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Sputnik…Wow!!

Barton George — Wed, 30 May 2012 04:47:44 +0000

Courtesy of nasaimages.org

We knew that project Sputnik, the idea of creating a developer laptop based on Dell’s XPS13 ultrabook and Ubuntu 12.04LTS, would have appeal but we never could have anticipated the response we’ve gotten.

To put it into perspective, the most cumulative views I’ve had of a blog entry before Sputnik was 2,700. My post introducing Sputnik, as of tonight, has had over 42,000 views! And the news has been carried by a boatload of pubs and blogs around the world (see a partial list below).

Silent but not sleeping

In case you’re wondering, the radio silence for the last couple of weeks hasn’t been intentional our little team has just been crazy busy. Not only have we gotten attention outside of Dell but our profile has raised quite a bit inside as well. Our skunk works team has been scrambling to leverage that attention to see what we can do to put this on a faster track. We have also had a bunch of meetings with Canonical to talk about the best way forward given the intense interest.

Whole lot of feedback

We have been deluged with comments and suggestions both on my blog and the Sputnik Storm session and while there were plenty of people who said they would buy it now if it was available, we also received some clear direction on where people would like to see this offering go. Some of the key areas for improving the offering are:

Multi gesture support for the touch pad (more on that in a second)
Screen resolution
More memory (8GB+)
Matte screen
Pricing: don’t make it more expensive than Windows

We are making note of these suggestions as we plot our way through this six month pilot.

The track pad

Its no surprise that the number one complaint has been the lack of multi gesture support in the touchpad. Canonical and Dell have reached out to the vendor and last week they began working on an open source driver. The vendor is sending both Dell and Canonical intermediary versions which will allow us to iterate on them as they’re developing and provide feedback about what’s working and what isn’t with the way things are assembled. Fingers crossed, we hope to see the completed driver by the end of June.

Thanks everyone for their amazing interest Sputnik and look for a bunch more info soon.

Extra-credit reading — some Sputnik coverage

DevOpsAngle: Dell Announces A Linux Laptop Designed for Developers
GigaOm: Dell tests open-source laptop for developers
VentureBeat: Neckbeards, rejoice! Dell’s new Linux ultrabook was developed just for you
Hacker News: Dell Announces A Linux Laptop Designed For Developers (devopsangle.com)
The Register: Dell puts Sputnik open-source laptop on launch pad
Engadget: Project Sputnik: Dell’s Ubuntu-based XPS13 laptop for developers
WSJ: Dude, Dell’s Building an Open Source Laptop
The Verge: Dell’s Project Sputnik pairs Ubuntu with the XPS 13 to help create a developer’s dream
Ars Technica: New Dell Ubuntu ultrabooks a step in the right direction for Linux support
USA Today: Social media is reinventing how business is done – USATODAY.com
Forbes: Can Dell’s Open Source XPS Ultrabook Steal Apple’s Thunder?
Stephen O’Grady: Why a developer laptop?
Cote’s Blog:Project Sputnik
InfoWorld: Dell plots Ubuntu laptop for developers with eye on OpenStack cloud
PCWorld: New from Dell: an Ubuntu Linux Laptop Targeting Developers
Dell Designing Developer Oriented Laptop – Slashdot
Dell Announces Linux Laptop For Developers – ITProPortal
Dell readies Ubuntu Linux laptop for developers – ZDNet
Dell releases Ubuntu 12.04 image for XPS 13 ultrabook – The Inquirer
Dell announces Project Sputnik pilot program, plans to create a laptop for mobile and web developers – Ubergizmo
Dell touts Linux laptop for Android, JS devs – TG Daily
Dell plans Ubuntu laptop for developers – ZDNet UK
Dell working on Ubuntu Ultrabook for developers – PC Pro
Dell targeting developers with XPS 13 and custom Ubuntu – Slashgear
Dell goes after devs with Ubuntu-based Sputnik – Bit-Tech
Dell’s Project Sputnik Uses Ubuntu 12.04 On XPS 13 – Developer’s Dream Machine – Crazy Engineers
First look at Project Sputnik: Dell’s XPS ultrabook with Ubuntu Linux – Liliputing
Developer Laptop launches: Project Sputnik | ServerGround.net
Dell tests open-source laptop for developers — Cloud Computing News
Dell presenteert ontwikkelaarsversie XPS 13-ultrabook met Ubuntu | Tech-nieuws
Dell prepara un portátil para Desarrolladores con Ubuntu y Software Libre | www.cyanogenmod.info
Project Sputnik: un portátil para desarrolladores Open Source
Für Entwickler: Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook mit Ubuntu
Sputnik Project: Dell e Canonical insieme per un ultraportatile Linux – Netbook News
Dell experimentiert mit Ubuntu-Entwickler-Ultrabook | Edv-Sicherheitskonzepte.de – News Blog aus vielen Bereichen
เดลล์ เปิดตัวโครงการ Sputnik: Ubuntu 12.04 สำหรับ XPS13 | Magento-Thailand.com | Magento, รับทำเว็บไซต์ Magento, รับทำเว็บไซต์ร้านค้า เว
New Dell Ubuntu ultrabooks a step in the right direction for Linux support | Share Blog
New from Dell: an Ubuntu Linux Laptop Targeting Developers | Geeklin
Ultraportátiles Dell con Ubuntu, para desarrolladores web
Dell plans Ubuntu laptop for developers | BussinessTree News
Компания Dell представила специализированный ноутбук для разработчиков, укомплектованный Ubuntu | PROUBUNTU
Projekt Sputnik – laptop dla deweloperów | OSWorld.pl
Dell Designing Developer Oriented Ubuntu Laptop
Dell Working On OpenStack-Friendly Ubuntu Laptop for Developers | PHP World
Dell annonce un protoype de développement d’un portable avec Ubuntu | LinuxBe.org
Dell porta Ubuntu sul suo Ultrabook XPS13 – Gizmodo IT – Il gadget weblog

