Platform as a Service vendor Jelastic announced the availability of PHP hosting alongside its Java-based PaaS functionality on Tuesday. Jelastic is unique within the PaaS space because of its focus on rendering its technology available to Service Providers that in turn deliver cloud platforms for their customers. With its announcement of PHP support, Jelastic continues the trend within the PaaS space towards polyglot compatibility marked by the ability to support multiple scripting languages and database platforms. Jelastic’s platform boasts features such as ease of deployment, automated vertical scaling, high performance horizontal scaling, high security for server nodes and support for SQL databases such as MariaDB, PostgresSQL and MySQL and NoSQL platforms MongoDB and CouchDB. Jelastic currently partners with service providers in multiple geographies such as ServInt (U.S.), Rusonyx (Russia), dogado (Germany), Layershift (UK), Tsukaeru (Japan), Planeetta (Finland) and Websolute in Brazil. The company currently claims 30,000 Beta and paid users worldwide.
Category: Platform as a Service
Netflix Details Architecture Of Hadoop Big Data Platform As A Service
Netflix recently delivered a stunningly detailed elaboration of the cloud foundation for its Hadoop architecture in a blog post titled “Hadoop Platform as a Service in the Cloud” by Sriram Krishnan and Eva Tse. The post explains the technical foundation underpinning “Genie,” Netflix’s Platform as a Service for Hadoop. But in order to detail the technical underpinnings of Genie, the Netflix Data Science & Engineering team positioned its Hadoop Platform as a Service infrastructure within the larger context of its Amazon Web Services S3 cloud storage platform and Amazon’s distribution of Hadoop, Elastic MapReduce (EMR). Importantly, the blog post suggests the possibility of open-sourcing Genie “in the near future” and solicits reader feedback about whether a Hadoop Platform as a Service product might be useful to organizations processing petabytes of data and more.
Key features of the Netflix Platform as a Service For Hadoop include:
Data Storage on Amazon S3
Whereas most traditional Hadoop deployments store data within a Hadoop data warehouse constituted by the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) storage platform, Netflix opted to store all of their data on Amazon S3 using EMR.
Benefits of S3 include the following:
•Durability and availability of objects over a given year to the order of nine 9s (99.999999999%) and two 9s (99.99%) respectively
•Granular versioning capabilities
•Elastic capabilities that result in virtually unlimited capacity on demand
•The ability to manage multiple, disparate Hadoop clusters that read from the same underlying data set
Disparate Hadoop Clusters For Dedicated Workloads
Genie’s architecture features multiple Hadoop clusters such as:
•Query cluster
•Production cluster
•Dev clusters
The query cluster represents a large, 500 node cluster used for ad hoc queries whereas the production cluster features the site of large ETL processes. All of these clusters can be dynamically resized in accord with the volume of data processing. Genie’s query cluster, for example, typically shrinks at night given the reduced need for ad hoc queries. Conversely, the production cluster expands at night as a result of the number of ETL processes that run accordingly.
Programming Languages
Developers typically use the following languages and tools to access Hadoop clusters:
•Hive for queries and analytics
•Python and Pig for ETL processes
•MapReduce for complex algorithms
•Communal gateways that permit the writing of Hive and Pig queries for multiple developers
•Personal gateway AMIs for heavy users that permit the customization of client-side development
Hadoop Platform As A Service
Unlike Amazon’s Elastic MapReduce, which provides an Infrastructure as a Service for Hadoop, Netflix’s Platform as a Service allows developers to execute Hadoop, Pig and Hive scripts without provisioning new Hadoop clusters or installing clients for Hadoop, Pig and Hive using a REST-ful API. Furthermore, Netflix’s Genie also allows administrators to manage Hadoop deployments using a backend configuration tool.
Analysis
Kudos goes to Netflix for its sustained and specific elaboration on the architecture of Genie. Hadoop Platform as a Service vendors have recently begun to proliferate in the industry and include the likes of Microsoft, Infochimps, Continuuity and Mortar Data. Microsoft announced news of its Azure-based Hadoop platform, Windows Azure HDInsight, in late October 2012. Infochimps, meanwhile, delivers a Big Data platform as a service that supports software frameworks such as HBase, Cassandra, MongoDB and NoSQL in addition to Hadoop. Continuuity platform AppFabric provides a set of APIs that sit atop a company’s Hadoop deployment while AWS Global Start-up Finalist Mortar Data provides an open-source framework that empowers developers to leverage their skills in Pig, Java and Python on a Hadoop ecosystem. Netflix’s Genie is without doubt the most production-ready Hadoop Platform as a Service in the industry given the sheer volume of data it processes daily. That said, the industry should expect more Hadoop platform as a service vendors to emerge as the need for simplified, PaaS-like methods of Hadoop management achieves greater urgency.
Dell’s Project Fast PaaS Illustrates Currency Of Cloud Foundry
Dell is incubating a new platform as a service offering built upon the Cloud Foundry PaaS infrastructure. The product, Project Fast PaaS, claims enhancements to the Cloud Foundry PaaS project. Project Fast PaaS boasts compatibility with Ruby, Node.js, Java, PHP and Python in addition to support for MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB and Redis databases as well as the RabbitMQ messaging system. An open-source solution, the product additionally features compatibility with application development frameworks such as Django, Grails, JavaWeb, Lift, Node, Play, Rack, Rails, Sinatra and Spring. Participants must already subscribe to Dell’s IaaS enterprise public cloud, Dell vCloud, in order to preview Dell’s Project Fast PaaS offering.
