Cloud Service

Cloud Services and Digital Zone work on a virus scanner for cloud storage

Tatyana — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 02:03:39 +0200

Cloud Services considers security to be an extremely important aspect of cloud computing and realizes it has not been really explored yet. We noticed that most cloud infrastructure providers offer cloud storage solutions, hence an obvious need for a service that will scan the content of the storage for viruses. Cloud Services and Digital Zone have joined efforts to create a cloud-based virus scanner.

The official press release can be found here.

This virus scanner for cloud storage will be built using Cloud Studio and OSGi Cloud. It will support pluggable scanning engines. It is going to be exposed as a web service and could be integrated with Java, PHP, Ruby, Python and almost any other language.

Release of Cloud Studio with profiles (generic, OSGi)

Tatyana — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 04:28:32 +0200

The Cloud Services team is proud to present a new version of Cloud Studio. Main feature that distinguishes this release is the introduction of profiles and here is a short story of why we decided to invent them:

We assume users have a set of images which are regularly utilized. When starting an instance off an image, certain parameters need to be set (instance type, availability zone and more). Making this information into one entity significantly simplifies the process of launching instances, hence the profiles - easily managed collections of parameters needed to start an instance.

Currently we support two types of profiles: generic EC2 profiles and OSGi profiles.

EC2 profiles allow users to create and keep the settings (launch parameters) enabling the execution of basic EC2 instances with just one click:

OSGi profiles allow users to define selection of bundles and Java properties that will be provisioned to OSGi runtime during EC2 instance launch:

Windows, Mac and Linux versions of Cloud Studio 1.0b4 are available for immediate download.

In addition we prepared several screencasts demonstrating newly introduced features (we added audio comments to them):

* Using generic profiles with EC2.

* Deploying server side OSGi applications. (JSP, Rich Ajax Platform).

* Exposing remote service (OSGi, Spring, Spring DM, Java RMI).

Introduction to OSGi

Tatyana — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 01:33:59 +0200

Cloud Services focuses on creating innovative solutions by enabling technologies we believe in to work in the cloud environments. Today we would like to present OSGi - the dynamic module system for Java™.

The article by Peter Kriens, Director of Technology for OSGi Alliance, is addressing many questions a newcomer might have on the benefits of developing with OSGi:

OSGi technology provides solutions to problems that many people simply see as intrinsic aspects of software development in Java and would not call them problems.

Well, these problems are not intrinsic and OSGi technology solves many of them. This article tries to explain why OSGi technology is relevant and why software developers, as well as strategic people, should pay attention. Some people say OSGi technology is the best kept secret of the computing industry. Let us try to change this.

So, what benefits does OSGi's component system provide you? Well, quite a list:

• Reduced Complexity - Developing with OSGi technology means developing bundles: the OSGi components. Bundles are modules. They hide their internals from other bundles and communicate through well defined services. Hiding internals means more freedom to change later. This not only reduces the number of bugs, it also makes bundles simpler to develop because correctly sized bundles implement a piece of functionality through well defined interfaces. There is an interesting blog that describes what OSGi technology did for their development process.

• Reuse - The OSGi component model makes it very easy to use many third party components in an application. An increasing number of open source projects provide their JARs ready made for OSGi. However, commercial libraries are also becoming available as ready made bundles.

• Real World - The OSGi framework is dynamic. It can update bundles on the fly and services can come and go. Developers used to more traditional Java see this as a very problematic feature and fail to see the advantage. However, it turns out that the real world is highly dynamic and having dynamic services that can come and go makes the services a perfect match for many real world scenarios. For example, a service could model a device in the network. If the device is detected, the service is registered. If the device goes away, the service is unregistered. There are a surprising number of real world scenarios that match this dynamic service model. Applications can therefore reuse the powerful primitives of the service registry (register, get, list with an expressive filter language, and waiting for services to appear and disappear) in their own domain. This not only saves writing code, it also provides global visibility, debugging tools, and more functionality than would have implemented for a dedicated solution. Writing code in such a dynamic environment sounds like a nightmare, but fortunately, there are support classes and frameworks that take most, if not all, of the pain out of it.

We strongly encourage you to read the entire article and see how this technology might benefit you. If you would like a more detailed introduction to OSGi, this is where you could start:

- The OSGi Architecture

- Getting Started with OSGi by Neil Bartlett.

Cloud Services makes it possible to deploy server side OSGi applications in Amazon EC2 instances. With several mouse clicks exported bundles can be uploaded to remote storage (S3) and added to profile (Launch Configuration). That is all it takes to start virtual servers (EC2 instances) containing OSGi framework provisioned with selected bundles.

