OpenStack: The open source, open standards cloud.

[yarapavan]

Rackspace today announced the launch of OpenStack, an open-source
cloud platform designed to foster the emergence of technology
standards and cloud interoperability. Rackspace, the leading
specialist in the hosting and cloud computing industry, is donating
the code that powers its Cloud Files and Cloud Servers public-cloud
offerings to the OpenStack project. The project will also incorporate
technology that powers the NASA Nebula Cloud Platform. Rackspace and
NASA plan to actively collaborate on joint technology development and
leverage the efforts of open-source software developers worldwide.

openStack will feature several cloud infrastructure components
including a fully distributed object store based on Rackspace Cloud
Files, available today at OpenStack.org. The next component planned
for release is a scalable compute-provisioning engine based on the
NASA Nebula cloud technology and Rackspace Cloud Servers technology.
It is expected to be available later this year. Using these
components, organizations would be able to turn physical hardware into
scalable and extensible cloud environments using the same code
currently in production serving tens of thousands of customers and
large government projects.

It has 2 components: Compute and Storage

OpenStack Compute:

OpenStack Compute is software for provisioning and managing large-
scale deployments of compute instances. It is written in Python, using
the Tornado and Twisted frameworks, and relies on the standard AMQP
messaging protocol as well as the Redis distributed KVS.

OpenStack Object Storage

OpenStack Object Storage aggregates commodity servers to work together
in clusters for reliable, redundant, and large-scale storage of static
objects. Objects are written to multiple hardware devices in the
datacenter, with the OpenStack software responsible for ensuring data
replication and integrity across the cluster. Storage clusters can
scale horizontally by adding new nodes, which are automatically
configured. Should a node fail, OpenStack works to replicate its
content from other active nodes. Because OpenStack uses software logic
to ensure data replication and distribution across different devices,
inexpensive commodity hard drives and servers can be used in lieu of
more expensive equipment.

URL: http://www.openstack.org/

[Ali, Saqib]

and I thought OpenStack referred to Open Standard protocols for
identity and social media ;)

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[GeekyOne]

So how does this compare to EUCALYPTUS which already exists as a open source compute platform for Cloud?

On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 11:16 PM, yarapavan <yara...@gmail.com> wrote:

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The GeekyJewel

[Sebastian Stadil]

Eucalyptus has an Enterprise Edition where all the good stuff is.

One of the core tenets of Open Stack is that it is not open-core. It's all open. Under the Apache 2.0 License.

[Gilad Parann-Nissany]

@GeekyOne

I see this as a competing project to Eucalyptus.

Eucalyptus has support for compute, distributed storage and virtual disks (compatible with the interfaces of EC2, S3 and EBS).

OpenStack has released support for storage and they intend to provide support for compute this year, according to their website.

Both are open-source. OpenStack has an Apache 2.0 license, while Eucalyptus has GPL3. This means the OpenStack license allows modified works for commercial purposes, while Eucalyptus is more restrictive.

Hope this helps.

Would welcome other opinions if people see it otherwise.

Regards
Gilad
__________________
Gilad Parann-Nissany
CEO, Founder
Porticor Cloud Security
http://www.porticor.com/

[Ray Nugent]

OpenStack, as the name implies, is more "open" than Eucalyptus in that 100% of the code is available and under the Apache license which is very liberal. Open stack consists of two parts - OpenStack compute and OpenStack object storage which roughly emulate Amazon's EC2 and S3 services respectively. It's a combination of code written by NASA and Rackspace and the NASA part in particular is focused on scaling to many thousands of machines. Both are expected to be released in mid October.

There has been some claim of API compatibility with the Amazon EC2 and S3 APIs but how far along this is and how complete the mapping is remains to be seen. From my standpoint if I can take an application running on AWS, using the EC2 and S3 APIs and drop it on to the OpenStack platform and it just runs then the claim is accurate. If not then I think they still have work to do.

The hope is that this code will spur on competitors to AWS which everyone agrees is a good thing. In that respect it's targeted at Cloud Service Providers - companies that are currently hosting real or virtual servers (VSPs). Those types of companies would have to be very deep pockets because the hardware and manpower infrastructure to build a cloud to compete with Amazon would be tremendously expensive. While OpenStack represents a considerable part of the equation it does not address the bigger issue of physical infrastructure investment. Running a public cloud is a non-trivial undertaking.

Eucalyptus, on the other hand, is targeting enterprises who want a private cloud so OpenStack may not be a competitor to them at this point. If OpenStack gains a lot of code to tie it together and make it enterprise friendly then it may become attractive to that market (although it's not clear if enterprise clouds needs play to OpenStack's strengths which is scaling. It may be they require reduce costs and increase business agility over large scaling). Time will tell and there are a host of other companies working on very large scale cloud software too. Chinese Telecommunication maker Huawei and Internet giant Yahoo are both working on similar types of products. Google is beleived to be working on an AWS type service and may ultimately become the much waited for Amazon competitor.

In any case the cloud community views this as a major next step in the cloud market and the excitement in the cloudasphere is truly palpable!

Ray

---

From: GeekyOne <geeky...@gmail.com>
To: cloud-c...@googlegroups.com
Cc: yara...@gmail.com
Sent: Mon, July 19, 2010 5:54:37 PM
Subject: Re: [ Cloud Computing ] OpenStack: The open source, open standards cloud.

[Geoff Arnold]

On Jul 19, 2010, at 8:54 PM, GeekyOne wrote:

> So how does this compare to EUCALYPTUS which already exists as a open source compute platform for Cloud?

Check out this analysis here:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/07/20/why_nasa_is_dropping_eucalyptus_from_its_nebula_cloud/

That piece points out the weaknesses in the architecture of Eucalyptus. It doesn't scale well - at least the "open core" doesn't - and it's not based on an extensible framework, so you can't replace subsystems, like the user management system or object store, with better alternatives.

More on the "open core" problem here:
http://webmink.com/2010/07/19/openstack/
http://www.neary-consulting.com/index.php/2010/07/19/rotten-to-the-open-core/