Redmonk on Developers and Project Sputnik

Barton George — Wed, 09 May 2012 01:48:41 +0000

Today at the Ubuntu Cloud Summit here in Oakland I grabbed sometime with Redmonk analyst Stephen O’Grady. It was Stephen who originally brought up the idea of creating a Dell laptop running Ubuntu targeted at developers.

I talked to Stephen about how he would characterize today’s world of developers and what he feels project Sputnik needs to deliver on to be successful.

Updated March 22

Stephen’s post on Sputnik a few days after the interview: Why a developer laptop?

Extra-credit reading

The Register: Dell puts Sputnik open-source laptop on launch pad
Engadget: Project Sputnik: Dell’s Ubuntu-based XPS13 laptop for developers
WSJ: Dude, Dell’s Building an Open Source Laptop
The Verge: Dell’s Project Sputnik pairs Ubuntu with the XPS 13 to help create a developer’s dream
Ars Technica: New Dell Ubuntu ultrabooks a step in the right direction for Linux support

Pau for now…

Talking about Project Sputnik

Barton George — Tue, 08 May 2012 06:27:33 +0000

Last Friday Cote and I took a break from the mad rush getting ready for today’s Sputnik announce and grabbed a conference room to record a short video. Below we discuss the project, how it came about, what its goals are and where it could go from here.

-> Weigh in on Dell IdeaStorm: Project Sputnik

Extra-credit reading

DevOpsAngle: Dell Announces A Linux Laptop Designed for Developers
GigaOm: Dell tests open-source laptop for developers
VentureBeat: Neckbeards, rejoice! Dell’s new Linux ultrabook was developed just for you
Cote’s Blog: Project Sputnik
Hacker News: Dell Announces A Linux Laptop Designed For Developers (devopsangle.com)

Introducing Project Sputnik: Developer laptop

Barton George — Mon, 07 May 2012 14:00:09 +0000

Today I am very excited, I finally get to talk about project Sputnik! In a nutshell, drumroll please, here it is:

Made possible by an internal innovation fund, project Sputnik is a 6 month effort to explore the possibility of creating an open source laptop targeted directly at developers. It is based on Ubuntu 12.04 and Dell’s XPS13 laptop.

To put it in context, Sputnik is part of an effort by Dell to better understand and serve the needs of developers in Web companies. We want to finds ways to make the developer experience as powerful and simple as possible. And what better way to do that than beginning with a laptop that is both highly mobile and extremely stylish, running the 12.04 LTS release of Ubuntu Linux.

Why a developer laptop

When we first started setting up the web vertical to focus on companies who use the internet as their platform, we brought in Stephen O’Grady of Redmonk to learn as much as we could about the needs of developers. One of the ideas that Stephen tossed out was a Dell laptop running Ubuntu, targeting developers. We thought the idea was pretty cool and filed it away.

