Dell provides Ubuntu-powered IaaS-in-a-box

Yesterday, the announcement went out that the Dell | Canonical Enterprise Cloud, Standard Edition was out and ready for consumption. What this cloud-in-a-box allows folks to do is to set-up affordable Infrastructure-as-a-Service (Iaas)-style private clouds in their computer labs or data centers. The cool thing is that, because the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) software is compatible with Amazon Web Services EC2 and S3 services, it enables IT admins and developers to move workloads between public and private clouds.

Who cares?

Application developers and IT service providers and admins who are setting up cloud POC’s are perfect candidates for this pre-configured testing and development environment.  With regards to industries, areas where there is a lot of software development work like Hosters, Telco & Communications, Media & Entertainment and Web 2.0 businesses are prime markets for the Dell UEC solution.

So what’s in it?

The solutions’ basic components are Dell PowerEdge C systems plus a Dell-specific download of the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (made up of the Ubuntu operating system and the Eucalyptus platform for private cloud computing).  To simplify getting the whole shebang up and running Dell and Canonical are providing the following:

Here’s a peak at the hardware that supports it:

The Dell UEC cloud solution pod

  • Cloud Compute Server – PowerEdge C6100 that embeds four discrete compute nodes in a single enclosure
  • Cloud Front-end Server – PowerEdge C2100 server that acts as an all-in-controller and runs all shared UEC-related services
  • Infrastructure Server – PowerEdge C2100 that runs two components of the cloud infrastructure:
    • Cloud Deployment and Landscape Management
    • Cloud Storage
  • Network switch – PowerConnect 6248

And on the software side…

The architecture looks something like this:

The Dell UEC cloud solution architecture

The software components are:

  • Cloud Controller (CLC) – the cloud portal
  • Walrus Controller (W) – the cloud’s storage repository
  • Cluster Controller (CC) – the controller for a up to 1024 compute cores grouped together as a cluster
  • Storage Controller (SC) – the controller for cluster’s storage repository
  • Compute Node (CN) – cloud’s compute node

And on the support side…

If you’re looking for systems management and support services with your order, you are in luck.  Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, has put together UEC Assist, a support service built specifically for Dell customers deploying SE Edition and which is delivered by Canonical’s Global Services and Support team.

Its all about efficiency

From a Dell DCS (the group at Dell behind this) point of view, this offering fits in well with our strategy of bringing total solutions to market that optimize efficiency at every layer, from code to servers to storage.  The open source Dell UEC solution is tailor made to deliver a ready to go IaaS solution.

Extra-credit reading:

Pau for now..

About the Author: Barton George