OStatic

On the heels of the launch and funding of open source cloud computing player Eucalyptus Systems, the company has now announced its first commercial product. The Eucalyptus Enterprise Edition (EEE) enables customers to implement an on-premise Eucalyptus cloud with VMware'VSphere virtualization platform, and ESX hypervisor.

VSphere is VMware's cloud operating system. Not only will Eucalyptus' EEE solution allow on-premise Eucalyptus clouds on VMware's platform, but it also supports other hypervisors, including Xen and KVM. With EEE, users can leverage all of these environments, and additonally develop applications compatible with Amazon's EC2.

Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, and the analysts at RedMonk presented the results of a recent survey conducted on Ubuntu's use in server deployments. Nearly 7,000 people (representing the same number of organizations) participated in the survey, which was promoted on Ubuntu's web site and several Linux server-specific forums.

Canonical's marketing head, Gerry Carr, says that the survey is essential reading for any organization using (or considering using) Ubuntu's Server Edition. After taking a closer look at the survey, I'd recommend it to anyone interested in current server technologies, or where the server market is headed -- even if Ubuntu Server isn't part of the equation.

While many cloud/utility computing services have sprung up over the past few years, the adoption of their management techniques in the open source world has not. Most people don't need or want to build a large-scale computing cluster in their own business, but they could use some of the automation inherent in these systems to their advantage.