Just Another ITS Systems Guy

Ubuntu Linux adds private cloud backing

Canonical’s upcoming server upgrade supports the Eucalyptus project’s open source system for cloud implementation using hardware and software already in place

Canonical is touting private cloud capabilities in an upgrade to its Ubuntu Linux OS being announced on Tuesday.

Available for free download on October 29, Ubuntu 9.10 Server Edition introduces UEC (Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud), an open source cloud computing environment based on the same APIs as Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud). Businesses can take advantage of private clouds, Canonical said.

Ubuntu Linux adds private cloud backing | Open Source – InfoWorld.

This should prove interesting.  If we were able to leverage something like this, we could build out a private cloud for researchers.  The Eucalyptus system certainly looks useful.  Especially if they’re touting it as API compatible with other external cloud vendors.  We’d certainly need to do some heavy investigation to figure out what running our own cloud would actually mean.  I can certainly see it as being completely different than running a classic high performance computing grid.

You, too, can have a cloud in the privacy of your own home!  Time to keep up with the Jones’s again!

The tech press is full of people who want to tell you how completely awesome life is going to be when everything moves to “the cloud” – that is, when all your important storage, processing and other needs are handled by vast, professionally managed data-centres.

Here’s something you won’t see mentioned, though: the main attraction of the cloud to investors and entrepreneurs is the idea of making money from you, on a recurring, perpetual basis, for something you currently get for a flat rate or for free without having to give up the money or privacy that cloud companies hope to leverage into fortunes.

Not every cloud has a silver lining: Cory Doctorow | Technology | The Guardian.

Computing.  Pay now, pay later … either way you’re paying for it whether you want it to be local or remote, under your control or not.  Cloud makes sense when you don’t have the initial capital investment available to bootstrap your environment (eg, millions of dollars to build a datacenter or hundreds of thousands to colo at one, purchase of computing equipment and resources, and so on).  If you’ve already got that invested in your environment, it’s basically a sunk cost.  Where cloud comes into play at that point is handling the resource peaks that everyone encounters (and if you’re not encountering, why did you over-engineer your environment that much?).

Nonetheless, that’s about the best description of cloud that I’ve seen in the last five years of dealing with the idea of outsourcing computing resources on a grand scale.