2009/07/23
TheRegister: Open source and the cloud: An unbalanced marriage
by Timothy Prickett Morgan
There's no question that open source software is helping vendors build utility-style infrastructure - or as the world insists on calling it: cloud computing.
But will cloud computing help the companies behind open source software, who pay their bills by collecting cash for commercial support? Or better still, will it help them stay in business at all?
Good questions. And the Red Hat-sponsored Open Source Cloud Computing Forum held Tuesday aimed to answer this and other questions from the business and technology sides. Technology dominated, but for now, let's just talk about business.
Brian Stevens, Red Hat's vice president of engineering and chief technology officer, kicked off the event with a keynote where he discussed the themes that are over familiar to us all by now:
- That IT is no longer seen as a cost center but as a means of delivering business value, etc.
- That cloud computing - which embodies virtualization and other things that make crusty IT infrastructure more resilient and flexible - would make it so that IT departments could charge back departments for the resources that they use and see a day when they no longer have to schedule downtime as they change hardware or software on their infrastructure.
- That independent software vendors see the inevitability of cloud computing and "are less defensive and are increasingly supporting" the deployment of their applications on clouds.
- That while the service level agreements on public clouds like Amazon's EC2 are good enough for application development and testing and offer substantial speed advantages when it comes to getting a test server up and running for putting code through the paces, the SLAs and the guarantees of security for applications and data deployed on clouds are currently not good enough for the deployment of production enterprise applications. Yet.
The way commercial Linux distributor Red Hat sees it, the move to cloud infrastructure is no worse and perhaps better than the old way of trying to sell into end user accounts directly. It's a lot easier, so the argument goes, to sell future cloud infrastructure makers commercial licenses to its Enterprise Linux stack and cover hundreds, thousands, or even millions of users than it is to sell directly or though a channel into those same accounts.
<p.You make one deal, and in theory, you have sold a buttload of licenses support contracts worth ga-gillions ka-millions. And then companies who have deployed applications on public clouds decide that they want to build similar infrastructure internally on their own private clouds, and you get to sell some more licenses there too.
There are only a few problems with this theory. First, the companies actually selling cloud infrastructure - Amazon, Google, and a handful of others - are not actually using commercial Linux distros (as far as we know) to build out their clouds. That's bad news for all of the server operating system makers (including those who don't sell open source software but rather support contracts), and it's bad news for all the commercial hypervisor makers we've noticed how they never get callbacks when they pitch their wares. In the case of Google, it's even bad news for the server makers. They're left standing at the door because Google makes its own servers.
Both Google and Amazon have essentially created their own Linux distros. And Amazon has its own version of the Xen hypervisor too. As industry analyst Matthew Aslett pointed out after Stevens' keynote, Amazon and Google provide a service based on open source software, so the modifications they make to GPL v2 programs do not have to be given back to the open source community. They would only have to contribute back if they distributed the software.
So while open source has benefited cloud providers, and this loophole in the GPL v2 license (at least from the point of view of people who would like to see Google, Amazon, and others contribute their genius to the community that they have benefited from) has allowed them to keep their intellectual property, it is not so clear that cloud computing is going to help the open source community.
InfoWorld: Virtualization to drive adoption of Fibre Channel over Ethernet
by Jon Brodkin
The Fibre Channel over Ethernet storage protocol may enhance virtualization projects by ensuring greater mobility of virtual machines, and is in the plans of more than a quarter of Fortune 1000 companies, according to new research from TheInfoPro IT consulting firm.
Few companies have begun using FCoE products, which is not a surprise given that FCoE standards have not yet been finalized, says Rob Stevenson, managing director of storage research for TheInfoPro. But storage executives at large enterprises are looking forward to benefits FCoE could bestow on virtualized servers, he says.
