OpenStack, a cloud software package, which has attracted great interest of community, associated with open source software and cloud hosting. This package offers a solution for hosting providers who want to offer cloud services to their customers. In many ways, this is similar to how Parallels Virtuozzo virtual private servers opened for companies dealing with web hosting. OpenStack offers the possibility of independent creation of cloud systems in a secure, private testing laboratory, before moving them to a private or public cloud, along with an introduction to the real problems of security of cloud computing and IaaS service.

Eucalyptus appeared about three years ago, which is a long time to service products IaaS. It was the result of a research project of the University of California, Santa Barbara, Department of Computer Science and became the basis for the creation of business in 2009.

Benefits of Eucalyptus

One of the benefits of Eucalyptus is that the components of its open source software can be used without modification. That is, they can be relatively easy to work on unmodified kernels. Built in Ubuntu cloud computing is based on Eucalyptus and ready to install right after downloading, which makes them very comfortable. But this is not the biggest advantage of the Eucalyptus platform.

The biggest advantage of Eucalyptus is that, its API (application programming interface) is compatible with the Amazon EC2 platform. This means that the company, which estimates EC2, can use free software to free operating systems. That is, you can use a Amazon Eucalyptus public cloud before you use for application development and testing. Currently Eucalyptus is ideal for such purposes.

Restrictions In Eucalyptus

Quite interestingly, the Eucalyptus is used in NASA Research Center in California, the draft platform Nebula, is not a problem related to the partially closed platform elements Eucalyptus. NASA was faced with the problem of scalability. This is a problem faced by most of the products in the early stages of its development. Gap between Eucalyptus and NASA became inevitable when NASA found out that they would not be able to use it in the project code extensibility, without conflict with Eucalyptus Systems Inc., the corporation behind the Eucalyptus. That's why Eucalyptus is not completely open platform. Eucalyptus Systems Inc. support some codes for these functions in the commercial version of Eucalyptus Enterprise Edition (E3) as control, integration SAN, best supporting database management system, and compatibility with VMware. However, these functions do not want to open. By the way, OpenStack, when fully open, still does not offer these features.

Eucalyptus is not a full, 100% implementation of Amazon EC2. Although it sold most of API EC2 (and some API E3). It is not, and will not be an identical copy. Instant provisioning - that's what it does well. The system brings the process of creating a new server is almost automatic. This process is designed to distribute the load in case of increase of demand growth. Until provided by the server will be treated to a supported type (and this is the main purpose for using EC2), all will be well with Eucalyptus. Eucalyptus can be used either instead of EC2, or as a test area before moving or patterns in EC2.

OpenStack impact on the open source

The activity of the developer community of open-source software has had an impact on economic development and innovation in the computer industry. It is known that open-source software helps to make a successful development and get their share of the market. In the database you need only to look at the MySQL and PostgreSQL. In the Web server - is Apache. And in server applications - this is Tomcat, JOnAS, JBoss, Jetty, and GlassFish. In the area of programming languages - is Java, Perl and PHP. In particular, GNU Linux, did a lot for the commercialization of the market for operating systems, and now it is even used in phones. Although the market will always be a place for closed-source projects, the impact of open source on these markets will be strong and deep, promoting innovation, and enabling systems that previously could not do it, interact with each other.

In theory, OpenStack offers this and much more, because of its complete openness. While OpenStack is supported by many players, but the product is still "in beta" with limited functionality.