B10WH

I met Diego during the WebHostingDay 2009 in Germany. My first impression was he was very open and friendly person. I asked him what did he do and he explained me that his company was producing a Cloud computing class software. When I went back to the hotel room the same day I began searching for other similar solutions produced by European software companies (this was during an EU based event) and I wasn’t able to find that many. So I’ve decided to ask Diego to give me an interview, to talk about Cloud computing, and of course about  his company. Then I begun preparing for this interview and started browsing the web, to find some information about Diego Parrilla. Information which would help me to find out more about the person I was about to interview. Let’s see whether I made it this time.

Hi Diego, it was good to meet you. And it is good talking to you. So, tell me how do you moved to the clouds? I’ve seen you see yourself as “Cloud computing evangelist”. I’m curious when did you get yourself familiar with Cloud computing?

I was the Professional Services Manager of Amplía Soluciones. We developed a platform for Telcos heavily based in distributed and grid computing. Late in 2006 I discover Amazon EC2 and started to use it as testing platform for Amplía and for my own pet projects. I resigned in Amplía in late 2007 and started to work in ‘stealth mode’ for Abiquo, redesigning their grid computing platform to become a cloud computing. And that’s why I’m here.

Something happened in mid 2008. I get a phone call of somebody from Amazon Web Services, and he asked me what was the status of the Cloud Computing in Spain. I was shocked with the question because obviously they should know more about it than me. Then I realized that Evangelization (Evangelism, of course figuratively) was key in the Hispanic world. The “Cloud Computing Evangelist title”? It’s a SEO strategy a colleague recommend me.

What did you do before getting done to Cloud computing? Have you been involved in development of any enterprise applications and software architectures?

I have been involved for almost 15 years in software and product development. Most of these projects, because of their nature and their complexity needed distributed computing (first) and grid (later) computing (later). Scalability was always an issue, and most of the times we could not use standard technology to solve our problems. In 2004 I became a partner of Amplía Soluciones. We developed a Machine-to-Machine (M2M) platform for Telcos and Big Wireless Carriers. In late 2007 I resigned and joined Abiquo to build what we think a cloud computing has to be.

My experience with software technologies? A lot of Java, C++, middlewares all around, and lot of open source of course. I have also trained people in the execution of Agile Projects with Scrum and Lean.

Now tell me more about Abiquo. Is it a company created to produce Cloud computing generation technologies?

Abiquo is a spin off a Grid Computing research department of the Politechnic University of Catalonia. We started in 2006 developing a Grid Computing framework called AbiNtense. But we soon realized that Grid Computing frameworks (and probably development frameworks in general) is a extremely hard market. So we move our focus towards Cloud Computing technologies.

Our vision is to let the users to choose. Choose the technology, the vendor, the timings… We develop a Cloud Computing Platform -AbiCloud- that give the power to the users.

I’ve see that you offer AbiCloud. Tell me more about this type of Cloud and its architecture. It is Linux one, isn’t it?

Well, not necessarily. Abicloud is composed of two main components: The Abicloud Server is the core management software running in centralized servers: it’s the command control. This software has been developed in Java and has been succesfully deployed in Windows, Linux and Solaris.

The other component, the Abicloud Node, is an agent installed on each ‘Cloud Node’. With this agent, an hypervisor must be installed. We support VirtualBox, XEN and KVM. This Cloud Node software is linux dependant (well, we are doing some experiments with VirtualBox and OpenSolaris). We also support VMware ESXi, but in this case the hypervisor is an embedded Linux OS.

Abicloud integrates with third party storage Software like Sun OpenStorage, NexentaStor. It can work with even simpler configurations like ZFS on Solaris/OpenSolaris or LVM+iSCSI targets in Linux. Abicloud is like a big ‘enabler’.

What kind of communication link do you use to connect load-balancer, web servers and database servers? Do you use Fibre Channel, iSCSI or InfiniBand?

We are using iSCSI as our main communication channel. With the new 10 GBit ethernet communications, we think that most of the traffic will pass through these new Fabrics. Some customers has requested FC as an option in the platform. We hope that it will be an option very soon.

Has a stable, commercial version of AbiCloud already been released or it is still in development. Please also tell me what kind of equipment does anyone need to deploy AbiCloud?

Abicloud 1.0 will be released in October 2009. It will include three different versions:

• Community: This is the version already available to download in our site. It’s a complete platform, and it’s the perfect tool to enter and understand what is the private cloud concept.
• Enterprise: This version will be focused on the needs of enterprises with the Private Cloud in their goals.
• xSP: This version complemets the Enterprise version with some key features that Service Providers need to deploy a Public Cloud.

