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.
This morning at Facebook’s headquarters in Palo Alto the company announced their Open Compute project Partners and kindred spirits were there to tell the story behind Open Compute and explain what they think it means to the industry. One group of kindred spirits were the individuals from Rackspace. I got some time with Jim Curry who heads up OpenStack at Rackspace after the event officially ended.
Here is what Jim had to say:
Some of the topics Jim covers:
Driving efficiencies in data center design requires looking at the issue holistically.
Learning from Facebook’s successes and failures.
Looking forward to collaboration in an area that hasn’t historically had a lot of collaboration.
Engagement with Facebook engineers on how to run OpenStack on their hardware.
OpenStack, the open source cloud platform based on code donated by NASA and Rackspace, has gained considerable traction since it was launched eight months ago. The community has rapidly grown and there have been several releases. Now its time to get potential customers trying it out and kicking the tires.
With the idea of removing friction to adoption and make the testing out of the platform as easy as possible, Dell, Equinix and Rackspace are announcing today the availability of a free OpenStack cloud demonstration and test environment.
The idea of the demo environment is to allow organizations to easily evaluate OpenStack and assess application performance on the platform in a low risk environment for free. The next step after a successful demo would be a proof of concept.
Movin workloads around the country
This demo environment is initially available in three U.S. data centers and in Q2 of this year this offering will also be available in Equinix data centers in Europe and Asia. The initial data centers are:
Equinix Silicon Valley
Equinix Asburn, VA
Rackspace Chicago
By having geographically dispersed facilities customers are able to test out the moving of applications and workloads between them.
The various parts
The OpenStack demo environment is made up of the following components
Platform Equinix, a global delivery platform of 92 network neutral data centers in 35 metro markets
Widening the circle
The name of the game here is making the trying out of OpenStack as easy as possible. There are a lot of community members and open source aficionados who are already testing out OpenStack. The idea with OpenStack cloud demonstration environment is to provide a set up where a greater number of organizations feel comfortable evaluating the platform for themselves.
Dell’s Data Center Solutions group (DCS) is no longer a toddler. Over the weekend we turned four!
Four years ago on March 27, 2007 Dell announced the formation of the Data Center Solutions group, a special crack team designed to service the needs of hyperscale customers. On that day eWeek announced the event in their article Dell Takes On Data Centers with New Services Unit and within the first week Forrest Norrod, founding DCS GM and currently the GM of Dell’s server platform division, spelled out to the world our goals and mission (in re-watching the video its amazing to see how true to that mission we have been):
The DCS Story
If you’re not familiar with the DCS story, here is how it all began. Four years ago Dell’s Data Center Solutions team was formed to directly address a new segment that begin developing in the marketplace, the “hyperscale” segment. This segment was characterized by customers who were deploying 1,000s if not 10,000s of servers at a time.
These customers saw their data center as their factory and technology as a competitive weapon. Along with the huge scale they were deploying at, they had a unique architecture and approach specifically, resiliency and availability were built into the software rather than the hardware. As a result they were looking for system designs that focused less on redundancy and availability and more on TCO, density and energy efficiency. DCS was formed to address these needs.
Working directly with a small group of customers
From the very beginning DCS took the Dell direct customer model and drove it even closer to the customer. DCS architects and engineers sit down with the customer and before talking about system specs they learn about the customer’s environment, what problem they are looking to solve and what type of application(s) they will be running. From there the DCS team designs and creates a system to match the customer’s needs.
In addition to major internet players, DCS’s customers include financial services organizations, national government agencies, institutional universities, laboratory environments and energy producers. Given the extreme high-touch nature of this segment, the DCS group handles only 20-30 customers worldwide but these customers such as Facebook, Lawrence Livermore National Labs and Microsoft Azure are buying at such volumes that the system numbers are ginormous.
Expanding to the “next 1000”
Ironically because it was so high-touch, Dell’s scale out business didn’t scale beyond our group of 20-30 custom customers. This meant considerable pent up demand from organizations one tier below. After thinking about it for a while we came up with a different model to address their needs. Leveraging the knowledge and experience we had gained working with the largest hyperscale players, a year ago we launched a portfolio of specialized products and solutions to address “the next 1000.”
The foundation for this portfolio is a line of specialized PowerEdge C systems derived from the custom systems we have been designing for the “biggest of the big.” Along with these systems we have launched a set of complete solutions that we have put together with the help of a set of key partners:
Dell Cloud Solution for Web Applications: A turnkey platform-as-a-service offering targeted at IT service providers, hosting companies and telcos. This private cloud offering combines Dell’s specialized cloud servers with fully integrated software from Joyent.
Dell Cloud Solution for Data Analytics: A combination of Dell’s PowerEdge C servers with Aster Data’s nCluster, a massively parallel processing database with an integrated analytics engine.