As we continued talking to customers and developers the topic of Ubuntu kept coming up and we came across a fair number of devs who were asking for a Dell laptop specifically based on it. To my knowledge, no other OEM has yet made a system specifically targeted at devs and figured it was time to see what that might mean. When the XPS13 launched we realized that we found the perfect platform to start with and when Dell’s incubation program was announced we knew I had the vehicle to get the effort kick started.

I should also add that Ubuntu was a natural choice not only because of its popularity in the Web world but Dell has quite a bit of experience with it. In fact Dell has enabled and pre-installed out-of-the-factory Ubuntu on more computer models than any other OEM.

What’s Sputnik actually running?

The install image available for Sputnik contains

drivers/patches for Hardware enablement
a basic offering of key tools and utilities (see the complete list at the end of this entry)
coming soon, a software management tool to go out to a github repository to pull down various developer profiles.

Hardware enablement

In putting together the project, the area that we focused on first was hardware enablement. As Linux users are all too painfully aware, Linux drivers are not always available for various platforms. We have been working hand in hand with Canonical, the commercial sponsor behind Ubuntu and identified three main areas on the XPS13:

An issue with brightness
The Wifi hotkey
The touchpad and multi touch support

The first two have been resolved but the last one re the touchpad is still at large. The issue is a bit of a pain particularly the lack of palm rejection support which can cause your cursor to jump by mistake. We have contacted the vendor who makes the touchpad and they are sizing the effort to fix this and at the same time we are working with Canonical to find an interim solution.

Developer profile management

Hardware enablement is table stakes but where Sputnik starts to get interesting is when we talk about profiles. No two developers are alike so instead of stuffing the system with every possible tool or app a developer could possibly want, we are trying a different approach. As mentioned above, the actual “stuff” on the install image is pretty basic, instead we are working with a few developers to put together a tool that can go out to a github repository and pull down various developer profiles. The first profiles we are targeting are Android, Ruby and JavaScript.

As a one of our alpha cosmonauts, Charles Lowell, explained (we have been working with three local developers in Austin, Charles, Mike Pav and Dustin Kirkland to put together our initial offering together. And yes I know Sputnik was unmanned but its our project and we wanted to call the testers “cosmonauts.” )

What I’d like to see is not only a gold-standard configuration, but also a meta-system to manage your developer configuration… The devops revolution is about configuration as code. How cool would it be if my laptop configuration were code that I could store in a source repo somewhere?

After we build the management tool and some basic profiles to get the effort started, we are hoping that the community will take over and began creating profiles of their own.

Getting Feedback and UDS activities

The idea is to conduct project Sputnik out in the open. There is a Storm Session that went live this morning on Dell Idea Storm for people to discuss the project and submit feedback, comments and ideas. Later today here at the Ubuntu Developer Summit, Dustin, Mario Limonciello of Dell and I will be hosting a UDS session to discuss Sputnik. Additionally at UDS there is a coding contest that has been kicked off. The three people who write the best Juju charms will each get an XPS13.

The Vision: a Launchpad to the cloud

As mentioned at the start, Sputnik is currently a 6month project to investigate an Ubuntu laptop. If successful, we have big plans for the effort.

When we initially pitched Sputnik to Ubuntu’s founder Mark Shuttleworth a couple months ago he really liked the idea. In his eyes however, he saw something bigger. Where it got really interesting for him was when this laptop was optimized for DevOps. In this scenario we would have a common set of tools from client, to test, to production, thereby tying Sputnik via a common tool chain to a cloud backend powered by OpenStack. Developers could create “micro clouds” locally and then push them to the cloud writ large.

We see a lot of potential in Sputnik to provide developers with a simple and powerful tool. Only time will tell however so stay tuned to this blog, check out the Sputnik Storm session and weigh in on the project, what you’d like to see and how you think it can be made better.

Pau for now…

Extra-credit reading

Links and notes

Sputnik Storm session on idea storm

Sputnik install image

Touchpad issue

Current behavior is that the touchpad functions as a basic pointing device, but lacks some desirable functionality:

Pinch, zoom, & flick
Palm negation (esp. important on larger touchpads where it’s easy for your hand to inadvertently touch the surface)
Side/edge scrolling
Two finger scrolling

We have contacted the vendor who makes the touchpad and they are sizing the effort to fix this and at the same time we are working with Canonical to find an interim solution.

