[18:26] <syadnom2> hi all. anyone able to chat with me about the differences between the ubuntu cloud an something like vmware or xenserver?
[18:56] <kim0> syadnom2: Hi
[18:57] <kim0> syadnom2: sure let me dump some thoughts
[18:57] <kim0> so basically there is a difference between a "cloud" solution, and the core "hypervisor"
[18:58] <kim0> A hypervisor is a part of the cloud. It is the technology that virtualizes a server turning it into multiple virtual machines
[18:59] <kim0> A cloud howeer is a higher level concept. Usually a cloud is about managing the complexity of a large number of physical servers, an even larger number of virtual servers
[18:59] <kim0> a large number of images, volumes, snapshots, users ...etc
[18:59] <kim0> a cloud puts an API on top of all that, and executes the workflows to keep the full thing running
[19:00] <kim0> everyone can describe cloud differently, so don't take my words too literatetly .. but I hope this helps
[19:00] <kim0> currently ubuntu cloud is based on openstack
[19:00] <kim0> a large and rapidly growing open source cloud stack
[19:01] <kim0> thus .. you cannot really compare it to xenserver (a hypervisor) or vmware if you mean ESX by that, since that's also just a hypervisor
[19:01] <kim0> actually openstack/ubuntu-cloud can "use" KVM or XenServer or VMware-ESX among many hypervisors
[19:01] <kim0> you can compare ubuntu-cloud to vmware vcloud director however
[19:02] <kim0> and also to Xen's XCP (Xen Cloud Platform) .. although confusingly even XCP is now becoming a pluggable component under openstack?!
[19:03] <kim0> the primary advantages of ubuntu cloud over say vCloud, is of course that it is open source, open standard, worked on by tens of top IT companies, totally pluggable, customizable, perhaps cheaper and more customizable
[19:03] <kim0> If you have more concrete questions .. ask away and someone will get around to replying
[19:03] <kim0> syadnom2: I'll be away for a while .. feel free to leave me questions though
[19:05] <syadnom2> kim0, what about Windows hosts on the ubuntu cloud, and can you live migrate hosts between servers via the cloud management interface?
[19:06] <kim0> depends on the hypervisor .. by default the kvm hypervisor can do live migrations if you provide a shared storage yes .. at least that's my understanding
[19:06] <kim0> kvm is the default hypervisor .. if I was not too clear
[19:07] <zoopster> syadnom2: live migration defeats the purpose of the usage of cloud...what you want is basic virtualization, not "cloud"
[19:08] <syadnom2> I am wondering if it can do both.  I get that the cloud is intended for 'instances' where a task can be spawned at will etc etc, but what happens if an instance is on a piece of hardware that goes down? is my option to just have it respawned on another piece of hardware or can it live migrate?
[19:11] <zoopster> syadnom2: in virtualization the "system" is built to be redundant hence the "live migration" need...in a cloud environment the application is designed for failure and is meant to be architected to "respawn" as you describe
[19:12] <syadnom2> I guess I should just say what my purpose is.  I want to both host windows server in a hosted domain setup and at the same time offer hosted web services like amazon or rackspace's cloud.  without having two entirely seperate server pools
[19:13] <zoopster> syadnom2: it's a core principle that is widely misunderstood hence the wide catastrophic failure when Amazon's EC2 hiccoughed earlier this year.
[19:14] <syadnom2> right, cloud vm's die and respawn, while virtual infrastructure live migrates
[19:15] <zoopster> syadnom2: ugh. I guess you could do that. Not sure how well openstack works with windows as far as a guest is concerned, but you won't really have a good failover story
[19:15] <syadnom2> I am investigating if I should consider a move from my XenServer cluster
[19:16] <zoopster> syadnom2: if you are using xenserver today, you can make it do what you are describing. I believe that Citrix has tools to manage it  in the fashion described above
[19:16] <syadnom2> for many $$
[19:17] <zoopster> exactly
[19:17] <syadnom2> i should have said $$$$$
[19:17] <syadnom2> $ is ok, but not $$$$$ :)
[19:17] <zoopster> you are paying for the tools
[19:18] <zoopster> the problem with windows as described is going to be failure. It's not very forgiving in a failure so you running into many issues
[19:18] <zoopster> in a openldap environment failure is more tolerant
[19:18] <kim0> Fault tolerance is even more impressive than live migration, for even more $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ :)
[19:18] <syadnom2> run two ADDS on different machines
[19:20] <syadnom2> microsoft is aware that windows servers are less than graceful when coming up after a crash so best practices is to have 2 ADDS servers
[19:21] <zoopster> I really don't have good advice for what you are trying to do
[19:22] <syadnom2> My infrastructure is quite easy to handle right now via XenServer.  I am able to live migrate between machines to keep services up when putting a VM Host in maintenance etc etc.  The delima is to offer customer appliances on my cluster or to build a new cluster for that purpose, and if so, do a cloud type setup instead.
[19:36] <syadnom2> thanks for the chat all, going away now :)