Nebula Debuts OpenStack-Based Cloud System

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Nebula, a startup founded by former NASA workers, has released a new cloud computing system it calls “Nebula One.” The cloud controller plugs into a standard server rack and turns it into an Open-Stack based private cloud.

ZDNet’s Nick Heath reported, “An appliance that aims to simplify the creation and running of private clouds has been released today. The Nebula One cloud controller is an appliance that can pool resources from up to 20 server nodes into a private cloud system. The appliance can provision and manage storage, compute and networking for virtual machines (VMs) from up to five appliances to pool resources from 100 nodes. It can be used with certified industry standard servers from major vendors such as Dell, HP and IBM.”/p>

SlashGear’s Craig Lloyd explained, “Essentially, the Nebula One is a turnkey computer, that takes an ordinary rack of servers and turns them into a full-fledged cloud storage system running OpenStack, which is an open source cloud computing platform. CEO and former NASA CTO Christopher Kemp says that these systems combine computing powers, storage, and networking all into one machine.”

InformationWeek’s Charles Babcock noted, “The Nebula One cloud controller is a single product rather than a set of loosely associated software components. Until now, OpenStack has appeared in the marketplace as a set of components included in major Linux distributions from Red Hat, Suse or Ubuntu. The Nebula One is instead a hardware appliance that fits into the 2u slot of a rack. The customer simply selects a standard two-CPU server of choice, plugs the device into the slot of the controller, and the OpenStack cloud comes to life on the rack. Like the controller itself, the server slots in the rack may be equipped with servers of the customer’s choice.”‘

GigaOm’s Barb Darrow observed, “Nebula One’s ability to plug into existing systems and services adds a comfort factor for many IT buyers that other OpenStack releases lack. ‘If you bring software into an enterprise, you end up in a conversation with the server people who want to know what the management system is, then you have to deal with the storage people and then the virtualization people who all hate each other,’ [Kemp] said. But, if you can bring in an appliance that plugs into existing systems, you can minimize the dissonance and blowback from those constituencies. And that could prove valuable.”