OpenStack Governance Elections – Coming Soon

 

August 4, 2011

The time is once again upon us for our OpenStack Governance Elections. The Nomination Process will run from August 10 – 24 at Noon CST; stay tuned for more information on how this process will work. The Election will run from August 25 – September 4 at Noon CST. Final results will be posted immediately upon election shutdown on the 4th at Noon CST.

Information on the open positions is listed below.

NOVA Project Team Lead (1 Position)

Voter Eligibility – Only OpenStack community members who have successfully submitted code to the NOVA project are eligible to be nominated or vote.  I am using the list of email addresses found at http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~hudson-openstack/nova/trunk/view/head:/Authors for eligible electors and nominees.

Each member of this list will receive an email with a direct link to the NOVA PTL team lead election site where they can vote for the member of their choice. Each member can only vote once in this election.

SWIFT Project Team Lead (1 Position)

Voter Eligibility – Only OpenStack community members who have successfully submitted code to the SWIFT project are eligible to be nominated or vote.  I am using the list of email addresses found at http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~hudson-openstack/swift/trunk/view/head:/AUTHORS for eligible electors and nominees.

Each member of this list will receive an email with a direct link to the SWIFT PTL team lead election where they can vote for the member of their choice. As this list only has author names, I will be reaching out to several members whose email I do not have; of course, if you are on the list you can simply send me your email address to save me time in searching out your contact information. Each member of this list will receive an email with a direct link to the SWIFT PTL team lead election site where they can vote for the member of their choice. Each member can only vote once in this election.

GLANCE Project Team Lead (1 Position)

Voter Eligibility – Only OpenStack community members who have successfully submitted code to the GLANCE project are eligible to be nominated or vote. I am using the list of email addresses found at http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~hudson-openstack/glance/trunk/view/head:/Authors for eligible electors and nominees.

Each member of this list will receive an email with a direct link to the GLANCE PTL team lead election site where they can vote for the member of their choice. Each member can only vote once in this election.

Project Policy Board (3 Open Positions)

Voter Eligibility – Any registered member of the OpenStack Launchpad is eligible to run or be nominated for one of the two positions. I am getting this list of authorized voters and nominees from the Launchpad system at https://launchpad.net/~openstack. Based on current numbers, there are 1,321 people eligible to vote or be nominated; however, Launchpad does not provide me the email address of all 1,321 people. Thus, if you are interested in voting I will need to obtain your email address for entry into the CIVS (see below) voting system. More information on this process later in this blog post.

PTL Member Wins 1 of 3 Slots – Following governance policy, if either of the three top vote getters are also winners in the PTL election, then the next highest person on the election results will be declared the winner.

The Condorcet Internet Voting System (see below) leverages ranked choices thereby making the possibility of a tie extremely unlikely. If a tie does occur, a runoff between the  candidates who tied will be held.

ELECTION TOOL

Like previous elections, we will use the Condorcet Internet Voting Service from Cornell University, see http://www.cs.cornell.edu/andru/civs.html. This tool uses the Condorcet method of voting which invokes ranking the nominees instead of just selecting one choice. More information on this methodology is at http://www.cs.cornell.edu/w8/~andru/civs/rp.html.

All registered voters will receive an email with a unique link allowing them to privately vote.

For the Project Policy Board election, in order to collect voters email addresses I will contact every potential voter using the “Contact this team’s members” feature at https://launchpad.net/~openstack and ask them to reply directly to me using their preferred voting email address if they want to participate in the vote.

Please note that the voting system is run using private polls with restricted access to ensure voter authenticity; however all results will be made public once the election ends.

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OpenStack Conference – Call for Speakers

 

August 3, 2011

On behalf of the OpenStack Conference Program Committee, I am pleased to initiate the Call for Speakers for the Fall 2011 OpenStack Conference in Boston, MA from October 5-7.  This gathering of OpenStack developers, users, eco-system partners, open source enthusiasts, and cloud computing technologists presents speakers with the opportunity to actively participate in the shaping of the future of the OpenStack project. I look forward to joining with the community in Boston for an amazing 3 days of OpenStack goodness.

