5 ms·

Ubuntu will power HP's new cloud service

76 points by diogenescynic 15y ago

3am 15y ago
It would be more accurate to say that OpenStack is powering HP's new cloud service. OpenStack has been adopted as the new UEC, and from my experience the development, documentation, and testing is almost completely geared towards Ubuntu hosts with KVM backends. So it should be no surprise that a commercial OpenStack deployment is going to based on the standard and best supported configuration.
gunz_rozez 15y ago
Its nice to see OpenStack getting picked up by HP, I think that is the bigger story here....wonder why they would choose Ubuntu over HPUX....It should not be that difficult to port HPUX onto OpenStack. Also would like to see if HP's play here would be get enterprises on this new "Cloud" they are building.
- bad_user 15y ago
  Probably because HP-UX is a technical liability that they are keeping around just for the support contracts involved. The hard reality is that while these operating systems (like HP-UX or Solaris) may still have some technical or commercial advantages, what really matters when you want to scale is the predictability and support for all kinds of cheap/expensive/old/new hardware and the availability of up-to-date software packages, and you really can't beat Linux there.
- patrickgzill 15y ago
  The issue is familiarity. Sun ran into the same issue with Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris. More programmers and sysadmins are just more familiar with Linux.
Apocryphon 15y ago
Whither WebOS?
- tesseract 15y ago
  WebOS isn't a server OS, it's a Linux userland for touch-based mobile devices.
suivix 15y ago
What happened to HP-UX?
- wmf 15y ago
  HP-UX doesn't run on x86 and the cloud == x86.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - gunz_rozez 15y ago
    But if they can port it to the Itanium instruction set then why not x86?
    - wmf 15y ago
      But who wants that? Aside from strategic reasons, why would it be better than Linux/KVM?
forgotAgain 15y ago
Who in their right mind would trust HP as a cloud provider? Three CEO's in the past year. Each one completely different from the last. Can any customer have confidence that the HP cloud strategy will A) last beyond the current CEO and B) be better implemented than other recent product strategies?
- bostonvaulter2 15y ago
  Well at least using OpenStack should lessen the pain of switching cloud providers.
- viraptor 15y ago
  Re. A: what else is left? They dropped physical products to go after services. The cloud is one of them, so why would they drop it?
- nl 15y ago
  HP never burn their customers, especially enterprise customers. Even if they got out of the hardware business I'd have a lot of confidence that all my HP hardware would continue to be supported (after all - who ever bought that business is liable for support, and is really buying the business for the existing business relationships) I might be unpopular for saying it, but WebOS was never a great fit for HP, and they did the right thing to kill it before they ended up in a situation where they had to support an unpopular platform. Maybe they should have spun it off, but keeping it as a HP platform didn't make sense.
- wnight 15y ago
  No, for an (modern) HP offering "Cloud" is actually appropriate. Vague, nebulous, rarely seen up close. Never performs a lick of work, floats idly by. Occasionally crashes spectacularly. It's actually perfect branding.
inopinatus 15y ago
Come back Tru64 Unix, all is forgiven.
rjbond3rd 15y ago
Just curious, what can Ubuntu Server provide as a cloud OS that isn't already in Debian? Is it just the Canonical support?
nl 15y ago
The big story here is the use of KVM. KVM is mostly seen as a RedHat technology these days in the Enterprise, because RedHat provides most of the support for customers. I suspect in this case HP have built the expertise in-house. The KVM people will be pleased to see this endorsement because most large public clouds (eg Amazon and Rackspace) are on Xen, and VMWare dominates the enterprise. KVM seems to have been stuck in the middle a little bit - used in a few enterprises, but not as many "name brands" as VMWare, and used in a few hosting providers, but none as big as Amazon and Rackspace. They have had other wins (I think Oracle's enterprise virtulization is KVM based (not VirtualBox)) and I think IBM and Dell use it too. But none of them run public clouds.
soapdog 15y ago
not too familiar with cloud software, can someone point to a reference on why use openstack instead of Xen and VMWare stuff. I am not bashing openstack, I am trying to educate myself here...
serverascode 15y ago
I don't know if I would use it but I hope they contribute back to the community.

