With Dell ARM-based “Copper” servers, Crowbar footprint grows May 29, 2012
Posted by Rob H in Crowbar, Dell, DevOps, Hadoop.Tags: ARM, Crowbar, Dell, DevOps
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One of my team at Dell’s most critical lessons from hyperscale cloud deployments was the DevOps tooling and operations processes are key to success. Our crowbar project was born out of this realization.
I have been tracking the progress the Copper ARM-based server from design to implementation internally. Now, I’m excited to see it getting some deserved attention.
The Copper platform is really cool because the cost, power, and density ratios of the nodes are unparalleled. This makes it an ideal platform for distributed mixed compute/store workloads like Hadoop. The nodes in the platform have excellent RAM/CPU/Spindle ratios.
While Copper is driving huge density, it also drives forward the same hyperscale challenges that we’ve been trying to address with Crowbar; consequently, we’re already working to ensure that we can deploy and manage Copper with Crowbar at scale.
Copper and Crowbar make a natural team and we’re excited to be part of today’s announcement:
Dell is staging clusters of the Dell “Copper” ARM server within the Dell Solution Centers and with TACC so developers may book time on the platforms. Dell also will deliver an ARM-supported version of Crowbar, Dell’s open-source management infrastructure software, to the industry in the future.
Congratulations to the Copper team!
OSED OMG: OpenStack Essex Deploy Day!! A day-long four-session two-track International Online Conference May 29, 2012
Posted by Rob H in OpenStack, Crowbar, DevOps, CloudOps, Open source, Meetup, Dell, Operations.Tags: Crowbar, essex, Logistics, OpenStack
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Curious about OpenStack? Know it, but want to tune your Ops chops? JOIN US on Thursday 5/31 (or Friday 6/1 if you are in Asia)!
Already know the event logistics? Skip back to my OSED observations post.
Some important general notes:
- We are RECORDING everything and will link posts from the event page.
- There is HOMEWORK if you want to get ahead by installing OpenStack yourself.
- For last minute updates about the event, I recommend that you join the Crowbar Listserver.
Content Logistics work like this.
- Everything will be available ONLINE. We are also coordinating many physical sites as rally points.
- Introductory: FOUR 3-hour sessions for people who do not have OpenStack or Crowbar experience. These sessions will show how to install OpenStack using Crowbar, discuss DevOps and showcase companies that are in the OpenStack ecosystem. They are planned to have 2 European slots (afternoon & evening), 3 US slots (morning, afternoon & evening), and 1 Asian slot (morning).
- Expert: ON-GOING deep technical sessions for engineers who have OpenStack and/or Crowbar experience. There will be one main screen and voice channel in which we are planning to highlight and discuss these topics in blocks throughout the day. We have a long list of topics to discuss and will maintain an ongoing Google Hangout for each topic. Depending on interest, we will jump back and forth to different hangouts.
Intro/Overview Session Logistics work like this
We’re planning FOUR introductory sessions throughout the day (read ahead?). Each session should be approximately 3 hours. The first hour of the sessions will be about OpenStack Essex and installing it using Crowbar. After some Q&A, we’re going to highlight the OpenStack ecosystem. The schedule for the ecosystem is in flux and will likely shift even during the event.
The Session start times for Overview & Ecosystem content
| Region | EDT | Session 1 | Session 2 | Session 3 | Session 4 |
| Europe (-5) | -5 | 3pm | 6pm | * | * |
| Americas Eastern | 0 | 10am | 1pm | 4pm | * |
| Americas Central | +1 | 9am | Noon | 3pm | * |
| Americas Mtn | +2 | * | 11am | 2pm | 7pm |
| Americas West | +3 | * | 10am | 1pm | 6pm |
| Asia (Toyko) | +10 | * | * | * | 6/1 10 am |
* There are no planned live venues at this time/region. You are always welcome to join online!
Experts Track Logistics
Note: we expect experts to have already installed OpenStack (see homework page). Ideally, an expert has already setup a build environment.
We have a list of topics (Essex, Quantum, Networking, Pull from Source, Documentation, etc) that we plan to cover on a 30-60 minute rotation.
