Innovations in Eucalyptus 3.2 Software

Eucalyptus Systems, Inc., provider of private and hybrid cloud computing software, announced several capabilities within its open cloud software including features that drive greater visibility into cloud operations and expanded storage options.

                         Eucalyptus Cloud Platform

Eucalyptus 3.2 also introduces several features that increase control and management of cloud resources including a new graphical user interface which enables self-service capabilities, simplified cloud administration, and enhanced cloud usage reporting.

"Visibility and control are foundational elements in driving the broader adoption of cloud computing in the enterprise," said Aneel Lakhani, research director, Gartner. "These capabilities are critical across the entire cloud spectrum, but especially for customers pursuing a hybrid approach where applications may run on multiple clouds, private or public, for maximum flexibility in supporting business needs."

Managing distributed cloud environments is a daunting challenge for today’s cloud administrators. As the complexity and scale of cloud deployments grow, solutions that automate key processes, troubleshoot and resolve performance issues, and report on cloud usage and key trends are critical for success. Innovations in Eucalyptus 3.2 provide customers with greater visibility and control over cloud environments so they can accelerate cloud adoption across their organizations.

New features include:

• Web-based Cloud User Console – A new GUI enables self-service provisioning of compute, network, and storage resources. The console allows users to perform self-service operations including the provisioning of instances, keypair and password creation, Elastic Block Store (EBS) volume and snapshot operations, image catalog listing and registration, user group operations, and elastic IP operations.
• Enhanced Cloud Usage Reporting – Allows cloud administrators to understand usage of cloud resources, provide chargeback for resources consumed, and facilitate capacity planning. Cloud administrators can report on cloud compute, storage, and memory usage at the user, group, and cloud level; generate and export reports via the GUI, API, or command line; and store usage data in an external database as desired.
• Cloud Administration – Cloud administrators also benefit from simplified cloud administration through improved logging capabilities for faster troubleshooting and issue resolution.
• Cloud Robustness – Performing QA testing on a massive scale and in an open environment ensures Eucalyptus is production-ready software that enterprises can rely on. Eucalyptus 3.2 increases the resiliency and availability of applications with a hardened node controller that further increases cloud reliability.

"At any given time, our load-test harness may handle up to 6,000 concurrent connections to 20 test applications across multiple groups and phases of development. Eucalyptus enables us to quickly provision cloud resources to meet these demands using the same ecosystem of tools we’re already familiar with through our work with AWS," said Thomas Morse, director of IT and SaaS operations, AppDynamics. "The reliability, flexibility and control provided by Eucalyptus 3.2 sets the stage for us to more rapidly deploy and manage mission-critical development and test environments in a highly scalable and self-service manner."

Eucalyptus also broadened its storage support
through introduction of two new adaptors:

• JBOD Storage Adaptor – Overlays Elastic Block Store (EBS) functionality on top of raw block devices and JBODs, and provides support of AWS EBS API operations.
• EMC VNX SAN Storage Adaptor – Provides expanded SAN support for EMC VNX Series SANs for Elastic Block Store (EBS) storage, including HA for the Eucalyptus Storage Controller, VNX snapshot support, and multi-pathing support for greater redundancy.

"Customers worldwide, including NSN, Puma, Inter-Continental Hotels Group, and NASA, have turned to Eucalyptus based on the agility, elasticity, and scale that our software provides for highly demanding development and test and Web applications," said Marten Mickos, CEO of Eucalyptus. "Eucalyptus 3.2 delivers a highly reliable and robust private and hybrid cloud solution that empowers both enterprises and the open source community to confidently deploy applications and drive innovation in the cloud."

The new capabilities build upon Eucalyptus 3.1, which aligned the open source community and enterprises on the same platform to contribute, build, run and manage cloud development and deployments.

Eucalyptus 3.2 will be available in December, 2012.