The simplified cabling schemes promised by FCoE will reduce the amount of physical work required to move a VM from one server to another, Stevenson says. "If there are less connection points to a virtual machine, you have more mobility," he says. Even in a virtual environment, "there are still physical interfaces beneath the hardware that have to be provisioned properly." TheInfoPro surveyed storage executives from 303 Fortune 1000 companies between November and April for a new report titled "Fibre Channel Over Ethernet: Storage Pro Perspective." A draft FCoE standard was recently approved by a technical committee within the International Committee for Information Technology Standards and submitted for an initial public review.
When asked which applications will benefit the most from FCoE, respondents put virtualized servers at the top, followed by databases, blade servers, backup environments, Microsoft applications, disaster recovery, and data warehouses.
Storage executives generally believe FCoE "will be the dominant storage transport for the future," but adoption today is scarce, the report states. Three percent of respondents are already using FCoE technology, and another 26 percent are either piloting, evaluating or planning to deploy in the near- or long-term. National labs, telco firms and some technology companies are testing out FCoE, but it's not at the point of mainstream adoption, or for use in mission-critical applications, Stevenson notes.
Moving to FCoE offers the advantage of a loss-less protocol, but the unfinished standard does not yet have the expected multi-pathing and load balancing features, according to Stevenson.
FCoE today is therefore like a car that drives, but lacks air bags and rear view mirrors.
"When we talk to enterprises, they need the full arsenal of capabilities," he says.
Even though the standard is unfinished, companies such as Cisco, Brocade, EMC, and NetApp are releasing products to lay the groundwork for an industry-wide move to FCoE.
Brocade, for example, recently unveiled a switch and network adapters that join Fibre Channel over Ethernet and Convergence Enhanced Ethernet (CEE) into one platform, but the company says it does not expect mass adoption until 2011.
Generally, users see NetApp and Cisco as offering the best FCoE technology, Stevenson says. But they are waiting for 10 Gigabit Ethernet to become fully deployed throughout the data center before adopting FCoE, TheInfoPro states. This will take two or three years.
"For the foreseeable future, Fibre Channel will remain the incumbent technology of choice, but FCoE's advantage in terms of cable simplification, lower infrastructure cost and management are positioning it as the next-generation storage fabric," the research firm writes.
CNet: Can IT help build smart cities?
by Ina Fried
Technology has the potential to help build smarter, greener cities, but whether it will is another matter.
That was the take-away from a panel discussion Wednesday at Fortune's Brainstorm: Tech conference here.
The need for cities that use less energy is clear. Although cities occupy just 2 percent of the world's geography, they account for 75 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emmissions, according to Clinton Climate Initiative Chairman Ira Magaziner. Cisco Systems CTO Padmasree Warrior noted that there will be 100 new cities with populations of more than 1 million people by 2025.
But while technology has the best potential for allowing society to maintain its standard of living in a sustainable way, the industry isn't necessarily set up to provide such technology.
"We're not there yet as an industry," said Sun Microsystems CTO Greg Papadopoulos. "Our business models are built on complexity."
Technology is also built based on frequent upgrade cycles and getting value from disposability of products. "There's a tension there," he said. "It's going to be a lot harder than you at first think."
Papadopoulos pointed to home automation as an example where the tech industry has failed to recognize the different standards needed in new markets.
"We've failed pretty miserably at that so far," he said. "The are complex and they don't work well. If we follow that model we will fail and we will be cursed."
Hara CEO Amit Chatterjee said that the focus now should be on changes that can be made without major technology shifts, giving solar and other low-carbon technologies a chance to mature.
"There is a unique opportunity to focus on lo hanging fruit or fruit that's on the ground," Chatterjee said. "That is where we need to start. Insulation is a huge win for the U.S. well before we get to solar panels."
Composting locally, he added, creates compressed natural gas that can fuel vehicles.
Chatterjee said that going after the "quick wins" could cut 30 percent of our carbon footprint.
Cutting energy use can also create jobs, the panelists agreed. But only if the right economic incentives are there, such as putting a price on carbon use.
Magaziner said awareness of the issues are improving, but that that isn't enough.
"What we really need is action," he said. "The next three, four, five years are going to be critical."