We will cover the OpenStack Essex deploy at the start of each planned session (9am, Noon, 3pm & 8pm EDT). Before we cover the OpenStack deploy, we’ll spend 10 minutes setting (and posting) the agenda for the next three hours based on attendee input.
Even if we are not talking about a topic on the main channel, we will keep a dialog going on topic specific Google hangouts. The links to the hangouts will be posted with the Expert track agenda.
We need an OpenStack Reference Deployment (My objectives for Deploy Day) May 29, 2012
Posted by Rob H in OpenStack, Crowbar, DevOps, CloudOps, Open source, Dell, Cloudera, Operations.Tags: Crowbar, Dell, DevStack, OpenStack, Reference
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I’m overwhelmed and humbled by the enthusiasm my team at Dell is seeing for the OpenStack Essex Deploy day on 5/31 (or 6/1 for Asia). What started as a day for our engineers to hack on Essex Cookbooks with a few fellow Crowbarians has morphed into an international OpenStack event spanning Europe, Americas & Asia.
If you want to read more about the event, check out my event logistics post (link pending).
I do not apologize for my promotion of the Dell-lead open source Crowbar as the deployment tool for the OpenStack Essex Deploy. For a community to focus on improving deployment tooling, there must be a stable reference infrastructure. Crowbar provides a fast and repeatable multi-node environment with scriptable networking and packaging.
I believe that OpenStack benefits from a repeatable multi-node reference deployment. I’ll go further and state that this requires DevOps tooling to ensure consistency both within and between deployments.
DevStack makes trunk development more canonical between different developers. I hope that Crowbar will help provide a similar experience for operators so that we can truly share deployment experience and troubleshooting. I think it’s already realistic for Crowbar deployments to a repeatable enough deployment that they provide a reference for defect documentation and reproduction.
Said more plainly, it’s a good thing if a lot of us use OpenStack in the same way so that we can help each out.
My team’s choice to accelerate releasing the Crowbar barclamps for OpenStack Essex makes perfect sense if you accept our rationale for creating a community baseline deployment.
Crowbar is Dell-lead, not Dell specific.
One of the reasons that Crowbar is open source and we do our work in the open (yes, you can see our daily development in github) is make it safe for everyone to invest in a shared deployment strategy. We encourage and welcome community participation.
PS: I believe the same is true for any large scale software project. Watch out for similar activity around Apache Hadoop as part of our collaboration with Cloudera!
Join us 5/31 for a OpenStack Deploy Hack-a-thon (all-day, world-wide online & multi-city) May 23, 2012
Posted by Rob H in Crowbar, Dell, DevOps, Meetup, OpenStack, Opscode.Tags: Chef, cloud, Crowbar, Dell, DevOps, essex, Hack-a-thon, OpenStack, OpsCode
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An OpenStack Deploy Hack-a-thon is like 3-liter bottle of distilled open source community love. Do you want direct access to my Dell team of OpenStack/Crowbar/Hadoop engineers? Are you just getting started and want training about OpenStack and DevOps? This is the event for you!
Here’s the official overview:
The OpenStack Deploy hack-a-thon focuses on automation for deploying OpenStack Essex with Dell Crowbar and Opscode Chef. This is a day-long, world-wide event bringing together developers, operators, users, ecosystem vendors and the open source cloud curious. (read below: We are looking for global sites and leaders to extend the event hours!)
OpenStack is the fastest growing open source cloud infrastructure project with broad market adoption from major hardware and software vendors. Crowbar is an Apache 2 licensed, open infrastructure deployment tool and is one of the leading multi-node deployers for OpenStack and Hadoop.
Learn first-hand how OpenStack and Crowbar can make it easy to deploy and operate your own cloud environments.
The Deploy day will offer two individual parallel tracks with something for both experts and beginners:
Newbiesn00bs will learn the basics of OpenStack, Crowbar and DevOps and how they can benefit your organization. We’ll also have time for ecosystem vendors to discuss how they are leveraging OpenStack.Expertsl33ts will take a deep dive into new features of OpenStack Essex and Crowbar, and learn how Crowbar works under the hood, which will enable them to extend the product using Crowbar Barclamps.
