The most unknown story OpenStack the revelation!

The Rainbow Pavilion (Rainbow mansion) is a mini imperial palace on the west coast of the United States, located on a hill overlooking the Silicon Valley, and boasts a Spanish-style roof-tile and foyer. The former owner of the 140-ping mansion has made a lot of money by selling computer chips and discs. But now it's just a Silicon Valley commune, a place where young activists in the tech community live and share their jobs.

The tenants here are Google employees, NASA engineers, employees who build electric cars in Tesla, and Apple engineers. But these people choose the Rainbow Pavilion as a shelter, not just to meet the needs of their jobs. The public library behind the foyer is where the salon is normally held (an informal discussion). The subjects discussed by ordinary tenants were all about: from the death of nationalism, to whether Internet freedom is more important than personal privacy, has been one of the topics. The garage has a makeshift hardware lab, where tenants build model submarines, satellites and unmanned aerial vehicles that can operate on Android phones. Over the past few years, more than one new venture has emerged from these rooms.

According to a former tenant, the prerequisite for staying at the Rainbow Pavilion is that you want to change the world! Changing the world seems like a simple thing to say, but the Rainbow Pavilion tenant has already done it. They poured the collective social character (communal ethos) into the most important open software project in nearly a decade: OpenStack, a cloud computing program that operates under Linux environments.

Using the OpenStack program, anyone can build their own Amazon Elastic cloud computing (Amazon's elastic Compute Cloud). Amazon's resilient cloud computing is currently a popular Internet service that allows developers and businesses to instantly access virtual servers. About four years ago, the predecessor of OpenStack was a project that was not well known within NASA, but the current OpenStack has dramatically subverted the entire private and public domain.

Since gaining the attention of Vivek Kundra (the first information chief in the United States), other U.S. federal business units have joined the OpenStack, with the exception of NASA. After NASA and the cloud computing market, the second largest brand Rackspace Alliance, launched OpenStack, now the world has more than 183 companies announced support OpenStack. OpenStack is changing the future of technology leaders such as HP, Cisco and Dell, and IBM is a part of the change if the rumors are true.

"A lot of people in the industry are taking this seriously," Zorawar "Biri" Singh said. Zorawar "Biri" Singh is responsible for overseeing HP's use of OpenStack to build cloud services. "In addition to the Members who have announced their support for OpenStack, we have discussed this matter with other people, like some of the top network architects with a strong interest in OpenStack." There is still a lot of work to be done, but everything is in our hands.

OpenStack's founders are located in Nasa, Rackspace and elsewhere. But some of the most important founders were activists at the technology commune in the Rainbow Pavilion, such as Chris C. Kemp, 34, who joined NASA's Ames Research Center in 2006 and founded a commune of liberal thinkers. "We were just looking for a place to live," Kemp said, "but this place has become an interesting place for people to eat, meet and live, and these interesting people have the ability to broaden our understanding of the world." ”

Kemp later served as the information director for the Ames Research Center, and then as the technical director of NASA as a whole. When NASA worked with other people at the Rainbow Pavilion, Kemp launched the NASA Nebula Project, which later allowed Google's web masterpieces to spread around the world. After two years of struggle, the project's main open platform Nova and Rackspace compatible platform merged, creating the birth of OpenStack.

Like Linux, the birth of OpenStack is a miracle. At the time, the goddess of fate was not on the side of Kemp, even though it was not easy to nebula the project inside NASA. Apart from the fact that the Nebula project is not very relevant to NASA's mission, the internal bureaucracy of NASA is not suitable for this creation, which can be shared with the world, and it is indeed difficult for the project to find shelter so quickly in the technological world of the Great Powers.

"The project has encountered difficulties from the outset," he said. In fact, it's an impossible task from beginning to end, "said Rick Clark. Rick Clark, who worked at Rackspace early in the OpenStack project, is now helping to drive related projects in Cisco. "You have to ingratiate yourself with NASA, NASA's legal team, the Rackspace legal team, the Rackspace board, and other developers." The birth of this project can only be said that God bless! ”

OpenStack co-founder Josh McKenty

NASA found a long-lost twin brother.

