CloudTweaks.com - Cloud Computing Community » Open Source

Optimizing the Virtual Cloud

cloudtweaks — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 11:43:25 +0000

BURBANK, CA–(Marketwire – July 29, 2010) – Cloud computing is a revolution for corporate data systems. Instead of having to install and maintain costly server hardware on-site, enterprises can now subscribe to a cloud service and literally use computing resources as they are needed. When they are no longer required, those resources are used elsewhere. The idea has firmly taken hold; a prominent motion-picture company recently turned to a cloud for their highly compute-intensive animation needs, and certainly saved major costs by not having to utilize in-house resources.

One element that makes cloud computing so attractive is its use of virtual servers. It boggles the mind to think that a user at a corporation can access the cloud and actually launch their very own complete server for needed tasks. When that task is done, that server is no longer needed and it simply ceases to exist. The incredible gains that virtualization has brought in hardware and space economics — to cloud computing and everywhere else — are still being realized.

But as we all know, while we all have our heads in the clouds it is important to keep our eyes on the ground as well. In the case of cloud computing, that “ground” is the hardware hosting virtual systems — hardware that is still subject to drastic system slows courtesy of file fragmentation.

All hard drives suffer from file fragmentation — and hard drives are the place that data for virtual systems, and hence a computing cloud, is stored. In comparison to a traditional server, a virtual environment has a few added steps to data storage and retrieval, however, and fragmentation can have even more of an impact. When a file request occurs on a virtual server, the I/O request is relayed, at the least, from the guest system to the host system — which means multiple requests are occurring for each file request. When a file is fragmented into hundreds or thousands of fragments, there are multiple I/O requests for each fragment. This operation creates an enormous amount of unnecessary overhead on disk subsystems.

Virtual disks also suffer from “bloat” — their sizes are dynamically set to grow, but they don’t shrink when users or applications remove data. This wastes the space that could be allocated to other virtual systems.

The latest in technology automatically and invisibly prevents a majority of fragmentation before it occurs, totally negating the effects of fragmentation in virtual environments. Because free space is also consolidated as part of the process, virtual disk “bloat” is eliminated. Enterprises can now take full advantage of cloud and virtual computing without ever having to worry about the performance drain from fragmentation again.

5 Cloud Computing Operating Systems (OS) to take notice of!

cloudtweaks — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 11:09:58 +0000

Here is a short list of some very good cloud based operating systems to look into.

icloud Consists of a desktop with applications and files that you run through your web browser. Because it’s running in the cloud (the internet) it can offer you impressive features such as easy sharing and rich collaboration. The icloud team is 100% committed to providing you with an exciting, reliable, and productive computing experience.

eyeOS Includes 5 powerful applications out of the box thought to be simple and easy to use: Word Processor, Calendar, Mail Client, Spreadsheets and Files Manager.

Cloudo When personal computers were introduced 25 years ago our lives looked completely different. We spent most of our days behind a desk and mobile phones didn’t exist. Today our lives are far more mobile, but computers haven’t evolved that much. Until now. Cloudo is a free computer that lives on the Internet, right in your web browser. This means that you can access your documents, photos, music and all other files no matter where you are, from any computer or mobile phone.

Jolicloud Brings all the benefits of cloud computing today, making your netbook the natural extension of all your other computers and mobile devices. We have mixed a super-optimized Linux* that makes the most of your netbook hardware, battery, graphics and connectivity with a cool interface that will make your life easier.

Cornelios CorneliOS is a web based OS (aka “Web OS“) that runs in your web browser. All applications and files are stored on the CorneliOS server and are accessible all the time and anywhere. CorneliOS is platform and browser independent and is available as free Open Source software under the GPL as well as under a commercial license.

By CloudTweaks

Open Source Release of ‘Hibari,’ A Database for Big Data

cloudtweaks — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 10:27:45 +0000

SAN MATEO, Calif., July 27 /PRNewswire/ — Gemini Mobile Technologies (″Gemini″) announced at ″Wireless Japan 2010″ in Tokyo that it will release Hibari (meaning ″Cloud Bird″ in Japanese) as open source. Hibari is a database optimized for the highly reliable, highly available storage of massive data, so-called ″Big Data.″ Hibari can be used in Cloud Computing Applications such as web mail, Social Networking Services (SNS), and other services requiring storage of tera-bytes and peta-bytes of new daily data.

