In this guest post, Jake Farrell, CTO for Static.com, explains how the major shift in the hosting industry towards platforms for high developer productivity and data-centric applications led them to build their Platform as a Service using Cloud Foundry with Hadoop support.
Foundry Core Compatibility here.
The hosting industry is undergoing a dramatic transformation due to increasing demand for self-service cloud based capabilities. To greet this shift, Static.com, a subsidiary of Catalog.com, is leveraging 19 years of hosting experience, and adopting Cloud Foundry as the foundation for its Platform as a Service (PaaS). This move demonstrates the company’s commitment to providing modern, easily-installed and managed cloud-based solutions to hosting companies and enterprises.
To address the demand for self-service cloud hosting, Static has designed the Static Cloud Manager, a robust yet easy-to-use interface. Static’s Cloud Manager leverages Cloud Foundry to allow end users and enterprises to configure, deploy and scale applications and services in seconds. Additionally, Static has expanded on Cloud Foundry’s core platform and developed a growing catalog of OSS applications, frameworks and services for end users to choose from.
With this growing array of options comes a greater need for insight into application metrics and usage patterns. Static has integrated Apache Hadoop with Cloud Foundry as one of the first steps in what it sees as the cloud’s next major offering: Analytics as a Service (AaaS). Thanks to the power and flexibility of Cloud Foundry, these robust new offerings are rapidly evolving the cloud.
Static adds Apache Hadoop to Cloud Foundry
As PaaS and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) become the new hosting standard, having the ability to gain insight into usage and the performance of sites and cloud-based applications is essential. Static believes that the AaaS offering will allow users to make educated decisions about their sites and applications based on usage patterns. The first step to achieving this is to be able to store and crunch large amounts of big data into usable metrics, and Apache Hadoop fits this need perfectly.
Adding services like Apache Hadoop to Cloud Foundry allows Static’s users to easily add cost-effective big data solutions to address custom application needs. Adding Apache Hadoop as a pluggable service inside Cloud Foundry is the first step to automating AaaS to any site or application within the PaaS, enabling customizable metrics and immediate insight into usage patterns.
The Shift in Hosting
Traditional hosting offers minimal choices to the user, forcing them into shared pools where sites and applications are not guaranteed any dedicated resources. Shared hosting has worked for many users and hosting companies, but Static has seen an increase in demand from users who are switching to Virtual Private Servers (VPS) solely for the ability to have a dedicated set of resources and the freedom to choose what they run. This use case places the burden on the user to install, setup and administer the entire process, from start to finish.
Static’s goal was to rethink this approach and to allow for users to have the ability to choose:
• An expanding applications list ready to be installed with one click
• All the latest languages and version to choose from
• Latest frameworks ready to be use
• Full control over memory limits
• Ability to scale instances easily
• Choose from array of services
• Sync code between test and production environments
• Backup and rollback applications and services with ease
Static has leveraged Cloud Foundry to help make this a reality with the Static Cloud Manager, an easy-to-use but robust interface which interacts with Cloud Foundry. Users are able to 1-click create a Platform as a Service application with a wide array of frameworks and services while taking advantage of integrated hosting features such as domain registration, DNS, billing, support, Virtual Private Servers (VPS), and email.
The Cloud Network
Having choices does not stop at applications and services. Static is working to create a unified cloud network of datacenters and hosting companies that will:
• Run your application in multiple data centers for high availability
• Migrate applications seamlessly from one datacenter to another while maintaining uptime
• Choose your application and services based on data centers capable of meeting your needs
Static’s Commitment to Open Source Development
Static believes that open source software development drives innovation and leads to higher quality software. We are deeply committed to the open source ecosystem and being a leader in the Cloud Foundry community. Static is proud to contribute back to the Apache Hadoop project, as well as Cloud Foundry, through services such as snapshot functionality to the file system service, chef cookbooks, bug fixes and enhancements. These contributions can also be found on our GitHub account at http://github.com/staticcorp.
About the Author: Jake Farrell is the Chief Technical Officer for Static Corporation. He specializes in scalable distributed back end infrastructure systems. He is actively involved in numerous projects with the Apache Software Foundation and is the Project Management Committee Chair for the Apache Thrift project.
