The Cloud in Review
From the Desk of
Nathaniel Rushfinn
A Discussion on Cloud Operating Systems
Today, nearly every vendor offers a cloud computing solution. While CA Technologies uses the
NIST definition of cloud computing, for the sake of this discussion, I will categorize offerings into
three groups: Cloud Plus, Cloud Support, and Cloud Operating Systems. “Cloud Plus” is the
group whose vendors simply append the word “cloud” to existing products. Practically every
company, including CA Technologies, does this for cloud switches, cloud backup systems and
cloud security products. In Cloud Support, products that support cloud include network
management solutions that have been upgraded to support server virtualization or security
products that protect data-in-motion in the cloud. The third group, Cloud Operating Systems,
contains solutions that provide the means to actually build a “cloud” and provide cloud services.
These solutions can be fully hosted or provided for use on-premise.
Cloud computing requires that a dynamic pool of resources be available for provisioning. This is
the primary means to deliver on-demand, pay-per-use, and elastic services. The fundamental
pieces of cloud computing solutions are: compute resources, storage resources, and network
resources. In addition some solutions provide additional components such as an operating
system, a service bus, or a distributed database -- all designed to support cloud computing.
COMPUTE ˳ STORAGE ˳ NETWORK ˳ SERVICE BUS ˳ DATABASE ˳ OPERATING SYSTEM ˳
HYPERVISOR
Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Fujitsu are the giants in cloud computing. Other notable players
are Rackspace, NASA, Eucalytus, Ubunta and Red Hat.
In this article, I will compare and contrast the solutions that fall into the third group -- solutions
that provide all of the fundamental components of cloud computing as a cloud operating system.
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Note: When doing a Google search on Cloud Operating systems, you might find results pertaining
to a lightweight desktop environment designed to run in the cloud. The most common examples
of this are EyeOS and iCloud. In this article we will not be discussing these products but only
those that enable data center-like operations in the cloud.
Cloud Computing Operating System Vendors
Microsoft Azure
“Azure ‘Microsoft’s operating system for the cloud’: Windows Azure offers a simple, reliable, and
powerful cloud computing platform that enables you to focus on business opportunities as opposed to
operational hurdles”
Microsoft Azure is a hosted solution which, essentially, cloud-enables Microsoft .NET. Microsoft
Azure is one of the most complete cloud solutions on the market. Microsoft Azure provides
compute, storage and network resources, to which they add their programming tools, an
operating system, a database, a hypervisor and a service bus. The power of this solution is its
compatibility across the entire development stack.
An important aspect of Microsoft Azure is that it provides in-depth support for the most popular
OpenSource development languages integrated into their service bus. The Azure architecture
contains what they call AppFabric, for connectivity in the cloud. The solution has programmatic
support for REST, SOAP and WS-* protocols. SDKs are currently available for Java, Ruby and
PHP, delivering on the promise of open standards support.
In the US, Microsoft Azure is available only in Microsoft-owned data centers, while in the Global
markets, Microsoft has a special arrangement with Fujitsu to offer it in their data centers.
Commentary
Microsoft has the most complete cloud offering in the market. By hosting the solution, they
enable near perfect vendor lock-in. While the solution is based on 100% Microsoft products, it
deserves respect for its completeness and in-depth support for cloud connectivity protocols and
OpenSource products.
Compare and Contrast
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Currently, Azure is provided only in a fully hosted model, whereas AppLogic is offered as a
complete cloud-in-a-box software solution. Azure provides everything from operating systems,
databases and programming languages, and while it very comprehensive it is also very
complex. The AppLogic solution focuses on a single task—rapidly deploy cloud services
(applications) into the cloud. AppLogic is hardware and platform agnostic and is designed to
avoid vendor lock-in. AppLogic uses industry recognized Xen hypervisors, which allows
applications to run on both Windows and Linux operating systems. Azure provides all of the
tools necessary to develop and run Windows applications. AppLogic on the other hand provides
a platform to run any business application. All of the business logic, software configurations and
even the development stacks like .NET and JAVA are fully encapsulated.
