We will present at the Open and Secure Cloud Computing – Workshop.

The cloud computing workshop: Open and secure cloud computing will be held in Technology Park Ljubljana on 14th December 2011, 10am – 3pm. The main purpose of this one day conference will be to share knowledge and experiences leveraging open-source IaaS solution: OpenStack. The opening lecture will be given by several distinguished guests from abroad: OpenStack Community Manager, Stefano Muffulli, the CEO of O’Reilly Media, Tim O’Reilly and Justin Santa Barbara from FathomDB.

You are welcome to attend the seminary and take advantage of this unique opportunity to get familiar with the leading IT trends and experiences. Submit here.

Agenda in Slovenian language is attached below.

Agenda

10:00 – 10:45
OpenStack – od kod in kam

Projekt OpenStack, v katerem že drugo leto nastaja programska oprema, ki uporabniku omogoča postavitev javnega ali zasebnega “oblaka” na standardni strojni opremi sta ustanovila NASA in Rackspace Hosting. Pridružila so se številna znana imena iz sveta IT: Cisco, Dell, Intel, Citrix, NetApp, F5, AMD, Hewlett Packard… skupaj preko 140 podjetij in preko 1.600 posameznikov, ki vlagajo napore v razvoj OpenStack platforme za postavitev in upravljanje “oblakov”.

Stefano Maffulli, OpenStack Community Manager, www.openstack.org/community
g. Stefano Maffulli je globalni koordinator tega obsežnega projekta. Po delu na področju formiranja Free Software Foundation Europe je delal kot “community manager” za vodilni odprtokodni sistem za sinhronizacijo med mobilnimi napravami “Funambol” ter uveljavitev Twitter-ja v Italiji. Sedaj živi in dela v San Franciscu.

Če je računalništvo v oblaku prihodnost računalništva, potem je razumevanje, kako narediti prihodnost odprto eden osrednjih tehnoloških izzivov današnjega dne. Projekt OpenStack dela velike korake proti viziji odprtega oblaka.

Tim O’Reilly, CEO of O’Reilly Media, Inc., www.oreilly.com

OpenStack bo seme številnih oblakov – javnih in zasebnih, ki bodo temeljili na enem, odprtem standardu.

Justin Santa Barbara, FathomDB

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10:45 – 11:15
Pregled odprtokodnih “IaaS” rešitev in praktična demonstracija OpenStack ogrodja

Na področju “infrastrukture kot storitve” (IaaS) so trenutno prisotne tako komercialne, kot tudi odprtokodne reitve. V industriji se vedno bolj uveljavljajo prav odprtokodni produkti, ki postajajo steber informacijske podpore v tevilnih podjetij in organizacijah. Na predstavitvi bo podan pregled najpomembnejih odprtokodnih rešitev, kot so OpenNebula, Eucalyptus, Nimbus in OpenStack. Predstavljeni bodo arhitekturni gradniki posameznih produktov ter njihove ključne funkcionalnosti, na podlagi katerih bo podana primerjava produktov. V zadnjem delu bo sledila praktična demonstracija OpenStack ogrodja.

Robert Dukarić, uni. dipl. ing., XLAB d.o.o., www.xlab.si
dr. Matjaž B. Jurič, Laboratorij za integracijo informacijskih sistemov, Fakulteta za računalništvo in informatiko (FRI), www.fri.uni-lj.si

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11:15 – 11:45
Varnost tudi v oblaku

Združenje “Cloud Security Alliance” navaja sedem glavnih groženj, ki po mnenju strokovnjakov pretijo organizacijam, ki so svoje poslovanje preselile v javni oblak s storitvenimi modeli IaaS, PaaS ali SaaS. Kjer je relevantno, navaja tudi primere incidentov, povsod pa vsaj smernice za njihovo preprečevanje. V drugem delu predavanja je predstavljena nova paradigmo “Security as a Service” – deset področij, na katerih imajo ponudniki današnjih oblakov dovolj prostora za nove storitve, ki jih najemniki oblaka danes močno pogrešajo in ki bodo gotovo omilile osnovno nezaupanje, ki ga prinaša izguba kontrole, povezana s prehodom v oblak.

Dr. Mojca Ciglarič, docentka in vodja Laboratorija za računalniške komunikacije na ljubljanski Fakulteti za računalništvo in informatiko. Je članica “Cloud Security” Alliance in ima vlogo raziskovalne direktorice v slovenski sekciji združenja. www.fri.uni-lj.si

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11:45 – 12:00
Varnost v OpenStack

V predstavitvi bo podan pregled varnostnih mehanizmov, ki so vključeni v trenutno različico OpenStack, in predstavljena priporočila za varno uporabo OpenStack.

