Is OpenStack the New Linux?

snydeq writes "As the self-proclaimed 'cloud OS for the datacenter,' OpenStack is fast becoming one of the more intriguing movements in open source — complete with lofty ambitions, community in-fighting, and commercial appeal. But questions remain whether this project can reach its potential of becoming the new Linux. 'The allure of OpenStack is clear: Like Linux, OpenStack aims to provide a kernel around which all kinds of software vendors can build businesses. But with OpenStack, we're talking multiple projects to provide agile cloud management of compute, storage, and networking resources across the data center — plus authentication, self-service, resource monitoring, and a slew of other projects. It's hugely ambitious, perhaps the most far-reaching open source project ever, although still at a very early stage. ... Clearly, the sky-high aspirations of OpenStack both fuel its outrageous momentum and incur the risk of overreach and collapse, as it incites all manner of competition. The promise is big, but the success of OpenStack is by no means assured.'"

Comments

Done.

[Frosty Piss]

...projects to provide agile cloud management...

Whenever I see "blaw...blaw AGILE blaw...blaw", I stop reading.

Re:Done.

[Anonymous Coward]

Needed webscale and enterprise value there. Agile alone isn't agile enough.

Re:Done.

[simcop2387]

I always think of Betteridge's Law of Headlines

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_Law_of_Headlines

Re:Done.

[gman003]

I dunno...

We're already hearing about "local clouds" - essentially building a small-scale cloud for your own large company. So, say, Hewlett-Packard could, instead of renting cloud space, could build a small "cloud" just for themselves.

Once that becomes relatively common, someone will come up with the "personal cloud" - a small home server, that "does" "everything" "the cloud" "does". I actually expect IPv6 may help with this - if you can access "your" cloud from anywhere, what advantage does "the" cloud have?

And then, once that becomes common for nerds and the tech-savvy wealthy, someone will decide to do it in software instead of a dedicated hardware appliance. I expect they shall call it a "desktop cloud".

And then the loop begins AGAIN!

Re:Done.

[Smauler]

I reckon the slashdot editors should just have gone the whole hog, with :

"2013 : The Year of OpenStack on the Desktop?"

Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenStack is a Linux distribution organized for deploying a compute cloud. Linux is the new Linux?

Re:Wait, what?

[MightyMartian]

In other words "We have a new distro, how can we get some free advertising..."

Re:Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenStack is a Linux distribution organized for deploying a compute cloud. Linux is the new Linux?

No it's not. It's a virtualization management platform with appropriate interfaces for clients that you can deploy on pretty much any Linux server.

Re:Wait, what?

[MattW]

OpenStack isn't a distro. It's a collection of utilities for virtualizing and managing compute and storage resources to build clouds. Putting Apache, PHP, and MySQL onto a linux box doesn't make the LAMP stack "Linux" any more than putting OpenStack services (Nova, swift, etc) onto a Linux distro makes OpenStack Linux.

Re:Meta-engineering

[morcego]

As a general rule, the only way to build something large and complex that works is to grow it from something small and simple that works.

As a general rule, something simple that works will grow into something large and complex that doesn't work, and no one can figure why.

No

[Pf0tzenpfritz]

As a "cloud OS for the datacenter" Open Stack clearly has to iconoclast on empowering croud-sorced segregation-effects within the namespace of its initial synergies. Anything else would be a paradigm shift.