Basic Install

== standard meta packages ==

ubuntu-desktop^

standard^

== scm ==

git

git-core

bzr

bzr-gtk

bzr-git

python-launchpadlib

== utilities ==

screen

byobu

tmux

meld

juju

charm-tools

charm-helper-sh

euca2ools

puppet

chef (available post install)

== editors ==

emacs

vim

vim-gnome

== browsers ==

chromium-browser

firefox

== common build tools/utilities & dependencies == fakeroot build-essential crash kexec-tools kvm makedumpfile kernel-wedge fwts devscripts

libncurses5

libncurses5-dev

libelf-dev

asciidoc

binutils-dev

DevOpsDays: Crowbar, where its been and where its going

Barton George — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 12:54:15 +0000

Earlier this month at DevOpsDays here in Austin the Dell Crowbar crew hosted a session and gave a demo. If you’re not familiar with it, Crowbar is an open source software framework written at Dell. I grabbed some time with Crowbar architect Rob Hirschfeld and got him to recap how far we’ve come in its less than a year and where he sees us going over the next year.

Extra-credit reading

DevOpsDays Austin — The provisioning panel starring JuJu, Crowbar, Puppet, Chef and Pallet

EnterpriseDB’s new Postgres cloud database

Barton George — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 19:35:05 +0000

A little while ago, EnterpriseDBs VP of Biz Dev, Sean Doherty popped in for a visit. While he was here I got him to tell me what EnterpriseDB, the certified professional distribution of the PostgreSQL open source DB, has been up to and fill me in on their new cloud database.

Some of the ground Sean covers:

What is EnterpriseDB and what is their business model
1:10 Where does EnterpriseDB fit in the overall database landscape and where is it used
2:00 The release of the Postgres Plus cloud database on EC2 and soon OpenStack
2:44 What EnterpriseDB has got up its sleeve in the way of features and functionality in the next year

Extra-credit reading

EnterpriseDB launches PostgreSQL Plus Cloud Service – ZDNet
EnterpriseDB Blog

Pau for now…

Dell Officially Launches Web|Tech vertical — the 100 second overview

Barton George — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 21:10:50 +0000

Last month I mentioned that Dell was launching a Web|Tech vertical targeted at those companies who use the internet as their primary platform. Well, a couple of weeks ago at our annual sales kick off (FRS) we debuted our six new commercial verticals to our sales teams from around the world.

At the show, which was held in Vegas, we had booths on the expo floor to talk about our solutions. We also delivered breakout sessions to present an overview of customer needs and concerns for each of the six — Retail, Manufacturing, Financial Services, Web|Tech, Energy and TME (Telco, Media & Entertainment), as well as for our existing three verticals in the Public space, Government, Education and Healthcare.

Here is a quick overview I did of the Web|Tech vertical from the show floor in a mocked up developer’s cube in our booth.

Extra-credit reading

Web|Tech page on Dell.com – (Note: This is for a general audience, we will be developing a separate location targeted at developers)
The World of Web and Developers, getting to know it better – My blog

Dell Gets It – Developers are the new Kingmakers – ServicesAngle
Dell’s golden opportunity is not in the servers – GigaOm

Pau for now…

The World of Web and Developers, getting to know it better

Barton George — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 16:00:54 +0000

A couple years back, on the Public side of the house, Dell set up specific marketing teams to focus on customer needs in three areas: Healthcare, Government and Education. This vertical approach turned out to be a great way to get to better know our customers and their pain points and ultimately meet their needs.

Based on this success, a little while ago we kicked off a similar effort in our commercial business. The first six verticals we are setting up are: Retail, Manufacturing, Financial Services, Web|Tech, Energy and TME (Telco, Media & Entertainment). Web|Tech is the group I belong to (I lead marketing for the group).

Developers, Developers, Developers

In the Internet space we have already had a fair amount of success through our DCS group. The idea with the new Web vertical is to learn even more about the customer set, companies that use the internet as their platform, and take this knowledge along with our accumulated experience, to a wider audience. Two of the key areas of focus of this new vertical will be developers and open source software.

Look it up

One of the ways we are helping our teams get a better understand of the wild and wacky world of the Web and Web developers is via a glossary we’ve created. In compiling this I pulled information from various and sundry sources across the Web including wikipedia, community and company web sites and the brain of Cote.

The glossary is organized into the following sections:

[Update Feb 1: I've gone back and linked the entries below]

Over the next several entries I will be posting the glossary. Feel free to bookmark it, delete it, offer corrections, comments or additions.