PROCESS
The Program Committee has listed a series of suggested topics for the overall agenda of the conference. Please review these topics and submit your talk under the various topic(s). Of course, if you have an idea for a topic not listed, please send your information as the Program Committee is always open to new ideas.

To submit your request to be a speaker please send an email to [email protected] with the Subject Line: OPENSTACK CONFERENCE SPEAKER SUBMISSION. In the email be sure to include your contact information as well as the topic you are interested in speaking on. Should you submit a new topic, please provide details on that topic.

TOPICS
The topics suggested by the Program Committee fit under two umbrella categories:  technical or business. Each session is currently planned for 30 minutes.

Technical
Project Overview – NOVA
Project Overview –  SWIFT
Project Overview – GLANCE
Community Developer Tools
OpenStack in the Data Center
OpenStack Deployments
DevOps
Project Introductions – Information on the various eco-system projects not yet core in OpenStack

Business
Economics of OpenStack
OpenStack Case Study
Project Overview – NOVA
Project Overview –  SWIFT
Project Overview – GLANCE
Building an OpenStack Practice (Solution Providers)
OpenStack Case Study
Public Cloud Hosting Best Practices
Private Clouds Hosting Best Practices

The Program Committee anxiously awaits your speaker submission as we assemble the final OpenStack Conference Agenda. The deadline to submit your request is September 6, 2011 so that we can release the final agenda on September 14, 2011. All speakers selected will receive a complementary pass to the event via a special registration code. If you have any further questions, please contact me.

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Some OpenStack Pictures from OSCON

 

July 28, 2011

Here are a few shots of the OpenStack booth at OSCON being supported by our amazing ecosystem partners during a slow time when I could get away from the crowds to take a shot. I also took a picture of the great OpenStack cake from our birthday with the tasty cupcakes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Announcing the Gluster Connector for OpenStack

 

Update: Greetings! I forgot to add a friendly ‘hello’ the first time. Also, we will submit code to the OpenStack project under the Apache 2 license in the near future. The automated code is not yet available, but for now you can track progress from our resource page. You *can* get the same functionality if you’re willing to follow a manual process.

Today Gluster announced that we are (almost) ready to release the Gluster Connector for OpenStack, after weeks and months of studying the OpenStack community and looking for ways that we can help.

The Gluster Connector for OpenStack is a triumph of community. Watching OpenStack grow as quickly as it has, changing the industry as it has, is breathtaking to watch. To be able to participate in that community and move it that much more forward is a privilege that we don’t take for granted. You can get more information about release availability and the first cut of documentation on our resource page.

So what are we about to release for OpenStack? This line from the press release says it all:

The Gluster Connector for OpenStack …supports the virtual motion of the VMs within the OpenStack compute environment.

You will now be able to deploy or migrate VM’s anywhere in the world, more flexibly, quickly and at greater scale. Here are some of the things the connector enables:

  • Instantly boot VMs using a mountable filesystem interface – no more waiting to fetch the entire VM image before booting
  • Live migration of VMs with no disruption to users for business continuity and disaster recovery
  • Instantly switch from one VM to another
  • Migrate the VMs as well as resume the VMs on a different hypervisor, in case the original hypervisor fails.
  • After migration, the destination VM comes up with preserved data
  • Movement of VMs between clouds
  • Easier management of VMs

Because of the global namespace capability of GlusterFS, we’re bringing the dream of open cloud federation that much closer to reality. If you’re deploying an OpenStack cloud, this makes life easier and opens up new possibilities at the same time. If you’re a developer, your apps are now easier to scale-out to multiple geographic locations.

These are exciting days in the cloud computing world.