Abicloud can run on any commoditized x86 hardware. If you just want to test drive our platform, you can do it with really modest hardware specs. If you want to deploy a private or public cloud, then you need to take it seriously. We can help with the deployment of this cloud, of course.

I’ve seen that you are connected in on or other way to Nubeblog.com. Is this blog yours and what do you write about?

Yes it’s my blog. It’s the most popular Cloud Computing blog in Spanish. It is one of the activities I perform to evangelize in the Hispanic world.

How do you plan to position AbiCloud on the market. As a IaaS solution or as a platform? Do you plan to offer services on top of AbiCloud as a SaaS provider, or you will stay as cloud software producer?

Abiquo is a software producer. Abicloud is a software product. It’s a software product that helps your to abstract your existing hardware and become a IaaS provider (no matter if external or internal).

How does the Spanish market adopt the idea of Cloud computing. Are Spanish It companies looking to deploy and use cloud architectures?

Spain is a difficult market. It’s hard to find early adopters because cultural reasons. But we have seen a lot of interest in Cloud Computing (not only in our platform), and there are a lot of initiatives around it. Some big Spanish companies are launching Private Cloud Computing initiatives, and I hope this market will ramp up in the near future.

OK. Final question. Would you reveal more about AbiCloud’s pricing? How do you price your solution and how much will cost to be deployed?

The price range will start at 0€ (community versions) and we will try to keep it on average €12 per month. There will be several options available. In october we will launch our commercial offering. Regarding the cost of deployment of the solution, it depends on a lot of factors, but it will be similar to the cost of virtualization and/or hardware consolitation of a data center.

Thank you for your time Diego. It was good to talk to you. Once Abicloud is already released we would present it here in B10WH.com.

“How fast Linux is going?”, “Who is doing it?, “What developers are doing?”, and “Who is sponsoring it”. The answers of these an many other questions can be found in the latest report released by The Linux Foundation. It provides details about the development of the kernel which forms the core of the Linux OS. The foundation said that the development of the Linux kernel is a “result of one of the largest cooperative software projects ever attempted”. According to the Report, the regular kernel development releases deliver stable updates to Linux users, each with significant new features, added device support, and improved performance. “The rate of change in the kernel is high and increasing, with over 10,000 patches going into each recent kernel release. These releases each contain the work of over 1,000 developers representing around 200 corporations” says the Report.

Since 2005, more than 5,000 developers from nearly 500 different companies contributed to the Linux kernel. The kernel, thus, has become a common resource developed on a massive scale by companies which are fierce competitors in other areas. A number of changes have been noted since this paper was first published in 2008. One of them is that a 10% increase in the number of developers contributing to each kernel release cycle. The rate of change increased significantly and the number of lines of code added to the kernel each day tripled. Since 2005 the kernel code base has grown by over 2.7 million lines. For the last 4 years Linux established a robust development community which “continues to grow both in size and in productivity”, as “The Linux Foundation” reported.

The Linux kernel is the lowest software level which runs on a Linux OS. It is used to manage the hardware, to run user programs, and to maintain the overall security and integrity of the whole operating system. This is the kernel that, after its release by Linus Torvalds in 1991, inspired millions to join the development of Linux OS and applications for Linux as a whole. The kernel is a relatively small part of the software on a full Linux system. Many other large components of the OS come from the GNU project, the GNOME and KDE desktop projects, the X.org project, and etc. But the kernel is the core of the OS which  determines how well the Operating system works and is the piece which is truly unique to Linux.

The Linux kernel is one of the largest individual components on almost any Linux OS. It features one of the fastest-moving development processes and involves more developers than any other Open Source project. The Linux Foundation said  that since 2005, kernel development history is well documented, thanks to the use of the Git source code management system.

The Linux Kernel Development

The Linux OS kernel is developing by the community on a loose, time-based model. New major kernel releases occur every 2 to 3 months. The model has been formalized in 2005. It works fine for the Linux users because they get all new features into the main kernel with a minimum of delay. The model is based on the concept that the pace of  kernel development should be as fast as it is possible. Another advantage is that the distributors of the Linux OS shall apply a minimum number of external changes.

A significant change in the most recent release of the kernel that Linux Foundation reported in its latest paper is the establishment of the linux-next tree.

“Linux-next serves as a staging area for the next kernel development cycle; as of this writing, 2.6.31 is in the stabilization phase, so linux-next contains changes intended for 2.6.32. This repository gives developers a better view of which changes are coming in the future and helps them to ensure that there will be a minimum of integration problems when the next development cycle begins. Linux-next smooths out the development cycle, helping it to scale to higher rates of change”, says the Linux Foundation report.

