Close
  • Latest News
  • 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
  • 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 Development
    • Development

    HashiCorp Unveils Otto Open-Source App Delivery Tool

    By
    Sean Michael Kerner
    -
    September 29, 2015
    Share
    Facebook
    Twitter
    Linkedin
      HashiCorp development tool

      In the DevOps world, the open-source Vagrant tool has long been a standard application, enabling developers to create reproducible virtual development environments. HashiCorp, the lead commercial sponsor behind Vagrant, has been continuously improving a full suite of DevOps tools in recent years to complement Vagrant, and today it’s going a step further, by redefining Vagrant itself.

      “Otto is the successor to Vagrant, and the idea is to extend it into deployment and production as well,” Armon Dadgar, co-founder and CTO of HashiCorp, told eWEEK.

      While HashiCorp is positioning Otto as Vagrant’s successor, Vagrant isn’t going away. Otto is Vagrant’s successor in a spiritual sense and not a technological one, Dadgar said. As such, Hashicorp is not deprecating Vagrant or abandoning the project. In another sense, Otto is a super-set of Vagrant that benefits from other HashiCorp tools to help enable deployments.

      HashiCorp is a venture-backed firm that has raised $10 million to help fuel its development and market efforts. In addition to Vagrant, and now Otto, HashiCorp builds the Packer project for creating artifacts for application deployment, Consul for service discovery and Teraform for deployment infrastructure. HashiCorp also operates the commercial Atlas service that ties the company’s open-source projects together.

      In addition to the new Otto project, HashiCorp today announced the open-source Nomad scheduler project. The world of scheduling and orchestration is complicated and has multiple tools in the market already that serve different needs. Nomad fits into the deployment workflow by pooling together resources from a larger cluster to enable application deployment.

      Dadgar explained that Nomad is a dynamic scheduler where an organization defines a fleet of machines and then jobs are provided to the systems online. Workloads are then placed onto specific machines in a way that maximizes utilization and efficiency.

      For application availability, a common technology used since the beginning of the Web era is load balancer tools—also known today as application delivery controllers (ADCs).

      Nomad is not an ADC, and fulfills a different need, Dadgar said. He explained that load balancers are typically a level of indirection from the application, where the load balancer proxies traffic across servers.

      “Nomad is more on the orchestration and deployment side,” Dadgar said. “You’re saying you want to deploy, for example, 500 instances of a Web server and Nomad figures out the set of machines it should run on, orchestrates the download of the Web server image and boots the Web server.”

      From a deployment perspective, Nomad is a general-purpose scheduler and can run in bare metal, container or cloud environments, Dadgar said. In some respects, Nomad’s functionality will overlap with platform-as-a-service (PaaS) scheduling features. For example, the popular open-source Cloud Foundry PaaS has its own scheduler, known as Diego, which plays a similar role to Nomad.

      The initial release of Nomad is available as a command-line tool, and it will integrate into HashiCorp’s broader platform of tools. A visual interface to Nomad will be part of HashiCorp’s commercial Atlas service.

      Another element that helps tie HashiCorp’s tools together is the Vault project, which was announced in May, that helps provide secure access and identity.

      “The initial release of Nomad will not integrate with Vault, but our roadmap is to integrate it in the future,” Dadgar said.

      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.

      MOST POPULAR ARTICLES

      Cybersecurity

      Visa’s Michael Jabbara on Cybersecurity and Digital...

      James Maguire - May 17, 2022 0
      I spoke with Michael Jabbara, VP and Global Head of Fraud Services at Visa, about the cybersecurity technology used to ensure the safe transfer...
      Read more
      Cloud

      Yotascale CEO Asim Razzaq on Controlling Multicloud...

      James Maguire - May 5, 2022 0
      Asim Razzaq, CEO of Yotascale, provides guidance on understanding—and containing—the complex cost structure of multicloud computing. Among the topics we covered:  As you survey the...
      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
      Big Data and Analytics

      GoodData CEO Roman Stanek on Business Intelligence...

      James Maguire - May 4, 2022 0
      I spoke with Roman Stanek, CEO of GoodData, about business intelligence, data as a service, and the frustration that many executives have with data...
      Read more
      Applications

      Cisco’s Thimaya Subaiya on Customer Experience in...

      James Maguire - May 10, 2022 0
      I spoke with Thimaya Subaiya, SVP and GM of Global Customer Experience at Cisco, about the factors that create good customer experience – and...
      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.
      © 2021 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.

      ×