OpenStack Birthday Videos

 

July 26, 2011

Over the last few weeks many OpenStack community members have sent me videos celebrating the first birthday of OpenStack. I plan to show these videos at the OpenStack booth at OSCON this week and I also want to share them with the community via this blog. Rather than post all at once, I plan to release them periodically on the blog. To get things going, I am staring with an amazing video from Robert Jamail at Rackspace who is a talented artist as you will see:

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OSCON Schedule for OpenStack

 

July 24, 2011

For OSCON attendees looking to learn more about the OpenStack community or technology, here are the recommended sessions:

Speaking Sessions, Wednesday, July 27

Introduction to OpenStack, Eric Day
Wednesday, 1:40 pm
http://www.oscon.com/oscon2011/public/schedule/detail/19146

Using OpenStack APIs, Present and Future, Mike Mayo
Wednesday, 4:10 pm
http://www.oscon.com/oscon2011/public/schedule/detail/18550

OpenStack Fundamentals Training Part 1, Swift, John Dickinson
Wednesday, 4:10 pm
http://www.oscon.com/oscon2011/public/schedule/detail/21287

OpenStack Fundamentals Training Part 2, Nova, Jason Cannavale
Wednesday, 5:00 pm
http://www.oscon.com/oscon2011/public/schedule/detail/21347

OpenStack One-Year Anniversary Party, Spirit of 77
Wednesday, 7-9 pm
http://openstack-one-year.eventbrite.com/

Speaking Sessions, Thursday, July 28

Prying Open the Cloud with Dell Crowbar and OpenStack, Joseph George, Rob Hirschfeld
Thursday, 10:40 am
http://www.oscon.com/oscon2011/public/schedule/detail/21206

OpenStack + Ceph, Ben Cherian, Jonathan Bryce
Thursday, 1:40 pm
http://www.oscon.com/oscon2011/public/schedule/detail/21174

Achieving Hybrid Cloud Mobility with OpenStack and XCP, Paul Voccio, Ewan Mellor
Thursday, 2:30 pm
http://www.oscon.com/oscon2011/public/schedule/detail/18726

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Building and Maintaining Image Templates for the Cloud

 

July 22, 2011

As IaaS platforms like OpenStack gain traction in delivering compute and storage resources on demand, we’re seeing telco and enterprise IT customers increasingly focus on “software on demand”. Typically existing software delivery processes are too lengthy to take full advantage of the “instant-on” nature of the cloud. End users need to be able choose and instantly provision software and applications, then decommission them when no longer required. Consequently this raises many questions: how do I get apps onto an IaaS platform? how do I ensure software governance if somebody else is providing the apps as part of an app store? how do I build and maintain software images through time, making cloud deployments predictable and consistent?

Today, software images are often built manually, making them difficult to update and maintain over time. Cloud users are now realizing the need to work with transparent image templates which enable them to trace individual software components, versions and licenses. They are combining these templates with automated software delivery processes, using APIs to industrialize image creation and maintenance. This enables them to easily track components, add or update software automatically, and generate to one or many clouds. The image remains consistent and predictable, whether it’s used only within a private cloud or as part of a hybrid model for bursting into Amazon, for example.

Customers can take different approaches to building and deploying these images. Firstly, the devops model uses a base image that contains only basic packages to boot the OS. Once it’s installed, a phone home feature enables the devops platform to install all the packages that a particular service needs. This is a great model for many customers. However, others are realizing that it takes a long time to stand up the service, if you’re installing say 400 VMs from an outside repository. In a cloud model, you’re also paying for bandwidth and other resources over that time.

Secondly, customers can use more complete images that include not only the OS packages but also middleware and applications. They can then combine these with a devops platform for configuration, which is a very flexible way to push configuration information without some of the disadvantages we discussed earlier.

Finally, there are “fully baked”, self-contained images that include all the software components, as well as configuration logic. These images can be used to turn a specific solution on within a private or public cloud without a great deal of expertise and are often used by ISVs for quickly ramping up POCs, for example, at a customer site.


Whichever approach you take, it’s essential to remember that all three approaches require to control and maintain the base image over time. You must be able to track the packages and components you’re using, even in a devops base image, otherwise you’ll quickly end up with scores of unmanageable images.

