As you may be aware Dell has been offering and hosting a public, multi-tentant IaaS cloud offering. After getting that business off the ground and many customer conversations, we’ve come to realize that the greatest way we can provide value for our customers is to focus our investments on more strategic components of the cloud and provide our customers with maximum choice and flexibility.
As a result, rather than building out and supporting our own multi-tenant public cloud, we will partner with companies in order to provide customers access to the cloud(s) of their choice.
Enter Enstratius
A sampling of some of the public clouds Enstratius provides access to.
With our recent acquisition of Enstratius not only are we are able to provide our customers with the ability to manage and govern a multi-cloud environment but we are now able to offer access to over 20 prominent clouds from Amazon to Rackspace, to Google, to AT&T.
A new Partner Program
Beyond the partners that Enstratius provides access to, today we are also kicking off today a partner program to provide access to IaaS through an ecosystem of options. The first three partners we are announcing are: Joyent, Scale Matrix, Zero Lag:
Joyent: An IaaS provider for real-time web and mobile applications. Joyent has out-of-the-box compatibility with Enstratius’ multi-cloud management.
ScaleMatrix: Cloud hosting platform, Services are offered from proprietary world-class data centers, and leverage enterprise hardware, storage and cutting-edge security and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) mitigation services.
ZeroLag: Combines VMware-powered on-demand cloud infrastructure with professional services and custom-designed solutions.
Customers will be able to purchase products from these partners through their Dell sales representatives and you can find out more information at dell.com/cloud-partner-program.
Private Cloud and Project Sputnik
On the Private Cloud front nothing has changed. We are still huge supporters of OpenStack and will continue offering our Open Stack-based private clouds. Additionally we will continue to provide cloud-to-on-premise connectivity via Boomi.
On the Project Sputnik front the cloud launcher that we continue to work on is being designed to provide access to a host of clouds.
Extra-credit reading
Dell to Deliver Public Cloud through Partner Ecosystem – Press Release
Back in September I posted an entry about the Modular Data Center that we set up in the Dell parking lot. Here is a time lapse video showing the MDC and the location being built out.
The MDC allows customers to test solutions at scale. It is running OpenStack and various Big Data goodies such as Hadoop, Hbase, Cassandra, MongoDB, Gluster etc…
Customers can tap into the MDC from Dell’s solution centers around the world and do proof of concepts as well competitive bake-offs between various big data technologies so they can determine which might best suit their environment and use case.
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
Last summer at OSCON Dell announced the availability of our OpenStack solution in the US and Canada. Today at World Hosting Days in Rust Germany we are now announcing that our OpenStack-Powered Cloud Solution is available in Europe and Asia.
If you’re not familiar with it, OpenStack is an open source cloud project built on a foundation of code initially donated by NASA and Rackspace. The project kicked off a little over a year and a half ago here in Austin and it has gained amazing traction since then.
Dell’s offering
Dell’s OpenStack cloud offering is an open source, on premise cloud solution based on the OpenStack platform running on Ubuntu. Its composed of:
The OpenStack cloud operating system
PowerEdgeC servers: C6100, C6105, C2100 and, coming soon, Dell’s new C6220 and R720
The Crowbar deployment and management software framework – developed and coded by Dell
Dell’s OpenStack reference architecture
Dell Services
Crowbar software framework
To give a little more background on the Crowbar software framework, its an open source project developed initially at Dell and you can grab it off github. The framework, which is under the Apache 2.0 license, manages 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 hours, as opposed to days.
Once the initial deployment is complete, you can use Crowbar to maintain, expand, and architect the complete solution, including BIOS configuration, network discovery, status monitoring, performance data gathering, and alerting. Beyond Dell, companies like VMware, Dreamhost and Zenoss have built “barclamps” that allow them to utilize Crowbar’s modular design. Additionally, customers who buy the Dell OpenStack-Powered Cloud Solution get training, deployment, and support on Crowbar.
