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Océano is an IBM Research project focused on the development of systems management software for the next generation of server farms. This interview with Alfred Spector, Vice President, Services and Software at IBM Research gives some insight into the project.
Q: What is Océano?
Spector: The technology will allow operators of server farms, such as IBM, to tailor service packages to customers based on their particular requirements. Today, customers buy dedicated racks of servers with sufficient surplus capacity to handle peaks in workload. This equates to wasted resources for which the customer still has to pay.
Océano technology aims to allow server farm operators to host multiple customers on a shared computing infrastructure. It assigns computers to customers based on their current capacity needs. Océano will adapt this allocation to changing customer workloads on a minute to minute basis by dynamically reassigning computers to customers. This obviates the need for customers to purchase surplus computing capacity and pay for it even when it is not being used. Furthermore, Océano will reduce the operational cost of managing the infrastructure, resulting in lower costs to the service providers.
Q: How does Océano work?
Spector: Océano will allocate just enough resources to each customer to meet their computing needs; these needs are encapsulated as "Service Level Agreements." Each customer is allocated a set of computers that Océano constantly monitors. If the load on particular customer workload increases, either due to changing Internet traffic patterns or due to a computer failure, Océano automatically detects the increase, and automatically assigns and provisions additional computers to compensate for the increased workload. Similarly, if a customer workload decreases, Océano automatically detects the decrease and accordingly deallocates computers.
Q: How does Océano protect customers?
Spector: Océano uses a variety of techniques to protect customers from each other, and prevent a denial of service attack on a particular workload from spilling over to the entire system. Océano deploys sophisticated techniques to make resource allocation decisions proactively in response to known usage patterns and reactively in response to unexpected workload changes. Océano uses novel visualization techniques to assist operators in comprehending and controlling a highly scalable system with thousands of computers.
Q: Why did IBM Research decide to develop Océano?
Spector: In e-business hosting, customers increasingly require support for peak loads an order of magnitude greater than those experienced in normal steady state. Existing commercial hosting models, such as the "co-location" model, make it difficult to effectively reuse idle capacity. Working with the divisions and customers we identified a set of requirements for more effective server farm management.
These requirements include:
- need to meet rapidly changing demand/capacity
- cost efficiency (customers don't want to pay for surplus.)
- better re-allocation of assets
- more automated, self-managing systems
These requirements indicated the need for advanced technologies, which provided an excellent challenge for IBM Research.
Q: Why was the project named Océano?
Spector: We thought about a concept that can indicate our very broad scope, difficult challenges and high goals. We chose the Spanish spelling of the word, ocean. We think that ocean -- Océano -- conveys the challenges of our work to deal with a world of abundance and almost unlimited supply of resources.
Q: When did you start working on this project? What progress did you make?
Spector: The project started in mid 1999. We currently have developed a first complete prototype, and are in the process of testing and refining it.
Q: What is IBM's future plan for Océano? Will IBM sell as a product?
Spector: IBM is exploring possible products based on Océano, specifically under the eLiza or Autonomic Computing umbrellas.
Q: Who would want to use Océano technology?
Spector: Service providers and organizations with large IT deployments. Océano technology will allow them to manage systems and meet changing demand much more efficiently.
Q: What are key advantages for users/customers to use Océano as opposed to typical server farm technology?
Spector: By using Océano technology, they will be able to meet rapidly changing demand. Today it usually takes weeks or months to add new servers because of the difficulty involved in configuring complex systems. Océano can accommodate increasing capacity very quickly. In the meantime, customers won't need to pay for unnecessary surplus capacity in advance of a peak in traffic.
Q: What is the future timeline? How soon can we see Océano in the real world?
Spector: We expect additional customer pilots to be deployed in 2002, and the first products incorporating Océano technology in 2003.
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A peek inside an IBM Research lab: the Océano prototype manages an "ocean" of servers.