20090731
cloud computing & the us government
the us government has released a rfq (request for quotation) for the cloud computing initiative. the document can be found here. reuven cohen, founder of enomaly, has a great writeup here.
20090725
eucalyptus upgrades
in addition to everything else, eucalyptus has been working with boto on building a new set of commandline tools that is agnostic of the underlying cloud controller, whether that is amazon's ec2 or their own offering. the result of this effort is that with release 1.5.2, euca2ools is now available. underneath, euca2ools uses the python based boto, but is meant (at least initially) as a seamless replacement of the commandline tools provided by amazon. the eucalyptus public cloud has also been upgraded to 1.5.2. rock on!
20090723
rackspace open sources their cloud apis
on the heels of releasing apis for their cloud offerings, rackspace has now open sourced those apis as well. press release is copied below for archival.
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The Rackspace Cloud Goes Open Source with APIs
Company fostering foundation for open clouds and cross cloud interoperability; empowers cloud development community
SAN ANTONIO – July 23, 2009 – In a major advancement of its open cloud strategy, Rackspace® Hosting (NYSE:RAX), the world’s leader in hosting, today announced it has open sourced the specifications for its Cloud Servers and Cloud Files™ APIs under the Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution license. Developers are now free to copy, implement, and modify the specifications, helping to enable a truly open cloud.
The Rackspace Cloud™ worked directly with developers in an open community to create the specifications and has now released them through Creative Commons. Creative Commons is a not-for-profit organization, founded in 2001, that promotes the creative re-use of intellectual and artistic works, whether owned or in the public domain through its free copyright licenses.
"We welcome Rackspace’s decision to provide their client-side tools as open source to the community,” stated Rich Wolski, Chief Technology Officer, Eucalyptus Systems Inc. “It builds confidence among developers to know they can 'see' how the APIs function at a programmatic level. Moreover, by providing their API tools as open source, Rackspace is assuming a leadership position in helping to achieve cloud interoperability."
As part of its ongoing vision to open the cloud and speed cloud development, the company has also made available its Cloud Files language bindings for Java, PHP, Python, C#, and Ruby under the MIT license. The source code for these bindings is publicly available on GitHub, a public software versioning system, at http://github.com/rackspace, where external developers can now contribute. Rackspace has also produced a technical guideline for Cloud Servers language bindings which is also available on GitHub. This guideline will enable developers to build Cloud Servers bindings in a variety of languages, but with a consistent design and feel. Rackspace expects to offer a reference implementation in Python soon and is aware of Ruby, Perl, Java, and Twisted Python Cloud Servers bindings that are in the process of being developed.
Rackspace’s commitment to openness extends to its work with the community and expects to continue to expand the range of language bindings as developers provide them and work with developers to help ensure they are notified quickly of new features and updated technical specifications.
"It's great to see Rackspace push the movement forward by getting more code into the hands of the community" stated, Alex Polvi, CEO, Cloudkick, a leading cloud management platform developer. “We are thrilled to see the company moving so quickly and proactively to promote an open cloud.”
“Rackspace is committed to the development of open cloud solutions and standards. We are working quickly to offer a wide range of tools to help developers work with us to create these important building blocks for the cloud industry,” said Emil Sayegh, General Manager, The Rackspace Cloud. “Rackspace is dedicated to bringing a coordinated effort to cloud development. We are working directly with our ecosystem of developers and the broader industry to share what we create with the open source community. We believe open source APIs are an enabling factor in making interoperable non-proprietary cloud solutions a reality.”
----
The Rackspace Cloud Goes Open Source with APIs
Company fostering foundation for open clouds and cross cloud interoperability; empowers cloud development community
SAN ANTONIO – July 23, 2009 – In a major advancement of its open cloud strategy, Rackspace® Hosting (NYSE:RAX), the world’s leader in hosting, today announced it has open sourced the specifications for its Cloud Servers and Cloud Files™ APIs under the Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution license. Developers are now free to copy, implement, and modify the specifications, helping to enable a truly open cloud.
The Rackspace Cloud™ worked directly with developers in an open community to create the specifications and has now released them through Creative Commons. Creative Commons is a not-for-profit organization, founded in 2001, that promotes the creative re-use of intellectual and artistic works, whether owned or in the public domain through its free copyright licenses.
"We welcome Rackspace’s decision to provide their client-side tools as open source to the community,” stated Rich Wolski, Chief Technology Officer, Eucalyptus Systems Inc. “It builds confidence among developers to know they can 'see' how the APIs function at a programmatic level. Moreover, by providing their API tools as open source, Rackspace is assuming a leadership position in helping to achieve cloud interoperability."