Extra-credit reading

Dell Gets It – Developers are the new Kingmakers – Services Angle
Dell’s golden opportunity is not in the servers – GigaOm

Pau for now…

Mark Shuttleworth part two: Developers, DevOps & the Cloud

Barton George — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 20:32:55 +0000

As I mentioned in my last entry, Mark Shuttleworth of Ubuntu fame stopped by Dell this morning on his way back from CES. Between meetings Mark and I did a couple of quick videos. Here is the second of the two. Whereas the first focused on the client, this one focuses on the Cloud and the back-end.

Some of the ground Mark covers

The cloud, Ubuntu and OpenStack involvement
The developer story: connecting the dots between app work on the client and testing and then deployment on the other end.
The world of DevOps and how JuJu fits in
Apple’s iOS as a developer platform and where Linux might have the edge going forward

Extra-credit reading

Hadoop World: What Dell is up to with Big Data, Open Source and Developers

Barton George — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 04:50:20 +0000

Besides interviewing a bunch of people at Hadoop World, I also got a chance to sit on the other side of the camera. On the first day of the conference I got a slot on SiliconANGLE’s the Cube and was interviewed by Dave Vellante, co-founder of Wikibon and John Furrier, founder of SiliconANGLE.

-> Check out the video here.

Some of the ground we cover

How Dell got into the cloud/scale-out arena and how that lead us to Big Data
(2:08) The details behind the Dell|Cloudera solution for Apache Hadoop and our “secret sauce,” project crowbar.
(4:00) Dell’s involvement in and affinity for open source software
(5:31) Dell’s interest in and strategy around courting developers
(7:35) Dell’s strategy of Make, Partner or Buy in the cloud space
(11:10) How real is OpenStack and how is it evolving.

Extra-credit reading

Pau for now…

Hadoop World: Talking to Splunk’s Co-founder

Barton George — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 04:22:01 +0000

Last but not least in the 10 interviews I conducted while at Hadoop World is my talk with Splunk‘s CTO and co-founder Erik Swan. If you’re not familiar with Splunk think of it as a search engine for machine data, allowing you to monitor and analyze what goes on in your systems. To learn more, listen to what Erik has to say:

Some of the ground Erik covers:

What is Splunk and what do they do?
(1:43) The announcement they made at Hadoop world about integrating with Hadoop and what that means.
(4:25) How Erik and Rob Das got the the idea to get involved in the wacky world of machine data and to create Splunk.

Extra-credit reading

Splunk connects with Hadoop to master machine data – GigaOm
Splunk at Hadoop World – Spunk blog
Splunk to provide integration with Apache Hadoop – Press release

Pau for now…

How to create a Basic or Advanced Crowbar build for Hadoop

Barton George — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 16:01:19 +0000

As I mentioned in my previous entry, the code for the Hadoop barclamps is now available at our github repo.

To help you through the process, Crowbar lead architect Rob Hirschfeld has put together the two videos below. The first, Crowbar Build (on cloud server), shows you how to use a cloud server to create a Crowbar ISO using the standard build process. The second, Advanced Crowbar Build (local) shows how to build a Crowbar v1.2 ISO using advanced techniques on a local desktop using a virtual machine.

Crowbar Build (on cloud server)

Advanced Crowbar Build (local)

Pau for now…

Open source Crowbar code now available for Hadoop

Barton George — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 16:00:47 +0000

Earlier this month we announced that Dell would be open sourcing the Crowbar “barclamps” for Hadoop. Well today is the day and the code is now available at our github repo.

Whats a Crowbar barclamp?

If you haven’t heard of project Crowbar it’s a software framework developed at Dell that started out as an installation tool for OpenStack. As the project grew beyond installation to include monitoring capabilities, network discovery, performance data gathering etc., the developers behind it, Rob Hirschfeld and Greg Althaus, decided to rewrite it to allow modules to plug into the basic Crowbar functionality. These modules or “barclamps” allow the framework to be used by a variety of projects. Besides the OpenStack and Hadoop barclamps written by Dell, VMware created a Cloud Foundry barclamp and DreamHost created a Ceph barclamp.

To help you get your bearings

As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, the code for the Hadoop barclamp is now available. To help you get started, below are a couple of videos that Rob put together. The first walks you through how to install Crowbar and the second one explains how to use Crowbar to deploy Hadoop.