So as of today, customers in the UK, Germany and China can purchase the Dell OpenStack-Powered Cloud Solution. As customer demand grows in other regions we will be adding more countries so stay tuned. If the first 18 mos of the project are any indication of whats the pace is like to come, we are all going to be in for a lot more excitement.
At our sales kickoff in Vegas, Rob Hirschfeld chose a unique vehicle to succinctly convey our Big Data story here at Dell. Check out the video below to hear one of our chief software architects for our Big Data and OpenStack solutions explain, in less than 90 seconds, what we are up to in the space and the value it brings customers.
This afternoon Matt Ray, Technical Evangelist for Opscode, stopped by Dell’s Round Rock HQ to brief a gaggle of folks on what they are up to. Cote arranged the visit as well as one last month with Puppet labs, which I unfortunately wasn’t able to make.
After Matt, with some help from teammates on the phone, briefed the Dell gang I grabbed some time with him to get the 5 minute Reader’s Digest version. Here is the result.
Some of the ground Matt covers:
What are Opscode and Chef?
How did they come to be?
The hosted version of Chef (moving from EC2 to Rackspace)
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:
In the previous entry I mentioned 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.
If you would like to get involved, check out this 1 min video from Rob Hirschfeld talking about how:
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:
Rob Hirschfeld, aka “Commander Crowbar,” recently posted a blog entry looking back at how Crowbar came to be, how its grown and where he hopes it will go from here.
What’s a Crowbar?
If you’re not familiar with Crowbar, its an open source software framework that began life as an installation tool to speed installation of OpenStack on Dell hardware. The project incorporates the Opscode Chef Server tool and was originally created here at Dell by Rob and Greg Althaus. Just four short months ago at OSCON 2011 the project took a big step forward when, along with the announcement of our OpenStack solution, we announced that we were opensourcing it.
DevOps-ilicous
As Rob points out in his blog, as we were delivering Crowbar as an installer a collective light bulb went off and we realized the role that Chef and tools like it play in a larger movement taking place in many Web shops today: the movement of DevOps.
The DevOps approach to deployment builds up systems in a layered model rather than using packaged images…Crowbar’s use of a DevOps layered deployment model provides flexibility for BOTH modularized and integrated cloud deployments.
On beyond installation and OpenStack
As the team began working more with Crowbar, it occurred to them that its use could be expanded in two ways: it could be used to do more than installation and it could be expanded to work with projects beyond OpenStack.
As for functionality, Crowbar now not only installs and configures but once the initial deployment is complete, Crowbar can be used to maintain, expand, and architect the instance, including BIOS configuration, network discovery, status monitoring, performance data gathering, and alerting.
The first project beyond OpenStack that we used Crowbar on was Hadoop. In order to expand Crowbar’s usage we created the concept of “barclamps” which are in essence modules that sit on top of the basic Crowbar functionality. After we created the Hadoop barclamp, others picked up the charge and VMware created a Cloud Foundry barclamp and DreamHost created a Ceph barclamp.
It takes a community
Crowbar development has recently been moved out into the open. As Rob explains,
If you’re planning on attending the OpenStack Design summit and conference next week in Beantown you’ll have to check us out. I’m bummed that I will be missing the summit for the first time, I have a big internal presentation next week, but the rest of the Dell OpenStack crew will be there in force. Dell is a sponsor at the event and we will have a keynote, speaking sessions and demos.
What have we got in the works?
Besides checking out Crowbar and our Openstack solution which we launched back at OSCON we will have a whisper suite where we will be showing our latest and greatest stuff that is currently in the works. If you’d like to see what we have up our sleeve, email us at OpenStack@Dell.com and we can schedule a time slot for you to come and see for yourself.
Updated: For more details what we’ll be doing at the summit check out Rob’s blog
Dell has been working for the last four plus years outfitting the biggest of the big web superstars like Facebook and Microsoft Azure with infrastructure. More recently we have been layering software such as Hadoop, OpenStack and crowbar on top of that infrastructure. This has not gone unnoticed by web pub GigaOm:
Want to become the next Amazon Web Services or Facebook? Dell could have sold you the hardware all along, but now it has the software to make those servers and storage systems really hum.