Dell | Canonical Enterprise Cloud, Standard Edition: A “cloud-in-a-box” that allows the setting up of an affordable Infrastructure-as-a-Service (Iaas)-style private clouds in computer labs or data centers.
OpenStack: We are working with Rackspace to deliver an OpenStack solution later this year. OpenStack is the open source cloud platform built on top of code donated by Rackspace and NASA and is now being further developed by the community.
These first four years have been a wild ride. Here’s hoping the next four will be just as crazy!
One of the trickiest things to get right in an open source project is the governance model. Who makes up the various boards and gets what authority is something struggled over and something that virtually no one gets right straight out of the gate. Its particularly interesting if you are a commercial entity sponsoring a project and want to maintain a certain amount of influence over the endeavor but also want it to grow and flourish.
Two weeks ago Jonathan Bryce, Rackspace cloud co-founder and one of the leads of the OpenStack project policy board, announced the changes that were being made to OpenStack’s governance.
I ran into Jonathan on Monday during South by Southwest and sat down with him to get some more insight into what the changes were and why they were being made.
Some of the ground Jonathan covers:
From Mosso to Rackspace cloud to OpenStack
How they’ve been surprised by the great uptake by the community and how this has led them to evolve the governance structure.
What the various boards are and what their make up will be
Last week and this, Austin’s downtown has been taken over by the South by Southwest festival (SXSW). What started out nearly 25 years ago as a music festival/conference has grown to include parallel film and interactive events as well. During the event every bar and venue downtown is occupied with bands, films or tech companies showing their stuff.
Check out the mini montage below that includes a quick interview I did with Dell solutions engineer Greg Althaus right after he finished the demo.
Don’t take our word for it
Dell is currently field testing crowbar and plans to donate the code to the OpenStack community after testing. If you are interested in testing crowbar yourself, email us at OpenStack@Dell.com.
Some of the ground the video covers
Intro montage: Welcome to the Kung Fu Saloon, setting up and a snippet of the demo
[0:40] Talking to Greg
What actually is crowbar and how does it work with OpenStack compute and storage?
How fast can you spin up a cloud using it?
Where does OpsCode’s Chef fit in?
Our plan to donate this code to the community after field testing.
One small step for OpenStack, one giant step for mankind! Ok, that may be taking it a bit far but today there is some exciting news that Dell and Rackspace have announced.
If OpenStack is new to you it’s the open source cloud platform based off of the Nebula cloud code base donated by NASA (hence all the rocket allusions) and the storage code base from Rackspace. The project is now about eight months old and its community is over 50 organizations strong including NASA, Citrix, AMD, Intel, NTT, cloud.com, RightScale, Dell, Opscode and Puppet labs.
To help the community and organizations get up and going building out their own OpenStack based clouds we are announcing the following:
Proof of Concepts: Rackspace and Dell are working together to deliver an OpenStack solution to market later this year. As the first step along the way we are currently seeking customers for OpenStack proofs of concept (POC). If you are interested in learning more about the POCs and possibly participating or getting engaged, email: OpenStack@Dell.com.
Code: Dell has developed an OpenStack installer that can be used to quickly install OpenStack on bare metal Dell PowerEdge C servers. This tool is being field tested, and Dell will contribute the code to the OpenStack community once testing is complete. To help users out further, once the OS is installed, the servers can be updated with all the latest packages and be automatically configured by Opscode’s Chef to provide their services in the OpenStack infrastructure.
Technical whitepaper: A technical whitepaper, “Bootstrapping OpenSource Clouds” which lays out the design of a hyperscale OpenStack cloud on Dell PowerEdge C servers.
But wait, there’s more, “Cloud Builders”…
To help support OpenStack deployments, Rackspace announced today that its launching a new division, “Cloud Builders.” Cloud Builders “will provide training, certification, deployment services and ongoing support and management to enterprises and service providers via the team of OpenStack experts and its partner network.”
Specifically the offerings will include (taken from the Rackspace blog):
Training & Certification – Rackspace Cloud Builders will provide training classes and certification testing for designing, developing and administering OpenStack Clouds. Rackspace also plans to empower a network of training and certification experts.
Deployment Services – Rackspace Cloud Builders, in conjunction with other experts from the OpenStack community, will help customers design and deploy OpenStack Clouds.
Support & Management – Customers will have ongoing access to remote support and escalation assistance from the OpenStack specialists, including proactive monitoring and fixes.
OpenStack is picking up momentum, stay tuned for more and in the meantime, set the controls for the heart of the sun!
Every year at the end of January Dell holds a giant kick-off meeting for our enterprise and public sales forces. The event, which has been held in Las Vegas the last two years, is a four-day happening consisting of keynotes, sessions and a full-scale expo where the sales team can touch and learn first-hand about the latest and greatest in Dell solutions and offerings.
