The Growing Role of Linux in the Cloud
Arvind Krishna is general manager of development and manufacturing in the Systems & Technology Group at IBM, and he is slated to deliver a keynote address at the LinuxCon and Cloud Open conference in New Orleans, Sept. 16-18, 2013. As a preview of his talk, The Linux Foundation has an interesting interview up with him, in which he discusses the role Linux will play in next-generation cloud applications. Some people may be surprised by how pervasive Linux is in cloud deployments already.
"[Linux is very influential already and its significance will only grow more dramatically in the near future. IDC Research Director Matthew Oostveen was recently quoted as saying, 'Private cloud adoption will drive converged systems adoption, which will in turn drive uptake of Linux-based servers.' I believe that Linux will both manage workloads and be the engine for the next generation of applications. That is where all the new applications are being developed."
IBM also has a developerWorks article up about Linux and cloud computing, which delves into Linux as an essential part of scalable cloud deployments and virtualization strategies. The article also delves into the Linux plumbing in popular cloud computing platforms:
"The Eucalyptus project (Elastic Utility Computing Architecture for Linking Your Programs To Useful Systems) is an open source implementation of Amazon EC2 that is interface-compatible with the commercial service. Like EC2, Eucalyptus relies on Linux with Xen for operating system virtualization."
"Another EC2 style of IaaS is the Enomalism cloud computing platform. Enomalism is an open source project that provides a cloud computing framework with functionality similar to EC2. Enomalism is based on Linux, with support for both Xen and the Kernel Virtual Machine (KVM)."
Krishna is right that Linux-based servers stand to increase their market share substantially as cloud computing deployments expand. In fact, growth on servers has made Linux one of the fastest growing segments of the overall operating system market in recent years. Many Linux servers are part of robust cloud deployments, and Linux is part of the multiple operating system virtualization strategies found in countless organizations.