They also made the following observation:
Because [Dell] doesn’t have a legacy [software] business to defend, it can blaze a completely new trail that has its trailhead where Oracle, IBM and HP leave off.
Letting customers focus on what matters most
Its a pretty exciting time to be at Dell as we continue to move up the stack outfitting web players big and small. The idea is to get these players established and growing in an agile and elastic way so they can concentrate on serving customers rather than building out their underpinning software and systems.
Last week at OSCON in Portland, I dragged Josh McKenty away from the OpenStack one-year anniversary (that’s what Josh is referring to at the very end of the interview) to do a quick video. Josh, who headed up NASA’s Nebula tech team and has been very involved with OpenStack from the very beginning has recently announced Piston, a startup that will productize OpenStack for enterprises.
Here is what the always entertaining Josh had to say:
Some of the ground Josh covers:
What, in a nutshell, will Piston be offering?
Josh’s work at NASA and how got involved in OpenStack
Timing around Piston’s general release and GA
The roles he plays on the OpenStack boards
What their offering will have right out of the shoot and their focus on big data going forward
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!
Last week on Day two of Structure the morning sessions ended with an interesting discussion moderated by James Urquhart. The session was entitled “DevOps – Reinventing the Developers Role in the Cloud Age” and featured Luke Kanies – CEO, Puppet Labs and Jesse Robbins – Co-Founder and CEO, Opscode.
After lunch I ran into Jesse and got him to sit down with me and provide some more insight into DevOps as well as explain what Opscode was doing with project Crowbar.
Some of the ground Jesse covers
(0:21) What is DevOps
(1:00) The shift that happens between developers and operations. Writing code and getting it into production faster and how it shifts responsibilities between the two groups.
(2:52) Who are the prime targets for DevOps and how has this changed over time.
How DevOps began in web shops who needed to do things differently than legacy-bound enterprises.
How enterprises faced with greenfield opportunities are now embracing devops
(5:36) The crowbar installer which employs Opscode’s Chef and allows the rapid provisioning of an OpenStack cloud.
Today was second day of the two-day Structure conference here in San Francisco. Cloud was the topic du jours with heavy referencing of big data and concepts and projects such as OpenFlow, Open Compute and OpenStack. The format consisted mainly of moderated panels seated in comfy chairs with break out sessions scheduled a couple of times during the day.
While some of the panels and speakers were quite enlightening, I find the true benefit of a show like Structure comes from the networking and hallway conversations that occur. One such conversation was one I had with Jonathan Bryce of Rackspace about the incubation program they have just launched for OpenStack.
Some of the ground Jonathan covers:
Dealing with the question of how to expand OpenStack and include new projects
The initial three core projects: Compute, Object Storage and Image Service
The first two projects that have been approved for incubation: a dashboard and “keystone”
Cybera, a Canadian not-for-profit recently selected OpenStack along with Dell systems to build out their Infrastructure as a Service cloud. The organization, which is based in Alberta, “collaborates with public and private sector partners to accelerate research and product development that meets the needs of today’s society.”
Most recently Cybera used OpenStack to build out a cloud for CANARIE’s (Canada’s Advanced Research and Innovation Network) DAIR project.
To start with, you’ll need hardware. If you have the time and inclination, the best thing to do might be to ask Rackspace Cloud Builders for some help spec’ing out the hardware for OpenStack. This is the route that Cybera went and we got some badly needed advice. Since you might not be able to go that route, I’ll tell you what we know.
At the end of the day we went with Dell, based on the Cloud Builders’ advice and our own due diligence. If you aren’t aware of it yet, Dell is supporting OpenStack in a big way. They have a number of pages dedicated to it here. There’s also a whitepaper that discusses hardware and network for OpenStack, if you feel like filling out the form.
