SAN JOSE, Calif. -- A National Science Foundation grant project
developed largely by graduate students at the University of California,
Santa Barbara, has resulted in Eucalyptus Systems, a three-month-old
startup which has produced new open-source cloud infrastructure
software that is a key component in Ubuntu 9.04 and its upcoming 9.10
edition.
Ubuntu is a popular Debian Linux-based open-source operating system
created by developer and Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth that has
been used increasingly in enterprise IT systems. Eucalyptus is an
open-source software platform for developing on-premise private and
hybrid clouds using a system's existing hardware and software
infrastructure with no modifications.
This is a little tricky to explain, so we're breaking this out for easier consumption:
--Ubuntu 9.10, nicknamed Karmic Koala [all Ubuntu releases are named after animals], is now in alpha testing and scheduled for general release in October 2009.
--Karmic Koala is the operating system of Ubuntu's new cloud-building
package called Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud, which includes Eucalyptus.
--Canonical released a preview edition of the UEC in April for the current 9.04 version, called Jaunty Jackalope.
--UK-based Canonical guides all Ubuntu development, and its open-source community is the maintainer for all Ubuntu products.
Got all that?
Eucalyptus adds a number of important new functions to Ubuntu -- such
as end-user customization, self-service provisioning and legacy
application support -- in addition to its standard data center
virtualization features. It also includes automated power-control
features to cut down on unnecessary electricity taken from the wall.
Ubuntu is the first Linux distribution to include this many
cloud-building resources. This is as close to a do-it-yourself cloud
kit as there ever has been.
"You can install it on your own server in just a couple of minutes, and
the API looks just like Amazon EC2," Eucalyptus Systems co-founder/CTO
and UCSB computer science professor Rich Wolski told eWEEK July 23
during a break at the OSCON 2009 conference here at the Convention Center.
Thus, it's not surprising that Eucalyptus also includes Amazon's Web
Services APIs (EC2, S3, EBS) and support for Xen and KVM (kernel-based
virtual machine) servers. "You literally can build your own cloud
system in six steps," Wolski said.
It follows that cloud computing developers with experience using the
well-established Amazon EC2 development environment should be able to
move comfortably over to Eucalyptus, if they choose to do so.
A current example of Eucalyptus working in a large system is a project
by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Jet
Propulsion Lab, which is currently deploying Eucalyptus to modernize
its computing and storage capacity. Another early adopter is
pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, which also is using Eucalyptus to build
a new computing and storage cloud.
Research Project Launches a New Company
Wolski and CEO Woody Rollins launched Eucalyptus Systems in April,
immediately after they landed $5.5 million in Series A funding from
Benchmark Capital and BV Capital. The software was developed as part of
a research project aimed at linking up a couple of National Science
Foundation supercomputers with public cloud services in order to run
heavy-duty scientific workloads.
Simon Wardley, head of cloud strategy at Canonical, said in his OSCON
keynote address July 23 that ultimately, enterprises can optimize
server use, increase data center efficiencies, and lower
power/cooling/storage costs by creating private clouds with
self-service IT like Ubuntu/Eucalyptus.
"Ubuntu is the first Linux distribution to provide such a system, and
now Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud Services will help businesses build these
environments with optimal efficiency," Wardley said.
Canonical is making no secret of the fact that since Eucalyptus enables
enterprises to test, deploy and experiment with their own private,
in-house clouds, it competes squarely with Amazon's Elastic Compute
Cloud (EC2) API.
"The Eucalyptus project enables you to create an EC2-style cloud in
your own data center, on your own hardware," Shuttleworth wrote in his
introduction to Karmic Koala in the Ubuntu users' e-mail list. "During
the Karmic [Koala] cycle, we expect to make those clouds dance, with
dynamically growing and shrinking resource allocations depending on
your needs.
"A savvy Koala knows that the best way to conserve energy is to go to
sleep, and these days even servers can suspend and resume, so imagine
if we could make it possible to build a cloud computing facility that
drops its energy use virtually to zero by napping in the midday heat,
and waking up when there's work to be done," Shuttleworth said.
"No need to drink at the energy fountain when there's nothing going on.
If we get all of this right, our Koala will help take the edge off the
bear market."
For more information on Eucalyptus, go here. For more information on Ubuntu, go here.
Editor's note: This story was updated to include the fact that Eucalyptus is also included in the current Ubuntu 9.04 version.
 |
Cloud Computing News & Reviews 