Extra-credit reading

Pau for now…

Hadoop World: Talking HBase with Facebook’s Jonathan Gray

Barton George — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 04:21:57 +0000

At Hadoop World, Facebook’s Jonathan Gray gave two talks: HBase Roapmap, and Building Realtime Big Data Services at Facebook with Hadoop and HBase. While I wasn’t able to attend the sessions, at the end of the conference I was able to catch up with the man himself.

Here’s what he had to say:

Some of the ground Jonathan covers

How Jonathan got involved with HBase and how Facebook uses it
(1:00) Where does HBase fit in the big data ecosystem
(1:54) HBase vs MySQL
(2:44) The HBase community and where the committers reside
(5:35) What is Jonathan looking forward to in HBase (the “HBase DBA”)

Extra-credit reading

Hadoop World 2011: Apache HBase Road Map - Jonathan’s slides
“MySQL Isn’t Going Anywhere Soon, but HBase is a Great Addition to the Tool Belt”

Pau for now…

Hadoop World: Ubuntu, Hadoop and Juju

Barton George — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 04:00:16 +0000

I’m always interested in what’s happening at Canonical and with Ubuntu. Last week at Hadoop World I ran into a couple of folks from the company (coincidentally both named Mark but neither Mr. Shuttleworth). Mark Mims from the server team was willing to chat so I grabbed some time with him to learn about what he was doing at Hadoop World and what in the heck is this “charming” Juju?

Some of the ground Mark covers

Making the next version of Ubuntu server better for Hadoop and big data
(0:34) What are “charms” and what do they have to do with service orchestration
(2:05) Charm school and learning to write Juju charms
(2:54) Where does “Orchestra” fit in and how can it be used to spin up OpenStack
(3:40) What’s next for Juju

But wait, there’s more!

Stay tuned for more interviews from last week’s Hadoop world. On tap are:

Todd Papaioannou from Battery Ventures
John Gray of Facebook
Erik Swan of Splunk
Nosh Petigara of 10gen/MongoDB.

Extra-credit reading

Pau for now..

Hadoop World: Karmasphere and big data intelligence

Barton George — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 02:54:19 +0000

One thing Hadoop isn’t great at right out of the box is data analytics, that’s where a company like Karmasphere comes in. Karmasphere provides business intelligence software that data analysts can use to use to mine the data that Hadoop sucks up.

Last week at Hadoop World I grabbed some time with Karamsphere’s Chairman and co-founder, Martin Hall to learn more about where he and his company play in the wild world of big data.

Some of the ground Martin covers

Where does Karmasphere play in the big data stack, how is it used and by whom
(0:38) Where did the idea for developing Karmasphere come from
(1:58) What is the Karmasphere “secret sauce”
(2:18) What are the main industries and use cases where their offerings are used
(3:40) What can we look forward to in future releases

But wait, there’s more!

Stay tuned for more interviews from last week’s Hadoop world. On tap are: Mark Mims of Canonical, Todd Papaioannou from Battery Ventures, John Gray of Facebook, Erik Swan of Splunk and Nosh Petigara of 10gen/MongoDB.

Extra-credit reading

Pau for now..

Dell to opensource software to ease Hadoop install & management

Barton George — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 14:00:18 +0000

It wouldn’t be surprising if you were surprised to learn that Dell is developing software. To say that this is an area we haven’t been known for in the past would be an understatement. While we may not pose a direct threat to Microsoft any time soon, we have been coding in a few focused areas. One of those areas is cloud installation and management and is represented by our project Crowbar. While Crowbar began life simply as a way to install Openstack on Dell hardware, it has expanded from there.

Today’s news is that we have developed and will be opensourcing “barclamps” (modules that sit on top of crowbar) for: Cloudera CDH/Enterprise, Zookeeper, Pig, Hbase, Flume and Sqoop. All these modules will speed and ease the deployment, configuration and operation of Hadoop clusters. But don’t take my word for it. Take a listen to Crowbar’s architect Rob Hirschfeld as he explains Crowbar and today’s announcement:

Look for the code on Crowbar GitHub repo by the last week of November. If you want to get involved, learn how.

Extra-credit reading:

Pau for now…

OSCON: The Data Locker project and Singly

Barton George — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 15:16:29 +0000

Who owns your data? Hopefully the answer is you and while that may be true it is often very difficult to get your data out of sites you have uploaded it to and move it elsewhere. Additionally, your data is scattered across a bunch of sites and locations across the web, wouldn’t it be amazing to have it all in one place and be able to mash it up and do things with it? Jeremie Miller observed these issues within his own family so, along with a few friends, he started the Data Locker project and Singly (Data Locker is an open source project and Singly is the commercial entity behind it).

