Citrix CloudPlatform, powered by Apache CloudStack, has been the platform of choice for more than 100 public and private production clouds.
In his Lunchtime Focus Keynote at the 11th International Cloud Expo, Shannon Williams, VP Cloud Market Development at Citrix, will provide an insider view as one of the co-founders of Cloud.com and will talk about his deployment experiences and provide tips for designing an open, scalable and highly efficient cloud that can support both traditional and purpose-built cloud workloads from a single solution.
Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: Building a Software-Defined Datacenter
The Software-Defined Datacenter is a unified datacenter platform that will help you transform the way you deliver IT with unprecedented automation, flexibility, and efficiency. VMware’s unique software-defined approach moves beyond traditional IT complexity and rigidity by liberating datacenter services from the constraints of specialized hardware. Compute, storage, networking, security, and availability services are pooled, aggregated, and delivered as software, and managed by intelligent, policy-driven software. The result is a datacenter optimized for the cloud era, providing unmatched business agility, the highest SLAs for all applications, dramatically simpler operations, and lower costs.
Quest Software Announces Hadoop-Centric Software Analytics
Quest Software, Inc. (now part of Dell) announced three significant product releases today aimed at helping customers more quickly adopt Hadoop and exploit their Big Data:
- Kitenga Analytics ? Based on the recent acquisition of Kitenga,
Quest Software now enables customers to analyze structured,
semi-structured and unstructured data stored in Hadoop. Available
immediately, Kitenga Analytics delivers sophisticated capabilities,
including text search, machine learning, and advanced visualizations,
all from an easy-to-use interface that does not require understanding
of complex programming or the Hadoop stack itself. With Kitenga
Analytics and the Quest Toad®
Business Intelligence Suite, an organization has a complete
self-service analysis environment that empowers business and systems
analysts across a variety of backgrounds and job roles.
- Toad for Hadoop ? Quest Software expands support for Hadoop in
the upcoming release of Toad® for Hadoop. With more than two million
users, and ranked No. 1 in Database Development and Optimization for
three consecutive years by IDC [1], Toad has been enhanced to help
database developers and DBAs bridge the gap between what they already
know about relational database management systems and the new world of
Hadoop. Toad will provide query and data management functionality for
Hadoop, as well as an interface to perform data transfers using the
Quest Hadoop Connector. Like Toad for any other platform, Toad for
Hadoop makes the lives of developers, DBAs, and analysts easier and
more productive.
- SharePlex with Hadoop Capabilities ? Quest Software adds Hadoop
capabilities to the next release of SharePlex® for Oracle,
its robust, high-performance Oracle-to-Oracle database replication
technology. For enterprise mission-critical systems that must always
be available, the new release will seamlessly create multiple copies
of Oracle data for movement simultaneously to both another Oracle
environment and Hadoop, with no downtime. Customers can choose how
they optimize Oracle and Hadoop environments based on data
requirements, such as high availability; analytics and reporting;
image and text processing; and general archiving. The architecture
allows for scalable data distribution on-premise, in the cloud, and
across multiple data centers without a single point of failure.
Libelium Launches Waspmote Plug & Sense
Libelium, a wireless sensor networks platform provider for Smart Cities solutions, today launched Waspmote Plug & Sense!, a new line of Libelium encapsulated wireless sensor devices allowing system integrators to implement scalable, modular wireless sensor networks and reduce installation time from days to hours.
Waspmote Plug & Sense! models are pre-configured to create such widely applicable services as Smart Cities, Smart Parking, Smart Agriculture, Air Quality, Smart Security, Ambient Control and, Radiation Control, out of the box. Unlike other platforms, Waspmote Plug & Sense! sensor nodes are ready for deployment anywhere in the world, in terms of available radio frequencies (2.4GHz, 868/900Mhz) and certification (CE, FCC, IC). Plug & Sense are set to send information to Meshlium, the sensor gateway that uploads data to the Cloud, making the data accessible from anywhere and easy to integrate into third-party applications.
Ready to install and easy to deploy, each Waspmote Plug & Sense! mote is equipped with six connectors to which sensor probes can be attached directly, allowing services to be scalable and sustainable. The Waspmote Plug & Sense! Platform may be solar powered to allow energy harvesting and years of autonomy. Once installed, Waspmote Plug & Sense! sensor nodes can be programmed wirelessly thanks to an over the air programming (OTAP) feature. Sensors can be replaced or added without having to uninstall the mote itself, keeping maintenance costs to a minimum. For example, a network with CO2 probe sensors may easily add a noise sensor by simply attaching it, thereby extending the service.
