Rackspace / Slicehost has announced (http://www.slicehost.com/articles/2010/7/19/opening-the-rackspace-cloud) they're partnering with NASA to release and develop their Cloud infrastructure under the Apache 2.0 license.

Code is available at http://www.openstack.org/

it is news for me

This will be HUGE for the Cloud computing community and will drive even quicker adoption without fear of vendor lock-in :) Now you can consume the power and flexibility of Cloud computing however you want it!

Cloud Object Store (Cloud Files) is available now and in the next coming months Cloud Compute (Cloud Servers) will be released after the merger with code from the NASA Nebula project.

If there are any questions don't hesitate to ask and I'll do my best to answer here.

-Chad

That would decrease the price of the cloud solutions. Good news for all!

Sounds awesome, I'll be keeping tabs on this one. :)

This will be HUGE for the Cloud computing community and will drive even quicker adoption without fear of vendor lock-in :) Now you can consume the power and flexibility of Cloud computing however you want it!

Cloud Object Store (Cloud Files) is available now and in the next coming months Cloud Compute (Cloud Servers) will be released after the merger with code from the NASA Nebula project.

If there are any questions don't hesitate to ask and I'll do my best to answer here.

-Chad
CAn you give slight comparison between rackspace cloud & google app engine?

CAn you give slight comparison between rackspace cloud & google app engine?

Sure thing -- to start it is important to note that the Rackspace Cloud offers three distinct Cloud hosting platforms, two of which are infrastructure services (IaaS) and one platform service (PaaS):


Cloud Servers (IaaS)
Cloud Files (IaaS)
Cloud Sites (PaaS)


To draw some comparisons, Cloud Servers and Cloud Files are similar in nature to platforms like Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3 respectively.

Cloud Sites on the other hand is a managed platform-as-a-service Cloud that is built for running web sites and web applications built on common web technologies such as PHP, MySQL, .NET/ASP and MS SQL Server (served either by Apache or IIS).

Google App Engine is also a platform Cloud and operates similar in nature which all the back-end scaling, systems management, etc completely abstracted from the end-user.

The main difference between Cloud Sites & Google App Engine are the technologies supported. GAE supports only Python and Java at this time if I'm not mistaken and some proprietary DB systems, so if you want to run on this platform you will either need to have your app developed in one of these languages and support for GQL (their proprietary SQL syntax).

In a nutshell these are both excellent platforms, but you can port practically any PHP/MySQL/ASP.NET/SQL Server app (or HTML/CSS sites) to Cloud Sites without having to change any code at all, it operates like any standard environment where GAE has a certain proprietary nature to it and may require some additional work to take advantage of.

Hope this helps! ;)

In a Cloud Server, is it possible to set one up with CentOS AND Cpanel??????? Without having to install Cpanel myself? Dave

How about the pricing?

In a Cloud Server, is it possible to set one up with CentOS AND Cpanel??????? Without having to install Cpanel myself? Dave

You can absolutely install cPanel on Rackspace Cloud Servers (if you are running CentOS), but at this time we do not install cPanel for you. This would have to be done by you or a cPanel reseller who provides these services.

In a Cloud Server, is it possible to set one up with CentOS AND Cpanel??????? Without having to install Cpanel myself? Dave

You can always just create a template with cPanel/WHM at the "initial setup" stage.

Cheers,

That would decrease the price of the cloud solutions. Good news for all!
Yes, and no. While it does reduce the amount of effort required for someone to establish a hosting platform there are still some significant barricades to entry. With OpenStack it will require still a whole UI, Billing and CRM to be built around it, in order for it to function in the hosting environment. There has to be a way to manage the users for the cloud system, and it doesn't provide that at all. Where OpenStack is truly advantageous is in the enterprise environment -- companies like IBM, Progressive Insurance, and Goldman Sachs are the companies that are going to truly find OpenStack to be advantageous. It's not web hosting companies that this is benefiting and that's truly the reason they partnered with NASA to release -- NASA is a company that's going to dramatically benefit from it.

Yes, and no. While it does reduce the amount of effort required for someone to establish a hosting platform there are still some significant barricades to entry. With OpenStack it will require still a whole UI, Billing and CRM to be built around it, in order for it to function in the hosting environment. There has to be a way to manage the users for the cloud system, and it doesn't provide that at all. Where OpenStack is truly advantageous is in the enterprise environment -- companies like IBM, Progressive Insurance, and Goldman Sachs are the companies that are going to truly find OpenStack to be advantageous. It's not web hosting companies that this is benefiting and that's truly the reason they partnered with NASA to release -- NASA is a company that's going to dramatically benefit from it.

How about the benefit for developers?
Google App Engine really usefull for developers

How about the benefit for developers?
Google App Engine really usefull for developers

I have not used Google App Engine, but Openstack does give developers a utility to test out their application on massively scalable networks.

I am with Rackspace Cloud and have no complaints.

This is good news. Did they actually team up with NASA? as in the space agency

This is good news. Did they actually team up with NASA? as in the space agency

Yes, NASA donated a large chunk of the code to the project.

I'm glad they released the source code, as it will help all of us in the long run.

My problem with RackSpace's Cloud is what they charge for bandwidth... I know many cloud companies charge for in and out bandwidth but I just can't see switching to them when VPS.NET includes 250GB of bandwidth per node.

RackSpace's cloud prices and specs are comparable to VPS.NET, but when you tack on the cost of the bandwidth it isn't even close. I'd jump all over their Windows Cloud if I didn't have to fork over extra cash for bandwidth.

Looks like this could be very useful... I guess whoever comes out with an app to make this work for webhosts will make quite a bit of cash.

Apart from the price, why would I choose the Rackspace Cloud software over something like onApp?

Yes, and no. While it does reduce the amount of effort required for someone to establish a hosting platform there are still some significant barricades to entry. With OpenStack it will require still a whole UI, Billing and CRM to be built around it, in order for it to function in the hosting environment.

I don't think it'd take long before someone builds it. lxadmin + hypervm supports xen, openvz etc, it just need to integrate with Openstack a little more and I think you can get rackspace cloud engine running.

This could trickle down into hosting if someone builds a billing system for it. I imagine there's some some entrepreneuring developers out there who might think this would be a good business to start. Little off topic, but hosting keeps being mentioned. CloudHosting is becoming the standard, and I think within a year we'll start seeing CloudSites being offered around the same price as traditional shared hosting. Probably with caveats like paying for additional nodes, but you'll get the benefit of 100% uptime to start, just not load balancing.

I'm pretty sure over the next few years we will see all the tools needed to set up your own Amazon EC2-like system. You will be able to buy your servers with OpenStack pre-installed on it. Plug them in, add to your OpenStack client, and away you go.

Few years? I actually think you can see something by end of the year.

Yes I am sure your right. Do you think OpenStack will become the de facto standard?

Well, I'm not exactly familiar with cloud, but I think given the fact that the source came from rackspace + NASA, and it is also powering a successful cloud. It can be one.

It's not Cloud Sites. And it's the least technically advanced bits of Rackspace's stuff: Cloud Servers and Cloud Files. Okay, I kinda like Cloud Files, but there are better things out there.

Whether this will become the defacto standard, probably yes. It's like the VHS in VHS vs Beta.

Apart from the price, why would I choose the Rackspace Cloud software over something like onApp?

You wouldn't. onApp is more vertical in that it also contains billing and more importantly, monitoring + automated failover.

onApp, AppLogic, Joyent: Everyone's got at least some attempt at high-availability. Rackspace has nothing*.

* They did buy CloudKick recently, but it's a crappy version of Rightscale.