Hibari, developed by Gemini, is based on distributed non-relational database technologies of key value store and chain replication. These technologies bring benefits of low cost and high reliability by enabling data storage on tens or hundreds of PC servers, instead of costly special-purpose storage appliances such as SANs. Development started in 2005, and has been deployed and commercially proven in a number of large telecom operators, storing everything from SNS digital goods to Cloud Mail for millions of users.

″Big Data″ applications are growing rapidly, fueled by tremendous growth in digital content, social media, automatically-generated data such as logs, histories, and telemetric statistics (electricity utilization, vehicle location information, etc.). By releasing Hibari to open sourcing, Gemini expects its commercially-proven, non-relational database technology to be used in a variety of fields, including enterprise private cloud computing, digital entertainment, e-commerce, financials, and telemetries.

Hibari is developed in Erlang, and is released under the Apache license. Hibari provides highly-versatile APIs including Amazon S3, JSON-RPC-RFC4627, Universal Binary Protocol, and soon-to-be-released Thrift, Avro and Google’s Protocol Buffers; Hibari supports Java, C/C++, Python, Ruby, and Erlang. Gemini plans to provide Hadoop Map-Reduce integration as well as a commercial license which includes updates and support.

Hibari download site – http://sourceforge.net/projects/hibari/
About Gemini Mobile Technologies – http://www.geminimobile.com/

CONTACT: Giorgio Propersi of Gemini Mobile Technologies, +1-805-312-6379, gpropersi@geminimobile.com

SOURCE Gemini Mobile Technologies

http://www.geminimobile.com/

A Guide to Cloud Computing on Linux

cloudtweaks — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 10:17:25 +0000

Here is an older but still interesting article written by Joe Brockmeierover at Linux

This may not be the year of the Linux desktop, but it’s definitely the year of Linux powering cloud computing. Even though cloud computing is gaining popularity; it’s still not well-understood. Want a bit more on the basics of cloud computing? Read on!

Behind the smokescreen of hype, there’s actually something to cloud computing. You’re already a consumer of cloud computing in the same way that we’re all Linux users. Using Amazon or Gmail? You’re using cloud computing. But that’s not the same as working directly with cloud solutions.

Just like virtualization, the right cloud solution — if any — depends entirely on the workloads you have and your requirements for data handling. Most businesses of any size are probably using at least some cloud computing in the form of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), if nothing else.

What is Cloud Computing?

Cloud computing, at least as initially defined, comprises on-demand computing delivered over the Internet. This includes several types of computing. First, Platform-as-a-Service offerings (PaaS) that allow users to run applications on cloud infrastructure. This includes services like Google’s App Engine. The infrastructure is completely controlled by the service provider and the customer doesn’t need to worry about the management of the systems or infrastructure that the service is running on. In fact, the user may not know whether the underlying platform is running on Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, some mixture of all the above, or something else entirely. All they need to know is the interface and how to run jobs on the system.

Next is Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), such as Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) that delivers on-demand and scalable services over the Internet where organizations can deploy workloads that can grow and shrink on demand to meet the need. This allows organizations to run operating systems or other infrastructure on top of a computing service. Again, customers don’t manage the underlying hardware or platforms that their infrastructure is running on top of — they simply define the level of services that they need and run their infrastructure on top of that.

Finally, SaaS, which has been around for a while now. Instead of installing and running software on your own infrastructure, it runs on someone else’s infrastructure in a pay per use model. Some SaaS, like Google Docs, might be entirely free to the end user. Other services charge per user, by service tier, or a combination of the two. Typically SaaS offerings are Web-based and run through the browser, like the 37 Signals suite.

You’ll find a lot of packages that are designed to be offered by third-parties as SaaS as well. For instance, the Parallels Automation and Plesk Control Panel offerings from Parallels, or Open-Xchange groupware that can be customized and deployed by hosting providers.

It should go without saying, though I’ll say it anyway, that Linux powers the bulk of cloud computing solutions. You’ll find some Windows-based offerings, but Amazon, Google, and other major players are running their cloud infrastructure on top of Linux.

