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Metal as a Service

maas.ubuntu.com

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Re: Metal as a Service

#51

Post by danudey »

quantail wrote: post #32
jaybuff wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a very similar experience when I tried it a few months before you.

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…

I've been looking into MAAS for the simple task of 'put this customized Ubuntu instance on this server' and nothing beyond that. From your experience, would you say it would work for that? Or were the underlying fundamentals the problem?

Re: Metal as a Service

#53

Post by nzonbi »

Alupis wrote: post #47
bratsche wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Syste…

My dream (currently impossible) is that Canonical would make money by selling hardware: a Canonical branded surface-3-alike, which can wirelessly connect to a giant desktop monitor, and still work as a second screen.

Re: Metal as a Service

#54

Post by iamsalman »

flyt wrote: post #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.

Enterprises are going for a hybrid Cloud model with private in-house Cloud housing critical business data and public Cloud for CRM etc. Even for a decent 30-50 server Cloud, this would prove very relevant, though not that lucrative as a business for Canonical.

Re: Metal as a Service

#55

Post by Alupis »

tealeg wrote: post #49
Alupis wrote: 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.

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…

I"m sorry but you are mistaken... if you look at server stats, majority of "the cloud" is RHEL/CentOS based. I'm not going to argue that there are not many people using Ubuntu for servers... but it's not the standard when you get to big deployments. (I think you are refering to Ubuntu being the default Linux choice on EC2 which certaintly helped it's popularity. However, EC2 is not even built from Ubuntu... it's RHEL/CentOS).

But it doesn't really matter. Canonical is drifting from what could be great. The average user does not need tech support to use a modern linux desktop (have you tried recently? they have come a long long way even from 3 years ago). At a time when XP is EOL'ed, and people are looking for anything not Windows 8 -- Linux should be answering that call, but instead Canonical is waffling again. There is absolutely a void in the market.

Let's not make this an argument. Time will tell, as does history. Canonical has fallen short on execution on almost every major project thus far. Maybe this one won't repeat history.

Re: Metal as a Service

#56

Post by kikoreis »

quantail wrote: post #27

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 trying; here's a commentary on your points:

> * 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.

If you have any detail to share on these I'd love to hear more. The first point has long been a sore point in MAAS and we're doing a lot of work this cycle to improve auto-registration and dealing with BMC hardware.

> * Juju 1.13 and maas 1.3 do not support isolated juju environments in the same maas cluster. No idea what version it is at now.

You can definitely do that now -- all you need to do is to set up separate users in MAAS and use different credentials for each of those. We've used this recently in the field for demonstrations (to take advantage of limited hardware)

> * Juju charms "local provider" is potentially very compelling but wasn't in a workable state.

This also works today (and can be used independently of MAAS) and as of 1.18 is in great shape; I'm personally supporting a few companies using it in production.

Re: Metal as a Service

#57

Post by danudey »

Alupis wrote: post #47
bratsche wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Syste…

Sure, but all of those desktops and laptops, in businesses and homes, usually come with operating systems, be they Windows or OS X.

On top of that, personal computer sales are stagnating and tablet and mobile markets are growing; if Ubuntu really wanted to get on the money train, that's probably a better place to go. There's no money in Linux Desktop any more than there's money in Windows Desktop, which is to say not much at all.

The only PC-related industry that might be worth focussing on is laptops or tablets-as-laptops (e.g. Surface), but there's a huge amount of engineering work to be done on hardware support, battery life, etc., and most of the Windows 8 tablet hardware is garbage. Without creating their own Surface-type product (and having an actual market for it), it would be difficult for them to control enough to ensure proper support.

Compare that to servers, where companies will shell out $3-10k per server for new servers (or hundreds of dollars a month). If you can add in some kind of premium support, management system, cloud something, etc. and charge a minimal amount, the money would be significant. Heck, give Amazon customers the option to opt in to a $1/mo support upgrade and that would be a decent income stream from people running their own servers who aren't highly technical.

Re: Metal as a Service

#58

Post by iamsalman »

flyt wrote: post #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.

For scenarios where I want to use GPUs to power a large simulation or AI workload (example: deep learning) where compute performance is prime. Amazon, MS & Google don't offer bare metal running GPUs. This is where MAAS would be relevant though I'm not sure if the it supports NVIDIA/AMD GPU drivers and DMA yet...

Re: Metal as a Service

#59

Post by [deleted] »

flyt wrote: post #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.

[deleted]

Re: Metal as a Service

#60

Post by 4ad »

rwmj wrote: post #28
kapilvt wrote: 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.

Don't even have? Apart from Soekris and boards that can use Corerboot, what x86 board does?
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