Startup Offers Open-Source VMware-Based Cloud Platform

Startup vendor Eucalyptus Systems, which has made a name for itself with open-source technology that enables enterprises to build an internal cloud computing environment that is compatible with Amazon’s EC2 public cloud offering, is launching its first commercial product that supports VMware’s virtualisation technologies.

Eucalyptus late yesterday announced its Eucalyptus Enterprise Edition (EEE), which it said lets businesses use VMware product — in particular, the vSphere 4 virtualisation platform and its ESX and ESXi hypervisor — to build an on-premise cloud computing environment.

In addition, EEE also supports other hypervisors, including the open-source Xen from Citrix and KVM from Red Hat.

Eucalyptus, which started out as a research project at the Santa Barbara-based University of California (UCSB) related open-source interfaces that enables businesses to use their own internal IT — including servers, storage systems and networking devices –to build clouds that are compatible with Amazon’s EC2.

With EEE, Eucalyptus is now supporting the VMware products. “Eucalyptus Systems’ mission has been to support the open-source Eucalyptus on-premise cloud platform, while also delivering solutions for large-scale enterprise deployments,” said Rich Wolski, Eucalyptus’ co-founder and chief, and former director of the academic research project at UCSB. “EEE represents the first step toward broader Eucalyptus-enabled cloud interoperability that leverages multiple virtualisation environments and technologies.”

Along with supporting the VMware products, EEE also includes an image converter that helps businesses create VMware-enabled Eucalyptus applications that are compatible with Amazon’s EC2, according to company officials.

EEE is available immediately and licensed based on the number of processor cores on the physical host system.