Primož Cigoj, dipl. ing. rač., Laboratorij za odprte sisteme in mreže (E5), Institut “Jožef Stefan”, www.e5.ijs.si

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12:00 – 12:15
KC Class

Predstavitev dejavnosti kompetenčnega centra za računalništvo v oblaku KC Class.

Dalibor Baškovč, www.KC-Class.eu

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12:15 – 12:30
Odmor

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12:30 – 13:00
Hranjenje podatkov v OpenStack

1. del: Izkušnje z namestitvijo Open Stack Storage (OpenStack Storage installation)

mag. Ivan Tomašič, Elektrotehniška fakulteta v Zagrebu

2. del: Povezava OpenStack Storage z AmazonS3 (OpenStack Storage and AmazonS3)

Aleksandra Rashkovska, dipl. ing. rač., Mednarodna podiplomska šola IJS, odsek za komunikacijske sisteme (E6), Institut “Jožef Stefan”, www-e6.ijs.si

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13:00 – 14:00
Kako z uporabo cenovno dostopnih orodij zgradimo visokozmogljiv sistem za hranjenje podatkov

S programsko opremo ZFS in Nexenta je možno zgraditi zanesljiv in zmogljiv sistem za hranjenje podatkov. Poleg zmogljivosti predstavitev prikaže kakšne so izkušnje s temi sistemi.

dr. Matjaž Pančur in Andrej Krevl, dipl. ing. rač., Laboratorij za računalniške komunikacije, Fakulteta za računalništvo in informatiko (FRI), www.fri.uni-lj.si

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14:00 – 14:30
Razvoj za oblake v RedHat

Java EE razvoj za oblake: postavitev aplikacijskega strežnika JBoss v okolje OpenShift.

Aleš Justin, JBoss by RedHat

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14:30 – 15:00
Predstavitev strojne opreme

Cloud Computing, IaaS, OpenStack Hide

The cloud computing workshop for KC Class (Cloud Assisted ServiceS) is taking place today at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Slovenia. The presentation slides can be downloaded using link below:

Slides.pdf

Unfortunately, the slides are available only in Slovenian language.

Cloud Computing (CC), IaaS, PaaS, SaaS Hide

The CEO of Oracle, Larry Ellison, announced a new Oracle cloud solution Oracle Public Cloud at the Oracle OpenWorld 2011 today. The product consists of two components, Application Services (Fusion CRM, Fusion HCM, Social Network) and Platform Services (Database, Java). They represent the suite of Oracle Fusion applications, middleware and database offerings, delivered as a service.

Check more about this brand new technology here.

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The Oracle OpenWorld conference kicked off this evening in San Francisco with keynote presentation from Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. There he unveiled Next-Generation SPARC SuperCluster T4-4, introduced the Oracle Exalytics Business Intelligence Machine and much more. Several use cases from major world companies were also presented, who use Oracle’s finest technologies (Exadata and Exalogic) to power their SOA/BPEL information systems in order to achieve greater performance, availability and lesser cost.

More about the conference here.

 

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During the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2011, Microsoft introduced Windows Azure Cloud Appliance or so called “private cloud in a box” to its partners. The Azure appliance can be used by Microsoft partners to leverage new cloud services in data centers. The available server capacity will be maximally utilized for the usage of business applications. The described service combines Windows Azure, Microsoft SQL Azure and hardware fitted for Microsoft infrastructures. The service is primarily available for developers, end-users, service providers and resellers, who run applications in a private or hybrid cloud in their own data center. Customers can manage their private cloud via a portal located in the Microsoft System Center. You can read more here.

Cloud Computing (CC), Platform as a service (PaaS) Hide

AWS Elastic Beanstalk (beta)

Elastic Beanstalk is Amazon’s Platform as a Service (PaaS) product that leverages AWS services such as Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, Amazon Simple Notification Service, Elastic Load Balancing, and Auto-Scaling capabilities. The Beanstalk environment supports a full Tomcat server running on an EC2 virtual server. It is a pure Java environment with access to the underlying file system.

The first release of Elastic Beanstalk is built for Java developers using the familiar Apache Tomcat software stack which ensures easy portability for your application. There is no additional charge for Elastic Beanstalk – you only pay for the AWS resources needed to store and run your applications. Java EE is not supported in AWS Elastic Beanstalk.

CloudBees RUN@Cloud

CloudBees is a new entrant to the Java PaaS scene. It may be a startup, but the people behind it are enterprise Java veterans. (It was started by JBoss ex-CTO Sacha Labourey, and has employed open source Java heavyweights Adrian Brock of JBoss fame and Kohsuke Kawaguchi of Hudson fame.) Its PaaS technology was acquired from Stax Networks, which has been providing hosted Java application services to enterprise customers for more than 10 years. The CloudBees RUN@Cloud service is based on the robust Stax platform, and it is available to individual developers via a self-service web portal.