Grid, Cloud, What’s the Difference?

Before there was cloud computing, there was grid computing and Sun telling us that “the network is the computer.” Is there any difference between grid and cloud computing, or is it just technical hairsplitting? Though the two are similar, it’s easy to make the distinction between grid computing and cloud computing.

The best description I’ve seen so far came from RightScale’s blog, attributed to Rich Wolski of the Eucalyptus Project. Wolski describes grid computing as suitable for environments where users make fewer requests, but for larger allocations of computing power. So a project may only have a few jobs to run, but they’re large jobs and tend to consume a fair amount of computing power.

Conversely, cloud computing consists of a lot of smaller requests. Think of applications running on App Engine, or users hitting a SaaS offering. The requests are minimal, but the actual number of requests are much larger. The data sets are typically smaller, but the number of requests over time is much greater.

Clouds and Appliances

If you want to talk about mixed metaphors, think about running a software appliance in the cloud. Though it’s a jarring clash of metaphors, the actual practice of deploying software appliances in the cloud is smooth as silk. (To use yet another metaphor!)

Some vendors are packaging their software as virtual appliances that can be run on top of your internal infrastructure or using cloud computing services. For instance, the BitNami folks have been packaging popular open source stacks and applications to run on top of VMware, Amazon’s EC2, and MyGSI GoGrid. (You can also run the stacks on top of regular servers as well, if you’re still doing old-fashioned computing…)

Appliances on top of cloud platforms simplify deploying and managing applications. Rather than having to provision your own hardware and deal with software dependencies, you can simply fire up a virtual appliance and start using it.

Continue Reading at: Linux

8 Promising Private Cloud Computing Companies

cloudtweaks — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 12:25:47 +0000

Cloupia was founded by experienced entrepreneurs and funded by Silicon Valley angel investors to create the foundation for next-generation cloud technologies. We are a group of seasoned professionals with complementary IT backgrounds joining forces to help businesses with complex IT needs ranging from small business to large enterprises. Our corporate headquarters is based in Santa Clara, California and development center in Hyderabad, India.

Fusepoint is a privately held company with data centres in Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal. Through our proven record of success we have built a loyal customer base and developed solid strategic partnerships with industry leaders such as Bell Canada, Microsoft, SUN, Cisco, Dell, Oracle and HP.

Amplidata was founded by a group of storage veterans, who also helped build the success of DataCenter Technologies (acquired by Veritas in 2005) and Dedigate (acquired by Terremark in 2005). The development team is responsible for patent-pending distributed storage innovations. Amplidata has its operational headquarter in Lochristi, Belgium. R&D are located in Belgium and Egypt, sales and support are represented in a number of countries in Europe and North America. Also the winner of the “Cloud Computing World Series Awards 2010″ for “Best cloud storage solution”

WSO2 is an innovative Open Source technology company devoted to building Web services middleware for your SOA. Offering leading products, support and other services, WSO2 was founded in August 2005. WSO2 is a global corporation with offices located in USA, UK and Sri Lanka.

Intalio software can be found everywhere, powering some of the largest companies in the world like Deutsche Bank, Mitsubishi, NTT, and Vodafone, as well as 3 out of the 10 most visited websites, Facebook, Google, and Yahoo! Intalio’s technology was even used to drive NASA’s Mars Exploration Rovers!

VMware Vsphere VMware vSphere, the industry’s most complete and robust virtualization platform, dramatically reduces capital and operating costs and maximizes IT efficiency while giving you agility through automation and the freedom to choose applications, OS and hardware.

LayerBoom (Acquired by Joyent) Builds hardware and software management tools for hosting companies that let them turn their Dedicated Servers into Virtual Private Server Clouds. They are based in Vancouver, Canada.

3X.com 3X Systems was founded in 2006 by entrepreneur Alan Arman with a clear mission stemming from a lack of practical and affordable data backup products in the marketplace. His mission was to create a reliable offsite backup solution that is automated, easy to use and affordable. Today, 3X Systems has hundreds of corporate clients worldwide using the 3X RBA® (Remote Backup Appliance) solution to protect their mission critical data without removable media such as tapes, CDs or DVDs in a fully automated fashion to offsite facilities without giving up access to or control of their data.