“In the context of Smart Cities, the Waspmote Plug & Sense! platform makes adding a new sensor so easy that municipalities will not need to reinstall the network,” said David Gascon, CTO of Libelium. “We have reduced the complexity of installation with a solution that provides low-cost maintenance and a high degree of scalability, ensuring the shortest time to market for system integrators and end users.”
Rackspace Launches High Performance OpenStack Cloud Block Storage
Today, Rackspace Hosting announced the unlimited availability of Cloud Block Storage, powered by OpenStack®. This solution provides a superior approach to attached storage in the Cloud by addressing customer demand for consistent and affordable performance for file systems, databases and other input/output (I/O) intensive applications. Rackspace Cloud Block Storage offers a standard volume option for everyday storage with performance that has been tested to be at least 30 percent less variable than that of alternatives1. The new product’s Solid State Drive (SSD) volume option has also been tested to deliver even higher performance, 5x to 6x faster than competing solutions1. Both options feature a transparent, flat pricing structure with no charge for I/O, and are now available for Cloud Servers powered by OpenStack.
“The Rackspace Cloud Block Storage solution is a crucial piece of our product portfolio,” said John Engates, CTO of Rackspace. “The explosion of data over the past few years has placed greater demands on our customers, presenting them with a variety of new storage related challenges. We developed Cloud Block Storage to deliver consistent performance in the cloud, with a very simple pricing model that gives customers the flexibility they require to meet their unique business needs.”
With Rackspace Cloud Block Storage, customers get:
A Full-Featured Attachable Storage Solution
- Attach multiple volumes of up to 1 Terabyte each of block storage to
Cloud Servers - Detach and re-attach storage between compute nodes in seconds
- Choice of Standard Performance or SSD-based High-Performance storage
Enhanced Performance
- SSD-based solution is more than 10 times faster than Standard drive
performance1. - Rackspace’s Cloud Block Storage Standard drive delivers consistent
performance with less variability than standard drive solutions
offered by leading competitors1. - High performance can be achieved without the need to RAID0 (stripe)
volumes together, providing significant savings in cost and complexity. - There is no cap on I/O and users do not have to specify IOPS numbers,
as they do with competing solutions.
A Simple Pricing Model
- Standard – $0.15 per gigabyte per month; SSD – $0.70 per gigabyte per
month - $.10 per gigabyte per month for snapshot data stored
- Competitive pricing structure also features I/O at no additional
charge, no additional per-instance fee, no minimum instance size, and
consistent pricing in all U.S. regions
No Vendor Lock-In
- Using the OpenStack Cinder APIs will allow customers to avoid
proprietary implementation
Rackspace Cloud Block Storage
Standard volumes are aimed at customers that typically require large amounts of everyday storage. These customers can leverage the product for a broad range of applications, including those that require standard performance or those needing to scale storage without scaling compute nodes. In addition, the product provides dependable storage for archiving solutions, companies that access large quantities of large files, and small to medium size websites.
Rackspace Cloud Block Storage SSD volumes are ideally suited for customers that require even higher levels of performance than what is normally experienced with standard drives. With a faster and more reliable SSD-based storage solution, customers can be better equipped to use applications that are crucial to their business, such as self-managed MySQL databases, MongoDB, Cassandra, and Web caching and indexing, among others.
“Based on our internal benchmarks, we’ve been impressed with the ability of Rackspace Cloud Block Storage to steadily perform at a high level,” said Greg Arnette, CTO at Sonian Inc. “For our customers, the capacity to effectively archive large amounts of email data is critical to their business. As a result, we look for storage solutions that give us maximum agility, scalability and enterprise readiness. We are excited that Rackspace is now providing a new block storage alternative service for running our large scale email archiving deployments.”
Cloud Block Storage joins Cloud Databases as a key solution in Rackspace’s expanding portfolio of storage products. Rackspace Cloud Block Storage is now available in the U.S. and UK. For more information, visit http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/public/blockstorage/
1 The data provided results from performance benchmarking tests that were commissioned by Rackspace. More information is available at: http://www.rackspace.com/blog/cloud-block-storage/.
Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: Secure Cloud and Network Unification
While the cloud provides businesses with a more secure IT investment, many don’t realize the data-protection risks of public networks until it’s too late. As a result, CIOs and business owners are kept up at night worrying about the security of their mission-critical data, not realizing that a private, secure intersection of network and cloud services can provide a cost-efficient elixir to help them sleep easier.
In his session at the 11th International Cloud Expo, Christopher K. Ortbals, Cbeyond’s Vice President, Cloud Services, will outline how businesses can successfully connect cloud services to a secure network and realize a “better night’s sleep” thanks to unparalleled performance, cost improvement, and, most importantly, data protection and reliability.
Cloud Expo Silicon Valley: The SDN (R)evolution
Software-Defined Networking has the potential to revolutionize the networking world.
In his session at the 11th International Cloud Expo, Scott Sneddon is Chief Solutions Architect at Vyatta, will discuss the SDN and network virtualization landscape and how this new technology can enable a whole new way of operating your network. He will also discuss a pragmatic and evolutionary approach to adopting SDN technologies in your environment.
Scott Sneddon is Chief Solutions Architect at Vyatta.
Rackspace Launches OpenStack-Powered Block Storage
Rivals are gonna have to stop sniping at OpenStack for only having object storage.
Rackspace, which originally put the open source cloud platform in play, filled the gaping hole Tuesday with its new Cloud Block Storage solution. The rest of the OpenStack community will catch up eventually thanks to the Cinder Project.
IDC supports EU stance on cloud computing
The International Data Center (IDC) has come out in support of the European Union’s stance on cloud computing in a new report from the analyst house – albeit one published on the EU’s behalf.
Back in September, EU digital agenda vice president Neelie Kroes set out her strategy to make the EU the ‘e-EU’ in a report entitled “Unleashing the Potential of Cloud Computing in Europe”, which summarised that the cloud could provide a €160bn injection to the European GDP by 2020, and a net gain of 2.5m jobs.
But the IDC, in their analysis, goes a step further. In a study conducted by IDC on behalf of the EU, removing the barriers to cloud adoption through sustainable policy would bring up to €250bn GDP growth by the end of the decade.
The IDC model is straightforward enough. If the EU doesn’t intervene and introduce relevant policies …
Cloud: I Like Renting a Piece of Cyberspace
I read a story by one respected writer who said that “cloud computing” will equal “computing” within five years. A day later, I saw a story by another respected writer who said that cloudwashing and a lack of standards means that most enterprises don’t yet even had a cloud-computing strategy, let alone deployment.
These statements can’t both be true; I think neither of them are.
Then there’s a recent survey commissioned by Citrix in which 51% of respondents in the US thought that bad weather could disrupt cloud computing. I suppose that’s literally true, if a bad storm keeps people from coming to work.
More hopeful – and more accurate, I think – are survey results released from The Future of Cloud, a group backed by venture capitalist Michael Skok, which find that 82% of enteprises are using SaaS and 75% say they’ll be building apps via PaaS within five years.
That software-as-a-service number may still be driven by a lot of email and/or collaboration rather than more complex application, but it shows that enterprise IT managers are savvy about cloud computing, or at least think they’re savvy in using the term.
The perceived lack of standards comes from the VMware vs. The World competition, with the separate open-source stacks competition within that. I don’t see this as an impediment, as there’s been a lack of standards – aka competing platforms – in this industry since its inception. The ostensible concern is a concern about vendor lock-in, and the lack of interoperability among the cloud stacks.
Pro tip: said interoperability will never happen, and concern about this is just a stalling tactic. Cloud computing is still new and most enterprise shops will proceed cautiously, if not show outright defiance against it.
The cloudwashing issue doesn’t bother me as much as it does some people, although I know I would be terribly annoyed by it if I worked for a company that smashes into Oracle and other big-iron vendors every day. I will be proven wrong on this if, ultimately, innovation is killed off by old wine in new bottles.
I also saw a tweet the other day by someone who questioned how many cloud analysts/pundits/etc. have fired up cloud instances on their own. I have.
I’m involved in a few projects in which cloud is present, one as a simple thin-client user, one instance (so to speak) of PaaS, and two others where we’re working to stage our stuff via IaaS. It’s damned difficult work, but something that simply wasn’t possible a few years ago. I like renting pieces of cyberspace rather than scrounging for the capital to buy it.