DISQUS

kennyo · 1 year ago

Thanks for the kind words about Cassatt, James. One bit of correction (or perhaps, re-direction): What Cassatt enables is a "generalizable" utility computing infrastructure. On top of that, users can build whatever IaaS/PaaS/SaaS they want, with whatever proprietary (or open) protocols they desire. To say that Cassatt is using "proprietary" protocols akin to saying an electric generator uses proprietary bearings. Cassatt has its own policy-based way of manipulating infrastructure -- but it nonetheless generates a generic utility computing foundation on which any cloud can be built. Ergo, it's *very* "commodity cloud computing" friendly.

And finally, the Cassatt solution has, for 4 years, been design primarily for enterprise use; so there has not been an emphasis on ties to external clouds. But the technology is so generalizable, that it's well within the realm of possibility for Cassatt software to be able to provision an EC2 CPU the same way it could provision a bare-metal SPARC machine.

jamesurquhart · 1 year ago

Let me clarify what I meant. When you capture an image into Cassatt, it gets tweaked a little bit. Not much, just stripped of the source host's specific IP and host information, which is replaced with a placeholder so that it can be filled in with instance-specific information later. No one else uses this format for "stripping" server images. So, it is proprietary.

That being said, I completely agree that it is a "generalized" image protocol that allows users to store *any* software image (built on a supported OS) in the repository. Furthermore, Cassatt entirely uses standards, such as PXE and NFS, to deliver a completely "normal" file system to the target server, one which when delivered is impossible to distinguish from an image installed manually. So, in the end, for someone using only Cassatt, the image format is immaterial.

Finally, these images can be deployed equally well to both physical and virtual servers. This, it may turn out, could be the thing that softens my complaint...if a Cassatt image delivered to a VDC-OS infrastructure results in a VM that can be deployed equally well to a private or public cloud, then my point is moot. However, today there really isn't much portability outside of Cassatt private clouds--which is consistent with the state of the market.

I just know you guys, so I push you harder... :-)