NASA teamed up with Rackspace, beginning with a blog post. This article appeared on the internet about the early summer of 2010, when few people noticed it. Joshua McKenty wrote in this blog: "Start Nova." Joshua McKenty, not only a NASA contractor, but also a frequent visitor to the Rainbow Pavilion, said in the article: "This is a Python programming language written in cloud computing software that uses Apache licensing." This thing can be used, a lot of defects, is a trial version, hurry and try it. ”

The Nova, written in Python programming language, is essentially an imitation of Amazon's elastic cloud computing. Amazon's resilient cloud computing allows users to operate software applications without having to set up a personal physical machine, and can get more virtual servers as long as the user needs it. The biggest difference with Amazon's resilient cloud computing is that Nova is open software, and because of the Apache license, people who want to use the Nova architecture for resilient cloud computing are free to use the platform.

One weeks after the Nova was online, someone told Rick Clark the news. In the September 1, Clark switched to Rackspace from Canonical, an Ubuntu Linux distro supplier, and then built a mission to build an open platform for infrastructure cloud (infrastructure clouds). Several Rackspace executives were pushing the same project, including the VP Jim Curry of the Corporate Development Division and Moorman Lew.

After Clark looked at NASA's Nova code, he was shocked by the high degree of similarity between the Nova and Rackspace's own open platform. So he quickly sent Ane-mail to Rackspace's Giants, "NASA, which is about three months ahead of us, said in his letter," We need to talk to them and see if there is any way to collaborate so we can use their programs to make further changes. " ”

Clark never thought NASA would really work with Rackspace, but it was clear that the company had a lot to do with NASA. The father of Clark's boss, director of corporate development, Jim Curry, a 40-year engineer at NASA, has been working to develop an insulation system for space shuttle and spacecraft, so Curry grew up in the NASA Space Center in Houston, Texas. One weeks after NASA's Curry with Kemp, several Rackspace employees flew to the Silicon Valley to meet with NASA's team. They met with NASA's team first at the Ames Research Center and then dined together at a nearby Thai restaurant. At this point the fate of Rackspace and NASA deepened a layer.

"It's like finding a long-lost twin brother," says McKenty, "it's the weirdest experience of my life." We use the same tool to choose the same language program. No one in our two research teams ever met each other, and we both said, Wow! The code you just wrote is exactly what we're going to write. ”

More coincidentally, the code base on both sides is compatible. When NASA was building Nova, Rackspace had completed a platform called Swift; Nova provides a virtual server, which is computing power, and Swift provides data storage; Nova is a feature that mimics Amazon's resilient cloud computing, And Swift is a replica of Amazon's simple Storage service,s3. During dinner, two teams decided to combine the two projects and open the source code, and decided to use the name "OpenStack" as the new project name.

But there is still a long way to go before that goal. When it comes to paying for the meal, the engineers realise that there is no simple way to pay the bill, and that at NASA, civil servants and contractors have to pay for their own meals. "There are about 20 people going to dinner, and we're sharing all the Thai food, so we have to try to distribute the expenses according to the head," said Jonathan Bryce, who works for Rackspace, "and I thought, if this is the epitome of working with the government, the project will never succeed.

This is indeed a microcosm of co-operation with the government, and it is no wonder how the Nova has been a broken eye.

Google and its infrastructure

In 2006, the Ames Research Center brought a new director into the network in an effort to bring the NASA's Silicon Valley outpost into the internet era. When the new director took office, he immediately recruited new blood, including Chris Kemp and four other employees who later moved into the Rainbow Pavilion. The Rainbow Pavilion is about a 15-minute drive from the Ames Research Center, and Kemp's new job is to change NASA.

Kemp was originally a system engineer at the Silicon Graphics Alabama Huntsville (Huntsville, Alabama) office, the mission of which was to support NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center Marshall Center) rocket scientist. Later, he became Classmates.com's chief Network architect, one of the best in the dotcom boom of the 90.

Within seven months of the building's basement, number No. 200, NASA's Ames Research Center, Kemp Non-stop. He finalized a partnership between Google and NASA, allowing internet giant Google to assist NASA in transmitting lunar and Martian images on public networks. Then, as Kemp's second feat, he asked Google's executives to park their private jets at the Ames Research Center.