The RUN@Cloud service is currently based on the EC2 infrastructure, and it can be viewed as a more automated version of Beanstalk + RDS. Like Beanstalk, RUN@Cloud also offers a dedicated Tomcat instance running on an EC2 virtual server for each web application. It provides a pure Java environment with no artificial limitation on file system access, network I/O, and threading. Unlike Elastic Beanstalk, CloudBees does have a Java EE support and it doesn’t need to be tied with Amazon. It plans to offer other infrastructure providers to supplement EC2 in the near future.

CumuLogic (beta)

CumuLogic is an easy-to-use service that allows creating private Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) on public clouds, such as Amazon EC2, and private clouds such as Cloud.com, Eucalyptus and VMware. CumuLogic is a scalable cloud platform for Java applications.  Unlike most Platform-as-a-Service offerings in the market today, CumuLogic gives you the flexibility to customize your platform on clouds so you are not locked-in to the platform or limited to use the services provided by the platform.

CumuLogic supports multiple Java EE containers. Enterprises with custom Java apps can build Java PaaS to consolidate applications on one standardized platform. Described PaaS product enables application developers to access a development, Test/QA and deployment infrastructure on a self-service basis, allowing developers to focus on building applications rapidly and cost effectively.

Java EE, Platform as a service (PaaS) Hide

WMware’s PaaS Solutions

VMWare provides several products that are labeled as PaaS solutions. The first platform that they provide is called VMware’s SpringSource (vFabric Cloud Application Platform), which has just recently acquired the graphical web development tool WaveMaker. WaveMaker is the only open and easy-to-use development platform for web and cloud applications. With WaveMaker’s visual, drag and drop tools, any developer can start building enterprise Java application. Unlike the traditional Java EE platform, SpringSource provides a range of capabilities for creating enterprise Java, rich web, and enterprise integration applications that can be consumed in a lightweight, a-la-carte manner.

VMware unveiled an open platform-as-a-service offering April this year, that supports multiple programming frameworks including Spring for Java developers, Rails and Sinatra for Ruby developers, Node.js and other JVM frameworks including Grails. This second platform is called Cloud Foundry. Even though Java EE support is still not present in this platform, there are plans to add in the future.

Windows Azure

As part of Microsoft’s commitment to interoperability, the Windows Azure platform has been built from the ground up with interoperability in mind. Developers have the choice of several languages for building their applications, including:  .NET (C# and Visual Basic), C++, PHP, Ruby, Python and Java. In addition, interoperability with other platforms is made easier through community-based libraries: Plug-in for Eclipse and SDKs for Java.

Open source project WindowsAzure4j is such SDK and enables Java developers to develop Java applications on Windows Azure platform. This open source project also provides a software development kit for Windows Azure and Windows Azure Storage – Blobs, Tables & Queues.
Windows Azure supports Java EE 6 with GlassFish. How to configure and run Java App on Azure, check here.

Oracle PaaS Platform

The Oracle PaaS includes database services based on Oracle Database and Oracle Exadata Database Machine, as well as middleware service based on Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud. With engineered systems such as Exadata and Exalogic providing extreme performance and efficiency for mixed workloads, Oracle provides the best foundation for PaaS. On top of this foundation of clustered middleware and database technologies, the Oracle PaaS Platform also includes components such as Oracle SOA Suite, Oracle BPM Suite, Oracle Identity Management and Oracle WebCenter.
Oracle WebLogic Server is the core application grid technology within Oracle Fusion Middleware. In addition to its general market leadership among Java EE application servers, WebLogic Server is particularly well-suited to application grid.

Java EE, Platform as a service (PaaS) Hide

Google App Engine

Google App Engine provides a PaaS environment for both Java EE and Python. The following features are supported especially for Java EE:

• The Java environment provides a Java 6 JVM and it is based on common Java web technology standards, including Servlets and WARs, JDO and JPA, java.net, JavaMail and JCache.
• Google App Engine for the Java EE Platform is supported by the Eclipse IDE. A plugin for the Eclipse IDE supports project creation, testing and deployment.

Unsupported Features in Google App Engine:

• Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) is not supported as part of the Google Apps Engine.
• A UI development framework like JSF (JavaServer Faces) is not directly supported.
• Other Java EE standards like JMS (Messaging Service) and Web Service Specifications.