AppLogic is purchased as a software license, but is also offered by global service providers as a
hosted service like Azure.
Amazon EC2
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2): Amazon EC2 is a web service that provides resizable
compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers.
Amazon Elastic Cloud Compute is almost synonymous with cloud computing. Today, Amazon is
a fully hosted solution built on industry tools. The core component of Amazon EC2 is the
Amazon Machine Image (AMI). AMI is a hosted solution of the Xen hypervisor. Amazon is a
complete cloud solution, and not simply a virtualization solution. They offer all of the core cloud
components, plus their own Amazon Simple DB and programmatic access to MySQL through
the Amazon Relational Database Service. They have created a complete cloud solution by
providing computer and storage resources with the necessary network infrastructure, and a rich
set of web services and APIs that provide everything from basic machine instances
sophisticated cloud management tools.
Amazon EC2 is based on the Xen hypervisor, so support is a sub-set of Xen compatibility. EC2
currently supports a variety of operating systems including: RedHat Linux, Windows Server,
openSuSE Linux, Fedora, Debian, OpenSolaris, Cent OS, Gentoo Linux, and Oracle Linux.
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Today all machine images must run on a Xen hypervisor, though Amazon does provide a tool
called VMimport that can import VMware virtual machines. However, today it is currently limited
to Windows 2008.
Commentary
Amazon was, in my opinion, the first vendor to offer a complete cloud solution to the public. The
story goes that they developed these tools to run their own operation and then decided to offer
them as a service. The Amazon solution continues to mature at a rapid rate offering more and
more functionality as web services. The best indicator of Amazon’s success is the wide support
and connectivity to Amazon from other vendors. Many cloud solutions support the use of
Amazon EC2 as part of their own cloud offering.
Compare and Contrast
EC2 and AppLogic use very similar approaches to delivering cloud. Both utilize the Xen
hypervisor for machine instances. They both use the idea of templates to easily construct
machine templates. Each has storage and network resources available in a dynamic pool for
easy provisioning of single and complex apps. Amazon provides all the basic building blocks for
customers to build their cloud services.
Amazon today is offered only as a 100% hosted solution, while AppLogic is offered as a turnkey software solution that customers can install on their own commodity hardware. This means
that AppLogic can be deployed completely within customer firewalls, allowing federal and
intelligence agencies to manage their own private or virtual private clouds.
While AppLogic is a software solution, many service providers do offer AppLogic as a fully
hosted service, removing the need for dedicated hardware. Amazon EC2 is a very flexible
solution. In many ways, it is similar to Azure in that developers have access to APIs and web
services to build very specific cloud services. With this flexibility though comes a need for
programming expertise. In contrast AppLogic includes ready-to-use appliances for high
availability, replication and disaster recovery appliances so that customers can insure their
applications are available anywhere in the cloud with programming experience.
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Amazon is a complex solution with many pieces and interfaces. AppLogic provides a single
interface to do one thing quickly —deploy and provision complex applications as easily as
deploying a single machine instance.
VmWare
“VMware customers typically save 50-70% on overall IT costs by consolidating their resource pools and
delivering highly available machines with VMware vSphere.”*
* Source: http://www.vmware.com/virtualization/virtual-infrastructure.html
VMware is the undisputed leader in server virtualization. In 1999 VMware shipped their first
product, Vmware Workstation. This was quickly followed by GSX and ESX servers and VMware
vCenter and vMotion. While virtualization had been used in other settings, VMware was the first
company to deliver a type 1 hypervisor with full translation for windows. Other systems required
that the Windows operating be modified. Their advanced hypervisor technology and powerful
server tools allowed them to dominate the industry with more than 190,000 customers. As a
result, VMware has become synonymous with virtualization.
In server Virtualization, a hypervisor lets you share the resources of a single physical machine
across multiple virtual machines or guests. In virtual infrastructure, the idea is expanded beyond
a single physical server.