Cloud Linux Named “Best Start-Up” In 2010 For The Cloud Computing World Series

cloudtweaks — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 18:14:56 +0000

Award recognizes LVE innovation that can “crash proof” servers in shared hosting environments

Princeton, NJ, July 8, 2010 – Cloud Linux Inc., an innovative software company dedicated to serving the needs of hosting service providers, is the recipient of the 2010 Best Start-Up Award by the The Cloud Computing World Forum in the “World Series” Innovation competition. Cloud Linux received the award for its new innovation on how to “crash proof” servers as hosting providers migrate to a cloud based services model.

CloudLinux was launched in early 2010 and is a new commercially supported operating system proven to increase server density, stability and performance, helping customers realize reduced operating costs and increased profitability. Cloud Linux invented the Lightweight Virtual Environment™ a kernel-level technology that isolates specific hardware resources in a lightweight environment and prevents one tenant on a shared server from affecting others – especially due to a sudden peak load from a single tenant. The technology is designed to eliminate the risks of unstable servers that can undermine businesses’ operations and profitability.

“Seamless migration to a cloud based business model requires a solid infrastructure that can be managed to be made rock solid reliable while optimizing infrastructure assets,” states Igor Seletskiy, CEO and Founder of Cloud Linux Inc. “We built CloudLinux to protect customers from outages often caused because of a lack of control over individual tenants. The last six months have been a great success for us – signing on many partners, including one of the largest shared hosting companies, UK2Group. This award is a rewarding validation of the work we are doing and the team is greatly honored to be receiving the award.” CloudLinux has signed on eighteen datacenter partners, and is installed on more then five hundred servers. It is compatible with all major hosting control panels, including Plesk, cPanel, ISPManager and InterWorx control panel products, as well as with Apache and LiteSpeed web servers. It is also used as a base for Parallels next generation H2E hosting platform. The company’s vision is to design a simple and elegant solution that helps companies improve server security, efficiency, density and performance as they migrate to Cloud-based services.

The Cloud Computing World Forum is sponsoring the Cloud Computing World Series Awards. Winners of the Cloud Computing World Series Awards were announced on June 29th at an award ceremony held at the Olympia Conference Center in London.

For more information about CloudLinux, please visit www.cloudlinux.com

About CloudLinux, Inc.

Founded in Princeton, NJ, CloudLinux is a privately funded company that combines unique expertise in the service provider business with in-depth technical knowledge of hosting, kernel development and open source.

CloudLinux provides hosting companies and datacenters with the only commercially supported Linux operating system (OS) optimized for their needs. The new technology behind CloudLinux has been proven to increase density, stability and performance, helping customers realize reduced operating costs and increased profitability.

To join online discussions and receive news updates you can find CloudLinux on: Twitter and LinkedIn. For more information, please visit http://www.cloudlinux.com.

Red Hat launches rival to Windows Azure

cloudtweaks — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 12:00:47 +0000

Red Hat’s Cloud Foundations, a complete package for running hybrid clouds, includes software and services

Red Hat has launched a comprehensive package, called Red Hat Cloud Foundations, that will allow organizations to run applications in both public clouds and their own private clouds.

With this release, Red Hat is one of only two companies that offer a complete package for running a hybrid cloud, said Scott Crenshaw, vice president and general manager of Red Hat’s cloud business unit. The other company is Microsoft, with its Azure platform.

The announcement was one of a number of cloud-related announcements that the company made during its Red Hat Summit last week in Boston. The company also has added new partners to its Red Hat Certified Cloud Provider Program. It has released version 2.2 of its Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) package, and has integrated Cisco’s Virtual Network Link (VN-Link) technology within the RHEV package.

The first edition of the Red Hat Cloud Foundations package includes a set of Red Hat programs, a reference architecture, and a number of consulting services and training classes. The Red Hat programs include Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), Red Hat Network Satellite, RHEV, JBoss and the company’s messaging software.

