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Originally posted here:
Getting Started with RightScale: Launching a server using a ServerTemplate - Video

Lew Moorman, President of Rackspace. Share your thoughts on lock-in, OpenStack and more in the comments section below.

Heres a question. What if your computing needs outgrow the horsepower and features of your current stable of PCs and servers? Simple. You go buy better ones. Maybe try a different brand.And if you hate the new ones? No problem. Simply try another option.Or go back to the original. You always have a choice with hardware.

That, however, was yesterday. Today, companies of all sizes are getting themselves out of the hardware business and instead are buying their computing as a service, in the cloud. Trouble is, the freedom of choice and portability that youve enjoyed when purchasing computer hardware has been largely absent when youre buying cloud services.

To see what I mean, consider movie rentals: a business revolutionized by cloud computing. Remember just a few years ago when you had to drive to Blockbuster and hope the movie you wanted wasnt already checked out? Now, the cloud has enabled a growing list of services like Netflix, which allow us to stream any movie onto any device with the click of a button.Todays cloud gives movie buffs unlimited choice and freedom. But is it giving businesses that same kind of choice and freedom?

Listen to what Adrian Cockcroft, Netflixs Director of Architecture, is saying about his cloud provider, Amazon Web Services. He loves it. And yet, he too wants choice. Please try to build AWS clones that scale! he asks.

Why is he saying this? Through no fault of Netflix, its business is deeply integrated into the Amazon cloud, with long-term implications for costs and capabilities. Like Amazon, Netflix is a pioneer, and at the time when it decided to move its business to the cloud, there was no open cloud platform available. All the cloud providers used proprietary software. My question is: if Netflix wanted to move, could it? How hard would it be? As for many who are using the full power of the cloud offerings of today, I think the answer is clear: moving would be very hard.

Heres why: the cloud is a very different model for running applications, as compared to traditional infrastructure. Your applications dont ride on top of the infrastructure like a jockey on a horse. Instead, those apps fuse to the cloud infrastructure, like the riders of the banshees in Avatar, who join for life with their flying beasts. This integration is central to the power of cloud computing: its nimbleness and speed; its automation and scaling. In traditional computing, when a company needs more servers to run its application, an operations technician has to ask for them. In the cloud, the application is capable of making these decisions automatically based on its needs and the cloud responds accordingly.

But heres the catch: Once your applications are integrated into the infrastructure of a proprietary cloud, switching providers becomes much harder. It requires at least some recoding of your application.

Furthermore, once your apps are fused into a proprietary cloud, there is a strong temptation to use its proprietary features. Amazon has innovated rapidly in this area, offering cool but proprietary products such as SimpleDB and DynamoDB that simply have no implementation outside its cloud. Once the customer uses such features, their applications are fully fused into that one stack.

To update an old computing metaphor: you date your hardware provider; you marry your cloud.

Here is the original post:
Is There Any Choice in the Cloud?

SEATTLE, WA--(Marketwire -06/25/12)- In the ongoing battle of the Linux distributions, new survey findings show that businesses favor Debian and Ubuntu over Red Hat distributions for file servers, including RHEL and CentOS. Among those using Linux on file servers, 67% of respondents use Debian distributions, while 54% use Red Hat. The survey of 100 small and medium business users, sponsored by Symform, was designed to identify the most common distributions among Linux users interested in additional data backup, particularly cloud-based solutions. While this survey focused on file servers, it aligns with other research that indicated Debian is also the most popular Linux distribution on web servers.

"When it comes to Linux market share information, there is good data about web server deployments from organizations such as W3Techs, but we wanted to shed light on SMBs' use of Linux for file servers, such as what Linux chains organizations use to store their data," said Margaret Dawson, vice president of product management and marketing at Symform. "As an added benefit, we are also getting this information directly from the businesses, since they typically manage their own file servers, whereas with web servers, the Linux decision is often made by the hosting companies SMBs leverage for web servers."

Most file server deployments signal a high degree of co-existence of Linux chains, with a clear majority of those who are using Red Hat/CentOS also utilizing Debian/Ubuntu. However, when it comes to data volume, the Symform survey revealed differences in the chains, with Debian/Ubuntu users storing more data on those file servers. In fact, 63% of Debian/Ubuntu users have one terabyte or more of data stored on the file servers, compared to only 46% utilizing Red Hat/CentOS for similar data volumes.

When it comes to data backup, nearly 20% of respondents are doing nothing for local, or on-premise, backup. Among those that are doing local backup, 37% rely on Rsync, an application and protocol used for data sync and mirroring. This is not surprising since Rsync is free software favored by the open source community and is frequently used over SSH for encryption. Among the remaining, 13% are backing up to another Linux server, a network attach storage (NAS) device or Storage Attach networking (SAN) appliance, and the remainder use a wide variety of commercial solutions.

For secondary or remote data backup, nearly 20% of respondents again are doing nothing. The majority of those that are doing remote backup use physical tape rotation to another location or a custom application. Few are using cloud backup, which is indicative of the limited availability of affordable cloud backup solutions for Linux servers on the market today. The survey results separately indicate that a large percentage would use a cloud backup solution if it supported the right Linux distribution and security requirements, with 68% saying they would be likely to use the Symform Global Cloud Storage Network to back up their Linux file servers.

Data protection and backup have become hot trends for small and medium enterprises, as companies of all sizes are struggling to manage fast growing volumes of digital data that is stored in a wide range of devices. Just under 50% of respondents are storing one to five terabytes of data on their Linux servers, while another 10% were storing between five and 20 terabytes.

Symform is using the data from this survey to prioritize Linux distributions to support in upcoming product releases. Its first Linux client supports an embedded Debian distribution in QNAP NAS devices. Symform currently has thousands of QNAP users on its peer-to-peer cloud network backing data up from NAS devices to the cloud, and contributing excess drive space to the network in exchange for free cloud storage.

About Symform Symform is a revolutionary secure cloud storage and backup service. The Symform Global Cloud Storage Network protects your data, business and bottom line. Unlike traditional data center storage, Symform's global network encrypts, shreds and geo-distributes data, providing greater security, higher performance and more cost-effective cloud data storage and backup than any alternative today. Customers join the Symform network by contributing excess local storage and, in exchange, receive affordable, unlimited cloud backup. Join the revolution today and experience secure cloud storage and backup that is up to ten times more affordable, faster and safer. Email info@symform.com.

Symform, Symform Global Cloud Storage Network, the Resilient Storage Architecture, and RAID-96 are trademarks of Symform, Inc. References to other companies and their products acknowledge the trademarks owned by their respective companies and are for reference purposes only.

See original here:
Debian and Ubuntu Surpass Red Hat and CentOS for Top Linux Distributions on SMB File Servers