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Another possible clue:

I’m a developer on Openstack’s object storage system, and I believe that Openstack is uniquely positioned to achieve this vision.

In contrast, I believe that Openstack is a steaming pile of impenetrable Python poo, especially its storage architecture. If this is indeed their platform then I am not at all surprised to hear that Github admins are now busy failing their files over manually.

CRLs are poorly used and often ignored, largely because there is no simple built in standard for keeping the CRLs updated and having all connections check them. Its bad enough that our team has gone to only issuing certs with very short life spans and just renewing them often. See https://www.openstack.org/summ...

Walmart runs OpenStack (as can be seen here: https://www.openstack.org/summ... ). It will be interesting what they want to open source, maybe they have built a management layer on top of OpenStack or even their own "distribution".

Let me be clear: what applies to Azure as a foreigner applies also to Amazon/AWS, Google, Rackspace, IBM/SoftLayer, CenturyLink, DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, PeerOne or any other US-based company (even if they run the service in Europe for example).

But I noticed there are others in the world, for example on the OpenStack Marketplace:
http://www.openstack.org/marke...

I don't understand the need to inject all the platform bloat into Docker. Why not just fold docker functionality into an existing platform such as OpenStack to handle all those "extras" that are being contemplated? The work to integrate the two is already in progress:

https://wiki.openstack.org/wik...

Best,

Fine, I'll paste the link and summary you care about:

http://www.openstack.org/softw...

OpenStack Juno, the tenth release of the open source software for building public, private, and hybrid clouds has 342 new features to support software development, big data analysis and application infrastructure at scale. The OpenStack community continues to attract the best developers and experts in their disciplines with 1,419 individuals employed by more than 133 organizations contributing to the Juno release.

Everything else is up to you now. Upvotes, please. :-)

With the recent announcement, I'm so relieved my favorite object store is now integrated with with OSX.

The only approach that has been successful for CUDA access from a kvm virtual machine that we know of is gVirtuS.

https://wiki.openstack.org/wik...

Meh, it's also just another level of complexity.

http://docs.openstack.org/trun...

The thing is that it's not OpenStack *or* VMWare, it's OpenStack *and* any hypervisor you like, including VMWare if you want. It's (as far as I understand, mind) an "Application Layer" above the hypervisors.

You can have OpenStack running with VMWare, XenServer, KVM, or possibly other hypervisors, if you like. Here for example is how you could setup OpenStack to use VMWare vCenter. But at the moment I also have absolutely no Idea what I could user it for. My "classic" virtual machines do everything I need them to do. Let's see what the next decade or so has in store. ;-)

Oh...you mean they didn't RTFA?

Here, you lazy bums:

OpenStack is an IT infrastructure framework made up of several components contributed under an open source license by multiple technology providers.

Am I the only one who thinks MS completely misunderstood their market and customers when they offered Azure?

What they should have done is license it to server OEM's to sell to businesses that want the advantages of distributed mainframes(you might know it better as cloud-marketers trying to hide something they think is a negative) without the disadvantage of no longer controlling your data?

basically what these guys are doing http://www.openstack.org/

That hits square in MS's target market.

Microsoft is not a consumer toy company and their obsession in trying to become one is exactly why they are no longer relevant today. Google and Apple are not and never should have been MS competitors.

Is it too late to change course?

It is absolutely amazing that they went after the wrong markets. Google and Apple have not and never will be competitors to MS.

MS needs to stick to supporting businesses and all that entails. Including a software package that that replicates much of their cloud service. An all in one setup where the business retains control of the hardware, software and data, so many businesses would jump on that. Why they haven't done this is surprising as it is right in their wheelhouse(business oriented 'me-too' product) and could actually right the ship.

Something like this. Why doesn't MS have anything like it?

Instead we get crappy tablets and whatever surface pro is supposed to be, Zune, multiple search failures, Windows Phones, home server(WTF MS), which all points to Microsoft not even understanding their place in the world.

The summary does not tell me what this thing, apparently popular in Beijing, actually is! You could at least link their website. :)

Anyway, looking at their website, it looks like it's a "cloud operating system", i.e. infrastructure for managing a cluster in a virtualized, "cloud-like" way. Does anyone know how it compares to other such platforms, like Eucalyptus and the confusingly-similar-in-name CloudStack?

It doesn't really need 1.5 pages of description.

Cloud computing is a strong abstraction layer between the physical machine and the logical machine. It's very similar in concept to memory virtualization - each process is given it's own address space, and really doesn't understand or care how that address space maps to physical memory. In a cloud computing environment, you request a new machine, and the cloud computing infrastructure automatically allocates a machine based on your requirements. The abstraction layer allows your physical hardware to be treated as a pool of resources, that can be expanded, repaired, or replaced without much concern about the impact to the logical machines it supports.

Cloud computing doesn't necessarily require virtualization either; physical computers can be provisioned using cloud infrastructure; https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Baremetal

You know what is interresting, have you seen the new X1 from Comcast ? It really is very close to a dump terminal:

http://www.openstack.org/summit/portland-2013/session-videos/presentation/keynote-openstack-as-a-platform-ecosystem
http://www.openstack.org/summit/san-diego-2012/openstack-summit-sessions/presentation/open-source-versions-of-amazon-s-sns-and-sqs

It send keystrokes one way and receives screens back.