Continue… Full Source: InfoWorld

NASA and Japan Announce Cloud Computing Collaboration

cloudtweaks — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 12:02:52 +0000

WASHINGTON, June 4 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — NASA and Japan’s National Institute of Informatics (NII) have announced plans to explore interoperability opportunities between NASA’s Nebula Cloud Computing Platform and Japan’s NII Cloud Computing Platform.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO)

Chris C. Kemp, NASA’s Chief Technology Officer for Information Technology, launched this effort on June 3 with a live demonstration of interoperability between NASA Nebula and the NII’s Cloud at the NII annual Open House event in Tokyo, Japan. The Nebula and NII Cloud infrastructures jointly served publicly-available selections of Mars Orbiter data sets to a web application.

This event was a first step in NASA’s efforts to demonstrate how cloud standards can facilitate interoperability and data portability for the benefit of the international science community.

“By demonstrating how cloud interoperability can facilitate international collaboration and seamless global access to public data, NASA hopes to accelerate the development of cloud standards and the adoption of cloud infrastructure services by the scientific community,” said Kemp.

NASA Nebula and NII’s Cloud are built entirely of open-source components and both employ open-data application programming interfaces. NASA and NII will collaborate on open source reference implementations of interoperable cloud services.

“The interoperability between an NII Cloud and the NASA Nebula Cloud is a combined effort toward the creation of an International academic-information infrastructure, which is essential in promoting the global cooperation of research and education,” said Masao Sakauchi, NII’s director general. “The interoperability of this cloud infrastructure will make it possible to create new academic activities by enabling the software and content to be shared amongst researchers, faculties, and students worldwide.”

NASA Nebula is a Cloud Computing service developed by the agency’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., that provides high performance computing, network, and data storage services to NASA scientists and researchers. Nebula allows NASA to share and process large scientific data sets and was one of three flagship projects highlighted in NASA’s Open Government Directive.

Japan’s NII Cloud provides cloud platform services to Japan’s academic and research community. Like Nebula, the NII cloud is developed using open source technologies. By focusing on partnerships and other joint efforts with universities and research institutions throughout Japan, as well as industries and civilian organizations, NII creates state-of-the-art information infrastructure to support education within Japan’s broader academic and research community.

For more information about NASA Nebula, visit:

http://nebula.nasa.gov

For more information about NASA’s Office of the Chief Information Officer, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/offices/ocio/home/

Yahoo! to open source floating Google-Amazon crossbreed – Cloud News

cloudtweaks — Wed, 12 May 2010 13:37:45 +0000

Early next year, Yahoo! intends to open source its internal “cloud serving” platform, described as something halfway between Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud and Google’s App Engine.

Known simply as “Cloud” within the company, the platform is that piece of Yahoo! infrastructure that serves up its online applications. In short, it provides the company’s internal developers with on-demand access to computing resources. But rather than offering raw virtual machines as Amazon EC2 does, it spins up “containers” of server power that are pre-configured for things like load-balancing and security. That way, developers needn’t handle the load-balancing on their own.

TARGET=”_blank”
HREF=”http://ad.uk.doubleclick.net/click%3Bh%3Dv8/3998/3/0/%2a/p%3B224803461%3B0-0%3B0%3B40961377%3B4252-336/280%3B36695595/36713473/1%3B%3B%7Esscs%3D%3fhttp://whitepapers.theregister.co.uk/paper/view/1338/?td=d-224803461″> SRC=”http://s0.2mdn.net/2645412/aprigo_taking_control_of_your_data_demons-mu.gif”
alt=”" BORDER=0>

Google App Engine also handles this sort of nitty-gritty on behalf of the developer, but it goes much further. It hides even more of the underlying infrastructure, and it puts tight restrictions on the design of applications so they’ll conform with this infrastructure. It restricts what languages you use. It limits the libraries you can choose from. It even prevents you from making system requests that take more than 30 seconds or return more than 10MB of data.

With its “Cloud,” Yahoo! abstracts some of the infrastructure, but it also lets you develop with all those standard LAMP stack tools you’re used to. “We don’t bless the language,” Yahoo! chief architect Raymie Stata tells The Reg. “We bless the container.”

The company says its current plan is to open source the platform early in 2011. And eventually, it will open source all its back-end platforms.

