---
title: Deltacloud Roadmap
extension: html
filter:
  - markdown
  - outline
---

# Deltacloud Roadmap

The current roadmap is maintained in
[teambox](https://teambox.com/projects/deltacloud/task_lists) where anybody
can comment on tasks, and suggest new features.

# Ye olde roadmap

*This list is no longer maintained. It's only here for historical
purposes. To see the current roadmap, go to
[teambox](https://teambox.com/projects/deltacloud/task_lists)*

This page lists the items we are currently working on for the next release,
and a longer list of items we will address after the next release, roughly
in order of priority.

If you have anything you'd like to see added to the roadmap, or think that
some items should receive more attention, please let us know on the
[mailing list][1]. Of course, the quickest way to get anything into
Deltacloud is to [send us patches][2] — we will of course take patches
for anything, regardless of whether they adress items on the roadmap or
anything else.

[1]: /contribute.html
[2]: /contribute.html


<toc numbering="off" toc_style="ul" toc_range='h2-h3' />

## Next release

This release will happen in mid to late January 2011. We very much hope to
include all the items below, but might have to defer some of them,
depending on the progress we make (and the amount of patches we receive)

* __Upload/creation of blobs__: the `/buckets` collection allows
  downloading blobs stored within buckets, but not yet creating and
  uploading them. The big challenge here is streaming the content to be
  uploaded to the backend cloud.
* __Update Apache Website__: mostly housekeeping to make sure the
  information on the site is accurate, and to update the documentation on
  the site
* __Capabilities for introspection__: provide a lot more information to
  clients about what each driver actually supports; for example, this makes
  it possible for clients to discover if the driver supports rebooting
  instances
* __RHEV-M driver__: RHEV-M has a new, shiny, and very nice,
  [REST API](http://markmc.fedorapeople.org/rhevm-api/en-US/html/index.html). The
  RHEV-M driver needs to be rewritten to take advantage of that.
* __Formal API docs__: A document that describes, in great detail, each
  possible call in the API, parameters, results, errors, etc.
* __Load balancers__: Add a new toplevel collection that can be used to
  manage load balancers in clouds that allow that (e.g., EC2)
* __Runtime driver selection__: So far, the driver to use is selected when
  you start the Deltacloud server; this becomes very unwieldy with clouds
  that offer multiple endpoints/regions, and with internal clouds. We'll
  make it possible to select the driver, and the API endpoint that the
  server uses through HTTP headers
* __Store blobs in tempfile by default__: Rack doesn't have a universal way
  to stream blobs, either for upload or download; the only Rack conformant
  way to deal with large objects is to store them in temporary files -
  we'll make that the default, and add proper streaming for some of the
  more popular servers (most likely `thin` for now)
* __Rewritten EC2 driver__: the current EC2 driver depends on too many
  API-wrapper gems; a rewrite will make sure we only use one gem (AWS) for
  it
* __Launch multiple instances with one call__: The API right now allows
  only creating single instances. For clouds that support it, the API
  should allow launching many instances in one operation.
* __Remote command execution__: Add a way to log into an instance and run a
  commend there as one API call
* __Clarify shutdown semantics__: the various drivers are a little squishy
  on whether shutting down means a clean ACPI shutdown or yanking the
  (virtual) power chord out of the instance
* __Create images from uploaded bits__: Allow posting to the `/images`
  collection so that bits in appropriate storage can be designated as
  images

## Backlog

These are items we think we'll work on in future releases. There is no
guarantee that we will actually wind up doing that &mdash; listing them
here simply means that they seem like a good idea today. The list is
roughly in the order in which we think the items should be addressed, with
the most pressing ones at the top of the list.

* __Dev guide/tutorials__: documentation to make it easier for people to
  get started using Deltacloud
* __Report password on instance creation (Rackspace)__: in Rackspace, you
  get a random root password when you create an insatnce, and it is only
  sent at instance creation.
* __File injection (Rackspace)__: support direct injection of files into
  the instance
* __Create image from running server__: in many clouds, that's the only way
  to create images. Support a magic call that sets the machinery to freeze
  a running instance into an image in motion
* __Driver for Google storage__
* __Improve streaming support for blobs__: stream uploads; probably need to
  support streaming for more than just `thin` (torquebox ? passenger ?)
* __Partial Upload__: several storage services allow uploading and
  downloading ranges of a blob, often also in parallel. Add that feature to
  Deltaclouds storage API
* __Billing info__: define a model and API calls to represent billing
  information and the billing model of the cloud. The aim is to make it
  possible for clients to find out how much and why they are being charged
  for current resource usage, and to enable them to make _what if_
  computations. Since none of the public clouds support that, needs to be
  done carefully in conjunction with some of the open-source players,
  especially RHEV-M
* __Attach EBS__: attach block storage to instances in EC2
* __Formal testing against live clouds__: run the test suite against each
  cloud we support on a regular basis
* __vCloud driver__: full support for VMWare's _vCloud_ so we can talk to
  these private clouds
* __Stateful instances__: the API is very much focussed on stateless
  instances (with a couple of exceptions) Cleanly define handling stateless
  and stateful side-by-side
* __IP address mgmt__: another toplevel collection to represent the IP
  addresses your account owns/has access to
* __Apply public IP(s) to server__: support things like EC2's elastic IP
* __Manage password lists__: some clouds allow predefining a list of
  passwords and then applying them to instances. Support managing these
  lists
* __technology compatibility kit__: a test suite that can be run against an
  implementation of the Deltacloud API and report on any problems with the
  API implementation
* __Firewalls__: there are a couple _very_ different models out there how
  instances can be firewalled from the rest of the cloud and from the
  internet at large. Support defining and manging firewall rules and
  applying them to instances
* __Public Deltacloud instances__: it would be nice for testing etc. to
  have a few Deltacloud instances running at a well-known address
* __Spot instances__: Support EC2's auction-based way of running instances
* __Reserved instances__: Support EC2's preallocated instances
* __Bare-metal servers__: some clouds also manage physical bare-metal
  servers
* __Text/graphical console__: As much as possible, make it possible for
  clients to open an interactive console; this is very speculative, and not
  possible in most clouds
* __Console logs__: access whatever logs the backend cloud API produces for
  an instance through Deltacloud
* __IBM cloud driver__
* __NTT cloud driver__
* __Monitoring (Cloudwatch)__
* __Error reporting__: clean up forwarding of backend errors
* __Account creation/registration__: make it possible to create an account
  in various backend clouds through Deltacloud