The primary issue I’ve seen so far with OpenStack has been the complete lack of enterprise builds, a la Red Hat’s RHEL version of Linux.  Enterprise companies can’t just roll out a whole rag-tag suite of different community projects that may or may not be integrated, upgradable and secure.  With so many projects now under the OpenStack banner, someone needs to do what Red Hat did with Linux, which is craft an enterprise version that is hardened, completely integrated and unified.  To do that, they will have to be selective and more conservative.  They will need to create a longer system lifecycle.  That means some projects will be left out in the cold, but that’s all right.  A smart company will create an upstream distro that is more cutting edge, a la Fedora and then a enterprise version.  I’ve haven’t seen that yet.

However, at least one company with some VC backed funding and some heavy hitters from NASA and the open source OpenStack project have created the first enterprise version of Cloud OS: Piston Cloud Computing.  Their version of OpenStack is called Piston Cloud OS or PentOS.  One many fronts they looked to have nailed it.  Check out the video below, where they rack four hypervisors/storage bricks and a 10Gbe switch, configure a single config file on a usb stick, plug it into the switch and then walk away while the entire rack configures itself.  That is some amazing stuff and we will be looking to partner with Piston in the coming weeks.  Their vision matches my vision of where cloud computing needs to go and in particular where OpenStack needs to go.  Public clouds are fine and dandy, but the real power is in private, on premise clouds built with OpenStack solutions.  Piston looks to have hit the nail on the head.

Piston Enterprise OS™ Demo from Piston Cloud Computing, Inc. on Vimeo.

Quoting: “Need to monitor Linux server performance? Try these built-in command and a few add-on tools. Most Linux distributions are equipped with tons of monitoring. These tools provide metrics which can be used to get information about system activities. You can use these tools to find the possible causes of a performance problem. The commands discussed below are some of the most basic commands when it comes to system analysis and debugging server issues such as:

1. Finding out bottlenecks.
2. Disk (storage) bottlenecks.
3. CPU and memory bottlenecks.
4. Network bottlenecks.”

Here is a link to it the article.

Of course, cloud computing is getting a lot of buzz recently. Do a quick Google on “cloud computing” and you’ll see tons of pages on how 2010 will be the year of the cloud and how the cloud will rule everything. I don’t think so and there are four reasons why.

1) The first reason cloud computing will never be the dominate form of computing is called “data lock in.” In other words how do you get your data out of the cloud? It’s great to have access to your documents and spreadsheets everywhere. This will only get better as vendors like Microsoft and Google make it easier and easier to translate your documents into web versions perfectly (if you’ve ever tried converting old word docs to google docs then you know this is a pain). This will get better, because there is a horde of programmers working on it right now. The problem is, with most applications, once you get your data into the cloud, it’s very hard to get it out.

Stored all your calendar items online? What if you don’t like that program any more and want to try another one? Good luck exporting that data. Most cloud vendors have no reason to make it easy for you to get your data out. It’s good business to get you in, but not let you out, because your stuck and have to keep paying them. This is especially true for even more advanced applications, which leads us to our second reason.

2) What happens when a cloud company goes out of business? Right now there is a push to give people a complete virtualized server in the cloud. No more running Microsoft Exchange and SQL server on your own server. Just run it in the cloud and save yourself the hassle, right?!?! Except there are a whole host of other hassles.

First, your bandwidth to that server is greatly reduced and so it can never be as fast as running a local connection to your own server, over your own fast network. Second, if that company goes out of business how will you get your data back? I asked one company and they said they would send me the virtual machine. Wow, great idea, I will just run that virtual machine on the server I don’t have and buy the very expensive VMware ESX server which I can’t afford, which I why I was running in the cloud in the first place! That’s assuming the company has any staff left after everyone is laid off to send you that file. If the Great Recession taught us anything it’s that companies, even big companies, can go out of business very fast. Not good.

If your cloud server company goes out of business, you are talking about weeks, if not a month or more of downtime if you have no local server to start running on. With that kind of down time, you probably end up out of business (seriously). Just think of trying to run your business with with no email, no contacts, no documents and spreadsheets and Quickbooks, etc. Not in today’s business world.

3) The third reason is that cloud companies can change their program and their prices on you at any time. This is one doesn’t scare most people until it happens and when it does it’s awful. A company I use all the time, Log Me In, who in general have a tremendous product did this to their customers recently. They have a free version and a paid version and most people use a combination of both products. Well, the company decided to strip out two very important features from the free version and charge people $300 a year for using those same formerly free features. They also changed their primary interface to one that is overly heavy and runs slower and charged their paying customers to use that as well. Basically they told their customers to cough up an additional $300 a year. There are not a lot of alternatives so people were stuck. If you don’t like the interface or price hike too bad, they’ve already got your data and they don’t have to ask. They can just force the change on you.

As one or two companies come to dominate a specific space, such as Google, will they always remain good to their customers? I think Microsoft has proven again and again that when you get too big and own too much of the market you don’t have to care about your customers in the least. That’s frightening.

Here’s the thing: if I don’t like the new Office 2007 interface, then I don’t upgrade. I stick with Office 2003. If you don’t like the new cloud interface of some cloud program, too bad, they can shove it down your throat. And here’s the deal, you only pay for Office once. Is is (mostly) yours to do what you like with. Are we really better off when everything costs us money for as long as we use it? I don’t think so. I prefer to own my data, my own programs and my own choices. This leads to my last and most frightening reason.

4) Big brother governments would love to have everyone’s data in a cloud. China and Iran would love for you to store everything on servers they can easily get at. How much easier it would be for them to centralize and harden their control of dissent and free expression. This is the scariest reason of all. Someone passes a law and bang they just data mine everyone’s documents and stamp it out. How much easier would it have been for the Iranian autocrats who stole the last election from their people to keep a tighter lid on their mass slaughter of protesters if their data sat in the cloud and not on their personal cell phones?

India recently decided that pornography was illegal and created a law that allows police officers to enter homes without a warrant or probable cause and search people’s hard drives for porn. With the cloud they wouldn’t even need that. They could just order the cloud provider to wipe out all images and videos of an adult nature. Ultimate control. Whether you agree with pornography is not the point. A free society is built on allowing other people to do things you don’t agree with. A totalitarian society is about forcing one view on everyone whether they like it or not.

The “personal computer” is the reason we have advanced so much and for good reason. They tried cloud computing before, it was called the main frame and people logged in with “dumb” terminals that stored no data or programs. But it wasn’t until the personal computer came along, giving people their power over their own data and programs, that the real computer revolution took off. It’s easy to see the wisdom in having control of your own stuff. The founding father’s certainly thought so when they wrote “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” If those great men were still alive today, they most certainly would have included computers and data in that venerable sentence.

The cloud can so easily be abused that it can’t be trusted as the sole owner of the electronic data that helps run your life and business. So don’t let it be. Let it be a nice back up system, but keep your data local and keep yourself and your business free from predatory laws and companies that don’t have your best interest at heart.