Cloud Studio supports Amazon Elastic Block Store

Tatyana — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 02:00:02 +0200

We are happy to announce our new release of Cloud Studio with full support of Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS).

Screenshot of EBS Volumes view:

Now Studio is available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Click here to open "Running Amazon Elastic Block Store in Cloud Studio" screencast in a new window. Download the Studio itself from our download page. We are also open to supporting you in incorporating EBS into your projects.

Since Elastic Block Store feature is not widely known to general public yet, we would like to quote Amazon’s own description of it:

“This new feature provides reliable, persistent storage volumes, for use with Amazon EC2 instances. These (EBS) volumes exist independently from any Amazon EC2 instances, and will behave like raw, unformatted hard drives or block devices, which may then be formatted and configured based on the needs of your application. The volumes will be significantly more durable than the local disks within an Amazon EC2 instance. Additionally, our persistent storage feature will enable you to automatically create snapshots of your volumes and back them up to Amazon S3 for even greater reliability.

You will be able to create volumes ranging in size from 1GB to 1TB, and will be able to attach multiple volumes to a single instance. Volumes are designed for high throughput, low latency access from Amazon EC2, and can be attached to any running EC2 instance where they will show up as a device inside of the instance. This feature will make it even easier to run everything from relational databases to distributed file systems to Hadoop processing clusters using Amazon EC2”.

At Cloud Services we have used this feature and already see numerous scenarios where Elastic Block Store might help users to expand the magnitude of their cloud-based solutions. Just to list a few obvious ones: hosting a database, replicating your volumes to be used by many instances (implementation of snapshots makes the job literally “a snap”), seamlessly moving volumes between the instances.

We would like to hear your comments and questions at studio@service-cloud.com.

Our special thanks are going to David Kavanagh for providing Typica ahead of time.

OSGi running on Amazon EC2

Tatyana — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 08:03:55 +0200

OSGi is a Java-based service platform that can be remotely managed. The core part of the specifications is a framework that defines an application life cycle management model, a service registry, an Execution environment and Modules. Based on this framework, a large number of OSGi Layers, APIs, and Services have been defined. OSGi Specification is maintained by OSGi Alliance.

Server side OSGi applications now can also be easily deployed on computing clouds implemented by Amazon (EC2). With several mouse clicks your exported bundles can be uploaded to remote storage (S3) and added to profile (Launch Configuration). Now virtual servers (EC2 instances) containing OSGi framework provisioned with selected bundles can easily be started.

Screenshot of the Profile Editor:

Click here to open OSGi on EC2 video presentation in a new window.

If someone is interested in trying out OSGi Cloud - contact us at studio@service-cloud.com

The Promise and Reality of Cloud Computing Forum

Tatyana — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 03:26:01 +0200

Yesterday we have attended Boston’s Xconomy Forum covering various Cloud Computing topics. Listening to what large players have to say about their initiatives in the filed was educational, but the entrepreneurs and the attendees really made us appreciate the magnitude of the interest Cloud Computing is quickly gaining. We are excited to be among the early adopters and looking forward to helping others either to enter or to migrate to Cloud Computing model.

Need services? We can help

Tatyana — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 19:39:00 +0200

Cloud Studio is undoubtedly not the only project we are working on. In case you are just looking to get into Cloud Computing, or already have ideas and need help with their implementation – do not hesitate to talk to us. Our versatile experience in the field and interest in nontrivial problems are to your service.

Your opinion matters

Tatyana — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 22:22:49 +0200

We plan to enhance the Cloud Studio with more functions as they come up, as well as improve upon what we have already done. Cloud Services would like to hear users’ feedback and build it into the process of advancement. We hope to hear your ideas at studio@service-cloud.com

Cloud Studio 1.0 b2 is released

Tatyana — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 09:50:00 +0200

We are proud to announce our second beta-release of Cloud Studio. As mentioned before, its main new feature is a S3 Browser. It allows users to navigate through S3 buckets, upload files and download objects.

In addition, starting from this release we will always deliver Mac version of the standalone application. It is now available from our download page.

Once again we would like to thank you for your interest in our software. We are doing our best constantly improving it.

Please keep us up to date about any problems you may experience with Cloud Studio. We are looking forward to hearing from either via the chat (see button on the right) or e-mail: studio@service-cloud.com

Nearest Plans

Tatyana — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 18:00:11 +0200

Within next few days we will make another release of Cloud Studio. The major new feature to be added is a S3 Browser. By using it, you will be able to browse through your S3 buckets, upload files, download objects and check object properties.