You know what is interresting, have you seen the new X1 from Comcast ? It really is very close to a dump terminal:

http://www.openstack.org/summit/portland-2013/session-videos/presentation/keynote-openstack-as-a-platform-ecosystem
http://www.openstack.org/summit/san-diego-2012/openstack-summit-sessions/presentation/open-source-versions-of-amazon-s-sns-and-sqs

It send keystrokes one way and receives screens back.

For those who aren't up on it, from the web site:

OpenStack is a global collaboration of developers and cloud computing technologists producing the ubiquitous open source cloud computing platform for public and private clouds. The project aims to deliver solutions for all types of clouds by being simple to implement, massively scalable, and feature rich. The technology consists of a series of interrelated projects delivering various components for a cloud infrastructure solution.

Who's behind OpenStack? Founded by Rackspace Hosting and NASA, OpenStack has grown to be a global software community of developers collaborating on a standard and massively scalable open source cloud operating system. Our mission is to enable any organization to create and offer cloud computing services running on standard hardware.

Who uses OpenStack? Corporations, service providers, VARS, SMBs, researchers, and global data centers looking to deploy large-scale cloud deployments for private or public clouds leveraging the support and resulting technology of a global open source community.

Why open matters: All of the code for OpenStack is freely available under the Apache 2.0 license. Anyone can run it, build on it, or submit changes back to the project. We strongly believe that an open development model is the only way to foster badly-needed cloud standards, remove the fear of proprietary lock-in for cloud customers, and create a large ecosystem that spans cloud providers.

OpenStack manages an Hypervisor, VMWare are many things an Hypervisor and a lot of administration applications (than only manage VMWare Hypervisor), OpenStack can manage multiple hypervisors. I want to know what they will use? KVM or Xen?

http://www.openstack.org/user-stories/paypal/

at least when the VCs behind Euca/Neubla shut up shop (or they are bought by HP/IBM)

Why would HP or IBM buy either? They're both OpenStack shops. HP has employees on the OpenStack Board, even.

They do have their swift storage subsystem, but it is not block storage, its object storage. it is, however, replicated, and highly available..

On their website, http://www.openstack.org/software/openstack-storage/ they also mention ceph, nexenta, netapp, and SolidFire (never heard of the last one).. I didn't think Gluster was block storage, however.. I thought it was just file...

OpenStack Compute gives you a tool to orchestrate a cloud, including running instances, managing networks, and controlling access to the cloud through users and projects. The underlying open source project's name is Nova, and it provides the software that can control an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud computing platform. It is similar in scope to Amazon EC2 and Rackspace Cloud Servers. OpenStack Compute does not include any virtualization software; rather it defines drivers that interact with underlying virtualization mechanisms that run on your host operating system, and exposes functionality over a web-based API.

It looks to me like it does what VMware's VirtualCenter does. It is a central management platform for interacting with whatever Hypervisor(s) you want to use.

OpenStack Compute gives you a tool to orchestrate a cloud, including running instances, managing networks, and controlling access to the cloud through users and projects. The underlying open source project's name is Nova, and it provides the software that can control an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud computing platform. It is similar in scope to Amazon EC2 and Rackspace Cloud Servers. OpenStack Compute does not include any virtualization software; rather it defines drivers that interact with underlying virtualization mechanisms that run on your host operating system, and exposes functionality over a web-based API.

It looks to me like it does what VMware's VirtualCenter does. It is a central management platform for interacting with whatever Hypervisor(s) you want to use.

I have 45 TB at home!

They need to get with the plan and have multiple locations (no fewer than 6) with large (24 petabyte minimum) storage at each site. Maybe manage it with OpenStack.

"When you buy a system and colocate it, you get 100% of the system resources."

Yes. And 100% of the inconveniencies.

"When you use OpenStack (or any resource virtualization scheme) you lose 15% of all the resources to begin with"

Yes. And when the hardware breaks you lose 100% of said resources. Something a migration (maybe even live) can save you of. Now, how many servers do you know with *exactly* 100% load?

"All hardware-acceleration (no TOE on the network)"

Given that the standard live for a production server is about three years, you can bet that, unless you use a lessen OS, about half of that life you are better managing network packets on the OS than on the NIC firmware.

"To add, then you're charged for CPU time per core, Bandwidth by the byte, and disk IOPS by the IOPS."

Yes... or not. There's nothing in the IaaS business model that forces to charge for any single of those items. On the other hand, you *are* paying for CPU, network, etc. on your dedicated server, only it's not itemized, nor upgradable.

But there's something else you are not noticing. Openstack is basically two things: a manager for the IaaS provider and a standard API for the consumer. Nothing more, nothing less. There's absolutly nothing avoiding a provider to offer you a "dedicated server" (minus the virtualization overhead, and even this is probably going to change, given that Openstack is aiming at providing "bare iron" provisioning in the future) just like any other current provider, exactly on the same terms of service and then even more (if wanted/needed) because of the provider-facing facilities any "cluster manager" like Openstack adds.