The Vmware virtual infrastructure not only provides the hypervisor but also manages all of the
storage, network and computing resources. Additionally it provides automation for provisioning
and disaster recovery. After nearly 10 years Vmware renamed ESX Server v4.0 to Vshpere.
In 2008, at about the same time, VMware began the transformation from a virtualization
company to a cloud company. These acquisitions were extensive including: Integrin, TriCipher,
Zimbra Terracotta, Genstone Systems, Mulesoft, Sophera, Heroku, Engine Yard, Skyway
Software, Chordian, and SpringSoft Their acquisitions varied from open source application
development to IT management solutions. Most technologies went into expanding the core of
vCenter and their hypervisor technology. In addition, they also purchased companies like
SpringSource and Zimbra. SpringSource, an open source group, provides training and support
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for Java web programming frameworks Spring, Grails and the programming language Groovy
(note: Groovy and Grails is akin to Ruby on Rails). SpringSource has strategic partnerships with
Salesforce.com and Google. And Zimbra is an open source email collaboration platform akin to
Microsoft Exchange.
In 2010 VMware launched vCloud Director. VMware has now positioning itself as the clear
leader in Cloud Computing. With their flagship product vSphere coupled with vCloud, they now
provide cloud computing solutions for public, private and hybrid cloud.
Commentary
VMware clearly invented virtual computing in the Windows x86 environment. For almost a
decade, VMware ESX server remained unchallenged as the only viable platform for the
enterprise. Today, VMware finally has competition from XEN server, but organizations are still
cautious of deployment in mission critical environments. Despite its total dominance in the
hypervisor world, VMware has transitioned to cloud computing with a complete solution.
Reviewing our definition of a cloud operating system, VMware is complete. They of course
provide a hypervisor as well as management of virtualized storage network resources. They do
not provide an operating system, but their hypervisor ensures 100% compatibility with all the
major OSes. VMware does not provide a database as part of their stack, but they do provide
support and certification for running databases in their virtual machines. Finally, as part of their
open source acquisitions, VMware does have a SOA bus that they leverage in building vApps.
VMware’s solution is built on solid proven technology, but it is not revolutionary. Perhaps they
summarize it best themselves, “VMware an evolutionary approach to an IT revolution”
Compare and Contrast
AppLogic and VMware are most similar in what they offer - yet very different in how they deliver
it.
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Both solutions provide a means for public agencies to build their own public, private and
community clouds. Both are complete solutions that install on bare-metal servers and create a
virtual infrastructure to deploy business applications. AppLogic has the Global Catalog that
contains virtualized business applications. VMware has vCloud Director, their catalog and
vApps, or virtual appliances. Both solutions leverage a type 1 hypervisor. AppLogic currently
uses the XEN hypervisor and is releasing support for the VMware hypervisor vShere in version
3.0. Both solutions use a pool of virtual compute, storage and network resources to rapidly
provision resources, and both solutions offer HA and DR solutions. Here is where the similarities
stop.
By its own admission, VMware is an evolutionary approach. AppLogic maintains a revolutionary
approach. VMware is currently seen as the most solid hypervisor technology on the market.
Their cloud solution makes the virtual machine the unit of measure. Vmware builds everything
from the bottom up, and applications are multiple virtual machines in an OVF format that are
grouped together and published in a catalog. From an infrastructure perspective, VMware uses
a solid established approach of attaching all of the servers with Fibre Channel to a SAN. While
reliable, it does require proprietary hardware, and it is expensive. From a server perspective,
VMware users typically use fast and powerful servers with lots of memory. They do this, so that
they can run as many virtual machines as possible to maximize their investment in VMware. To
provide resiliency and disaster recovery, these powerful servers are clustered together.