We ordered four different types of servers (aka nodes). A management node (nova-api, nova-network, nova-scheduler, nova-objectstore), compute nodes (nova-compute, nova-volume), a proxy node (swift-proxy-server) and storage nodes (swift-object-*, swift-container-*, swift-account-*). All nodes were contained in the Dell C6100 chassis. Here are the specs:
Processor
Sockets
Cores
Threads
RAM
Disk
Management
E5620
2
8
16
24
8 x 300 GB
Compute
X5650
2
12
24
96
6 x 500 GB
Proxy
E5620
2
8
16
24
4 x 300 GB
Storage
E5620
2
8
16
24
6 x 2 TB
Great to see people picking up OpenStack and running with it!
Today when I was walking the floor at the Cloud Expo here in New York, I ran into fellow Austinite Dustin Kirkland. Dustin is the manager for systems integration team for Ubuntu. I got Dustin to give me the low down on the most recent UDS (Ubuntu Developer Summit) that concluded a few weeks ago in Budapest:
Some of the ground that Dustin covers
The big areas of focus on the server side coming out of Budapest
Getting behind OpenStack as the Ubuntu IaaS platform
[1:09] The pioneering work they’ve done with Eucalyptus and how its use case differs from that of OpenStack
[2:05] The Ensemble project, a service orchestration framework for the cloud which is the brainchild of Mark Shuttleworth.
[3:59] Ubuntu Orchestra for cloud installation, provisioning and configuration management (using Puppet)
Last night at Cloud Expo, I got some time with Cloud.com‘s CMO Peder Ulander to learn how they are working with two key partners, OpenStack and RightScale. Peder told me how OpenStack is a key relationship for Cloud.com and gave me a quick overview of today’s announcement that Cloud.com is powering RightScale’s myCloud Private Cloud offering:
Some of the ground Peder covers:
Open Stack: The development work Cloud.com is doing on OpenStack; their work on a Swift implementation; and how Cloud.com and OpenStack might play together going foward
[1:25] RightScale: The myCloud announcement and the advantages it brings to enterprises. How the two companies are doing joint development and joint marketing.
Today at Citrix Synergy, Citrix announced “Project Olympus,” their up coming OpenStack distribution. In case you’re not familiar with it, OpenStack is an open source cloud platform based on the code from NASA’s Nebula cloud as well as Rackspace’s storage code. The OpenStack project kicked of last summer and already has gathered support from over 60 commercial hardware and software vendors.
Mt. Olympus and the Cloud
Citrix’s OpenStack Distro
Citrix’s Project Olympus will produce a commercial distribution of the OpenStack infrastructure-as-a-service platform. This “Olympian” distribution will be made up of two main components: a Citrix-certified version of OpenStack and a cloud-optimized version of XenServer. While Citrix will lead with their Xen technology, thanks to OpenStack the distro will support all leading hypervisors.
Project Olympus is targeted at both public cloud providers as well as enterprise customers looking to build out private clouds. The distribution will be available later this year.
But I want it now — The Citrix/Rackspace/Dell Early Access Program
For those who don’t want to wait until the official distribution is ready, don’t fret you can get started today through the Early Access Program (EAP). The EAP is designed to help customers kick-off pilots and proof-of-concept deployments. The program provides access to a beta version of the Citrix distro plus Dell hardware and deployment software as well as deployment services, training and on going customer support for customer clouds via Rackspace’s Cloud Builders program.
Dell’s above-mentioned deployment software, aka “crowbar,” was a big hit at the last OpenStack Design summit. The software which leverages Opscode’s Chef, allows folks to get an Openstack cloud up in running in less than four hours (instead of days). In addition to the deployment software and systems, to support the project Olympus EAP, Dell will also be providing reference architectures so keep your eyes peeled for those.
If you have any questions about what Dell is doing with OpenStack or want to get started, email us at OpenStack@Dell.com.
RT @DellintheClouds: Dell maintains its commitment to OpenStack w/offerings such as Dell OpenStack-Powered #Cloud Solution & proj Crowbar. … 1 hour ago
and will continue offering our Open Stack-based private clouds. Additionally we will continue to provide cloud-to-on-premise connectivity via Boomi.
Posted by Barton George 
