'choosing right cloud platform' in apr'10 'tech & trends' is very informative with your past coverage on the subject in jan, feb & mar'09 issues. categorization of cloud services gave us much clarity

well, what you have discussed in previous issues was about settingup a baremetal cloud. to provide a cloud service, infrastructure as a service in particular, one will need some kind of middleware for provisioning and billing of machine instances, storage space, bandwidth, etc

a) any opensource software available for that or the service provider do it in their own way?

b) cumulative processing power of all the nodes is the processing power of cloud. and same with ram.
does it stand same for hard disk space too? does a cloud pool all the free space available on all nodes and
present it as space available for guest instances?
if not how does a service provider provide space? using a SAN?

c) i heard that ubuntu 9.10 server is also offering some kind of cloud appliance. can you cover it for us?


you have reviewd dell and tyrone blade servers in current issue. incase anyone take a fully populated blade enclosure to work as a node cluster for a cloud = all the blades will work as nodes

how much hard disk space a node requires actually? may be less than 2 gb. and it doesnt require redundancy. any hard disk or a node for that matter goes faulty, you can simply hot-replace it without stopping the cloud

d) what is the use of having big hard disks in nodes then? they can work with flash drives then. less money,
lesscooling,less power. no?

e) can we make pcqlinux2009 cloud computing virtual appliance for hyperv work with virtualbox or xen hypervisor?



thanks,
rajesh

Wohoo.. so many questions at a go.. looks like you are really serious about cloud.

Well.. Its Anindya. I have left PCQuest sometime back, but your question is so interesting that I couldn't resist myself to respond to it.
a) any opensource software available for that or the service provider do it in their own way?

-- generally the open source communities are focusing on Private Clouds, so you will not find any full-fledged billing Opensource app for clouds.. you can try Enomaly's Service Provider edition for the same.


b) cumulative processing power of all the nodes is the processing power of cloud. and same with ram.
does it stand same for hard disk space too? does a cloud pool all the free space available on all nodes and
present it as space available for guest instances?
if not how does a service provider provide space? using a SAN?

---No, you need a SAN at the backend, else it will use the disk space of the master cloud node.

c) i heard that ubuntu 9.10 server is also offering some kind of cloud appliance. can you cover it for us?

Yes ubuntu 9.10 do have Enterprise Cloud Offering essentially based on Eucalyptus which PCQuest had already covered long time back. essentially the PCQLinux Cloud Appliance is also based on the same application. They are going to cover Ubuntu ECS or not?? No idea


you have reviewd dell and tyrone blade servers in current issue. incase anyone take a fully populated blade enclosure to work as a node cluster for a cloud = all the blades will work as nodes

Oh yes, of course. in fact that's what is the concept of Cloud in a Box.

how much hard disk space a node requires actually? may be less than 2 gb. and it doesnt require redundancy. any hard disk or a node for that matter goes faulty, you can simply hot-replace it without stopping the cloud.

You are correct, they don't need a huge storage space.. all they need is around 4 to 5 GB. even work is going on for disk-less cloud nodes, where the nodes just boot over LAN.


d) what is the use of having big hard disks in nodes then? they can work with flash drives then. less money,
lesscooling,less power. no?

well Flash Drive is not equal to less money and less power . Rather its exactly opposite most of the time . though you can ofcourse plug in any smaller hard-drive into it and save some money.

e) can we make pcqlinux2009 cloud computing virtual appliance for hyperv work with virtualbox or xen hypervisor?

Humm... you technically can.. but it has a trick.. Take a Hyperv/VPC virtual machine with any windows flavor. now install VMWare Converter into it and add the PCQLinux Cloud Appliance disk as a secondary disk. now VMware converter will detect the Cloud Appliance disk as a physical disk and will let you convert it to VMWare appliance.. and VMWare appliances are natively supported in Virtual box.. so ur done ...


Hope the response helps . If you have any other query regarding cloud. you can contact me at anindyar [dot] roy [at] gmail [dot] com

Regards
Anindya

dear anindya
i'm very happy for your response. its very informative

diskless nodes for cloud is really a great idea. i wish it would become reality soon.
otherwise people will endup putting large disks in nodes which are under utilized.
its hard to buy small disks i guess

i admire you guys for answering questions over forum
i generally ask questions in this forum and i dont have technical competence to answer any of them.
i'm not sure i will post answers even if i know that
it takes good deal of time and passion to help, yet non remunerative

its not short of any social service. you are examples!

love you guys
-rajesh

I am so Flattered…. ... BTW! Just out of curiosity... Are you planning to deploy a cloud or you are learning about it just out of curiosity?

Regards
Anindya

i really mean it

i'm an accountant and been a reader of pcq for the last 11 years, so long as my career
i bet anyone who reads it will endup doing more than using just internet explorer and microsoft office suite, he he, same with me
i try doing things with my desktop and laptop

two things on my list for now:

a) try to use only linux on my laptop (wanna stop dual booting)
b) putup a server myself and try using citrix xenserver

about this cloud question, i'm very far from deploying it myself in my house
just to know how things work

-rajesh