In contrast, the power and beauty of AppLogic is its simplicity. From the beginning, it was
designed to be single complete solution for building cloud. AppLogic is a fully object-oriented
platform and not a collection or grouping of parts. In AppLogic, Virtualized Business Services
encapsulate everything needed to run that application. By using AppLogic’s visual designer, an
administrator can move, copy, and resize a business service with the click of a mouse. With
AppLogic, not just the virtual machine is abstracted from the hardware, the entire business
application is abstracted from the hardware. It is this revolutionary approach that allows
organizations to move their applications in and around the cloud easily. AppLogic takes a
completely different approach when it comes to infrastructure. AppLogic uses only commodity
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servers. It requires no expensive SAN or Fibre Channel devices; it does not require RAID
controllers or any type of NAS. AppLogic relies on a grid of dissimilar hardware rather than
clusters of identical machines. The AppLogic grid easily scales up and down. When a new
commodity server is added to the grid, new storage and compute resources are available
automatically.
VMware is the industry standard hypervisor. Since 2008 they have acquired more than a dozen
companies to piece together a solution for cloud computing.
AppLogic is a single application with a core kernel and one GUI. It is one solution that provides
a turn-key platform for managing and deploying applications in the cloud.
Eucalyptus v2.0
“Eucalyptus Systems delivers private cloud software. This is infrastructure software that enables
enterprises and government agencies to establish their own cloud computing environments. “
Eucalyptus provides a complete cloud solution by supporting many different types of resources.
Their cloud controller supports access and control to both public and private cloud resources,
including machine images, storage devices, a service bus and access control with a data base.
It even supports the Amazon API. The support for resources is very extensive. For computer
resources, Eucalyptus supports multiple hypervisors including Xen, KVM, ESX and Windows
Machine Images. They have support for all types of storage, including NAS, SAN, and iSCSI.
Their controller is even API-compatible with Amazon EC2 for both machine instances and
storage.
Commentary
Eucalyptus is a complete solution with the ability to dynamically provision a wide array of cloud
resources. The unique controller approach provides great flexibility in creating private and virtual
private clouds. Because their architecture supports the use of different hypervisors, storage and
networking, customers avoid vendor lock-in.
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Compare and Contrast
Eucalyptus is similar to AppLogic, in that it is a purchased solution which allows customers to
build and host their own private clouds. It provides access to all of the core resources to
manage a cloud solution. Eucalyptus is very flexible, giving the customer the option to choose
storage and networking and compute resources. The flexibility requires that users make more
choices and do more configuration. AppLogic is different in this regard in that it provides a turnkey solution with storage, networking, and hypervisor support all built in without the need to
build and configure the underlying infrastructure. With Eucalyptus, customers can choose but
then must assemble and configure all of the components. With AppLogic, customers only need
a usable block of commodity servers. AppLogic turns these resources into a pool of resources,
supplying the storage, volume management, high-availability, and replication all under the hood.
Red Hat
“Red Hat delivers the infrastructure needed for reliable, agile, and cost-effective cloud computing.
Red Hat's cloud vision is unlike that of any other IT vendor.”
“In a market full of hype, Red Hat makes the cloud real and compelling. Today.”
The Red Hat cloud solution is comprised of their standard products offerings: Red Hat
Enterprise Linux, Enterprise virtualization and JBoss Enterprise Middleware.
Red Hat has a certified cloud provider program. Their current partners include Amazon, IBM
and Savvis, who run Red Hat products. In the NIST cloud model, they offer a PaaS Cloud
Solution which is based on offering a flexible application deployment environment. The solution
is based on Red Enterprise and JBoss. Their portability model is based on a Java Virtual
machine and the ability to use programming frameworks like Seam, or Spring, Struts, Ruby etc.
Red Hat pitches that by using open standards and OpenSource development tools that there is
no vendor lock-in. They also make a point that “Salesforce.com cloud is built on Red Hat”
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Commentary
Red Hat is the undisputed leader in the enterprise OpenSource market. Red Hat Enterprise is
used in Federal and DoD data centers around the world to run mission critical apps. With the
purchase of JBoss, Red Hat now has a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and a service bus.