Why now? We’ve validated our OpenStack Essex deployment against the latest release bits from Ubuntu. Now it’s time to reach out to the OpenStack and Crowbar communities for training, testing and collaborative development.
Join the event! We’re organizing information on the Crowbar wiki. (I highly recommend you join the Crowbar list to get access to support for prep materials). You can also reach out to me via the @DellCrowbar handle.
We’d love to get you up to speed on the basics and dive deep into the core.
Hungry for Operational Excellence? ChefConf 2012 satisfies! May 23, 2012
Posted by Rob H in Crowbar, DevOps, Events, Lean, Matt Ray, OpenStack, Opscode.Tags: Chef, Crowbar, DevOps, essex, Ignite, Knife, OpenStack, OpsCode
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Since my team at Dell sponsored the inaugural ChefConf, we had the good fortune to get a handful of passes and show up at the event in force. I was also tapped for a presentation (Chef+Crowbar gets Physical+OpenStack Cloud) and Ignite session (Crowbar history).
I live demo’ed using a single command window with knife to manage both physical and cloud infrastructure. That’s freaking cool! (and thanks to Matt Ray for helping to get this working)
It’s no surprise that I’m already a DevOps advocate and Opscode enthusiast, there were aspects of the conference that are worth reiterating:
- Opscode is part of the cadre of leaders redefining how we operate infrastructure. The energy is amazing.
- The acknowledgement of the “snowflake” challenge where all Ops environments are alike, but no two are the same.
- A tight integration between Operations and lean delivery because waterfall deployments are not sustainable
- Opscode’s vision is rooted in utility. You can be successful without design and then excel when you add it. I find that refreshing.
- There was a fun, friendly (“hug driven development?!”) and laid back vibe. This group laughed A LOT.
- For a first conference, Opscode did a good job with logistics and organization.
- I saw that the back rooms and hallways are buzzing with activity. This means that people are making money with the technology.
Crowbar + Chef installs & manages OpenStack Essex (Live Demo, 45 minutes):
Ignite Talk about Dell Crowbar History (5 minutes)
Crowbar’s emergence as a DevOps enabled Cloud Provisioner May 9, 2012
Posted by Rob H in Crowbar, Dell, DevOps, Opscode.Tags: Crowbar, DevOps, Mirantis, Sys-Con, Zenoss
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I’m going to be talking Crowbar & OpenStack at Chef Conf next week. While I’m always excited to wave the Crowbar flag, it’s humbling to see our vision for an open source based cloud provisioner picking up momentum in the community.
Dieter Plaetinck
…I think this tool deserves more attention and should be added to your devops toolchain for the cloud (triple buzzword bonus!!!)…
Hosting News
…As an alternative to proprietary, licensed software models, Dell continues to see heavy customer interest in the OpenStack-Powered Cloud Solution, which integrates the OpenStack cloud operating system, cloud-optimized Dell PowerEdge C servers, the Dell-developed Crowbar software framework, and services…
Sys-Con Post by Mirantis
…Finally, there is Dell and Crowbar. Dell’s approach to riding the OpenStack wave is, perhaps, the most creative. Crowbar is neither a hardware appliance nor an enterprise version of OpenStack. It’s a configuration management tool built around OpSource’s Chef, designed specifically to deploy OpenStack on Dell servers. Crowbar effectively serves as the glue between the hardware and any distribution of OpenStack (and not only OpenStack)…
Robert Booth w/ Zenoss
Well if you care to only give them the best then introduce them to a set of tools that will drastically change the way they do business in a way they want to. Introduce them to Dell’s Crowbar and OpsCode Chef and you will make their job easier, faster and possibly put a stop to the finger pointing! No longer will they have to pull out the IT secret decoder ring to understand what the dev team put in the deployment docs.