I caught up with Jeremie right after the talk he delivered at OSCON. Here’s what he had to say:

Some of the ground Jeremie covers:

The concept behind the Data Locker project, why you should care
How the locker actually works
The role Singly will play as a host
Where they are, timeline-wise, on both the project and Singly

Extra-credit reading

Forbes.com: The Locker Project and Your Digital Wake
BusinessInsider: The 20 Hot Silicon Valley Startups You Need To Watch
Matt Zimmerman: Why I’m excited about joining Singly
OSCON: ex-NASA cloud lead on his OpenStack startup, Piston
OSCON: How foursquare uses MongoDB to manage its data

Pau for now…

Dell announces availability of OpenStack solution; Open sources “Crowbar” software framework

Barton George — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 13:00:29 +0000

Today at OSCON we are announcing the availability of the Dell OpenStack Cloud Solution along with the open sourcing of the code behind our Crowbar software framework.

The Solution

Dell has been a part of the OpenStack community since day one a little over a year ago and today’s news represents the first available cloud solution based on the OpenStack platform. This Infrastructure-as-a-service solution includes a reference architecture based on Dell PowerEdge C servers, OpenStack open source software, the Dell-developed Crowbar software and services from Dell and Rackspace Cloud Builders.

Crowbar, keeping things short and sweet

Bringing up a cloud can be no mean feat, as a result a couple of our guys began working on a software framework that could be used to quickly (typically before coffee break!) bring up a multi-node OpenStack cloud on bare metal. That framework became Crowbar. What Crowbar does is manage the OpenStack deployment from the initial server boot to the configuration of the primary OpenStack components, allowing users to complete bare metal deployment of multi-node OpenStack clouds in a matter of hours (or even minutes) instead of days.

Once the initial deployment is complete, Crowbar can be used to maintain, expand, and architect the complete solution, including BIOS configuration, network discovery, status monitoring, performance data gathering, and alerting.

Code to the Community

As mentioned above, today Dell has released Crowbar to the community as open source code (you can get access to it the project’s GitHub site). The idea is allow users to build functionality to address their specific system needs. Additionally we are working with the community to submit Crowbar as a core project in the OpenStack initiative.

Included in the Crowbar code contribution is the barclamp list, UI and remote API’s, automated testing scripts, build scripts, switch discovery, open source Chef server. We are currently working with our legal team to determine how to release the BIOS and RAID which leverage third party components. In the meantime since it is free (as in beer) software, although Dell cannot distribute it, users can directly go the vendors and download the components for free to get that functionality.

More Crowbar detail

For those who want some more detail, here are some bullets I’ve grabbed from Rob “Mr. Crowbar” Hirschfeld’s blog:

Important notes:

Crowbar uses Chef as it’s database and relies on cookbooks for node deployments
Crowbar has a modular architecture so individual components can be removed, extended, and added. These components are known individually as “barclamps.”
Each barclamp has it’s own Chef configuration, UI subcomponent, deployment configuration, and documentation.

On the roadmap:

Hadoop support
Additional operating system support
Barclamp version repository
Network configuration
We’d like suggestions! Please comment on Rob’s blog!

Extra-credit reading

Press Release: Dell Unveils Industry’s First OpenStack Infrastructure-as-a-Service Cloud Solution
Joseph’s blog: THIS JUST IN: Dell Announces the Dell OpenStack Cloud Solution
Rob’s blog: #Crowbar source released with #OpenStack Cloud install (#apache2 #opschef #Dell #cloud)
Rob’s blog: How OpenStack installer (crowbar + chefops) works (video from 3/14 demo)

Pau for now…

Hadoop Summit: Chatting with Cloudera’s VP of Product

Barton George — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 04:26:00 +0000

The next in my series of videos from the Hadoop Summit features Cloudera‘s Vice President of product, Charles Zedlewski. If you’re not familiar with Cloudera you can think of them as the Red Hat of Hadoop world.

I sat down with Charles to learn more about Cloudera, what they do and where they came from.

