Does VMware’s vCloud API really protect from vendor lock-in?

For years now, the story coming out of VMware and the VMworld trade show was all around virtualizing your physical datacenter, but in 2008 and 2009, the VMware and VMworld message took a slight turn upward as the discussion began to focus more around the cloud. VMware called its solution the VMware vCloud, and its vCloud initiative was set on enabling customers to work closely with VMware cloud partners who would provide reliable, enterprise-ready cloud services without vendor lock-in.

When VMware initially unveiled its vCloud initiative for service providers last year during VMworld 2008, nearly 100 vendors had signed up for the program. But only one year later, VMware CEO Paul Maritz explained during a VMworld 2009 press Q&A that there were now more than 1,000 hosting providers that have enlisted with VMware to help enable the public cloud. Maritz said partners included companies such as AT&T, Savvis, Terremark, and Verizon Business to name but a few.

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Consumers are looking at cloud computing solutions because of the benefits that it provides such as convenient, on-demand access to a shared pool of computing resources, but VMware stated that customers are often concerned about vendor lock-in and huge investments in proprietary tools, formats, and infrastructure. In an attempt to address that concern, the virtualization giant released its vCloud API.

VMware said that with the availability of this API, customers can choose cloud services that will enable the on-demand flexibility that they require, and the ability to move their applications in and out of internal or external clouds with the high availability, manageability, and security that customers have grown to rely on from VMware.

The Alpha version of the VMware vCloud API is offered under a royalty-free, MIT-style open source license, which requires that any reuse of the code retain the VMware copyright notices. The vCloud API provides a REST-ful Web services API to virtualized cloud resources, and it is based around the Open Virtualization Format (OVF), a standard for describing an open, portable, and flexible format for the packaging and distribution of one or more virtual machines.

VMware also offered members of the press this high-level explanation of its API:

• The VMware vCloud API is an open, REST-based, pure virtual API supporting multitenancy.
• It is standards-based and platform independent, making it compatible with a diverse range of applications.
• It provides an interface for consuming and managing virtual resources from the cloud, enabling the deployment and management of virtualized applications in both internal and external clouds, as well as enabling interoperability between clouds.

In an effort to become the de facto standard API for the cloud, VMware has submitted its vCloud API to the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) to standardize the mobility, provisioning, management, and service assurance of applications running within internal or external clouds. VMware CTO Stephen Herrod said VMware wants “to provide cloud interoperability while still allowing vendors to have significant differentiated values to offer to their customers.”

DMTF or not, Microsoft, Citrix, and the Xen community don’t seem to be lining up behind VMware’s cloud API. The Xen community is moving forward with its own cloud project, and it already has a list of companies — such as Amazon, Rackspace, GoGrid, Eucalyptus, and OpenNebula, to name a few — behind its initiatives. And since these VMware competitive hypervisor platforms aren’t dominating the market, they are much more willing to be heterogeneous in the cloud.

Where does that leave us? Realize that virtualization itself is still considered by many in the industry to be a technology in the infancy stage. Since it is a key building block of the cloud, it seems safe to say that the cloud industry still has a long way to go, especially when you are talking about cloud interoperability and standards. With that said, VMware is at least trying to move the ball forward with its open API, but I stop there before calling it a standard or something that keeps vendor lock-in at bay.

If you are currently building an internal or external cloud based on VMware vSphere technology, this is definitely something to look into. You can find out more information from VMware’s vCloud API FAQ or on VMware’s newly created vCloud API developer forum.