Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Cloud Hosting : Rackspace cloud is now open-source

[XenlightenmentTeisho]

Rackspace / Slicehost has announced 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/

[ibee]

it is news for me

[ckeck]

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

[eSupun]

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

[MikeTrike]

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

[bekanosky]

Originally Posted by ckeck

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?

[ckeck]

Originally Posted by bekanosky

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!

[Cape Dave]

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

[bekanosky]

How about the pricing?

[ckeck]

Originally Posted by Cape Dave

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.

[Jacob Wall]

Originally Posted by Cape Dave

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,

[IGobyTerry]

Originally Posted by eSupun

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.

[bekanosky]

Originally Posted by inogenius

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

[IGobyTerry]

Originally Posted by bekanosky

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.

[WHC - Travis]

I am with Rackspace Cloud and have no complaints.