Why open source tools need to bind hardware facilities soft hard combination is a trend

The advantage of open source software is that they are completely free and practical, and the disadvantage is that they are difficult to configure and manage, such as OpenStack and Hadoop. Fortunately, hardware vendors are stepping up to fill gaps.

Hardware Giants

Essentially, OpenStack and Hadoop are designed specifically for the best way to run their own software. Dell's Open-source software, which is deployed on hardware and manages existing systems, matches crowbar. The biggest difference between OpenStack and Hadoop two products is the price issue. Dell's OpenStack solution is a reference architecture for alternative support and services, while Cloudera releases Hadoop is a complete product, including hardware, software, support and services.

In the OpenStack field, Dell and start-up Nebula are competitors. Led by former NASA chief technology officer Chris Camp, Nebula Company has developed its own equipment, pre-installed OpenStack software and management tools, running dozens of commodity servers. However, although Nebula now focuses on OpenStack, Kemp is not able to exclude devices designed for Hadoop, NoSQL databases and other next-generation software platforms.

Difficult to extend outward

Common hardware devices, and even specific hardware that binds specific software, may be difficult to sell. However, when it comes to distributed systems, the situation is different. Of course, there will also be some examples of the success of binding many software products to sales hardware facilities.

Teradata, IBM Netezza and Oracle Exadata Three companies successfully bind large-scale parallel database products to hardware devices. Through its collaboration with Joyent, Dell offers cloud computing solutions for Web applications in conjunction with other cloud computing products. EMC sells hardware devices by optimizing and pre-installed the Greenplum database and the Hadoop Enterprise Edition.

On the surface, distributed system management difficulties have become a problem for everyone; Conversely, buying a single device or a specially configured hardware facility may be easier than installing and maintaining the system.

This is especially true for OpenStack, Hadoop, and other open-source projects that do not require enterprise support. While many companies now say they can help enterprise manage systems, using Open-source software does not have to worry about what level of price, performance, and reliability the hardware architecture will provide.

The success of software plus hardware

For businesses that sell hardware devices, such as nebula, or just hardware and optional simple support such as Dell. For them, it is not difficult for customers to pay for open source software that they can access for free, and customers will buy the commercial version of open source software if they want it. So why not save customers ' budgets and provide them with hardware while providing technical support?

Nebula and Dell claim that the product line provides their customers with their help, although they are actually novices, and are not available in nebula cases. I guess OpenStack new member Hewlett-Packard Company will carry out the preset OpenStack system business. It has been sold out to preset cloud software products. Perhaps Hadoop will find a partner in a community other than Dell.

Finally, let's see how the market develops. Does the software use new technology to carry out the mainstream profitable business, or does the hardware purchase software maintenance services separately? Of course, different companies have different strategies, but I suspect that "soft and hard integration" will be a successful business model only for the reason that the infrastructure is not widespread.

(Responsible editor: admin)