Some of the ground Charles covers:

Cloudera’s founding, what its original goals and vision were and where its founders came from.
(1:35) What Cloudera does for customers 1) packages Hadoop and 2) helps them run it in production environments.
(3:27) What channels Cloudera leverages and where they play in the ecosystem
(4:11) Charles’ thoughts on the Yahoo spin-out Hortonworks and how it might affect Cloudera.

Extra-credit reading

Pau for now…

Cloud Expo: Cloud.com, what’s it all about?

Barton George — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 05:01:38 +0000

Tonight at the opening reception for Cloud Expo, I ran into Peder Ulander, CMO of Cloud.com. We found a quiet spot off the show floor and I got him to tell all about Cloud.com, where they’ve been and where they’re going.

Some of the ground Peder covers

What is cloud.com, where does it play in the cloud ecosystem and what does it help customers do?
[01:22] Who are some of Cloud.com’s customers (hint: Nokia, Zynga, Korean Telecom…) and in what industries are they in?
[03:25] Where did the idea for cloud.com come from and what experience did the founders leverage in creating it?

Pau for now…

BitNami Cloud Hosting: a demo and chat with the CEO

Barton George — Tue, 03 May 2011 02:57:56 +0000

Last week at the OpenStack Design Summit I met up with Erica Brescia, CEO of BitRock who was accompanied by BitRock’s founder and CTO Daniel Lopez Ridruejo. Although BitRock’s recently announced BitNami Cloud Hosting currently runs solely on Amazon’s EC2, Erica and Daniel were at the OpenStack event to see if OpenStack might make sense as a second platform.

I grabbed some time with Erica and we did a quick interview and demo:

Some of the ground Erica covers:

BitRock, facilitating the installation of software. Who are the big open source players that BitRock makes easy to deploy.
Bitnami.org providing end users with completely free native installers, virtual appliances or cloud templates
Who are the targets users for BitNami cloud hosting

The demo covers:

Creating a server on Amazon EC2 in minutes, with apps added
Making and scheduling back-ups
Scheduling server run times
Monitoring data about the server

Extra-credit reading

MySQL Conf08 – Erica Brescia, CEO BitRock – Barton’s Blog

Gettin’ the scoop on the OpenStack Design Summit

Barton George — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 22:08:57 +0000

Earlier this week, I attended the first two days of the OpenStack Design Summit out in Santa Clara, CA. Before I took off I grabbed sometime with Jim Curry, GM of Rackspace Cloud Builders and the leader of Rackpace’s OpenStack efforts.

I got Jim’s thoughts on how the summit was going, how the project was going as well as some breaking news.

Some of the ground Jim covers:

Jim’s areas of responsibility
How this week’s Design summit is different from the first two? (how its grown and changed)
Some of the hot topics at this summit
Breaking news re. the next release, Diablo, milestones and a regular cadence
Note: I had a brain cramp and said Ubuntu follows the Mozilla schedule, I meant GNOME (go figure)

Extra-credit reading:

Pau for now…

Eucalyptus back at OpenStack Design Summit

Barton George — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 22:50:43 +0000

At the last OpenStack design summit, I sat down with Eucalyptus co-founder Graziano Obertelli and got his thoughts on the effort. This morning I bumped into a now clean-shaven Graziano and thought Id get his input on this week’s summit.

Some of the ground Graziano covers:

What Graziano’s goals are for this weeks OpenStack summit
What sessions he plans to attend
Eucalyptus’s big upcoming 3.0 release
Looking forward to really engaging with the Eucalyptus community

Extra-credit reading:

My interview with Graziano from the last OpenStack summit: Chatting with Eucalyptus Co-founder about OpenStack

Pau for now…

Forrester’s James Staten on OpenStack

Barton George — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 22:09:08 +0000

Earlier today the OpenStack Design Summit kicked off here at the Hyatt in Santa Clara. This four day event is bringing together developers, users and business people to discuss OpenStack and design its future.

Among this morning’s attendees was James Staten Forrester Research’s cloud guru. I grabbed James at the first break and got his thoughts on the event’s kick-off and OpenStack in general.

Some of the ground James covers:

Why he chose to attend and what he’s looking for
What he thought of the opening presentations and how something like an OpenStack could alleviate some of the pain of outages like Amazon had last week.
What type of outcomes he would like to see from this weeks summit.
How important are programs like Rackspace’s cloud builder effort.

Extra-credit reading

Dell, Equinix and Rackspace launch Free OpenStack Demo environment
My interview with James from Aug of ’09: Forrester’s James Staten Explains the Cloud

Pau for now…