Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Canonical Launches MicroCloud to Deploy Your Own "Fully Functional Cloud"

phoronix.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 94 posts

Re: Canonical Launches MicroCloud to Deploy Your Own "Fully Functional Cloud"

#81

Post by meonkeys »

Scubabear68 wrote: post #67

What are the implications of the AGPL license for this (if any)?

It means all derivative works of microcloud must also be licensed AGPL (if someone else "links" other software into it, makes modifications and re-distributes, they must provide those modifications, etc).

Any company can sell microcloud, but it must remain AGPL.

This license choice is a defense against microcloud being assimilated into proprietary products.

(Now I'll guess at the motivation of your original question. Lemme know if I missed your point...) The AGPL doesn't apply to any containers or VMs running in a microcloud any more than Ubuntu's licensing applies to programs you run on Ubuntu.

Re: Canonical Launches MicroCloud to Deploy Your Own "Fully Functional Cloud"

#82

Post by wmf »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #53
Eumenes wrote: post #26

So OpenStack?

But actually less features than OpenStack. Kind of weird that they didn't just package OpenStack. A vendor to manage it for you would actually provide business value

Ubuntu has had OpenStack for years. It sucks. MicroCloud looks like a simpler, saner reboot.

Re: Canonical Launches MicroCloud to Deploy Your Own "Fully Functional Cloud"

#83

Post by [deleted] »

doublepg23 wrote: post #80
doublerabbit wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very stable. Libvirt is supported. So you can now use a GUI [0] [1] There's a few web control panels too if that's your thing. I can't fault it. A bit rough round the edges and manual in some places but as expected. Has tackled everything I've thrown at it from Windows Servers to Linux, VPNs to Routers all very well. You won't get the bells and whistles of an enterprise hypervisor, however for a Tier-2 hypervisor, it…

What's the container story like? It might be fun running my homelab on FreeBSD 14...

[deleted]

Re: Canonical Launches MicroCloud to Deploy Your Own "Fully Functional Cloud"

#84

Post by doublerabbit »

doublepg23 wrote: post #80
doublerabbit wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very stable. Libvirt is supported. So you can now use a GUI [0] [1] There's a few web control panels too if that's your thing. I can't fault it. A bit rough round the edges and manual in some places but as expected. Has tackled everything I've thrown at it from Windows Servers to Linux, VPNs to Routers all very well. You won't get the bells and whistles of an enterprise hypervisor, however for a Tier-2 hypervisor, it…

What's the container story like? It might be fun running my homelab on FreeBSD 14...

Most call them Jails, but others like to call them containers. But in comparison to Linux containers they are very different. Some would argue what you can do in jails you can do in Linux containers but, that's another discussion.

Each Jail, can have it's own network adapter, allowing yourself to host network applications, firewalls, servers and routers isolated from your main network.

These jails can have firewalls allowing you to test firewall changes without burning down your network. As well as isolated Web Servers, Music Servers, Game Servers taking no further resources other than what you give it.

You can also apply resource limits to jails, and the whole lot too. IOPS, CPU Cycles, Cores, Network, Quota Size.

With this you can then create locked sandbox environments for applications. Firefox/chromium can all run in their own jail ensuring that any virii are isolated from your core system while ensuring they only have 2mbit of network. You can even run Linux within. Ubuntu on FreeBSD, who would of thought. Can you run FreeBSD on Linux?

What I'm currently setting on my colocation box as I call them are cell's. Zones as if you wish to go Solaris'ly. Which by you can host bHyve, FreeBSD's native hypervisor in a separate jails giving you isolation. I host game servers publicly, so knowing they're restricted to their own cell, with a set amount of resources means I know my system is going to brick if something goes astray. As that too with ZFS allows me to backup real-time. Real-time migration and resource limiting, what more could you want?

There are other third party "container" attempts at containerizing FreeBSD. But in my opinion Jails are the bee-knees.

A feature I've never seen outside of the Unix world are: bectl and beadm. A dream, advance boot environment tools for when you really want to keep deep. Imagine compiling your kernel, rebooting only to find it panics. Those tools allows you to revert back to the OS to it's previous state, even jump into your newly built kernel without having to reboot. Magical.

Resources: https://wiki.freebsd.org/Jails https://wiki.freebsd.org/Containers https://wiki.freebsd.org/LinuxJails https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2022/03/14/zfs-boot-environme...

