COMPUTER 10: Lesson 7 - File Storage and Online Collaboration
Rishidot research briefing notes Cloudscaling
1. Cloudscaling
A
Briefing
Note
By
Krishnan
Subramanian
Cloudscaling
A
Briefing
Note
by
Krishnan
Subramanian
Company:
Cloudscaling
(www.cloudscaling.com)
Market:
Infrastructure
as
a
Service
(IaaS)
Products:
Open
Cloud
System
(OCS)
Summary:
Cloudscaling
is
one
of
the
vendors
in
the
OpenStack
ecosystem
focusing
on
building
infrastructure
for
web
scale
applications.
Their
core
product
is
Open
Cloud
System,
which
is
in
Version
2.0
now.
OCS
is
suitable
for
organizations
wanting
to
build
elastic
infrastructure
like
public
clouds
inside
their
own
datacenter.
OCS
core
is
based
on
OpenStack
with
some
additional
add-‐ons
offered
by
Cloudscaling
to
optimize
the
OpenStack
platform
for
production
level
infrastructure.
2. Cloudscaling
A
Briefing
Note
By
Krishnan
Subramanian
Market
Overview
The
cloud
infrastructure
market
is
divided
into
two
segments,
public
clouds
and
private
clouds.
At
present,
public
cloud
use
is
mostly
driven
by
startups
and
other
SMBs
while
enterprises
are
slowly
starting
to
embrace
the
public
clouds
for
their
non-‐mission
critical
needs.
Even
though
some
organizations
are
using
public
clouds
for
their
mission
critical
workloads,
most
of
the
enterprise
usage
is
restricted
to
customer
facing
web
applications.
However,
enterprises
see
the
benefits
of
public
clouds
and
use
private
clouds
as
a
way
to
achieve
some
of
the
benefits
like
agility,
cost
savings,
etc.
inside
their
organization.
They
also
use
the
hybrid
approach
for
certain
use
cases
where
the
spike
in
the
load
is
short
term
and
investments
in
additional
capacity
are
unnecessary
(Cloudbursting).
According
to
our
internal
estimates,
private
and
hybrid
clouds
are
going
to
dominate
the
enterprise
market
for
the
next
3-‐5
years
while
public
clouds
slowly
make
inroads
into
the
enterprises.
This
changes
the
dynamics
of
infrastructure
market
and
opens
up
the
market
for
cloud
infrastructure
platforms.
After
staying
quiet
for
many
years,
telecom
companies
are
slowly
waking
up
to
the
reality
of
public
clouds
and
the
value
they
can
offer
in
the
cloud
market.
Telecoms,
along
with
other
traditional
hosting
service
providers,
are
going
to
greatly
increase
the
market
size
of
cloud
infrastructure
platforms,
making
this
one
of
the
fastest
growing
segments
in
the
coming
years.
This
market
segment
is
divided
into
proprietary
and
open
source
software.
Some
of
the
leading
cloud
infrastructure
platforms
include:
• OpenStack
• CloudStack
• Eucalyptus
• vCloud
Suite
• Nimbula
• Hexagrid
• Joyent
SmartOS
• 3Tera
• Flexiant
• Microsoft
CloudOS
There
are
few
other
proprietary
and
open
source
platforms
available
in
the
market.
We
have
listed
the
important
cloud
infrastructure
platforms
as
per
our
analysis
of
the
market.
Cloudscaling
Overview
Cloudscaling
was
founded
by
Randy
Bias,
one
of
the
thought
leaders
in
the
cloud
computing
space
and
former
CTO
of
GoGrid.
The
company
started
off
as
a
systems
integrator
building
cloud
infrastructure
for
telcos
but
slowly
transformed
themselves
as
a
company
offering
cloud
infrastructure
solutions
based
on
OpenStack
software.
Their
core
focus
is
in
building
reliable,
scalable,
production
grade
cloud
infrastructure
for
enterprises
and
service
providers.
3. Cloudscaling
A
Briefing
Note
By
Krishnan
Subramanian
Taking
advantage
of
the
reluctance
of
enterprises
to
relinquish
the
control
they
have
on
their
infrastructure,
Cloudscaling’s
Open
Cloud
System
(OCS)
offers
the
same
benefits
of
public
clouds
and
can
be
deployed
inside
the
enterprise
datacenters
with
the
full
control
of
IT.