With the addition of a hypervisor, they have positioned themselves with the ability to run the
cloud. Red Hat is a great operating system and JBoss is an excellent Java application server;
but even with the addition of KVM, this doesn’t really put them in the same category as
Microsoft, Amazon or Eucalyptus. Red Hat provides some very important tools that can be used
in building a cloud solution, but by my definition, they are not a cloud operating system. That
fact that SalesForce.com uses Red Hat doesn’t equate Red Hat to Cloud.
Compare and Contrast
Red Hat Enterprise is an operating system with support for a Hypervisor. AppLogic uses the
Xen hypervisor and provides support for Red Hat Enterprise as part of the application stack.
Red Hat offers JBoss as its strategy for application portability. AppLogic supports JBoss, as well
as other Java application development stacks. JBoss is provided as a ready virtual image in the
AppLogic catalog.
AppLogic supports and offers Red Hat and JBoss as components in platform offerings. Thus
there is little to compare and contrast.
UBUNTU Enterprise Cloud (UEC)
“The Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) brings Amazon EC2-like infrastructure capabilities inside the firewall.
The UEC is powered by Eucalyptus, an open source implementation for the emerging standard of the EC2
API”
Commentary
Ubuntu gets an honorable mention. They appear poised to bring the simplicity and love of
Ubuntu to their followers around the world who want cloud. Ubuntu uses Eucalyptus paired with
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its own operating system. With these two powerful tools any “geek” can assemble a quality
cloud.
The capabilities of Eucalyptus have already been discussed, so there will be no compare and
contrast.
Rackspace & OpenStack
“OpenStack is a collection of open source technologies delivering a massively scalable cloud operating
system.”
OpenStack was started as a partnership between by RackSpace and NASA. OpenStack is
based on NASA’s Nebulae software, and is offered by Rackspace Hosting as a service. The
code is available for download under the Apache 2.0 OpenSource licensing agreement at
www.openstack.org.
OpenStack addresses cloud in the same manner as Amazon. They have two interrelated
projects: OpenStack Compute and OpenStack Object Storage. OpenStack Compute manages
the cloud fabric. This currently means making machine images available as cloud resources.
They currently support Xen, KVM, and QEMU. OpenStack Object Storage uses clusters of
commodity servers to create redundant, scalable storage for the cloud compute fabric. It is not
an operating system but a persistent store for machine images and data.
Commentary
The forces of Rackspace and NASA, combined with support from industry leaders like Dell,
make the OpenStack project one of the most formidable competitors on the market. While
OpenStack is its infancy compared to Amazon, the power of the brain trust at NASA and the
OpenSource community at large, could make OpenStack one of the most powerful cloud
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computing projects. The combination of OpenSource projects, the scientific community and the
private sector make this the solution to watch,
Compare and Contrast
When OpenStack is offered by Rackspace, it provides all of the benefits of a fully hosted
solution like Azure. The fact that the core of the software is freely available and supports all
popular hypervisors and operating systems circumvents the problem of vendor lock-in.
OpenStack positions itself as a cloud operating system to position large groups of virtual private
servers rapidly. With its use of object machines and object storage, it is the solution most similar
to AppLogic.
AppLogic and OpenStack are similar in their approach to using an object-oriented model.
AppLogic takes this approach further and encapsulates more components at a higher level on
the solution stack. AppLogic not only provisions virtual machines along with their requisite
storage, it rapidly provisions all three types of cloud services in the NIST model. AppLogic can
easily provide basic virtual machines with storage and networking as Infrastructure-as-a-Service
(IaaS). It can just as easily provide Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) with all required development
platform like .NET, LAMP, Java. And finally can provide Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) by easily
provisioning complex applications (SaaS) with the same ease as a single virtual machine object.
OpenStack is an OpenSource project, making it freely available to everyone. AppLogic fully
supports all OpenSource projects as ready application images in the AppLogic catalog. As
commercial software, AppLogic is offered exclusively by CA Technologies and is backed up with
the support of a $ 4 Billion dollar company.
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