Dell Releases Ubuntu-Powered Cloud Servers 94
angry tapir writes "Dell has released two servers for the US market that have been customized to run Ubuntu-based cloud services. The company has outfitted its PowerEdge C2100 and C6100 servers with Canonical's Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC), an implementation of the Eucalyptus private cloud software that runs on the Ubuntu Server Edition operating system."
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No, that's the Apple tradition.
The open-source tradition is: "If it's not there, WriteItYourself(TM)".
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They can't even figure out how to implement an "edit your post" feature.
Yes they can, they choose not to. Read the FAQ. Slashdot doesn't want a memory hole feature, it wants people to be able to reply to posts without worrying that the contents of the post that they replied to will change by the time people read it.
Re:A POS comment? (Score:4, Informative)
The idea that Dell would push Linux in the server space is pretty old news really.
Contrary to popular Lemming opinion, Microsoft doesn't have the stranglehold in the server market that it has on desktops.
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Like the other guy said: Microsoft has been trying to dominate the market for a long time. In the mid-90s they were touting NT as some sort of Unix killer.
Although strangely enough, commercial Unix manages to linger on. Microsoft and even Linux hasn't been able to completely kill it off.
Quite often, large companies have problems that are too big to be solved on Windows.
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Linux kernel in the Ubuntu is the operating system.
Linux is just the kernel, a kernel is not an operating system.
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Depends whose definition of operating system you are using. The GNU guys use a very wide definition including things like the compiler, shell, command line utils etc but that is far from the only definition.
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The UEC combination has gotten decent ratings if you want to put your anti-Canonical prejudices aside. Dell hardware ain't all that bad these days.... the combo is a damn sight cheaper than buying a fat HP box with VMware on it..... and you get to reuse some of your code on AWS.
Yes, there are clean, virginal, can-wear-white-at-the-wedding implementations, too. This one uses kvm, if memory serves, and beats threading the whole thing together yourself.
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HP may be the fair to midrange PC on the Best Buy shelf but in the enterprise it kicks the crap out of anyone else. This includes their business desktops.
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Their business laptops suck ass. Getting them to support them is even worse.
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Wow... this just seriously went way over your head if you are suggesting "ownCloud" as a superior replacement for UEC. I read the description for "ownCloud" and it's some kind of central file storage/sharing software. Not even the same type of product as UEC/Eucalyptus.
The difference :
- You would use ownCloud to share the latest Justin Bieber mp3s with your peeps.
- You would use UEC to build out a corporate cloud computing solution comparable/compatible with Amazon EC2 that you would then use to make bags
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" People has better futures when staying away from Canonicals products."
And finishing high school helps too.
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I guess it's fun to be a Stallman fanboi, but he'll never love you back if you don't get the details right.
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Uh I don't think the open source version of Eucalyptus is proprietary...and it runs on other distros.
I submitted this with a better summary. (Score:5, Funny)
Dell blah blah blah Ubuntu blah blah blah cloud blah blah blah enterprise blah blah blah three letter acronym blah blah blah server edition blah blah blah
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Yes, your summary was too clearly written and too informative. The slashdot editor fixed it for you.
By customized... (Score:4, Funny)
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yep, including the Eucalyptus open source cloud platform
Good luck with that (Score:4, Interesting)
We purchased 16 C2100s in August. If you like being a Dell beta tester, have at it. The LSI RAID controllers they have in these things are, for a lack of a better word, complete crap. Technically, it's probably the drivers ... but until they have a working driver for linux that doesn't lose its mind and reset the card randomly (thus making your volumes disappear for a minute or two), I suggest staying away. Far away.
(Posting anonymously for obvious reasons)
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Somebody, please somebody, give me comparable systems to the old Micron days of yore. It was Micron on the desktop, Compaq on the server side. Well respected names in those times. Now one doesn't exist, and the other, well I wish it didn't.
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So true.
I had bought a Pentium 90 (that would make it almost 20 years old) Micron back in the day. If it wasn't for the fact that the tech is too slow for today's standards, I'd still be running it.
Micron? (Score:2)
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We purchased 16 C2100s in August. If you like being a Dell beta tester, have at it. The LSI RAID controllers they have in these things are, for a lack of a better word, complete crap. Technically, it's probably the drivers ... but until they have a working driver for linux that doesn't lose its mind and reset the card randomly (thus making your volumes disappear for a minute or two), I suggest staying away. Far away.
(Posting anonymously for obvious reasons)
Bypass the shit sas expander... we had the same problems... don't even want to comment on our DOA rate... crazy.
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Ubuntu itself is a terrible server, why not use Debian instead? Or is it only me that cannot find the Ubuntu 'Stable' Repo for running things like NGINX? Nevermind Ubuntu for servers, just use Debian; and you're probably actually supporting Ubuntu when you do too.
Re:Good luck with that (Score:4, Interesting)
paid support with canonical? Debian isn't a corporate entity like red hat.