Setting up the DCS Modular Data Center on the expo floor
This year the systems and solutions have been out in the market for a little while and we were able to share actual case studies with the attendees showing how our systems and solutions have been able to solve real customer problems. The big new addition to the DCS line up was our Modular Data Center (MDC) which, until just a few months ago, was reserved only for a very small group of select customers.
Gearing up for day two of both duty at the DCS booth.
As you can tell from the picture above, the MDC took up a big part of our booth. It served to house our PowerEdgeC servers and host a selection of our cloud solutions:
Additionally, to provide a peak at what PowerEdge C systems we have up our sleeve, we had several units in an uber secret whisper suite.
Our overall message at the booth was that although these components can be used individually, if you want to run “the world’s most efficient hyperscale data center” you’ll want to combine these optimized solutions and systems with the MDC into one hyper-efficient, integrated system.
Well received
Now as a member of the DCS team I may be a little biased but I really think we had the coolest booth there It was great to hear comments from the sales force such as “this is awesome!” and “why didn’t I know about this?!”
We’ll have to start now to figure how we will top this next year.
Mark Shuttleworth, the ever gracious founder of Ubuntu, stopped by Dell this morning to talk to various folks about various subjects. I was able to grab some time with him between meetings and get his thoughts on a few topics.
I was particularly interested in getting his thoughts on Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) which will be available this week from Dell as the Dell | Canonical UEC Solution (along with the UEC software, the solution is based on our PowerEdge C2100 and C6100 and comes with a reference architecture and deployment guide). The other topic I wanted to get his insight into was OpenStack.
Here’s what Mark had to say:
What Mark talked about
How Mark has settled into his role as non-CEO (he is still chairman).
What he is focusing on these days: the cloud and product design e.g. Unity.
[1:45] The thinking behind UEC and the combined Dell Canonical offering.
[3:45] OpenStack and Canonical’s participation
Working with both OpenStack and Eucalyptus and how both of these are central to the process of standardization that we are starting to see at the infrastructure layer of cloud computing.
Yesterday morning at the Web 2.0 summit out in San Francisco I sat in a session led by RackSpace‘s CTO John Engates. After the session finished I grabbed some time with John to learn more about his thoughts on OpenStack, the open source cloud platform that Rackspace, along with NASA helped kick off.
Some of the ground John covers:
How OpenStack directly addresses some of the most common reservations people have about the cloud.
Last not but least in my series of videos from the OpenStackdesign summit, is an interview I did with David Lemphers of Price Waterhouse Coopers. David recently joined PWC as their director of cloud computing after spending six years at Microsoft, most recently as one of the principle engineers on the Windows Azure platform.
I talked with David to get his thoughts on OpenStack and here is what he had to say:
Some of the ground Dave covers:
Dave’s background
What he’s doing at PWC as the cloud director
Why decided to attend (and present at) the OpenStack summit and why he’s so bullish on the platform.
Today the OpenStackdesign summit wrapped up down in San Antonio. The summit featured close to 300 attendees representing 90 different companies. One of the key partners since the project kicked off back in July has been Citrix. On Wednesday I caught up with Gordon Mangione, Vice President of cloud at Citrix to get his thoughts on the project and this week’s summit. Here’s his enthusiastic response:
Continuing in my series of videos from the OpenStack design summit this week in San Antonio, here is an interview I did yesterday with Eucalyptus systems co-founder Graziano Obertelli.
Eucalyptus allows enterprises to set up open source infrastructure-as-a-service private clouds. Eucalyptus is also one of the key ingredients in the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud that is being certified to run on Dell’s PowerEdge C systems as part of our cloud ISV program.
Here is what Graziano had to say:
Some of the ground Graziano covers:
What goals do the Eucalyptus team have for the summit
They’ve recently hired a community manager – Mark Atwood
Yesterday, near the end of day two of the OpenStack design summit, I caught up with Rick Clark, chief architect of the OpenStack platform. I wanted to get Rick’s thought’s on how the four-month old open source cloud computing project and the summit were going.
Here’s what he had to say:
Some of the ground Rick covers:
The goal of the summit as well as the goal of the next two releases.
Another of yesterday’s featured speakers at the OpenStack design summit was Accenture partner, Joe Tobolski. Joe is part of Accenture labs which looks at emerging technologies and he is responsible for assets and architecture as part of Accenture’s global cloud program.
I sat down with Joe in the cafe downstairs and got his thoughts on why OpenStack would be attractive to enterprises as well as how the Accenture team was participating in the summit.
One of the featured speakers during the kick off of the OpenStack design summit yesterday was NASA CTO of IT, Chris Kemp. OpenStack is an open source cloud platform and the compute side of the project is based on code from NASA’s Nebula cloud.
