Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) has been released today bringing highly interesting new features, specially in the Cloud Computing and Virtualization area. The new Ubuntu server distribution includes two complementary cloud tools, OpenNebula and Eucalyptus, so providing the technology required to build the three types of Cloud architectures, namely private, hybrid and public clouds.

Eucalyptus can be used to transform an existing infrastructure into an IaaS public cloud, being compatible with Amazon’s EC2 interface. Eucalyptus is fully functional with respect to providing cloud-like interfaces and higher-level cloud functionality for security, contextualization and image management. OpenNebula, on the other hand, is a virtual infrastructure engine that enables the dynamic and scalable deployment and re-placement of groups of interconnected virtual machines within and across sites. OpenNebula can be primarily used as a virtualization tool to manage a distributed virtual infrastructure in the datacenter or cluster. This application is usually referred as private cloud, and  OpenNebula can also dynamically scale the local infrastructure using external clouds, so building hybrid clouds. OpenNebula provides dynamic “cloudbursting” to any cloud with Amazon EC2 interfaces, including Eucalyptus-based clouds.

OpenNebula is building an ecosytem with tools extending its functionality, such as the Haizea lease management system, a libvirt implementation on top of OpenNebula or a VM consolidation scheduler fro GreenIT. The project provides support to host the development of the new ecosystem projects.

Moreover, because OpenNebula is one of the technologies being enhanced in RESERVOIR, flagship European research initiative in virtualized infrastructures and cloud computing, in few months there will be available several new components complementing its functionality for service elasticity management, VM placement to meet SLA commitments, supporting public cloud interfaces…

Ignacio M. Llorente