Fantastical thinking by private cloud builders has led to a deep misunderstanding of cloud storage technologies. If you are building a private cloud, you MUST understand the realities of cloud storage and not just think in terms of buying a single simple solution to what is ultimately a very complex...

Voting is now open for the OpenStack Summit fall 2013 in Hong Kong. Cloudscalers have submitted a variety of presentations, from Randy Bias’ popular “State of the Stack” overview of the project to technical deep dives on security, block storage, networking, SELinux and more. Below, we’ve summarized each talk and...

I can’t think of anyone who has had a more epic impact on the history of open source software than Brian Behlendorf. He’s the co-founder and/or board member of a raft of open source communities, including: Apache Group, which became the Apache Foundation Mozilla CollabNet Benetech Electronic Frontier Foundation He’s...

Last week I published an open letter to the OpenStack community calling for more focus on Amazon Web Services (AWS) compatibility. I feel strongly about this, as do others. However, in retrospect, I could have gone about elevating this issue in a different manner. I realize now that it might...

OpenStack is taking off at a pace that has defied almost everyone’s initial assumptions, and buying patterns are beginning to emerge. That’s a good thing, and it inevitably means change. Smart companies iterate fast and respond to market changes. Startups are held to a higher standard than established entities. That’s...

An Open Letter to the OpenStack Community: Our Future Depends on Embracing Amazon <UPDATE: Please see the follow up response to this letter .> Dear Stackers,  For three years, elements of the OpenStack community have arbitrarily and unfairly positioned OpenStack against incumbents, especially Amazon Web Services (AWS) and VMware (VMW)....

If winning derives from rapid iteration of a minimum viable product, then all indications are that the momentum driving OpenStack will only continue. Consider three facts that demonstrate the rapid iterations driving OpenStack skyward: 1. Technology is Keeping Up With Hype There’s no shortage of hype in the OpenStack community....

At the recent Structure event in San Francisco, I watched Werner Vogels’ presentation, along with about 500 others in a packed auditorium. Werner is the CTO of Amazon Web Services and one of the industry’s more prophetic voices. (I was honored to share the keynote stage with him at Cloud Connect a...

Earlier this week, I gave the keynote address at the Storage Plumbing and Data Engineering Conference in Santa Clara (it’s abbreviated SPDEcon and pronounced, “Speedy-con,” by the way). Sponsored by the SNIA, the event is targeted for hardcore storage development and data engineers who configure, integrate and support storage and...

Since the first quarter of this year, Cloudscaling has secured a number of new customers, including LivingSocial, EVault, Ubisoft and DataFort, launched a channel partner program and announced support for OpenStack Grizzly in the third generation of OCS technology, Open Cloud System 2.5.