Red Hat wants to standardise clouds
Red Hat's Deltacloud project is developing a open source standardised API for addressing different cloud architectures in a uniform way. Cloud service users can use the Deltacloud API to access Amazon's EC2 as well as private clouds that are based on Red Hat Enterprise Virtualisation (RHEL-V); drivers for private VMware ESX clouds and the cloud services offered by Rackspace are to follow.
Deltacloud exposes its API in a REST style to provide simple, common, platform-independent access. Deltacloud Portal then provides a web UI which accesses that REST API. Deltacloud Proxy is aimed at developers who want to create their own user interface; it provides the code to track cloud accounts, user authorisation and resources allowing developers to focus on the user interface.
The abstraction of the various cloud APIs is designed to facilitate the development of cloud applications, as it allows applications to be programmed independently of the actual cloud environment used. Ultimately, Red Hat wants to enhance the interoperability between different clouds.
The DeltaCloud API and Portal are licensed under the LGPL and GPL and are available to download. Documentation for the API, Ruby client, drivers and driver development is also available.
(djwm)
