[ncc-services-wg] New on RIPE Labs: RIPE NCC and the Cloud - Let’s Start Again

I see the discussion about "RIPE NCC and cloud" in the archives and believe one of the reasons there seems to be a confusion is that indeed many issues are mixed in the same...hmm...whatever.

I personally think deployment "in the cloud" implies an ability to deploy services in such a way (orchestration) that resources are dynamically allocated depending on for example load. This implies automatic scaling and dynamic allocation of storage, memory and CPU.

Efficient such deployment can to some degree be independent of who is the provider of "the cloud". Quite often it is mostly efficient if in normal load it is deployed "on prem" while dynamic allocation during extreme load is "to an external provider". This to get most efficient use of the hardware one have invested in.

For this to work, it is important to not(!) use specific services that often can also be offered by the provider of the cloud service. And this regardless of whether the deployment is on prem or externally.

My suggested request to RIPE NCC is because of this to implement orchestration of services in such a way that the mechanism used is as provider neutral as possible.

The 2nd request could be to remind RIPE NCC to do the actual deployment in an as efficient way as possible (whether on prem or not), but to be honest, this is what I always expect the Managing Director to do, and I do not think we members should do micro management.

On top of this we have policy related requirements that in turn can be divided in two: 1. That RIPE NCC do not violate any by law requirements on data, data transfer, data storage and such things; and 2. That the policy expressed by the RIPE Community that is on top of the regulative requirements is implemented.

Regarding these, I sure hope RIPE NCC is not violate any regulation. If they do we have some other issues. The 2nd list of requirements might have to do with the quite complicated situation RIPE NCC is in, to have customers in many different jurisdictions and the union of these legislations might be implemented in multiple ways, and when doing this selection on how to do "the right thing", RIPE community might have some interest in influencing it. I believe we see this for example in the DB WG on how to implement the database and here in this WG.

But, separate from this I see questions where RIPE members do ask RIPE NCC to be more transparent on how (for example) legislation in the Netherlands is implemented.

What I think we in the community should do though is to separate between when we want transparency and when we do believe we really do have input on issues that do not micro manage the work the managing director do.

Personally, I think the Managing Director and his staff is doing good stuff and see no reason what so ever to question what decisions they have made. That said, I am curious in some cases to know what decisions they have made as maybe I have the same or similar deliberations to do at Netnod and might want to know more. But I do not question them.

So, many things are intertwined and specifically mixed up are "us members being curious" and "us members actually wanting to provide input".

From a technical stand point, I think the most important thing for "cloud" is to choose interoperable solutions so that migration from one cloud to another is possible, or at least as easy as possible. Including on-prem-clouds.

Best,

   Patrik
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