OpenShift (beta)

Red Hat just recently announced a new Platform as a Service (PaaS) environment, known as OpenShift at Red Hat Summit 2011 in Boston.  The platform, which was built on top of Makara, JBoss EE runtime and some other pieces, provides support for a variety of programming languages and frameworks, including Java, Ruby, PHP, Python and more.
The platform comprises of three PaaS options, while only the FLEX supports Jave EE development in the cloud:

• EXPRESS – deploy new and existing Ruby, PHP, and Python applications in the cloud for free.
• FLEX – free PaaS for new and existing JBoss, Java EE 6, and PHP applications.
• POWER – Deploy applications to the cloud that are written to Linux (i.e. written in C,or using many binary components).

IBM PaaS Stack

Java EE on Cloud is made possible using IBM’s PaaS solution. It consists of three main products: IBM Tivoli Sercice Automation Manager, WebSphere Application Server and IBM Workload Deployer.
IBM Workload Deployer (previously known as WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance) is a hardware appliance that provides access to IBM middleware virtual images to create application environments that can be deployed and managed in a private cloud. IBM Tivoli Service Automation Manager on the other hand enables users to request, deploy, monitor and manage cloud computing services. This Tivoli offering enables a more modern and dynamic data center.

The latest version of WebSphere Application Server (V8) supports a Java EE 6, and is EJB supported technology-based application platform. Build, deploy and manage robust, agile and reusable SOA business applications and services of all types while reducing application infrastructure costs.

WebSphere Application Server V8 is also available on the following clouds:

• IBM Smart Business Cloud – Enterprise
• Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)

Java EE, Platform as a service (PaaS) Hide

More and more enterprises are nowadays moving applications to the cloud to modernize their current IT asset base or to prepare for future needs. There are several strategies for migrating applications to new environments. In this blog, we shall discuss a phase-driven step-by-step strategy for migrating applications to the cloud.

One of the key differentiators of AWS’ infrastructure services is its flexibility. It gives businesses the freedom of choice to choose the programming models, languages, operating systems and databases they are already using or familiar with. As a result, many organizations are moving existing applications to the cloud today. The AWS cloud brings scalability, elasticity, agility and reliability to the enterprise. To take advantage of the benefits of the AWS cloud, enterprises should adopt the previously mentioned migration strategy and try to take advantage of the cloud as early as possible. Whether it is a typical 3-tier web application, nightly batch process, or complex backend processing workflow, most applications can be moved to the cloud.

It is true that some IT assets or applications currently deployed in company data centers might not make technical or business sense to move to the cloud. Those assets can continue to stay within the organizations’ walls. However, we strongly believe that there are several assets within an organization that can be moved to the cloud with minimal effort. The step by step, phase-driven approach helps you identify ideal projects for migration, build the necessary support within the organization and migrate applications with greater confidence.

A successful migration largely depends on three things: the complexity of the application architecture; how loosely coupled your application is; and how much effort you are willing to put into migration. We have noticed that when customers have followed the step by step approach and have invested time and resources towards building proof of concept projects, they clearly see the tremendous potential of AWS, and are able to leverage its strengths very quickly.

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Cloud Computing (CC), IaaS Hide

In February this year we marked one-year anniversary of Microsoft’s Azure platform being available for public consumption. To celebrate, Microsoft has announced two additional companies that have made use of the platform for consumer- and business-facing services. One of those is T-Mobile, which used Azure to speed up the development time for its Family Room collaboration tool for mobile phones. The other is Xerox, which used Windows Azure and SQL Azure to help build its cloud-based printing service dubbed Cloud Print.

Microsoft first unveiled its Windows Azure platform a little more than two years ago at PDC 2008. The product, which lets developers write programs that live inside Microsoft’s data centers, competes with similar offerings from cloud heavyweights like Amazon Web Services, Salesforce Force.com, and Google App Engine. Microsoft has pushed it to both developers and customers alike, as a way to get the latest version of its server technologies on demand, and in a way that can be scaled up or down depending on the size of their business, or the needs of their applications. Microsoft has continued to make improvements and additions to the service, as well as to work toward moving Azure beyond its own data centers, with plans to let businesses run their own private clouds with on-premises Azure appliances.

Shortly after the free trial for businesses ended, Microsoft had said that many of the free-trialers had stayed on as paying customers, but it would not go into specifics. According to The Seattle Times, the official number now stands at 31,000 customers, up from 20,000 last July; that’s a 55 percent increase inside of seven months. Prior to that, Microsoft said during its fiscal first-quarter earnings call that it had seen Azure subscriptions grow 40 percent quarter-over-quarter.

Cloud Computing, Microsoft, Platform as a service (PaaS), Windows Azure Hide