Cloud computing technologies overview and comparison

There are so many companies trying to make money out of cloud computing and so many open source products ... with this article I want to give a short introduction on what is available on the market today ...

Contents 1 Cloud Concepts 1.1 IaaS 1.2 PaaS 1.3 SaaS 2 Cloud Companies 2.1 Amazon 2.2 Google 2.3 Rackspace 2.4 cloud.com 2.5 3 tera 2.6 Citrix 2.7 Ubuntu 2.8 VMware 2.9 RightScale 2.10 force.com 3 interesting (OpenSource) products 3.1 Eucalyptus 3.2 OpenStack (TM) 3.3 CloudStack (TM) 3.4 OpenCirrus (TM) 3.5 Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud 3.6 MapReduce 3.7 Hadoop 3.8 Mahout 3.9 Pig 3.10 Hive 3.11 AppScale 3.12 openQRM 3.13 enStratus 3.14 cloud42 3.15 proxmox 3.16 abicloud 3.17 elastra 3.18 Red Hat Cloud Foundations 4 virtualisation technologies 4.1 lxc 4.2 kvm 4.3 xen 4.4 vmware 4.5 hyperv 4.6 qemu 4.7 virtualbox 4.8 openvz 4.9 virtuozzo

Cloud Concepts

Cloud Computing can not be defined in two sentences. It is a marketing hype for highly scaling (web-)technologies that are mostly payed per use and delivered in a very short time. Anyway cloud computing can be devided into the following categories ...

IaaS

• Infrastructure as a Service
• virtual computers, virtual networks/loadbalancers/firewalls/storage is delivered in minutes on demand
• you don't need to care about hardware
• example: Amazon Web Services (highly scalable virtual machines - you get root access to VM and deploy your stuff)

PaaS

• Platform as a Service
• provides a highly scalable application server / platform
• you don't need to care about hardware and operating system
• example: Google App Engine (highly scalable "tomcat" webapps - you just upload a .war file)

SaaS

• Software as a Service
• provides highly scalable application
• you don't need to care about hardware and operating system and application
• example: salesfore.com ... google mail ...

Cloud Companies

Amazon

• mainly IaaS
• Amazon Web Services AWS (EC2)
• kind of standard
• S3 Storage
• EBS block storage
• pretty mature
• easy to use web frontend
• pioneer in cloud computing business
• mature and huge infrastructure

Google

• mainly PaaS and SaaS
• google mail, google apps ... offer high scalable SaaS
• GoogleApp Engine offers high scalable PaaS (you just deploy your Java .war file and don't care about anything else)

Rackspace

• cloud hosting provider
• open sourced their "OpenStack" (http://www.rackspace.com/information/mediacenter/announcements/openstack.php)
• advertise with "fanatic support"
• http://www.rackspace.com/

cloud.com

• opensource private/public/hypbrid clouds
• demo video on: http://cloud.com/main/ (nice and easy looking webfrontend)
• also part of openStack initiative (http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2010/07/impact-of-openstack-project-go.php)

3 tera

• the impressiv demo says it all: http://www.3tera.com/AppLogic_demo.php
• fully virtualised data center
• drag and drop provisioning of components
• virtualised firewalls, loadbalancers, VLANs, applications ....

Citrix

• part of openStack
• maintainer of XEN
• strong virualisation player in enterprise business

Ubuntu

• Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud UEC (http://www.ubuntu.com/cloud)
• bundles eucalyptus for easy installation with ubuntu server (installs directly and easy from .iso/cd)
• offers webfrontend and "template-shop" for vm-images
• work together with eucalyptus company

VMware

• strong virtualisation player in enterprise business

RightScale

• offers management software for EC2 cloud
• also works with eucalyptus private clouds
• load management
• server templates (improves image management with provisioning scripts, so you don't need to maintain too many huge image files)

force.com

interesting (OpenSource) products

Eucalyptus

OpenStack (TM)

CloudStack (TM)

OpenCirrus (TM)

Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud

MapReduce

Hadoop

Mahout

Pig

Hive

AppScale

openQRM

enStratus

• http://www.enstratus.com/

cloud42

• http://cloud42.net/

proxmox

• http://www.proxmox.com/
• http://nodomain.cc/2010/08/16/vps-hosting-mit-proxmox.html

abicloud

• http://www.abiquo.com/

elastra

• http://www.elastra.com/

Red Hat Cloud Foundations

• deltacloud is a wrapper tool that supports drivers for different cloud providers - one API for different clouds
• http://www.redhat.com/solutions/cloud/
• offers whitepapers and example implementations

virtualisation technologies

lxc

• OS virtualisation
• part of upstream kernel
• more containers on one physical hardware than with hypervisors
• manageable with openQRM / libvirt
• native performance (faster compared to hypervisors)
• similar to openvz/virtuozzo

kvm

• hypervisor
• runs on most linuxes
• manageable with eucalyptus, libvirt, openqrm, ...
• lots of features
• pushed by redhat
• multiple OS possible on one host (windows, linux, different kernels ...)

xen

• paravirtualised (need modified kernels)
• manageable with eucalyptus, amazon, openQRM, openStack, libvirt
• commercial version pushed by citrix

vmware

hyperv

• microsoft virtualization technology

qemu

• emulator for different hardware / architecture
• not the best choice for performance critical needs

virtualbox

• simple virtualization for home use

openvz

• opensource os containers / os virtualization / contextualization

virtuozzo

• enterprise version of openvz
• used by many hosting companies
• powered by parallels

... tbc ...