Close
  • Latest News
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Networking
  • Cybersecurity
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Storage
  • Sponsored
  • Mobile
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
Read Down
Sign in
Close
Welcome!Log into your account
Forgot your password?
Read Down
Password recovery
Recover your password
Close
Search
Logo
Logo
  • Latest News
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Networking
  • Cybersecurity
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Storage
  • Sponsored
  • Mobile
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
More
    Home Cloud
    • Cloud

    Breqwtr Enters OpenStack Arena With Cloud Appliance 2.0

    By
    Sean Michael Kerner
    -
    June 18, 2015
    Share
    Facebook
    Twitter
    Linkedin
      Breqwtr cloud appliance

      eWEEK content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.

      Running an OpenStack hardware business is a tough proposition. Just ask OpenStack founder Chris Kemp, who also founded failed startup Nebula.

      Despite the risks, Toronto-based technology vendor Breqwtr is hoping it’s up to the challenge and announced its Cloud Appliance 2.0 on June 17.

      John Kadianos, founder and CEO at Breqwatr, explained that his company focuses on making it easier for an organization to deploy and manage an OpenStack cloud.

      “The idea behind Breqwater is to deliver a completely enclosed private cloud, including compute, storage, networking, automation and cloud management in a two-rack unit (2U) hardware appliance,” Kadianos told eWEEK.

      Breqwater had been incubating within consulting firm Hyper Technologies, which emerged as a company on May 1.

      The new Cloud Appliance 2.0 provides a curated version of OpenStack, including a new graphical user interface (GUI). Many OpenStack distributions use the OpenStack Horizon dashboard as the default GUI, but that’s not the approach being taken by Breqwater.

      “We felt that Horizon is a very technical interface and is not sufficient for our goal of simplicity,” Kadianos said. “So we have created from scratch a brand-new front end and we are 100 percent feature-compatible with Horizon.”

      Breqwater adds a number of things that Horizon typically does not include, such as hardware visibility. The Breqwater Cloud Appliance is a four-node cluster. If an administrator wants to go into a single node and put it in to a maintenance mode, that is possible.

      “What the system does is it live-migrates the virtual instances from the node going into maintenance onto the other three nodes,” Kadianos said.

      Breqwater also has added visibility into its management interface for accessing and connecting to external storage. While Breqwater has some unique capabilities, the company is not building its own entire OpenStack distribution from scratch. Kadianos said that Breqwater is based on Ubuntu’s distribution of OpenStack with many modifications.

      From a hardware perspective, the Cloud Appliance 2.0 uses a Supermicro chassis and Intel Xeon E5-2600 processors. The idea of building hardware for OpenStack is not one that has been all that successful to date. Nebula, which was also involved in building hardware for OpenStack, ceased operations in April.

      Kadianos said that he heard Nebula’s founder, Kemp, speak at a conference in 2011, and he thought at the time that there would be a great market for a device that merged what Nebula was doing and what Nutanix does. Nutanix provides hyperconverged infrastructure for generic compute and storage, while Nebula, in Kadianos’ view, provided a great controller for OpenStack.

      “Nebula for us was the catalyst, and we just wanted to do it better, quite frankly,” Kadianos said. “We’re able to do everything that Nebula could accomplish in 6U in only a 2U appliance.”

      Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at eWEEK and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.

      Sean Michael Kerner
      Sean Michael Kerner is an Internet consultant, strategist, and contributor to several leading IT business web sites.
      Get the Free Newsletter!
      Subscribe to Daily Tech Insider for top news, trends & analysis
      This email address is invalid.
      Get the Free Newsletter!
      Subscribe to Daily Tech Insider for top news, trends & analysis
      This email address is invalid.

      MOST POPULAR ARTICLES

      Latest News

      Zeus Kerravala on Networking: Multicloud, 5G, and...

      James Maguire - December 16, 2022 0
      I spoke with Zeus Kerravala, industry analyst at ZK Research, about the rapid changes in enterprise networking, as tech advances and digital transformation prompt...
      Read more
      Applications

      Datadog President Amit Agarwal on Trends in...

      James Maguire - November 11, 2022 0
      I spoke with Amit Agarwal, President of Datadog, about infrastructure observability, from current trends to key challenges to the future of this rapidly growing...
      Read more
      Cloud

      IGEL CEO Jed Ayres on Edge and...

      James Maguire - June 14, 2022 0
      I spoke with Jed Ayres, CEO of IGEL, about the endpoint sector, and an open source OS for the cloud; we also spoke about...
      Read more
      Applications

      Kyndryl’s Nicolas Sekkaki on Handling AI and...

      James Maguire - November 9, 2022 0
      I spoke with Nicolas Sekkaki, Group Practice Leader for Applications, Data and AI at Kyndryl, about how companies can boost both their AI and...
      Read more
      IT Management

      Intuit’s Nhung Ho on AI for the...

      James Maguire - May 13, 2022 0
      I spoke with Nhung Ho, Vice President of AI at Intuit, about adoption of AI in the small and medium-sized business market, and how...
      Read more
      Logo

      eWeek has the latest technology news and analysis, buying guides, and product reviews for IT professionals and technology buyers. The site’s focus is on innovative solutions and covering in-depth technical content. eWeek stays on the cutting edge of technology news and IT trends through interviews and expert analysis. Gain insight from top innovators and thought leaders in the fields of IT, business, enterprise software, startups, and more.

      Facebook
      Linkedin
      RSS
      Twitter
      Youtube

      Advertisers

      Advertise with TechnologyAdvice on eWeek and our other IT-focused platforms.

      Advertise with Us

      Menu

      • About eWeek
      • Subscribe to our Newsletter
      • Latest News

      Our Brands

      • Privacy Policy
      • Terms
      • About
      • Contact
      • Advertise
      • Sitemap
      • California – Do Not Sell My Information

      Property of TechnologyAdvice.
      © 2022 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved

      Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.

      ×