EUCALYPTUS: a Tree Growing in the Cloud
From the Linux (and Linux Journal) perspective, there's an issue with clouds—those back-end Web services that compose Utility Computing. They're proprietary. Amazon owns AWS (Amazon Web Services: S3, EC2 and a growing number of others). Google, Microsoft and other companies own theirs as well.
These are open in the sense that most services are substitutable, which makes them utilities. If you don't like storing your data at Amazon's S3, you can park it elsewhere. The documents you create and keep at Google Docs can be put elsewhere as well. Elastic computing is more tricky, but it should be substitutable as well.
In a way, all these data centers are available to the public as a utility service. They are an important trend in computing, comprising the growth of a vast open SLA (service-level agreement) infrastructure for computing resources spread across the Net. (Nicholas G. Carr wrote about all this in his book The Big Switch—Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google. I visited the topic in “The Bigger Switch”, my EOF column in the May 2008 issue of Linux Journal.)
But, why should The Cloud consist only of proprietary back ends? How about building our own cloud services, our own way?
I was pleased to find an answer from colleagues at UCSB (where I'm a fellow at the Center for Information Technology & Society), namely Rich Wolski and his merry band of computer scientists in the Computer Science Department. There they have created EUCALYPTUS (Elastic Utility Computing Architecture for Linking Your Programs To Useful Systems). It's what they call “an open-source software infrastructure for implementing Elastic/Utility/Cloud computing using computing clusters and/or workstation farms”. It is interface-compatible with Amazon's EC2 (the de facto standard for elastic cloud computing) and designed for modification and extension as needed for you-name-it client-side interfaces. Most important for Linux Journal readers, “EUCALYPTUS is implemented using commonly available Linux tools and basic Web service technology making it easy to install and maintain”, they say.
The issue for IT folks is a range of choices that should include DIY as well as commercial back ends. Rich Wolski puts it this way:
Cloud computing permits “self-service” IT independently of whether the provider is an external company or an internal IT organization. Part of what makes IT onerous these days is that the infrastructure organization also must be a customer service organization. Cloud computing really streamlines customer service for IT in the same way that Web-based e-commerce streamlined customer service for retail. It doesn't eliminate the need entirely (you still can get someone on the phone even when a company has an e-commerce site), but it does improve the business efficiency considerably.
For more information, check out eucalyptus.cs.ucsb.edu.
Doc Searls is Senior Editor of Linux Journal
Realizing the promise of Apache® Hadoop® requires the effective deployment of compute, memory, storage and networking to achieve optimal results. With its flexibility and multitude of options, it is easy to over or under provision the server infrastructure, resulting in poor performance and high TCO. Join us for an in depth, technical discussion with industry experts from leading Hadoop and server companies who will provide insights into the key considerations for designing and deploying an optimal Hadoop cluster.
Sponsored by AMD
Built-in forensics, incident response, and security with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
Every security policy provides guidance and requirements for ensuring adequate protection of information and data, as well as high-level technical and administrative security requirements for a system in a given environment. Traditionally, providing security for a system focuses on the confidentiality of the information on it. However, protecting the data integrity and system and data availability is just as important. For example, when processing United States intelligence information, there are three attributes that require protection: confidentiality, integrity, and availability.
Learn more about catching the bad guy in this free white paper.
Sponsored by DLT Solutions
Free Webinar: Hadoop
How to Build an Optimal Hadoop Cluster to Store and Maintain Unlimited Amounts of Data Using Microservers
Realizing the promise of Apache® Hadoop® requires the effective deployment of compute, memory, storage and networking to achieve optimal results. With its flexibility and multitude of options, it is easy to over or under provision the server infrastructure, resulting in poor performance and high TCO. Join us for an in depth, technical discussion with industry experts from leading Hadoop and server companies who will provide insights into the key considerations for designing and deploying an optimal Hadoop cluster.
Some of key questions to be discussed are:
- What is the “typical” Hadoop cluster and what should be installed on the different machine types?
- Why should you consider the typical workload patterns when making your hardware decisions?
- Are all microservers created equal for Hadoop deployments?
- How do I plan for expansion if I require more compute, memory, storage or networking?
| Designing Electronics with Linux | May 22, 2013 |
| Dynamic DNS—an Object Lesson in Problem Solving | May 21, 2013 |
| Using Salt Stack and Vagrant for Drupal Development | May 20, 2013 |
| Making Linux and Android Get Along (It's Not as Hard as It Sounds) | May 16, 2013 |
| Drupal Is a Framework: Why Everyone Needs to Understand This | May 15, 2013 |
| Home, My Backup Data Center | May 13, 2013 |



1 hour 53 min ago
10 hours 38 min ago
11 hours 12 min ago
12 hours 11 min ago
13 hours 1 min ago
17 hours 3 min ago
20 hours 50 min ago
20 hours 58 min ago
23 hours 13 min ago
1 day 1 hour ago