Little fun with cloud API comparison

lcerveau@nephorider.com

• Our product, Nephorider, wants to provide a one click visualization of a cloud based infrastructure. A diagram like in computer school

• This include : Load Balancers, Instances (including image information), Volumes, SQL DB basic network information (e.g elastic IP)

• Now how many queries should be made to get all this info?? We want the shortest time

Context

Amazon AWS

• No authentification phase • Principles: Action+XML • Usually requests returns all information for an

category of items. The “container” contains all its content but with no details

• Some questions requires additional calls. Disk image, is an IP elastic

• 8 regions

Amazon AWS

8*(DescribeInstances+DescribeLoadBalancers+DescribeVolumes+DescribeDBInstances)

Fixed

Variables

Max(NInstances*(diskimage-id))+Max(NInstances(checkstatic))

> 42 requests, count 50

Rackspace with Openstack• Needs one pre-authentication (although it can

last) • Global call may or not return all informations

needed to draw the graph (cf DB) • Not always “descending logic” between

“containers” and content. E.g instance to volume comes with volume info

• AFAIK no concept yet of Elastic IP (see http://feedback.rackspace.com/forums/71021-product-feedback/suggestions/998625-configurable-ip-addresses)

• 5 regions

Rackspace with OpenstackFixed

• /v2/tokens + Authentification • 5 Regions (volumes/details+/servers/detail+ /

instances (for DB) + /loadbalancers)

Variables

• NLoadBalancer *loadbalancers/LBID for instances (Node keys)

• Max(NInstances*(image)) • NDB * instances/instance_id/users (for info on

users)> 22 requests count like 30

Google Compute Engine

• Requires an OAuth dance for authorization, then with limited token

• At first optimization per region is possible through /projects/PROJECTID/regions (but apparently not zones). Returns usage per region

{! "metric": "CPUS",! "limit": 24,! "usage": 1! },!

• Better there are aggregated calls over all regions !!!

Google Compute Engine

• APIs have fields so this allow to ask for the needed information

• Inside an API call URL to the “containee” object is returned

• Load balancing is not named “per se” (ForwarwindRule and TargetPool)

Google Compute EngineFixed

• /oauth2/token On Compute Engine • /project/PROJECT-ID/aggregated/instances/ • /project/PROJECT-ID/aggregated/disks/ • /project/PROJECT-ID/aggregated/targetPools • /project/PROJECT-ID/aggregated/

forwardingRules On SQL • /project/PROJECT-ID/instances/

6 to 8 (images and IP not explored)

Conclusion• Although format changes (XML versus JSON),

AWS and Rackspace are in same philosophy. Iterate over regions.

• By itself Rackspace requires even more calls per region

• Google Cloud Platform is more a next generation API. This really came as a “last minute surprise”

• We want the other to catch up!!!!!

Thank You!