Dell’s investment in Project Fast PaaS illustrates the emerging currency of the VMware-EMC Cloud Foundry PaaS platform as the de facto standard infrastructure for Platform as a Service offerings. ActiveState’s Stackato, for example, which is similarly based upon the Cloud Foundry platform has recently been licensed by HP for HP’s Cloud Application PaaS offering. The other trend represented by Dell’s PaaS offering consists of the willingness of heavyweight tech behemoths such as Dell and HP to supplement their IaaS public cloud offering with a PaaS solution of some kind. IaaS customers are likely to want a PaaS offering as well, and correspondingly, PaaS may well end us serving as an originator for IaaS customers. The industry should expect to see more IaaS-PaaS combination offerings as public cloud vendors, in particular, strive to accommodate demands for preconfigured development frameworks from their customers alongside their IaaS platforms.
Amazon Web Services Enhances Elastic Beanstalk & EBS IOPS
This week, Amazon Web Services announced two significant enhancements to its PaaS platform Elastic Beanstalk in the form of support for Ruby and Virtual Private Clouds. Elastic Beanstalk now supports application development in Ruby in addition to Java, PHP, Python and .NET. Ruby applications are run on the Phusion Passenger application server, which enables users to develop and test code and subsequently deploy applications to the Elastic Beanstalk platform. In addition to supporting Ruby, Elastic Beanstalk now supports integration with Virtual Private Clouds, allowing customers to run an intranet atop the Elastic Beanstalk infrastructure.
Separate from the enhancements to Elastic Beanstalk, AWS declared a doubling of the maximum Input/Output Operations Per Second (IOPS) per EBS volume from 1000 to 2000. The new upper bound of 2000 IOPS per EBS volume represents “an order of magnitude more IOPS than you can expect from a high-end 15,000 RPM disk drive.” The increase in the maximum IOPS per EBS volume means that customers may be able to RAID together fewer EBS volumes to achieve the desired increase in performance. Based on comments by AWS CTO Werner Vogels at Structure Europe, customers should expect to see more enhancements to the AWS platform in general, and Elastic Beanstalk in particular, as AWS fends off competition from Microsoft Azure and the emerging constellation of private PaaS vendors.
Heroku Consolidates Leadership In PaaS With Enterprise For Java Platform
Salesforce.com recently consolidated Heroku’s leadership position in the Platform as a Service space by announcing Heroku Enterprise for Java, a component of the Salesforce.com platform that streamlines the development and deployment of enterprise-grade Java applications. Heroku Enterprise For Java provides developers with a pre-packaged Java solution that can be provisioned with the click of a mouse. Whereas traditional models of Java development require the coordination of a constellation of resources including source-code control systems, integration servers, load balancers, test and staging environments and in-memory caching systems, Heroku Enterprise for Java delivers a unified infrastructure for Java development and testing.
The basic premise of Enterprise for Java is to simplify the process of Java development by reducing the number of steps required for deployment as well as expanding the range of development options. Heroku’s chief operating officer Orin Teich remarked that Heroku Enterprise for Java “can bring 80 [development and deployment] steps down to four,” assuming a high quality implementation of the application.
Heroku Enterprise for Java features the following components:
•Complete Java stack
•Heroku runtime and tools
•Support for core Java Development Kit, Java Virtual Machine, JDK 7 and JDK 8
•Memcache for session management
•Postgres for relational data management
•Separate environments for development and staging
•Support for Eclipse
•Direct deployment of WAR files
•Enterprise-grade support
Teich elaborated on the innovation of the Heroku Enterprise for Java platform as follows:
“Enterprise developers have been looking for a better way to easily create innovative applications without the hassle of building out a back-end infrastructure. With Heroku Enterprise for Java, developers get all the benefits of developing in Java along with the ease of using an open, cloud platform in a single click.”
Heroku did support Java development previously, along with Node.js, Scala, Clojure and Python and PHP. However, the Enterprise for Java Platform is designed to expand the platform’s appeal to large-scale enterprises in addition to startups and small to medium size businesses. Meanwhile, Salesforce is working hard to integrate its Force.com platform with Heroku through Force.com Canvas, which enables applications coded in other languages into the Force.com platform. Because Salesforce’s Force.com platform is coded in its proprietary APEX language, Force.com Canvas steers the company in the direction of allowing applications built on the Heroku platform to pull metadata from the Salesforce Force.com infrastructure.
AppFog Acquires Nodester As Node.js’s Star Continues To Rise
AppFog announced the acquisition of Nodester, the PaaS for Node.js, on Wednesday. Even though AppFog already supports Node.js on its PaaS platform, the acquisition brings Nodester developers into AppFog’s ecosystem and thereby gives them the ability to additionally code in Java, .NET, Python, PHP, Ruby, MySQL and PostgreSQL. The acquisition of Nodester also enables AppFog to use Nodester’s support of WebSocket to provide WebSocket technology to VMware’s Cloud Foundry. Nodester will operate as an independent service owned by AppFog until its WebSocket technology is integrated into AppFog’s PaaS infrastructure, at which point Nodester developers will enjoy full integration with all of AppFog’s polyglot support and functionality.
AppFog’s CEO Lucas Carlson commented on the acquisition by noting:
AppFog was incredibly impressed from day one with the market-leading community that Nodester has built. And now that Node is now tied with PHP for having the most number of applications running – so bringing our operational excellence and poly-infrastructure support to the loyal Nodester users; is a win for everyone.
Carlson’s reference to “poly-infrastructure support” takes note of AppFog’s ability to seamlessly deploy applications to multiple cloud providers, and from one cloud vendor to another, eliminating concerns of vendor lock-in. More so than anything else, the acquisition highlights the buzz around Node.js, as illustrated recently by Engine Yard’s commitment to support Node.js on its PaaS platform. While the PaaS space may witness a few more acquisitions in 2012, the landscape still remains sufficiently variegated that rapid consolidation is unlikely within the next year. But the trend marked by the rise of polyglot PaaS platforms is emerging with unmistakable precision. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
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