SUSE releases OpenStack-powered cloud distribution

SUSE has announced the introduction of SUSE Cloud, the company's own distribution of OpenStack. The Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) offering enables organisations to set up their own local cloud instance that behaves similarly to public cloud services such as Amazon EC2.

SUSE Cloud 1.0 is available in three components, all of which are based on the Essex release of OpenStack and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 11 SP2. The Cloud Administration Server component is the central management instance for the cloud deployment; it manages the Cloud Control Nodes which store and offer the actual cloud instances users are working on and also provide a self-service portal to the users. The Cloud Control Nodes also assign tasks within the cloud between the different Compute and Storage Nodes which form the third component of the system. The Storage Nodes provide block object storage while Compute Nodes host virtual machines running the actual workloads.

SUSE Cloud can be used in conjunction with existing products such as SUSE Manager and SUSE Studio. Since the distribution is based on SLES 11, a service agreement for this product is included in the cost of the Cloud Administration Server and the Control Nodes. The Cloud Administration Server comes with one included Cloud Control Node and is listed at €8,300 (approximately £6,600), while one Compute or Storage Node costs an additional €670 (£530) per socket pair per physical server. A Cloud Control Node costs €2,080 (£1,650). More information on the included components and pricing is available from the SUSE web site.

SUSE Cloud 1.0 constitutes the company's first foray into the IaaS market. Rackspace and Piston Cloud are already offering OpenStack-based products while Red Hat is preparing its own OpenStack distribution as well.

(fab)