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THIS JUST IN: The Dell OpenStack-Powered Cloud Solution Expands Globally
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It’s hard to believe that it’s only been eight months since Dell, the company I work for, brought the Dell OpenStack-Powered Cloud Solution to market. 
It was a great day for Dell in that we were
- the first to bring an OpenStack based, on-premise cloud solution to market
- the first to make available a software framework like Crowbar (extending Opscode’s Chef tool)
- the first to provide a referencable Dell OpenStack customer in DreamHost
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Being the agile team we are, we were very focused in our launch. We launched the solution in North America first, while 
we learned about the open source cloud needs of Europe and Asia and what our customers in those regions needed from an OpenStack solution.
We listened. We learned. We built. We tested. We took learnings back to our solution. And we retested. And got more customer input. And retested. And we built in our learnings.
(Should be a very familiar song and dance to the innovators out there.)
And that journey brings us to today.
With that exprience under our belt, I’m proud to say our team has reached our next milestone….
At World Hosting Days in Germany today, Dell will be announcing that our OpenStack-Powered Cloud Solution will be launching in the UK, Germany, and China.
Our executive director, John Igoe, will be on stage at the event to talk through more details on the launch, supported by a great group of folks to help answer questions on the announcement and the solution.
As we take the Dell OpenStack-Powered Cloud Solution into these new regions, it continues to feature:
- A validated and OpenStack-optimized reference architecture based on Dell’s infrastructure portfolio, including Dell PowerEdge C series and new 12G servers
- Open source OpenStack cloud software
- Dell developed Crowbar software to enable quick and easy deployment + continous integration
- Deployment, support, and consulting services
We’re very excited by the news today, and anticipate this will help accelerate OpenStack as a movement and a community. 
We’ve seen the OpenStack community grow so quickly and our friends in Europe and Asia are a strong part of what makes the OpenStack open source movement so great. In fact, I am happy to report that we’ve already begun enablng some of our customers in those areas to start with our solution.
If you’re interested in learning more about what Dell is doing with OpenStack, and more on the Dell OpenStack-Powered Cloud Solution, you can visit www.Dell.com/OpenStack or drop us an email at OpenStack@Dell.com.
Until next time.
JOSEPH
@jbgeorge
More info:
- Dell.com/OpenStack
- Dell.com/Crowbar
- Crowbar’s public repository
- The Dell OpenStack case study featuring DreamHost
- RobHirschfeld.com – our lead architect’s blog
- BartonGeorge.net – our web / tech marketing director’s blog
THIS JUST IN: VMware and Dell Partner to Enable Cloud Foundry via #Crowbar
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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
The #Dell #Crowbar Software Framework: Who, What, When, Where, and How
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It’s been about a week since Dell (the company I work for) officially announced the Dell OpenStack Cloud Solution, the market’s first HW / SW / Services solution for OpenStack – and the response has been great!
(Check out my last blog post about it here for more details.)
Crowbar from Dell
Since this wasn’t your average announcement with a big company like Dell actually contributing to the community, I received a number of questions, comments, and accolades around our contributed software framework – Crowbar.
So I thought I’d pass on some of the people, history, functionality, and background behind Dell’s Crowbar software.
History
Since Dell had been a committed partner of OpenStack’s since it’s announcement in July of 2010 (over a year ago), we were among the first to begin working with the OpenStack code as we began developing the Dell solution for it. Since it was very early, very raw code, there was a lot of installing / testing / coding / re-testing / blowing it away / reinstalling / testing / coding / re-testing / blowing it away… you get the idea.
And as any cloud technology goes, deploying OpenStack on bare metal took time, effort, and expertise.
It wasn’t long before our solutions development team decided we’d automate this process to make our efforts quicker. But lo and behold, we discovered that others in the community were dealing with the same thing. A few early users indicated that it was taking them a full day to deploy OpenStack from start to finish, and in most cases, it was taking multiple days.
So we decided build out a quick, automated method of deploying OpenStack on bare metal technology that the whole community could use.
And Crowbar was born.
Functionality
Extending the capabilities of the Chef configuration management framework from Opscode, our team began developing Crowbar with the goal of installing a multi-node OpenStack cloud on bare metal PowerEdge C servers in less than four hours. “Multi-node” was a key requirement as almost every use case we encountered required that.
We announced Crowbar’s existence and development in early 2011, with our intent to field test, and then release to the open source community. Over the course of time, we began testing it out in various instances and scenarios, as well as demo-ing it at various cloud events. Many of you may remember us showcasing our progress at SCaLE, CloudConnect, and the Apr OpenStack Design Summit (which Dell sponsored).
With time and experience, we came across a number of requirements for this type of a tool – automated BIOS configuration, RAID configuration, network discovery and set up, installation of the open source system monitoring tool Nagios, installation of the open source performance monitoring tool Ganglia, and more. So we built it all in.
And based on the extensive cloud cloud experience on our team, we knew that cloud development and management is an ever evolving exercise – as the Dell OpenStack lead architect and OpenStack community celeb Rob Hirschfeld would say, “Cloud is always ready, and never finished.” So Crowbar is designed in a way to manage change. Add in a new supported server to the mix, and Crowbar detects it and proceeds to add it to the OpenStack pool. When software needs to be updated, Crowbar can be leveraged to update once, and deploy to all.
Barclamps
Dell Crowbar featuring Barclamps!
