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Metal as a Service

maas.ubuntu.com

41–50 of 106 posts

Re: Metal as a Service

#41
Any infrastructure that is of a size needing this will already have in-house tooling (Google/FB/Amazon/etc) and everybody else should be using public clouds anyway. Ubuntu is grasping for relevance.

Re: Metal as a Service

#42
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, we were psyched to use it as a private cloud deployment tool and to manage some development environments. It represented a interesting middle ground between a container like setup (docker) and a distributed computing model like Storm/Disco. A stack was run on it, however it lacked the polish, support and flexibility required to make it a platform worth investing in. That is not to say that we thought the idea w…

> Given how Tahr has rolled out, we suspect most development effort was put into the mobile platform and a close integration of MaaS with the cloud in a box. You're incorrect about that, but the MAAS team did suffer some short staffing last year that left us behind the curve. We've now increased the number of people working on MAAS, which is what allowed us to get large chunks of work – like integrating CloudBase's w…

Apologies for positing a supposition without knowing the facts.

To be clear we are a great fan of Canonical's work and it's too easy complain about the few issues that praise them for the great work that is done every day on the Ubuntu platform.

The bleeding edge of Open Source technology is oft a perilous place to do business.

Re: Metal as a Service

#44
post #31

We spent around 6 weeks trying to wrangle Juju and MaaS into a working state in August 2013. Skimming through my notes we surmised the following. * Auto-enrollment of nodes was tough to get working. * Overlay and config management was weak and better handled by Puppet. Though Juju beans were touted as able to handle this. * Juju 1.13 and maas 1.3 do not support isolated juju environments in the same maas cluster. No…

Thanks for giving it a try. If you're ever thinking about trying it again, we (MAAS team) would be happy to help. Truth is that the problems that MAAS is trying to solve are hard , and it's taken us some time to solve them. We're spending a lot of time in this development cycle working on the robustness of the MAAS node lifecycle. MAAS 1.5 is significantly better than 1.3, and getting stronger all the time. Similarly…

Maybe Canonical should stick to their core...

...and focus on Linux on the Desktop... instead of trying to be an "Everything" company. Get the core down solid and making money, then expand into other markets.

Re: Metal as a Service

#45
post #28
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty cool. One of the goals for the orangebox was being robust and compact enough to throw in a suitcase and fly to a conference. The nucs win on compactness, and also via intel's vpro/amt can do remote power management (ie. ipmi light).

Nice -- didn't know that Intel now had a serious remote management offering. These AMD mobos do wake-on-LAN, and that's it. They don't even have serial BIOS.

To be honest, Intel's AMT is a bit of a PITA, but the Orange Boxes were assembled to have some resemblance to real racks of hardware. So remote out of band power control is essential.

There's something quite magical about using Juju and MAAS on the Orange Boxes and seeing the LEDs light up as you scale out a service (e.g. juju add-unit -n 5 nova-compute).

Re: Metal as a Service

#46
post #44
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for giving it a try. If you're ever thinking about trying it again, we (MAAS team) would be happy to help. Truth is that the problems that MAAS is trying to solve are hard , and it's taken us some time to solve them. We're spending a lot of time in this development cycle working on the robustness of the MAAS node lifecycle. MAAS 1.5 is significantly better than 1.3, and getting stronger all the time. Similarly…

Maybe Canonical should stick to their core... ...and focus on Linux on the Desktop... instead of trying to be an "Everything" company. Get the core down solid and making money , then expand into other markets.

There's no money in desktop now, though. Maybe they need to expand into markets where there is money in order to pay for desktop development.

Re: Metal as a Service

#47
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe Canonical should stick to their core... ...and focus on Linux on the Desktop... instead of trying to be an "Everything" company. Get the core down solid and making money , then expand into other markets.

There's no money in desktop now, though. Maybe they need to expand into markets where there is money in order to pay for desktop development.

Well, that's not very true. I think you mean to say, "Desktop is not sexy".

Most homes have either a desktop, or a laptop, or both, sometimes multiples of each.

Every business has at least 1 computer (desktop or laptop, sometimes multiples of both).

So there very much so is a lot of money still in desktop.

Right now if you want to purchase a factory Linux computer, your choices are severely limited. It's either System76, or the Dell Sputnik (which for some reason costs more than it's Windows counterpart).

XP just expired. My company has a warehouse of 40 workstations running XP. We're looking into getting new hardware. Guess what... it'll be Windows because there are not many other options to price-shop around and/or get differing levels of support.

There is indeed money in Linux Desktop.

Re: Metal as a Service

#48
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe Canonical should stick to their core... ...and focus on Linux on the Desktop... instead of trying to be an "Everything" company. Get the core down solid and making money , then expand into other markets.

There's no money in desktop now, though. Maybe they need to expand into markets where there is money in order to pay for desktop development.

I would honestly pay $25 or $50 more to have a dual booting macbook pro with no headaches. I waste about a day a year fighting OSX closed hardware, and I still don't have microphone support on this thing.

Edit: But your point totally stands. They need more sources of revenue besides desktop linux.

Re: Metal as a Service

#49
post #44
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for giving it a try. If you're ever thinking about trying it again, we (MAAS team) would be happy to help. Truth is that the problems that MAAS is trying to solve are hard , and it's taken us some time to solve them. We're spending a lot of time in this development cycle working on the robustness of the MAAS node lifecycle. MAAS 1.5 is significantly better than 1.3, and getting stronger all the time. Similarly…

Maybe Canonical should stick to their core... ...and focus on Linux on the Desktop... instead of trying to be an "Everything" company. Get the core down solid and making money , then expand into other markets.

If you go look at what companies are running in the cloud, and what companies are hosting their clouds on, Canonical and Ubuntu are the 800lb gorilla in the cloud market. If you were talking naively about where Canonical should focus to make money you'd have to favour cloud tech over the desktop. It's not a simple as that though, those two facts aren't separate - Ubuntu got to be the platform of choice for the cloud not just by being their early and investing in it, but also by being a great choice for the people developing cloud tech in over companies. Ubuntu in the cloud is a success story already and both the Ubuntu Desktop and Server are integral to that.

Re: Metal as a Service

#50
post #44
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for giving it a try. If you're ever thinking about trying it again, we (MAAS team) would be happy to help. Truth is that the problems that MAAS is trying to solve are hard , and it's taken us some time to solve them. We're spending a lot of time in this development cycle working on the robustness of the MAAS node lifecycle. MAAS 1.5 is significantly better than 1.3, and getting stronger all the time. Similarly…

Maybe Canonical should stick to their core... ...and focus on Linux on the Desktop... instead of trying to be an "Everything" company. Get the core down solid and making money , then expand into other markets.

I know dozens of companies using Ubuntu on servers, in the cloud, as VM hosts, etc. I don't know anyone using it on the desktop.

Linux on the desktop is a tough sell to non-technical users (who don't need support, etc.), but technical users operating server clusters is big money.

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