As part of its ongoing vision to open the cloud and speed cloud development, the company has also made available its Cloud Files language bindings for Java, PHP, Python, C#, and Ruby under the MIT license. The source code for these bindings is publicly available on GitHub, a public software versioning system, at http://github.com/rackspace, where external developers can now contribute. Rackspace has also produced a technical guideline for Cloud Servers language bindings which is also available on GitHub. This guideline will enable developers to build Cloud Servers bindings in a variety of languages, but with a consistent design and feel. Rackspace expects to offer a reference implementation in Python soon and is aware of Ruby, Perl, Java, and Twisted Python Cloud Servers bindings that are in the process of being developed.
Rackspace’s commitment to openness extends to its work with the community and expects to continue to expand the range of language bindings as developers provide them and work with developers to help ensure they are notified quickly of new features and updated technical specifications.
"It's great to see Rackspace push the movement forward by getting more code into the hands of the community" stated, Alex Polvi, CEO, Cloudkick, a leading cloud management platform developer. “We are thrilled to see the company moving so quickly and proactively to promote an open cloud.”
“Rackspace is committed to the development of open cloud solutions and standards. We are working quickly to offer a wide range of tools to help developers work with us to create these important building blocks for the cloud industry,” said Emil Sayegh, General Manager, The Rackspace Cloud. “Rackspace is dedicated to bringing a coordinated effort to cloud development. We are working directly with our ecosystem of developers and the broader industry to share what we create with the open source community. We believe open source APIs are an enabling factor in making interoperable non-proprietary cloud solutions a reality.”
20090715
rackspace's new cloud offerings
rackspace is already a big name in server hosting. they have now released their own api for running a cloud on those servers, with costs that best those of amazon. the press release is copied below. they also discuss the press release in a blog post.
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The Rackspace Cloud Announces Public API for Cloud Servers
Expands power of the cloud, offering more control and flexibility and automation features including mobile management of cloud with new iPhone application
SAN ANTONIO – July 14, 2009 – Rackspace® Hosting (NYSE:RAX), the world’s leader in hosting, today announced the availability of the public beta of its Cloud Servers® API. Cloud Servers, part of the company’s portfolio of cloud services, is a leading Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offering that provides inexpensive compute capacity that can be instantly sized allowing businesses to pay only for what it uses—as needed. Through the open, standards-based API, Rackspace Cloud customers can now manage their cloud infrastructure with greater control and flexibility. The API, for example, enables elastic scenarios as users can write code that programmatically detects load and scales the number of server instances up and down.
The Rackspace Cloud solicited feedback and conducted intensive testing with its partners and cloud developers to help ensure that the community shaped the API. With today’s announcement, users now have control panel and programmatic access to the company’s cloud infrastructure services: Cloud Servers, Cloud Files and Slicehost.
The Cloud Servers API will introduce four new features including:
Server Metadata – Supply server-specific metadata when an instance is created that can be accessed via the API.
Server Data Injection – Specify files when instance is created that will be injected into the server file system before startup. This is useful, for example, when inserting SSH keys, setting configuration files, or storing data that you want to retrieve from within the Cloud Server itself.
Host Identification – The Cloud Servers provisioning algorithm has an anti-affinity property that attempts to spread out customer VMs across hosts. Under certain situations, Cloud Servers from the same customer may be placed on the same host. Host identification allows you to programmatically detect this condition and take appropriate action.
Shared IP Groups – While Rackspace has always supported shared IPs, it’s been made simpler with the creation of
Shared IP Groups and the ability to enable high availability configurations.
Rackspace Cloud customers will be able to manage their Cloud Servers or Cloud Files accounts anytime, anywhere on their iPhones thanks to an application built off the APIs by developer Michael Mayo. The application is expected to be available in the App Store within a month.
“It’s been a great experience to collaborate with the Rackspace Cloud team on the development of the Cloud Servers API,” stated Michael Mayo, iPhone application developer. “Working together with the Rackspace team enabled me to develop my application much more quickly. I’m very pleased with the open feedback process as it makes my work a lot easier.”
With the API, developers can create applications for the Rackspace Cloud which can automatically access compute power as required. The Cloud Servers API also allows developers to work with partners on pre-built applications.
"After testing, it is apparent the Cloud Servers API was created to meet the needs of the community." said David Day, CTO, Zeus Technology. "The ReST API has a complete feature set and is easy to use. We are excited to be building on such a robust platform."
“With the launch of our API, we’re looking forward to working with our partners and the developer community to create a powerful cloud ecosystem which we believe will generate new tools and applications to make cloud hosting even easier and more efficient,” said Emil Sayegh, General Manager, The Rackspace Cloud. “We see programmatic control as essential for igniting an ecosystem around the Rackspace Cloud. It’s a key tool for generating the ‘next big thing’ in cloud because it gives developers the power and control to bring their great ideas to fruition.”