Currently
in
Version
2.0,
OCS
uses
certified
hardware
components
along
with
the
reference
architecture
developed
by
Cloudscaling
team
based
on
their
experience
building
web
scale
elastic
clouds
at
telecom
providers
like
Korean
Telecom
and
service
providers
like
Internap.
OCS
also
includes
certain
production
grade
features
offering
improved
reliability,
performance
and
security
that
are
not
part
of
the
core
OpenStack
trunk.
In
addition,
OCS
includes
support
for
Amazon
EC2
and
Google
Compute
Engine
APIs,
thereby,
making
federation/bursting
into
these
public
cloud
services
completely
seamless.
OCS
2.0
offers
support
for
AWS
EBS
like
block
storage
and
support
for
OpenStack
Folsom.
OCS
2.0
also
supports
advanced
networking
capabilities
including
scale-‐out
networking
and
cloud
topology
management.
Cloudscaling
has
customers
ranging
from
enterprises
to
telcos
to
large
service
providers
to
modern
organizations
focused
on
consumer
facing
web
scale
applications.
Even
though
they
are
built
on
free
and
open
source
OpenStack
software,
their
monetization
strategy
is
two-‐fold:
• Annual
support
and
maintenance
for
Open
Cloud
System
based
on
per
physical
CPU
and
terabyte.
They
have
two
support
levels,
base
level
and
production
level
• Commercially
licensed
production
grade
add-‐ons
for
OpenStack
with
support
part
of
the
licensing
fee
Let
us
briefly
discuss
the
pros
and
cons
of
Cloudscaling’s
OCS:
Advantages
-‐ Web
scale
elastic
clouds
ready
for
production
environment.
One
of
the
few
players
in
the
OpenStack
ecosystem
to
offer
production
grade
deployment
of
OpenStack
with
fast
support
for
newer
versions
of
the
software
-‐ Built
on
top
of
open
source
software
without
any
need
for
expensive
specialized
hardware.
Use
of
commodity
hardware
and
networking
makes
the
solution
cost
effective
-‐ Built
for
modern
dynamical
distributed
applications
-‐ Suitable
for
both
enterprises
and
service
providers
Disadvantages
-‐ Dependence
on
fragile
OpenStack
ecosystem.
A
fork
in
the
community
has
the
potential
to
impact
their
business
-‐ Enterprises
heavily
reliant
on
legacy
software
will
find
their
solution
to
be
of
little
use
Competitors
Cloudscaling
faces
competition
from
many
different
market
segments
including:
Ø Public
cloud
services
like
Amazon
Web
Services,
Google
Compute
Engine,
Rackspace,
etc.
including
many
startups
in
the
infrastructure
as
a
service
space.
As
enterprises
get
comfortable
with
public
cloud
services,
their
need
for
a
solution
like
Cloudscaling
decreases
4. Cloudscaling
A
Briefing
Note
By
Krishnan
Subramanian
Ø Proprietary
cloud
platforms
like
vCloud,
Nimbula,
etc.
and
open
source
cloud
platforms
like
Eucalyptus,
CloudStack,
etc.
combined
with
professional
services
offered
by
the
vendors
behind
the
product/projects
or
other
system
integrators
Ø Other
vendors
in
the
OpenStack
ecosystem
including
companies
like
Piston
Cloud,
Rackspace
Private
Cloud,
Nebula,
Redhat,
SuSe,
and
system
integrators
like
Mirantis,
etc.
Summary
Cloudscaling
Open
Cloud
System
is
well
suited
for
enterprises
wanting
to
set
up
elastic
infrastructure
for
their
modern
distributed
applications
and
service
providers
who
want
to
offer
public
cloud
services
like
Amazon
Web
Services
and
Google
Compute
Engine.
However,
it
is
ill-‐suited
for
enterprises
having
large
legacy
application
baggage.
OCS
2.0
is
production
ready
solution
on
commodity
hardware
and
uses
open
protocols.