The JBGeorge Tech Blog

.

And the goodness just keeps on coming!

A few weeks ago, Dell (they company I work for) unleashed the power of the Dell developed, open source Crowbar software framework as a part of the announcement of the Dell OpenStack Cloud Solution.  It allowed users to deploy a full OpenStack IaaS cloud on bare metal PowerEdge C servers in less than two hours (vs multiple days if done manually), and allows for a continuous integration mechanism for the stood up cloud. 

A week later, we announced the Dell | Cloudera Solution for Apache Hadoop, which also leverages the powerful Crowbar software to deploy a running Hadoop cluster on to bare metal PowerEdge C servers in less than a day, where it can take days or even weeks if deployed by other means.

So….

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)?   Check.

Hadoop / Big Data?  Check.

But what about Platform as a Service (PaaS)?

Big time check.
  

Today, VMware is announcing their development of a Cloud Foundry barclamp for Dell’s Crowbar software!

VMware’s Cloud Foundry is an open platform as a service (PaaS) project initiated by VMware designed to support multiple frameworks, multiple cloud providers, and multiple application services all on a cloud scale platform. It’s a project that is only a few months old, but one that has been getting outstanding interest from enterprises who want PaaS to be the new developer UI to their private cloud.  And Cloud Foundry is already powering real solutions.
  

And now it can be deployed quickly, simply, and automated with Dell’s Crowbar software.  
  

Crowbar, software that leverages OpsCode’s Chef configuration management tool,  allows users to get up and running on powerful technologies like Cloud Foundry, but actually does much more.  It actually does BIOS configuration, RAID configuration, network discovery, deploys Nagios and Ganglia, and more to enable an environment ideal for complex technologies.  It is also aware of changes in its environment, and adjusts to them in an automated manner.  (Learn more about Crowbar here.)
  

This is another win for open source in my book, and a real indicator of the impact open source is going to have on the next era of IT.

So who’s the next Crowbar barclamp rockstar? 

You tell me.

You.  Crowbar.  Download.  Build barclamp.  Share.

I’d love to be telling your story here next.  🙂

More info:

• The Cloud Foundry Blog – http://blog.cloudfoundry.com
• Get open source Crowbar – www.github.com/DellCloudEdge
• Rob Hirschfeld’s Blog (Dell)
• Barton George’s Blog (Dell)

  
Until next time,

JBGeorge
@jbgeorge