Another reason being adoption of ubuntu having a desktop mindshare (Of % of linux desktops) so it's a single platform to support for workstation and server - for dell techs
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Or is it only me that cannot find the Ubuntu 'Stable' Repo for running things like NGINX?
How to install nginx on debian: apt-get install nginx [debian.org]
How to install nginx on ubuntu: apt-get install nginx [ubuntu.com]
So yes, it is only you.
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There's a difference between installation using apt-get and actually serving pages with a full configuration that might include stuff like memcache, drupal, mariadb, in a professionally hosted environment, serving multiple domains. Gimme a break. There's a reason Debian calls its stable repo stable.
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There's a difference between installation using apt-get and actually serving pages with a full configuration that might include stuff like memcache, drupal, mariadb, in a professionally hosted environment, serving multiple domains. Gimme a break. There's a reason Debian calls its stable repo stable.
Bullshit. We run ubuntu 10.04 on all our servers. Currently we have 20 servers and will increase that number the coming months. Ubuntu has served us very well. I used to run Debian which is almost the same and also a very nice system. So what do you mean? If you run apt-get install nginx on Debian you just get a full config for memcache, drupal, mariadb with that? You actually have to configure those things yourself regardless. We use chef - http://wiki.opscode.com/display/chef/Home [opscode.com] - for that. We run thing
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Glad everything is working out for you.
Here's a comment from someone more in-line with the work I do, from an expert supporting my server configuration:
"Re: your issue - it looks weird and I must admit I'm already tired supporting Ubuntu. 95% of all issues were related to some weird package updates they (Canonical) decided to introduce over last months. At the same time there was just one and simple issue in Debian Lenny, related to broken git package. My general advice is: avoid Ubuntu at all costs! They a
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Here's a comment from someone more in-line with the work I do
And here's a comment from me: "what a load of balls".
If we're going to start taking anecdotes as evidence, then I can prove that every OS sucks, and we're back to square one :-P
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The closest equivilent to debian stable on the ubuntu side of the fence would be the LTS releases. They have longer support lifecycles than debian stable and a similar release rate. Sounds good on paper particulally the fact that you get plenty of time to plan your upgrades (unlike debian which releases unpredictably and then gives you only about a year to plan and execute your upgrade)
The downside is the QA. Ubuntu have a largely fixed release cycle (they prioritize releasing on time over releasing right).
Re:Good luck with that (Score:5, Funny)
(Posting anonymously for obvious reasons)
Yeah, I'd be pretty embarrassed if I had ever bought anything from Dell meself.
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I tried to purchase a couple of them in September but I couldn't even get a quote from Dell's representatives (neither the basic Dell service or the company's account rep.). I gave up hope with them.
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You know what they say, "Buy a Dell and you get. . . . a Dell"
I'm stuck with a Dell laptop for work and it is brand new and the biggest piece of crap (in all fairness it's the combination of mediocre Dell and mediocre Winblows).
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Since you're not buying those servers and instead just using them for computing people who use this service wouldn't have to care about such things. That's dell's admin's problems.
Gaging by the amount of bullshit from AC trolls in these comments I think i'll reserve my judgement until someone has actually tried it out before bad mouthing it. I do have to kind of wonder why there is so much hate by ACs in these comments. The astro turfing is high today.
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We use a pile of the C1100 servers, and the problem is not with the LSI controllers. It's with Dells brilliant SAS expander board that sits between the LSI and the disk backplane. We have had the same issues and have bypassed the board. The board also controls the fan speed, so you cannot disable it all together, but you can bypass its sata/sas expander.
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We have a couple dozen also. We're running Hadoop which means the RAID controllers are not needed. Would have been VERY NICE if Dell had told us we could have purchased these servers without them (apparently it IS an option).
On the plus side, 12 RAID 0 drives works very fast in our cluster :-)
Running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. Haven't had a drive disappear yet and we've had them for several months working 24x7
Plenty of Linux integrators already (Score:2)
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My company buys a ton of Dell servers, all with RHEL. Dell has a large library of linux drivers for their hardware, if you're using RHEL.
I'm not saying Dell is great at linux, but they do support it.
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Well yes... but supporting RHEL is not supporting Linux, just as supporting Ubuntu isn't supporting Linux.
It's kind of like saying a company supports Mac. What version... OS9, OS/X Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard?
So to put in a nutshell, they're a RHEL shop.
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Well yes... but supporting RHEL is not supporting Linux, just as supporting Ubuntu isn't supporting Linux. It's kind of like saying a company supports Mac. What version... OS9, OS/X Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard?
So to put in a nutshell, they're a RHEL shop.
Which is fine and dandy if you stick to RHEL (and for many shops, it's just a matter of sticking to a single distro.) See, the original question was as follows:
Why buy Linux from a traditionally Windows-only integrator with little Linux experience?