76 points by diogenescynic 15y ago

3am 15y ago

It would be more accurate to say that OpenStack is powering HP's new cloud service. OpenStack has been adopted as the new UEC, and from my experience the development, documentation, and testing is almost completely geared towards Ubuntu hosts with KVM backends. So it should be no surprise that a commercial OpenStack deployment is going to based on the standard and best supported configuration.

gunz_rozez 15y ago

Its nice to see OpenStack getting picked up by HP, I think that is the bigger story here....wonder why they would choose Ubuntu over HPUX....It should not be that difficult to port HPUX onto OpenStack. Also would like to see if HP's play here would be get enterprises on this new "Cloud" they are building.

bad_user 15y ago
Probably because HP-UX is a technical liability that they are keeping around just for the support contracts involved. The hard reality is that while these operating systems (like HP-UX or Solaris) may still have some technical or commercial advantages, what really matters when you want to scale is the predictability and support for all kinds of cheap/expensive/old/new hardware and the availability of up-to-date software packages, and you really can't beat Linux there.
patrickgzill 15y ago
The issue is familiarity. Sun ran into the same issue with Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris. More programmers and sysadmins are just more familiar with Linux.

Apocryphon 15y ago

Whither WebOS?

tesseract 15y ago
WebOS isn't a server OS, it's a Linux userland for touch-based mobile devices.

suivix 15y ago

What happened to HP-UX?

wmf 15y ago
HP-UX doesn't run on x86 and the cloud == x86.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- gunz_rozez 15y ago
  But if they can port it to the Itanium instruction set then why not x86?
  - wmf 15y ago
    But who wants that? Aside from strategic reasons, why would it be better than Linux/KVM?

forgotAgain 15y ago

Who in their right mind would trust HP as a cloud provider? Three CEO's in the past year. Each one completely different from the last. Can any customer have confidence that the HP cloud strategy will A) last beyond the current CEO and B) be better implemented than other recent product strategies?

bostonvaulter2 15y ago
Well at least using OpenStack should lessen the pain of switching cloud providers.
viraptor 15y ago
Re. A: what else is left? They dropped physical products to go after services. The cloud is one of them, so why would they drop it?
nl 15y ago
HP never burn their customers, especially enterprise customers. Even if they got out of the hardware business I'd have a lot of confidence that all my HP hardware would continue to be supported (after all - who ever bought that business is liable for support, and is really buying the business for the existing business relationships) I might be unpopular for saying it, but WebOS was never a great fit for HP, and they did the right thing to kill it before they ended up in a situation where they had to support an unpopular platform. Maybe they should have spun it off, but keeping it as a HP platform didn't make sense.
wnight 15y ago
No, for an (modern) HP offering "Cloud" is actually appropriate. Vague, nebulous, rarely seen up close. Never performs a lick of work, floats idly by. Occasionally crashes spectacularly. It's actually perfect branding.

inopinatus 15y ago

Come back Tru64 Unix, all is forgiven.

rjbond3rd 15y ago

Just curious, what can Ubuntu Server provide as a cloud OS that isn't already in Debian? Is it just the Canonical support?

nl 15y ago

The big story here is the use of KVM. KVM is mostly seen as a RedHat technology these days in the Enterprise, because RedHat provides most of the support for customers. I suspect in this case HP have built the expertise in-house. The KVM people will be pleased to see this endorsement because most large public clouds (eg Amazon and Rackspace) are on Xen, and VMWare dominates the enterprise. KVM seems to have been stuck in the middle a little bit - used in a few enterprises, but not as many "name brands" as VMWare, and used in a few hosting providers, but none as big as Amazon and Rackspace. They have had other wins (I think Oracle's enterprise virtulization is KVM based (not VirtualBox)) and I think IBM and Dell use it too. But none of them run public clouds.

soapdog 15y ago

not too familiar with cloud software, can someone point to a reference on why use openstack instead of Xen and VMWare stuff. I am not bashing openstack, I am trying to educate myself here...

serverascode 15y ago

I don't know if I would use it but I hope they contribute back to the community.