Dell Team at the OpenStack Spring 2012 Summit April 16, 2012
Posted by Rob H in Andi Abes, Crowbar, Dell, DevOps, Greg Althaus, Joseph George, Matt Ray, OpenStack, OpenStack Design Summit, Opscode.add a comment
It’s OpenStack Summit time again for my team at Dell and there’s deployment in the air. It’s been an amazing journey from the first Austin summit to Folsom today. Since those first heady days, the party has gotten a lot more crowded, founding members have faded away, recruiters became enriched as employees changed email TLDs and buckets of code was delivered.
Throughout, Dell has stayed the course: our focus from day-one has been ensuring OpenStack can be deployed into production in a way that was true to the OpenStack mission of community collaboration and Apache-2-licensed open source.
We’ve delivered on the making OpenStack deployable vision by collaborating broadly on the OpenStack components of the open source Crowbar project. I believe that our vision for sustainable open operations based on DevOps principles is the most complete strategy for production cloud deployments.
We are at the Folsom Summit in force and we’re looking forward to discussions with the OpenStack community. Here are some of the ways to engage with us:
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Demos
- During the summit (M-W), we’ll have our Crowbar OpenStack Essex deployments running. We kicked off Essex development with a world-wide event in early March and we want more people to come and join in.
- During the conference (W-F), we’ll be showing off application deployments using enStratus and Chef against our field proven Diablo release.
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Speakers
- Thursday 1:00pm, OpenStack Gains Momentum: Customers are Speaking Up by Kamesh Pemmaraju (Dell)
- Friday 9:50am, Deploy Apps on OpenStack using Dashboard, Chef and enStratus by Rob Hirschfeld (Dell), Matt Ray (Opscode) and Keith Hudgins (enStratus).
- Friday 11:30am, Expanding the Community Panel
including Joseph George (Dell)
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- This fun round trip road trip from Rackspace & Dell HQs in Austin to the summit and home again promises to be an odyssey of inclusion. Dell OpenStack/Crowbar engineer Andi Abes (@a_abes). Follow @RoadstackRV to follow along as they return home and share their thoughts about the summit!
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Parties
My team has been in the field talking to customers and doing OpenStack deployments. We are proud to talk about it and our approach.
Mostly importantly, we want to collaborate with you on our Essex deployments using Crowbar. Get on our list, download/build crowbar, run the “essex-hack” branch and start banging on the deploy. Let’s work together to make this one rock solid Essex deploy.
Seven Cloud Success Criteria to consider before you pick a platform April 12, 2012
Posted by Rob H in CloudOps, Clouds, CloudStack, Culture, Dave McCrory, Dell, DevOps, Joyent, Lean, OpenStack.Tags: CloudOps, CloudStack, hybrid, Lean, mccrory, open operations, OpenStack, patents
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From my desk at Dell, I have a unique perspective. In addition to a constant stream of deep customer interactions about our many cloud solutions (even going back pre-OpenStack to Joyent & Eucalyptus), I have been an active advocate for OpenStack, involved in many discussions with and about CloudStack and regularly talk shop with Dell’s VIS Creator (our enterprise focused virtualization products) teams. And, if you go back ten years to 2002, patented the concept of hybrid clouds with Dave McCrory.
Rather than offering opinions in the Cloud v. Cloud fray, I’m suggesting that cloud success means taking a system view.
Platform choice is only part of the decision: operational readiness, application types and organization culture are critical foundations before platform.
Over the last two years at Dell, I found seven points outweigh customers’ choice of platform.
- Running clouds requires building operational expertise both at the application and infrastructure layers. CloudOps is real.
- Application architectures matter for cloud deployment because they can redefine the SLA requirements and API expectations
- Development community and collaboration is a significant value because sharing around open operations offers significant returns.
- We need to build an accelerating pace of innovation into our core operating principles
- There are still significant technology gaps to fill (networking & storage) and we will discover new gaps as we go
- We can no longer discuss public and private clouds as distinct concepts. True hybrid clouds are not here yet, but everyone can already see their massive shadow.
- There is always more than one right technological answer. Avoid analysis paralysis by making incrementally correct decisions (committing, moving forward, learning and then re-evaluating).