And what about new components that come out? There are a number of new OpenStack capabilities coming out of various projects – how do those get rolled in?
Barclamps.
(Yes, we designed Crowbar with modularity in mind.)
Think of it this way: Crowbar is made up of two general functionality categories – the Crowbar core and Crowbar barclamps. The Crowbar core contains all the main functionality that allows Crowbar to perform tasks. Barclamps are modules that actually perform a function. So need to deploy OpenStack Nova (aka cloud compute)? Leverage the Nova barclamp. Need to deploy OpenStack Swift (aka cloud storage)? Leverage the Swift barclamp.
Need to deploy some software that doesn’t have a barclamp?
You can create your own barclamp!
And that’s the beauty of Crowbar – we created (and will continue to create) barclamps that work for our customers, but we’re encouraging / training our customers to develop their own barclamps, and we want the community at large to do the same.
What real customers are doing with the Crowbar and the Dell OpenStack Cloud Solution
In our press release, one of our OpenStack customers, DreamHost, spoke about their success with the Dell OpenStack Cloud Solution. Along with Dell server technology and services, the innovative DreamHost team really picked up on the Crowbar tool. In fact, as they are working on hosted options for their Ceph technology, the DreamHost team has begun developing a barclamp for Ceph!
In fact, here’s what the DreamHost GM of Emerging Technologies, Ben Cherian, had to say about Crowbar:
“If Dell had not developed Crowbar, we would have been forced to write a similar tool ourselves. It’s a fundamental goal that we have in the company: automate, automate, automate. That’s how we drive down prices.”
Ben also went on to say that since Dell had already developed a technology like Crowbar, we ended up saving them four to six months of development time.
Common Questions
- Is Crowbar for Dell products only?
The Crowbar software that we’ve developed at Dell will obviously work with Dell supported platforms. But there is no reason that this framework will not work for any other vendor technology – all that needs to happen is for that vendor / user / community member to create a barclamp for that technology.
- Is Crowbar for OpenStack only?
Obviously, our original use case is for OpenStack – it has been tested and validated for that model. However, again, it is a flexible software framework. We can see a number of use cases for OpenStack, and welcome the community to use it where it makes sense.
- What do I get with Crowbar as a part of the Dell OpenStack Cloud Solution vs open source Crowbar?
There are two main differences at this point:
First, open source Crowbar has everything that the Dell OpenStack Cloud Solution Crowbar has, except for the BIOS and RAID capabilities, where we’re trying to clear some legal hurdles before we open source. Once those are cleared, we expect to open source those capabilities.
Second, when you get Crowbar as a part of the Dell OpenStack Cloud Solution, you will get full support from Dell via Dell Services. Any questions, support, training you need on Crowbar, Dell delivers it.
Where do I get Crowbar?
OK, the question of the hour. How do you get Crowbar?
- You get Dell-supported Crowbar when you purchase the Dell OpenStack Cloud Solution.
- You get open source Crowbar from our github site – http://www.github.com/dellcloudedge.
You can head over to http://www.RobHirschfeld.com and see much more TECHNICAL content on the Dell OpenStack Cloud Solution and Crowbar. In addition to being our lead architect on OpenStack, Rob is actually one of the developers of the actual Crowbar software. (You can also follow him on Twitter at @zehicle.)
And as always, if you want to learn more about the Dell OpenStack Cloud Solution, you can head to http://www.Dell.com/OpenStack. Or if you’d like to reach out to us to learn more, drop me and the gang a line at OpenStack@Dell.com.
Until next time,
JOSEPH
@jbgeorge
Dell OpenStack Cloud Solution
Opscode announces Private Chef and Hosted Chef
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Interesting news at the Velocity conference this week.
Opscode today announced their release of Hosted Chef, where Opscode offers their Chef capabialities “as a service”. Additionally, Opscode announced Private Chef, which is essentially Chef delivered as an appliance on premise.
Chef is an important part of what Dell is developing as part of our Crowbar tool that is being developed for OpenStack. By leveraging Chef cookbooks and recipes, and even contributing some of our own, it allows us to drive the operational model that we see as an important avenue to cloud technology.
What’s Crowbar? You can google or twitter it (#crowbar) to see what people in the know are saying, but at a basic level, it allows user to deploy an MULTI-NODE OpenStack cloud on bare metal Dell PowerEdge C servers in a matter of minutes. But it also offers BIOS configuration, RAID configuration, network discovery, and a number of other great benefits. If you’ve been to a recent cloud event or the last OpenStack Design Summit, you may have seen our live demo of it.
It’s just one of the many cool things we’re doing at Dell to better enable our customers to get to the cloud sooner rather than later, and to leverage OpenStack as a powerful cloud platform.
I’ve written about Dell’s OpenStack solution and Crowbar a lot, so you can check out my blog history for more. Or if you’d like to chat about it drop me a line at OpenStack@Dell.com.
These offerings certainly come at the right time for a market seeking some real cloud answers – congrats to our pals over at Opscode!
More info on the new offerings:
- Hosted Chef – http://www.opscode.com/hosted-chef/
- Private Chef – http://www.opscode.com/private-chef/
- The full press release – http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/opscode-delivers-cloud-infrastructure-automation-to-the-enterprise-123801144.html
Until next time,
JBGeorge
@jbgeorge
The JBGeorge Tech Blog 