Easy traceability and maintenance will also help you transition to the next phase of cloud software deployments: moving from a monolithic image for small deployments or test purposes to multi-tier images for pre-production and production deployments on a larger scale. You’ll be able to more easily piece together multiple VMs, provision, maintain and decommission complete solutions over multiple cloud nodes.

James Weir

CTO, UShareSoft

OpenStack Celebrates a Successful First Year

 

July 20, 2011

A year into the life of OpenStack, it seems like its success should have been more obvious.  The market lacked an open platform designed specifically for building and managing a cloud.  We knew that fact at Rackspace because we had been forced to build our own solution.  For five years we looked for off the shelf technologies that could power our public cloud but never found an acceptable solution.  So we kept building our own proprietary technology.  But that wasn’t the right answer.  As a company, we had always relied on standardized technologies to power our offers.  Technologies that our customers were also running in their own data centers.  But in cloud, such standards did not exist and were nowhere in sight.  Certainly, the ones that were emerging were not completely open.  And by building our own solution — one not available to anyone else — we weren’t actually helping to solve the problem.  So we decided to open source our technology, and make it available for use by our competitors and customers alike.  What we didn’t know was whether anyone else saw the world as we did.

A year later, its obvious we weren’t alone.  Consider these stats:

  • We grew from 2 organizations to 89
  • We grew from a couple dozen developers to nearly 250 unique contributors in the Cactus release and over 1,200 in the development community
  • Over 35,000 downloads from Launchpad and thousands more from our ecosystem
  • The scope of the project has truly evolved into a cloud operating system, tackling a diverse range of cloud infrastructure needs such as networking, load balancers and database.
  • Our initial conference and design summit had over 100 people, while the last in April hosted over 450
  • We have delivered 3 major releases and are halfway to the fourth
  • 17 countries have active participants and user groups now exist on 5 continents

One of the key reasons OpenStack has been successful is that it has such an audacious mission — to build an operating system to power both public and private clouds.  We believe that while public and private clouds do have different requirements, much of the core need is shared.  Things such as basic management, self-service and scalability.   OpenStack started with the large scale cloud expertise of Rackspace and NASA and has since added a wealth of knowledge from a who’s who list contributors with broad-ranging enterprise and service provider expertise.  All of these participants recognize that in order for the promise of cloud to be realized — for workloads to seamlessly migrate from one environment to another — a common platform is required inside the enterprise DC as well as the public cloud.  The technology should also be purpose-built for cloud, rather than a bolt-on to existing server virtualization technologies.  And that solution should be open and controlled by a vast community rather than a single vendor.

The shared community desire for an open cloud operating system powering both public and private clouds has resulted in a flurry of activity around OpenStack.  Consider the following:

  • Major enterprise software companies such as Citrix and Canonical, as well as startups such as StackOps, have announced commercial distributions of OpenStack.  This is a very key development for enterprise adoption.
  • Reference hardware architectures from the likes of Dell, Cisco, Intel and AMD for OpenStack.
  • The contributions from service providers and announcement of public clouds powered by OpenStack including Rackspace, Internap, Dreamhost, Dell, Korea Telecom, Memset and Nephoscale among others.
  • Support for OpenStack deployments by the likes of Cloudscaling, Cybera and Rackspace Cloud Builders.
  • Deployment support from Puppet Labs and Opscode.
  • A host of tools and software integration from scores of companies including Scalr, Rightscale, FathomDB, enStratus, and many others.
  • Venture funding and M&A activity have picked up in the community, including the recent funding of Piston and the acquisition of Cloud.com by Citrix (both OpenStack community members).

Most importantly, enterprises are really beginning to deploy OpenStack.  It wasn’t until the Cactus release in April that OpenStack truly became ready for production deployments.  But during the 3 months since that release, the number of companies deploying the technologies is truly remarkable.  Expect to see many of these stories coming to light in the next few months.

Thank you to everyone who has made OpenStack happen over the last year!  It has been an incredibly rewarding experience to be part of such an engaged and diverse community committed to the goal of an open cloud operating system.  Happy first birthday to all!

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