I got some time with Chris and learned about NASA’s involvement in the project:
Some of the ground Chris covers:
Nebula and the cloud computing platform code base
NASA’s huge data needs and what they do with the data
Serendipity: NASA’s cloud engine + Rackspace’s file system engine
How NASA is working with the project: a two-way street
Yesterday morning I made the drive down to San Antonio for OpenStack’s second design summit (and first open to the public). If you’re not familiar with OpenStack, its an open source cloud platform founded on contributed code from Rackspace and NASA’s Nebula cloud. The project was kicked off back in July at an inaugural design summit held in Austin.
The project has picked up quite a bit of momentum in its first four months. Attending this week’s 4-day conference are close to 300 people, representing 90 companies, from 12 countries. The event is broken into a business track and design track (where actual design decisions are being made and code is being written).
Powering the Install Fest
For the project Dell has sent down a bunch of PowerEdge C servers which have been set-up upstairs on the 5th floor. OpenStack compute has been installed on the two racks of servers and are up and running. Tomorrow, coders will get access to these systems during the install fest. During the fest attendees will each be given a virtual machine on the cloud to test and learn about installing and deploying OpenStack to the cloud.
I got Bret Piatt, who handles Technical Alliances for OpenStack, to take me on a quick tour of the set-up. Check it out:
Featuring: Brett Piatt, PowerEdge C1100, C2100, C6100 and C6105
Last week a couple of us went down to San Antonio to help represent the OpenStack project at Rackspace’s partner summit. While there I met up with the VAR Guy. Mr. Guy got me chatting about Dell’s Data Center Solutions group, where we’ve been and where we’re going. Below is the resulting video he put together featuring myself and San Antonio’s greenery. (See the original article this came from).
Some of topics I tackle:
How Dell’s Data Center Solutions Group is designing servers for high-end cloud computing
How Dell is integrating hardware with software in cloud servers
Coming soon: Dell Cloud Solution for Web Applications/Leveraging Joyent‘s software
One of the key ingredients for the success of any open source project is a strong community manager. Coming on board to fill that role for the not-quite three-month-old OpenStack project is Stephen Spector. (If you’re not familiar with OpenStack, it’s an open source cloud platform).
Stephen made his first public appearance in his new role today at the Rackspace partner summit in San Antonio. I was able to catch Stephen first thing this morning before the summit kicked off.
Some of the ground Stephen covers:
His background: 14 yrs at Citrix. He initially ran developer alliance programs. He spent the last 3yrs running the Xen.org community.
Why Stephen joined OpenStack (he jumped at the chance to build a community from scratch).
He sees his role as that of a communication conduit
One of his first tasks is to find out who makes up the community e.g. developers, users, students, research, partners..
He’s very interested in making events like next months design summit successful as well as the importance of globalization.
A couple of days ago Bret Piatt, who handles Technical Alliances for OpenStack, came up to Austin to have further discussion with our team’s software engineers around OpenStack. If you’re not familiar with OpenStack, it is an open source cloud platform founded on contributed code from Rackspace and NASA’s Nebula cloud.
The project was kicked off a couple of months ago at an inaugural design summit held here in Austin. The summit drew over 25 companies from around the world, including Dell, to give input on the project and collectively map out the design for the project’s two main efforts, Cloud Compute and Object Storage.
Since the summit, and the project’s subsequent announcement the following week at the OSCON Cloud Summit, the community has been digging in. The first object storage code release will be available this month and the initial compute release, dubbed the “Austin” release, is slated for October 21. Additionally, the second OpenStack Design Summit has been set for November 9-12 in San Antonio, Texas, and is open to the public.
OpenStack visits Dell
During Bret’s visit to Dell he met with a bunch of folks including two of our software architects, Greg Althaus and Rob Hirschfeld. The three talked about how things were going with the project since the summit as well as specific ways in which Dell can contribute to the OpenStack project.
Below you can see where I crashed the three’s whiteboard session and made them tell me what they were doing. I then followed them, camera in hand, down to the lab where Greg and Rob showed Bret the system that we have targeted for running OpenStack.
Some of the topics (L -> R) Bret, Greg and Rob touch on:
Bret: Getting ready for the object storage release in September and compute in October. Looking to get the right hardware spec’d out so that people can start using the solution once its released.
Rob: Learning about how the project is coming together since the design summit. Interested in how the 3 code lines, storage, NASA compute and Rackspace compute, along with the input that was gathered at the Design summit and community input, are coming together.
Greg and Rob take Brett to the lab to show him the C6100 which could be a good candidate for open stack.
Next step, getting OpenStack in the lab and start playing with it.
Posted by Barton George 