It also explains that after each mainline 2.6 release, the kernel’s “stable team” – currently made up of Greg Kroah-Hartman and Chris Wright – takes up short-term maintenance to apply important fixes. The stable process ensures that important fixes are made available to distributors and users and also that they will be part of the next major releases. According to the foundation the stable maintenance period lasts at least 1 development cycle and. However for specific kernel releases it can go significantly longer.

Who Is Moving Linux Ahead?

The numbers show that 18.2% of Linux OS is written by people who aren’t working for any company, and 7.6% is created by programmers who don’t affiliate their contribution with any business entity. Others who write Linux are paid to contribute to the OS. Here are some of the companies which contributed more than 1% of the current Linux kernel: Red Hat: 12.3%; IBM: 7.6%; Novell: 7.6%; Intel: 5.3%’ Independent consultant: 2.5%; Oracle: 2.4%; Linux Foundation: 1.6%; SGI 1.6%; Parallels 1.3%; Renesas Technology, amd etc.

More information can be found in the Linux Foundation’s report – “Linux Kernel Development“.

This year’s exhibition hall of the HostingCon was smaller compared to the one that hosted exhibitors previous year, but most attendees said that it was more convenient. We have spoken to many of the exhibitors you can see below and all of them said they are very satisfied of the way HostingCon 2009 was organized. Most said that the conference was successful for them and they had a good business during the exhibition days – August 11 and 12. One of the biggest exhibitors were Softlayer, Parallels, cPanel and Microsoft. TheWHIR sponsored the networking lounge inside the exhibition hall. If there were are competition for a booth design Parallels would probably win. 2CheckOut, a provide or payment services fro web hosts in countries with undeveloped dot-com economies was on the show and I was surprised of this. But the company has specialized in providing payment solutions for the web hosting industry.

Aflexi – collaborative CDN software producer.

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The guys from BackupAgent.

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The famous Web Hosting Talk.

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Realtime Register – Dutch Domain registrar that offers nice prices on general TLD’s and on European domain names.

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The booth of HostingControler.

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The booth of HostingControler.

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Hosting Panama, a good place for outsourcing.

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SpamExperts, another Dutch company. Dutch dot-com businesses have one of the best designed booths at the show.

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Steadfast staff at the company’s booth. We have never heard of this web host, but decided to take a picture of its booth because of the catchy green color.

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Trustwave, a company that provides SSl certificates and other e-commerce products.

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DemoWolf, the most popular provider of tutorials for the web hosting industry.

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Ping!Zine, the longest running print magazine in web hosting industry.

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Teresa and Alisa from VeriSign.

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The 2Checkout booth at the con.

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Keith Dunkan, the publisher of Ping!Zine and Dimitar Avramov, the CEO of SingleOS.

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Parallels, the only web hosting events you can not see them are those organized by their competitors.

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cPanel, the most popular web hosting control panel was one of the featured exhibitors at the HostingCon 2009.

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The guys from DotNetPanel, a Windows web hosting control panel.

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No excuses, but I didn’t make too many pictures from this years HostingCon 2009. The reason was that I needed to attend to some business meeting and didn’t have time to shoot around. However I has some spare time on August 12 and tried to picture the conference. here are the results.

The next HostingCon – 2010 will take place in Austin, Texas. The even has a growing popularity. On of the good reasons for this is the excellent job of the iNet Interactive’s team.

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The media partners of the conference.

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The Gaylord Resort and Convention Center (I agree funny name for a hotel) obviously uses Windows Server. This screen provides the question to the answer why Linux hosting is better than Windows.

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David Snead, a lawyer who has 15 years experience in the web hosting industry and Jeff Gordon hold the session “How To Respond To Legal Threats To Your Business?” See more about the keynote at Daw Web Hosting Blog.

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A few of the senior members of the Parallels team, during an informal meeting.

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In the lobby, during the launch break.

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The main hall.

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The desk in the main hall.

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Gaylord Resort, view to the atrium.

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We will publish this years HostingCon 2009 as we see it in pictures. The first series has been shot only an hour when we arrived in Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center. It is brand new facility which has an impressive architecture. There is plenty of space in convention center and it looks like everything is very well organized. The exhibition will take place on the 2nd and 3rd days of the conference. The first day promises very interesting sessions and keynotes.

The first section to picture on the opening day of the con is “Step by Step Ways to Increase your Sales and Decrease Costs”. After 10 am we will try to show the session “Cost-Cutting Strategies for Web Hosts” in pictures.

Gaylord shot from the water.

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A Guide for the HostingCon. Find which way to go.

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A sign of the Gaylord national resort.

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In front of the exhibition hall.