The JBGeorge Tech Blog

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On the heels of the one year anniversary of the OpenStack open source cloud operating system – here’s some awesome news…

Dell (the company I work for) announces the Dell OpenStack Cloud Solution, the market’s first hardware + software + services OpenStack solution for customers seeking to build out their own OpenStack clouds!

Let’s take a look under the hood, shall we?
  

Dell OpenStack Cloud Solution

Hardware (Dell PowerEdge C cloud optimized servers)

 Built on a reference architecture honed since DAY ONE of the OpenStack movement, the Dell OpenStack Cloud Solution offers a hardware configuration featuring cloud optimized Dell PowerEdge C servers.  Dell has built cloud infrastructure for some of the biggest names in the world, like Facebook and Microsoft Azure, and have used those learnings to develop the highly dense, power-efficient PowerEdge C servers that the Dell OpenStack Cloud Solution has been architected with.

Software (Dell Crowbar deploying and managing the OpenStack cloud platform)

When Dell began testing OpenStack in mid 2010, we were installing it, testing it, blowing it away, reinstalling it, tweaking it, blowing it away, reinstalling it… you get the picture.  And it wasn’t trivial.  These deployments took considerable time, effort, and expertise, so we developed the Dell Crowbar software framework extending Opscode’s Chef automation, which can deploy MULTI-NODE OpenStack clouds in hours or even minutes, rather than days when done manually.   (Anyone remember our team deploying a 6 node Nova and Swift OpenStack deployment in 29 minutes at CloudConnect?)   Crowbar enables BIOS and RAID setup and configuration, network setup, deploys open source tools like Nagios and Ganglia for monitoring, and much more.  

And hey, we’re a community here, right?  So here’s what the OpenStack community has been waiting to hear – Dell has now open sourced Crowbar!  We’ve made it available to the open source community via our Github site, which is linked below.   My partner in crime, Rob Hirschfeld, goes into Crowbar deep on his blog, so I’ve provided a link to his site below as well.  (FYI – we are still working through some of the legal aspects of BIOS and RAID capabilities, but decided to open source the rest of Crowbar while we work it out.)

And speaking of support…

Services (Dell Services + Rackspace Cloud Builders)

After a year of being in OpenStack, we’ve built up some expertise, so Dell Services, along with our partner Rackspace Cloud Builders, will be offering a plethora of services to help you make your OpenStack cloud a reality.

• Consulting
• Deployment
• Training
• Support for the entire solution – HW, Crowbar, OpenStack, etc
• And a host of other services direct from Dell Services

When you get the Dell OpenStack Cloud Solution, you can call Dell for support on any aspect of the solution, and we’ll help you figure it out, with our crack support teams, our OpenStack engineers, and our OpenStack partners.

And those are the basics. 

Fast. Easy. Now. The Dell OpenStack Cloud Solution

A few more comments….

Let me just say – I am proud that we’ve delivered this solution to market, but even PROUDER to be part of a company had the vision to see the potential of OpenStack on Day One.  Yes, that’s a big deal to me.

I’d like to call out a number of partners we’ve worked with to get to this point – Rackspace, Citrix, Opscode, Canonical, Intel, and others – the community is a big deal in OpenStack, and it’s great to have their support in this announcement.   I’m also very happy that one of our first Dell OpenStack customers, DreamHost, is a part of this announcement as well with a full case study on how they’re doing OpenStack with Dell.  (HINT: they’re neck deep in Crowbar and loving it!) 

We plan to celebrate the announcement big time at OSCON, so if you’re here, come by the Dell booth – demos, gear, giveaways, etc.   And our breakout session will be on Thursday (10:40am in room E-141) – “Prying Open the Cloud with Dell Crowbar and OpenStack” – Rob will present the deep down details on Crowbar. 
(And if you want to get in on the celebration, feel free to tweet the news and your thoughts – be sure to use hashtags #Dell, #OpenStack and #Crowbar…)

So What’s Next?

Time for YOU to start using this.  The Dell OpenStack Cloud Solution, Crowbar, all of it.   Talk to your Dell rep, emaial us at OpenStack@Dell.com, download Crowbar, start building Crowbar barclamps, discuss it in the forums, etc…  and get started building OpenStack clouds with Dell.
  

More info:

• Dell OpenStack webpage 
• Crowbar’s open source repository
• Press Release: Dell OpenStack Cloud Solution
• Rob Hirschfeld
• Barton George
• OpenStack.org
• Partners: Citrix Project Olympus, Rackspace Cloud Builders, Opscode Chef, Canonical, and Intel
    

Until next time,

JBG
@jbgeorge