That question itself makes no much sense since 1) there are many distros of Linux, each with its own idiosyncracies, and 2) Dell is not a Windows-only integrator given that they also do integration work with RHEL, a well-known Linux distro (and ergo pointing to the claim of Dell having little Linux experience (they do through RHEL) a fallacy.
The po
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Dell has never been a Windows-only integrator as you put it. They've embraced http://linux.dell.com [slashdot.org] on PowerEdge servers, for quite some time.
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That should link to http://linux.dell.com/ [dell.com] screwed up my own HTML link.
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Microsoft has been embracing Linux for over a decade now as well - They're obviously open-source friendly and showing their worth as a team player
http://www.mslinux.org/ [mslinux.org]
non sequitur (Score:2)
Microsoft has been embracing Linux for over a decade now as well - They're obviously open-source friendly and showing their worth as a team player http://www.mslinux.org/ [mslinux.org]
Non sequitur. The argument that Dell being or not being a Linux-integrator (or a Windows-only integrator) is logically independent of MS position (and ulterior motives, whichever they might be) with respect to Linux and/or open source.
In fact, the truth or falsehood of one company X using and providing services based technologies Y is based solely on one yes/no question and nothing else: does company X provides services based on Y? Their position, promotions and motivations (ideological or economical) ar
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these..oh wait..Dell? (Score:2)
Never mind. The downtime from having multiple, random nodes in the cloud burn out at regular intervals isn't worth it.
Call me when Canonical gets a real company to back this setup.
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Maybe you don't get the point of cloud computing. It's not new technology that allows you to do things never done before. It's cheap technology that allows you to do what you can already do, but cheaper, and with the ability to grow cheaply. Even the most expensive hardware can fail, so if you really need uptime, you buy two (at least) of anything and configure failover and load balancing, etc. "Cloud" computing is simply the idea of doing this at a large scale so you can bring more equipment online and mov
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Remind me the next time I neglect to put a gigantic [FoghornLeghorn]That's a joke son...[/FoghornLeghorn] humor tag in there.
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When I was installing plain-jane Ubuntu over the crapware-ridden default Ubuntu install on my sister's Dell netbook a few years back, I noticed that there was a Dell Dock bar for it.
No OS is safe from Dell Dock.
Local cloud servers? Really?! (Score:1)
One of the selling points of the cloud is the ability to spin up new server instances whenever they're needed. So why then would anyone need to buy a bunch of approximately equivalent servers for local development/testing/staging when all they have to do is set up a new environment in the cloud? Seems like a product designed for people who fundamentally misunderstand the whole paradigm.
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You're missing the part of the paradigm in which there are organizations that provide cloud services. These servers are for cloud service providers.
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Actually the original reason "cloud" computing came about is to abstract the computing power into a "cloud".
The whole outsourcing mentality came about much later.
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As in, distributed computing? That surprises me a bit, as I'd begun to think of them as almost counterposed concepts.
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One of the selling points of the cloud is the ability to spin up new server instances whenever they're needed. So why then would anyone need to buy a bunch of approximately equivalent servers for local development/testing/staging when all they have to do is set up a new environment in the cloud? Seems like a product designed for people who fundamentally misunderstand the whole paradigm.
Or..., for those who do business in the real world and "understand" that things like security and compliance regulations sometimes make the public cloud a bad fit. Not that this johnny-come-lately to the "cloud" buzz-word party has much else to recommend it but, just sayin'.
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When it comes to cloud we think of servers as applicances. We hardly ever fix them. If they break we throw
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One use case (and why amazon isn't all over this is beyond me) is to keep a big enough private 'cloud' for your system's base capacity. When you need extra capacity in a hurry you simply tell your management system to also add nodes from a 3rd party 'cloud', and your infrastructure is tested, and ready to go there. You can then grow your private cloud at your leisure.
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Basically that is the 'cloud-enhanced' hosting model. Pretty much the same as hosting before cloud was a buzzword, but with a certain expectation of no people interacting with people to do something (and therefore low latency to get what you need done without knowing the details).
The same principals can apply to how an organization deploys internal resources. Instead of opening a ticket that an admin has to read and immediately react to (often times that latency representing an outage), you implement a st
Clouds require servers that are local to someone (Score:2)
One of the selling points of the cloud is the ability to spin up new server instances whenever they're needed. So why then would anyone need to buy a bunch of approximately equivalent servers for local development/testing/staging when all they have to do is set up a new environment in the cloud? Seems like a product designed for people who fundamentally misunderstand the whole paradigm.
Maybe you don't understand how the paradigm is actually concretely implemented. Servers remotely hosted in the cloud aren't magic, somewhere, there is an actual data center, with actual servers, running software that provides the "cloud" features.
Some enterprises with many functions want to have the benefits of the cloud (e.g., dynamic provisioning of resources among the various applications the enterprise is running), but prefer in-house hosting.
Some operations, additionally, want to actually host cloud se
Dislike (Score:1)
put 'cloud' in it (Score:1)
Dell Ubuntu Cloud Services (Score:1)