The Cloud Servers API is implemented using a RESTful web service interface. Aiming to build a cohesive approach to all products in the Rackspace Cloud suite, Cloud Servers shares a common token authentication system that allows seamless access between products and services. Launched earlier this year, Cloud Servers is a compute service that provides server capacity in the cloud to businesses of all sizes and leverages key technology developed by Slicehost, LLC, a Rackspace wholly-owned subsidiary. Until today, interactions with Cloud Servers only occurred via the Rackspace Cloud Control Panel (GUI) and now programmatically via the Cloud Servers API.
For more information or to obtain access to the Cloud Servers API, please visit: http://www.rackspacecloud.com/cloud_hosting_products/servers/compare
----
The Rackspace Cloud Announces Public API for Cloud Servers
Expands power of the cloud, offering more control and flexibility and automation features including mobile management of cloud with new iPhone application
SAN ANTONIO – July 14, 2009 – Rackspace® Hosting (NYSE:RAX), the world’s leader in hosting, today announced the availability of the public beta of its Cloud Servers® API. Cloud Servers, part of the company’s portfolio of cloud services, is a leading Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offering that provides inexpensive compute capacity that can be instantly sized allowing businesses to pay only for what it uses—as needed. Through the open, standards-based API, Rackspace Cloud customers can now manage their cloud infrastructure with greater control and flexibility. The API, for example, enables elastic scenarios as users can write code that programmatically detects load and scales the number of server instances up and down.
The Rackspace Cloud solicited feedback and conducted intensive testing with its partners and cloud developers to help ensure that the community shaped the API. With today’s announcement, users now have control panel and programmatic access to the company’s cloud infrastructure services: Cloud Servers, Cloud Files and Slicehost.
The Cloud Servers API will introduce four new features including:
Server Metadata – Supply server-specific metadata when an instance is created that can be accessed via the API.
Server Data Injection – Specify files when instance is created that will be injected into the server file system before startup. This is useful, for example, when inserting SSH keys, setting configuration files, or storing data that you want to retrieve from within the Cloud Server itself.
Host Identification – The Cloud Servers provisioning algorithm has an anti-affinity property that attempts to spread out customer VMs across hosts. Under certain situations, Cloud Servers from the same customer may be placed on the same host. Host identification allows you to programmatically detect this condition and take appropriate action.
Shared IP Groups – While Rackspace has always supported shared IPs, it’s been made simpler with the creation of
Shared IP Groups and the ability to enable high availability configurations.
Rackspace Cloud customers will be able to manage their Cloud Servers or Cloud Files accounts anytime, anywhere on their iPhones thanks to an application built off the APIs by developer Michael Mayo. The application is expected to be available in the App Store within a month.
“It’s been a great experience to collaborate with the Rackspace Cloud team on the development of the Cloud Servers API,” stated Michael Mayo, iPhone application developer. “Working together with the Rackspace team enabled me to develop my application much more quickly. I’m very pleased with the open feedback process as it makes my work a lot easier.”
With the API, developers can create applications for the Rackspace Cloud which can automatically access compute power as required. The Cloud Servers API also allows developers to work with partners on pre-built applications.
"After testing, it is apparent the Cloud Servers API was created to meet the needs of the community." said David Day, CTO, Zeus Technology. "The ReST API has a complete feature set and is easy to use. We are excited to be building on such a robust platform."
“With the launch of our API, we’re looking forward to working with our partners and the developer community to create a powerful cloud ecosystem which we believe will generate new tools and applications to make cloud hosting even easier and more efficient,” said Emil Sayegh, General Manager, The Rackspace Cloud. “We see programmatic control as essential for igniting an ecosystem around the Rackspace Cloud. It’s a key tool for generating the ‘next big thing’ in cloud because it gives developers the power and control to bring their great ideas to fruition.”
The Cloud Servers API is implemented using a RESTful web service interface. Aiming to build a cohesive approach to all products in the Rackspace Cloud suite, Cloud Servers shares a common token authentication system that allows seamless access between products and services. Launched earlier this year, Cloud Servers is a compute service that provides server capacity in the cloud to businesses of all sizes and leverages key technology developed by Slicehost, LLC, a Rackspace wholly-owned subsidiary. Until today, interactions with Cloud Servers only occurred via the Rackspace Cloud Control Panel (GUI) and now programmatically via the Cloud Servers API.
For more information or to obtain access to the Cloud Servers API, please visit: http://www.rackspacecloud.com/cloud_hosting_products/servers/compare
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