Nebula's OpenStack Hardware Offering Touts Plug-and-Play Simplicity

With all the momentum that the OpenStack cloud computing platform has, it was inevitable that eventually hardware running it and optimized for it would appear. What is notable, though, is that one of the first OpenStack-based hardware entries comes from Nebula, , the company that evolved from the NASA Nebula cloud with Chris Kemp, who was CIO of NASA. Nebula was directly involved with the genesis of OpenStack itself.

The Nebula One cloud system (with controller appliance) plugs into existing servers and recognizes the services you're already running. The idea is to provide a plug-and-play OpenStack cloud solution without installation and deployment headaches.

Nebula describes the Nebula One as an "integrated hardware and software appliance." You can read more about it here. The announcement notes:

"Nebula One consists of Nebula hardware and software coupled with certified industry-standard x86 servers known as Nebula Cloud Nodes to create a private cloud. The heart of the solution is the Nebula Cloud Controller, an appliance which integrates up to 20 servers."

"Embedded on each controller is Nebula Cosmos, our operating system used to orchestrate services and provide end-user functionality. Cosmos simplifies administration for the entire cloud system through a unified management interface enabling end users to provision their own compute and storage resources via an intuitive self-service portal. It provides API compatibility with the OpenStack and Amazon EC2/S3 cloud platforms."

You can contact Nebula to see about a demonstration or trial here. According to InformationWeek, quoting Chris Kemp, "with the simplest configurations of one or three servers, customers can get started with cloud computing for about $100,000." A Nebula One cloud can leverage just one server or up to 20 dual CPU servers in a rack.

If it does work as a simple, plug-and-play solution, $100,000 is a very tolerable price for many organizations interested in OpenStack clouds. Nebula One definitely has some credibility coming out of the gate, given Nebula's close involvement with OpenStack since its inception.