8 Tips to Getting Started in Cloud Computing

cloudtweaks — Mon, 10 May 2010 16:55:52 +0000

In the old days, infrastructure meant buying $5,000 servers, putting them into high-security, cooled rooms, and hiring IT folks to make them all work. And then doing this all over again so that you’d have redundancy. Those days are gone—in fact, if you tell investors that you need money for IT infrastructure, they’re going to question your intelligence.

Cloud computing is what has changed the game. It provides small businesses with the ability to deploy websites and applications quickly, to pay only for what you use, and leave all the management issues to someone else. It makes for a leaner business that can react faster to challenges and opportunities.

But cloud computing also requires understanding a whole new technology and computing philosophy. I was lucky when we put my company’s website, Alltop.com, “into the cloud” because our service provider, Rackspace, hosts hundreds of companies and our developers at Electric Pulp have done this many times. The gang at Rackspace and I have come up with a list of ten tips to help you get started in cloud computing:

1. Know the different options available to you. “Cloud computing” simply means that you pay only for what you use—like electricity, but it can be found many forms. A platform-as-a-service (PaaS for short) works well for front-end applications and websites. It takes care of a lot of the infrastructure you need to get started. An infrastructure as a service (IaaS for short) gives you access to a command line and allows you the flexibility to customize your load balancing, autoscaling, security and failover settings, but requires advanced technical knowledge in system administration.

If you don’t have someone comfortable programming in a terminal, an IaaS is not for you. Infrastructures-as-a-service require some system administration experience. If you don’t have someone with this type of expertise, either find a competent systems administrator or consider a platform-as-a-service instead. A PaaS provider should be able to handle basic but necessary tasks such as load balancing and security.

2. Understand that scaling is a skill, not a default. Cloud computing gives you a lot of flexibility to scale at a lower cost. However, no cloud provider offers “infinite scalability” out of the box though. The world’s most popular websites and applications have professionals working full-time to ensure uptime and speed when they are needed most. Be sure to factor this into your long-term IT costs.

3. Implement a disaster plan. The cloud is not fool proof, but there are ways to protect yourself should it go down. A multi-tenant cloud will go down on occasion. If uptime is crucial to your business, be sure you have a disaster recovery plan, geographic failover, and redundancy set in place.

4. Don’t be naïve. Cloud computing will not make up for a poorly written application or database structure. A hosting provider gets the blame for a lot of performance issues. If a database is not set up properly, or code is not optimized, there is nothing a hosting provider can do to make up for this. When it comes to developers, remember that you often get what you pay for. Be sure to check their resumes and portfolio for other work.

5. Budget for your specific use-case. Calculating your budget is not as simple as reading a provider’s website. Cloud computing treats hosting as a utility. Like other utilities such as electricity, your bill will vary each month with usage. If you see a surge in traffic or users, use more space, or process more information, expect to pay more at the end of the month.

6. Choose a cloud provider on your needs, not its popularity. Do you need something that is highly elastic in a short period of time? Are you going to need support and additional services? High availability? Integration with third party software? Different cloud providers excel at different things. Consider your individual needs, do your homework, and ask cloud providers questions about their availability, speed, security, and integration before you sign up.

7. Remember: some applications are not good fits for cloud. Cloud computing is great for anything you’d need to deploy quickly and at a low cost. However, just like multi-tenant buildings are not good for every business, a multi-tenant cloud is not good for every application. If you have high security or bandwidth needs, you will need to pursue dedicated gear.

For security reasons, any application that requires PCI or HIPPA compliance is not a good fit for cloud computing. A multi-tenant cloud may also not be able to handle extreme performance loads often seen by more resource intensive applications. Evaluate your specific needs and don’t rule out dedicated or hybrid hosting (a combination of cloud and dedicated hosting) if it looks like the right fit.

8. Think outside of the box. When hosting becomes a commodity, it opens your business up to new and exciting things. You can deploy applications or sites on the fly. Consider media rich or real-time elements to your application or website. Set up a server just to comb through customer information or other data your company collects. These possibilities were not as accessible to the masses before cloud computing, so don’t be afraid to try new things and expand how your business operates.

Full Source: Guy Kawasaki at OpenForum