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Rackspace Has Open Sourced Its Cloud Platform

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Rackspace has opened its cloud computing platform source code under Apache 2.0 license as part of OpenStack initiative. NASA is contributing with technology powering NASA Nebula Cloud Platform.

Rackspace has announced the creation of OpenStack Project, an initiative aiming to become the open source solution for cloud computing. The first component of the platform is Object Storage based on Rackspace’s Cloud Files source code, while a second component, Compute, based on NASA Nebula’s computing engine and Rackspace’s Cloud Servers technology, is to be added later this year. Cloud Files is a storage solution accessible via a RESTful API, while Cloud Servers is a technology offering Linux virtual images based on Xen Virtualization. NASA Nebula is a cloud computing service offering computing, networking and data storage services to NASA scientists, including the ability to process large scientific data sets.

OpenStack is for companies wanting to create their own cloud solution either for a their internal private use or to provide services to other users. Being an IaaS platform, OpenStack is going to compete more with Amazon and to a degree with Windows Azure, rather than Salesforce.com or Google.

Rackspace organized an OpenStack Design Summit on July 13-16, inviting technical advisors, developers and founding partners in order to present the code and establish a roadmap. A RightScale representative commented on the requirements gathering proceeding:

Despite the fact that there were over 40 technical folks discussing architectural details, Rick Clark [Chief Architect and Project Lead, OpenStack] managed the requirements gathering very openly using a “scaled-up” version of the Ubuntu design conference process he is very familiar with, having been the lead of the Ubuntu Server project. The process felt very inviting yet still focused on firming up a first release later this year, which doesn’t leave much room for crazy new stuff. I expect we’ll see a good number of companies contributing code to this project.

Over 25 companies, including Citrix, Dell, NTT Data, RightScale, AMD, and Intel, are supporting the project either by contributing with architectural ideas, code, or even using it as a business solution.

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