Re: Canonical Launches MicroCloud to Deploy Your Own "Fully Functional Cloud"

#85

Post by lproven »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #48
lproven wrote: post #9

This was my take, FWIW. https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/16/canonical_microcloud/

So basically it's VMware but with more nodes required

It's free. The free tier of VMware doesn't offer any redundancy at all.

Re: Canonical Launches MicroCloud to Deploy Your Own "Fully Functional Cloud"

#86

Post by lproven »

icedchai wrote: post #60
lproven wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, that's how Plan 9 boxes talk to one another. I think maybe you are misinterpreting my post as saying "mount the entire disk used by box1 on box2 simultaneously". Although when it comes to that, I would also note that DEC's AdvFS did more or less that, 20+ years ago, and it's FOSS now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdvFS And it's also what the DragonflyBSD team are attempting to make happen in HAMMER2. https:…

Wasn't DEC doing that with VAX/VMS 40 years ago with VAXclusters? See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VMScluster

I believe I specifically mentioned VMS and VAXclusters in the article, didn't I?

Re: Canonical Launches MicroCloud to Deploy Your Own "Fully Functional Cloud"

#87

Post by icedchai »

lproven wrote: post #86
icedchai wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't DEC doing that with VAX/VMS 40 years ago with VAXclusters? See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VMScluster

I believe I specifically mentioned VMS and VAXclusters in the article, didn't I?

You did, sorry! I did not read your article originally. That's great. So few people these days even know about anything outside of Linux/Unix or Windows...

Re: Canonical Launches MicroCloud to Deploy Your Own "Fully Functional Cloud"

#88

Post by withinboredom »

willsmith72 wrote: post #32
sumtechguy wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is where you run the cost calculations and decide if it is worth it or not. At the very first it can make zero sense to run in cloud. Then slightly in it becomes very worth it. Then later on that cost overhang becomes so big you are better off building your own. Where those boundaries are depends on your business.

I think the opposite, at the start it's a no-brainer. Setting up cloud infra for a simple website or web api is so so simple, and between free tiers and startup credits, costs $0.

I think it depends. For example, if I needed machines running 24/7 running some stuff, then I would eat through those cloud credits so fast. For example, managed k8s is actually pretty cheap in the cloud, but you can't turn off their logging solution, and even on the lowest setting, storage for those logs will cost you an arm and a leg. However, if you can use something like serverless or even just regular vms, you can be super cheap at the start. It all just depends on what you're doing.

Re: Canonical Launches MicroCloud to Deploy Your Own "Fully Functional Cloud"

#89

Post by Roark66 »

ReleaseCandidat wrote: post #49
nisa wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's assume I have huge server at home with tons of disks that sucks on average 200W 24/7 - most machines idle around 10-50W depending on the periphials I'm in Germany, the country with the most expensive electricity prices - I'm paying 31cent/kWh at the moment. That's about the current market price for consumers - so that's 543,48€/year or 45€/month if that machine would suck 200W on average over the year. If you a…

> I'm in Germany, the country with the most expensive electricity prices - I'm paying 31cent/kWh at the moment. "Most" is an exaggeration, but expensive is true: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

It's important to note there are extra charges on top of the electricity price that are counted per kwh. Here in Poland we have transmission charges that are almost the same amount as per kwh so the total variable cost is 2x per kwh cost. Looking at my last bill I pay 0.36€ per kwh in Poland despite the chart showing about 0.16€

I wonder if countries like NL listed as one of most expensive have all these charges on top too.

Re: Canonical Launches MicroCloud to Deploy Your Own "Fully Functional Cloud"

#90

Post by DiabloD3 »

tw04 wrote: post #47
DiabloD3 wrote: post #45

This is going to be very uncomfortable when Supermicro sues Canonical over a trademarked term. Supermicro has been selling Microclouds for years, and is a well known product line in the industry.

Just like it was a very uncomfortable situation when Anderson sued Microsoft over the term windows? Canonical is selling a piece of software, supermicro a line of servers. And based on their own site it isn’t trademarked. Notice there’s no r next to the microcloud server but there is next to microblade. https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/blade

Interesting, I wonder if Supermicro applied for the TM but was rejected.

Either way, Supermicro will most likely make noise about this. We'll find out if I'm right when Canonical changes the name.

Post reply on HN