"Building this stuff is expensive"

But not more expensive than your own datacenter/server room under other technologies.

"and using cheap commodity hardware is unreliable"

But much more reliable than a traditional server room under same conditions (you can't live-migrate instances on a traditional server room).

"so the only way to beat Amazon is to either have enough leverage to make the bandwidth free, or to use unreliable hardware configurations"

So you have done the numbers, didn't you? Just in case you didn't: http://www.buildcloudstorage.com/2012/01/can-openstack-swift-hit-amazon-s3-like.html

"What may help is if the concept of "****stack" is eliminated. Instead of trying to create 4 VM's on one machine, it should instead be about virtualizing the storage system"

You don't have the slightest idea of what Openstack brings to the table, do you? Well, here comes a starting point: http://www.openstack.org/

I did misread this. When I think cloud computing, I am coming for a CS point of view, which is that cloud computing is the terms used to describe the efforts to make scalability of software as a service ubiquitous. Basically, the cloud is not a bunch of servers, it is the infrastructure that provides scalable services to an application layer like the web. Amazon pretty much built the best cloud and others are following their lead. So, I have been looking at OpenStack
If anyone actually thinks this question is in any way relevant, please let me know if there are other resources.

You want OpenStack, CloudStack or Eucalyptus. All the flexibility of cloud (dynamically spinning up instances, etc) while running on your own hardware.

"the New Linux" is an analogy (you literal dorks). From the FAQ http://openstack.org/projects/openstack-faq/

What does it mean for the cloud ecosystem?

This is not yet code that comes with certification from operating system or hardware vendors. Instead it's aimed at providers, institutions, and enterprises with highly technical operations teams that have the capabilities and needs to turn physical hardware into large-scale cloud deployments.

Still, wide adoption of an open-source, open-standards cloud should be huge for everyone. It means customers won't have to fear lock-in and technology companies can participate in a growing market that spans cloud providers.

A great analogy comes from the early days of the Internet: the transition away from fractured, proprietary flavors of UNIX toward open-source Linux. An open cloud stands to provide the same benefits for large-scale cloud computing that the Linux standard provided inside the server.

I don't believe it's a Linux distribution because it's intended to be installed on Fedora, RHEL, Debian, Ubuntu, etc.

http://wiki.openstack.org/InstallInstructions/Nova

I don't think it's even a Linux distribution because the install guides for the different types of OpenStack nodes start with instructions for Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, Fedora, RHEL.

http://wiki.openstack.org/InstallInstructions/Nova (Compute node)
http://wiki.openstack.org/InstallInstructions/Swift (Storage node)
http://wiki.openstack.org/InstallInstructions/Glance (Image server)

I don't think it's even a Linux distribution because the install guides for the different types of OpenStack nodes start with instructions for Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, Fedora, RHEL.

http://wiki.openstack.org/InstallInstructions/Nova (Compute node)
http://wiki.openstack.org/InstallInstructions/Swift (Storage node)
http://wiki.openstack.org/InstallInstructions/Glance (Image server)

I don't think it's even a Linux distribution because the install guides for the different types of OpenStack nodes start with instructions for Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, Fedora, RHEL.

http://wiki.openstack.org/InstallInstructions/Nova (Compute node)
http://wiki.openstack.org/InstallInstructions/Swift (Storage node)
http://wiki.openstack.org/InstallInstructions/Glance (Image server)

Cloud doesn't necessarily mean closed source[1][2]. We should be working towards open source and standards based "cloud" platforms. Fighting against the concept of "cloud computing" is a misguided, losing battle.

[1] http://www.cloud.com/
[2] http://www.openstack.org/

Amazon's S3 is based off of MogileFS (the concept, not the code): http://danga.com/mogilefs/

And if you want to run an S3 compliant system internally, you'll us openstack.org's object storage system:

http://www.openstack.org/projects/storage/

Ability to provide object storage services at multi-petabyte scale
Free open source software, no licensing frees, ‘open-core,’ or ‘freemium’ model
Written in python; easy to differentiate your offering with extensions and modifications
Compatibility and established ecosystem with industry standard OpenStack API
Support for Amazon S3 API for easy inbound migration
Completely multi-tenant, with billing integration hooks
Pluggable authentication mechanism for SSO integration
Integrated reseller model allows for resale of services

There is "cloud storage" management software that would be awesome on these boxes (although they might benefit from a bit more CPU and ram, and some more Gigabit nics.. When I read this blog article yesterday, I immediately went back to openstack.. The examples for Openstack Storage don't even bother with raid, since the objects on the drive will be replicated to multiple other servers automatically. This could be very, very interesting..

http://www.openstack.org/projects/storage/

>What I'd like to see is an open cloud platform

http://www.openstack.org/

You've got Rackspace + Softlayer and about 60 other companies.

>What I'd like to see is an open cloud platform

http://www.openstack.org/

You've got Rackspace + Softlayer and about 60 other companies.