organisations (NRENs) to introduce services based on ownCloud technology and/or to offer the technology to their constituencies.
- As part of this collaboration effort, in January 2015, ownCloud initiated an idea (aka. OpenCloudMesh) to interconnect the individual on-premise private cloud domains at the server side in order to provide federated sharing and syncing functionality between the different administrative domains.