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Posts Tagged ‘cloud computing’

Mark Shuttleworth, founder of the Ubuntu Project, has announced via the Ubuntu Development List that Ubuntu Server 9.10, which will be available in October 2009, will allow companies to build their own open source, private clouds. Mark explains in his announcement, “Ubuntu aims to keep free software at the forefront of cloud computing by embracing the API’s of Amazon EC2, and making it easy for anybody to setup their own cloud using entirely open tools.” Mark states that official Ubuntu based revisions of Amazon Machine Images (AMI), the operating system and software stack currently deployed on Xen Server in the EC2 cloud, are currently in beta.

However, Mark indicates that plans for the new Ubuntu Server include more than just providing for the hosted Amazon Cloud service:

“What if you want to build an EC2-style cloud of your own? Of all the trees in the wood, a Koala’s favourite leaf is Eucalyptus. The Eucalyptus project, from UCSB, enables you to create an EC2-style cloud in your own data center, on your own hardware.”

Ubuntu 9.10 ‘s official distribution name will be “Karmic Koala” thus explaining the mascot refrence in the previous quote. (I can’t help but think about dining at the Rainforest Cafe when considering all of the Ubuntu distro names and mascots!) Eucalyptus is a cloud management interface in development by Ubuntu which will enable private EC2 style clouds. Eucalyptus is actually an acronym for Read the rest of this entry »

A lot of blogs and web sites are predicting that Cloud Computing will be big in 2009. Instead of offering another prediction I am asking VM /ETC readers to take the following poll about their Cloud Computing interest, expectations, and plans. The poll will run until 11:59 pm EST January 15. Hopefully the response will help put a “from the trenches” perspective on a topic that seems to be everywhere you look right now.

[poll id="4"]

Happy New Year and Best wishes in 2009!

For some additional reading here’s some links to other’s predictions for 2009. Most contain cloud computing as a topic.

Read the rest of this entry »

Cloud Computing in Plain English is a 4:51 long video from rPath that gives a great overview of Cloud Computing and how virtualization plays a  key role enabling all size businesses to take advantage of utility computing and software as a service (SaaS). The video is lite and humorous, and does a good job comparing traditional software to a luxury car, SaaS as a leased vehicle, and then Cloud Computing as a taxi.

Watch the video to hear how virtualization is the engine of the Cloud Computing taxi, and virtual appliances are the fuel for that engine.

I first heard about the video from Benard Golden’s CIO.com article titled after the video.

rPath is self described on their web site as

“the company that is pioneering the virtual appliance approach for application distribution and management.”

rPath also provides more information about their product offerings that help enable the Cloud Computing strategy.

“rBuilder and the rPath Lifecycle Management Platform automate the creation, configuration, management and maintenance of application images for virtualized and cloud computing environments. By producing application images that are optimized for any hypervisor, rPath frees the application from the underlying hardware, and enables a better model for development, deployment and support.”

The virtualization blogisphere exploded yesterday with the news of VMware’s plans to bring virtualization to mobile phones with the announcement of the new VMware Mobile Virtualization Platform (MVP). Regular readers of VM /ETC will know I am a fan of the idea of the handheld evolving into a device that can consolidate everything from the wallet to the laptop, so I wanted to add my two cents, not only about VMware’s MVP, but about what this can mean for businesses, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), and you and me.

First, here’s some information from the official VMware news article about MVP.

“What is VMware MVP?
VMware MVP is a thin layer of software that will be embedded on a mobile phone that decouples the applications and data from the underlying hardware. It will be optimized to run efficiently on low-power-consuming and memory-constrained mobile phones. The MVP is planned to enable handset vendors to bring phones to market faster and make them easier to manage.”

It should be clear that MVP diversifies VMware’s customer base with a brand new market. MVP is a product for handset manufactures. It doesn’t appear to me that I will ever have to install MVP personally, and I doubt I will have to learn how to P2V a desktop to a Blackberry, for example. In the future, when I buy a new handset MVP will already be on the device.  Alex Barrett expands on this in his post VMware MVP does not equal Windows XP on your phone.

Thinking about why VMware would aquire Trango and develop this product is where it gets interesting, Read the rest of this entry »

Like almost all of the virtualization vendors these days, Citrix has their own set of technologies in development that will enable a highly scalable and dynamic cloud server infrastructure. I attended a Citrix Summit 2008 breakout session yesterday about one of the new Citrix products at the heart of the Citrix Cloud Center (C3) portfolio; Citrix Workflow Studio.

Citrix describes Workflow Studio as an orchestrator of products and processes that allows all the technologies in Citrix’s version of the cloud to be automated and controlled. Combined with the virtualization and consolidation made possible by Citrix XenServer, Workflow Studio will enable administrators to turn virtual infrastructure into a dynamic delivery platform by: Read the rest of this entry »