The opening of the airport to Google's business, each year for NASA to bring more than $2 million of additional revenue. But compared with the airport deal, Google Moon and Google Mars to the impact of the more significant NASA. Before that, Kemp had a similar Internet service at Microsoft, so it was a shock to the way Google and Microsoft handled the communications infrastructure (backend infrastructure).

"At Google, infrastructure is like money," Kemp says, "Google's laissez-faire attitude is like saying, ' no problem, we have thousands of terabytes of space available at any time." ' Microsoft's attitude is exactly the opposite of Google's. At Microsoft, data storage space is controlled by certain units, so you have to kneel down and ask them to do everything they can to borrow or steal some computing resources. The situation at NASA is even tougher because NASA has absolutely no infrastructure to accommodate these things. ”

Over the past few years, Google has built unparalleled infrastructure: a software platform that spans many servers, allowing Google developers to arbitrarily expand or shrink their apps. And this infrastructure is for Google itself, and it doesn't need to be shared with the world like Amazon's resilient cloud computing. At the same time, Amazon's resilient cloud computing is similar to the technology concept of Google's infrastructure.

As a result, Kemp that Amazon's resilient cloud computing and Google's infrastructure are what NASA needs. He wants NASA to deliver its own high-resolution images without the help of Google, Microsoft or Amazon.

"I think NASA should be able to deliver this valuable material so that the platform like Google Earth and Microsoft's Space Telescope (worldwide telescope) can use this valuable information," Kemp said. We can't always say this is a problem that Google or Microsoft wants to solve. The reality then is that we don't have our own infrastructure. That's why we want to launch this project. He called the project "NASA, Nebula," and this project eventually led to the birth of Nova. For the next few years, Joshua McKenty said, most of the strategy meetings and a whole bunch of overtime writing programs were done at the Rainbow Pavilion table.

The White House rescued nebula from the crisis of destruction

NASA Nebula was simply a replica of the Amazon public cloud, or another failed government project. But in 2009, things turned out, and the project won the favor of the first federal information Vivek Kundra of the United States. When Obama was President of the United States in 2009, he created the post of Chief of information, hoping to improve the health of the government's technology infrastructure, which NASA nebula just offered. Kundra the nebula as a platform for the federal government, including NASA, to use the application program.

"At that time, the technical part was still green," Kundra said, "but I can see at the time that using this technology will probably break the pattern we used to use technology, which is what we call the digital oil." The old model is very economical, it will consume a lot of resources, each government unit must be prepared enough space to cope with peak use time, but in addition to peak moment, most of the space will not be used. Kundra said the government's data centre would use only about 40% of all data storage space and about 27% of the computing power. And the advent of Nebula will change all this. Nebula not only has the processing power, but also has the data storage space function, so that each unit to use when it can be used.

So Kundra Chris Kemp to the White House and made use of NASA Nebula to create a website called "USAspending.gov" to publish information about government spending to the public. At the same time, Kundra also developed a related project, hoping to promote the platform to other government units.

The problem is that some American lawmakers and NASA bureaucrats are planning to suspend the project. Kemp said the leader of the opposition was Senator Richard Shelby, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee (Senate Appropriations Committee). Shelby's office did not respond to "Wired" in response to the incident, but Kemp said the senator thought Nebula would cause many people to lose their jobs. "Every time I say in Washington that cloud technology can make a datacenter work in unmanned state, my words will be interpreted as a job that will disappear," Kemp said. "The project faced a very difficult political challenge, and even called on the entire NASA chief to explain the matter. ”

Kundra's approach to the matter is more tactful. This, he says, is but a bit of resistance in the pursuit of new ideas. Ray O ' Brien, the current NASA Ames Research Center, is very similar to Kundra. But, according to Kemp, the project was probably not going to get any money or even go on.

The pressure on Washington is almost at a tipping point in the fall of 2009. That fall, Kundra flew to the Silicon Valley Ames Research Center to personally host the federal government Cloud strategy (cloud computing strategy) to show that he personally supported nebula projects in private. "Without Vivek at the White House for us, we couldn't finish the project," ",kemp said." My team was working to produce documents that might be used in congressional investigations. " But Vivek is the one who really helped stop them. "In this situation, the state of NASA's nebula operation is not as good as expected, which is another troubling problem."