As IT and datacenter owners, we're constantly looking for new ways to modernize our environments while at the same time lowering costs and decreasing inefficiencies. A new startup in Austin, TX announced earlier this month that it was helping do just that through open source projects, bringing out-of-the-box management
capabilities that eliminate complexities and significantly lower CapEx
and OpEx.
Vapor IO says it is providing the industry’s first intelligent, hyper modular data center solution and offering what it calls the Open Data Center Runtime Environment or OpenDCRE. To find out more, I spoke with Cole
Crawford, CEO of Vapor IO.
VMblog: Tell us
about Vapor IO and the news you recently announced.
Cole Crawford: At Vapor IO, we are focused on helping to modernize today's data
centers by providing an open platform, with which vendors can create innovative
new data center infrastructure solutions.
OpenDCRE, the Open
Data Center Runtime Environment, is the world's first open source, intelligent, data center analytics
platform - designed to simplify data center infrastructure communication, and
is an open alternative to competing proprietary rack scale infrastructure,
eliminating vendor lock-in.
We also recently announced that
we've partnered with AppliedMicro Circuits Corporation, a global leader in
computing and connectivity solutions for next-generation cloud infrastructure
and data centers, and BASELAYER, the inventors of the software-defined modular
data center, to highlight our goal of furthering development of hyper converged
data center architectures within the open source community.
VMblog: And what
problems does OpenDCRE solve/address?
Crawford: OpenDCRE is a superior and less restrictive alternative to competing
proprietary rackscale infrastructure, eliminating vendor lock-in. OpenDCRE
also delivers a 21st century protocol to replace IPMI, and also provides modern orchestration
requirements of hyper-scale cloud environments that traditional and obsolete
technologies do not.
VMblog: What's new
in this version of OpenDCRE?
Crawford: The datacenter is overcomplicated.
With OpenDCRE, End Users have the ability to simplify and modernize the
datacenter through an open source project. OpenDCRE not only allows developers
and operational managers to create monitoring sensors to review their data
centers, but it also decreases OpEx (Operational Expenditure), and CapEx
(Capital Expenditure), ultimately lowering the costs of a business and
increasing ROI (Return on Investment).
VMblog: What do
these technology partnerships with BASELAYER and AppliedMicro mean? How have
the technologies been integrated and how will this affect data center users?
Crawford: These partnerships with BASELAYER and AppliedMicro highlight our
goal of furthering development of hyper converged data center architectures and
were developed in order to help create new and improved data center infrastructure
products and solutions within the open source community.
OpenDCRE
is the first true infrastructure automation and DevOps platform connecting IT
and physical infrastructure and is a superior alternative to competing proprietary rackscale architectures. With this new release,
version OpenDCRE 1.2 supports AppliedMicro X-Gene server family and BASELAYER Anywhere
modular data center (MDC) products.
VMblog: Tell us
about your work with the Open Compute Project and the open source community.
Crawford: As the founding executive director of the Open Compute Project, I care
very deeply about bringing our global community of technology leaders together.
With this in mind, I believe cloud economics and hyper-scale type data center
service optimization can be brought to the world through a community-based
effort. This not only opens up the technological community to those who would
be unable to fully participate, but it also allows collaboration among all,
ultimately bringing together a plethora of ideas that would have otherwise
never been heard.
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Once again, thanks to Cole Crawford of Vapor IO for speaking with VMblog.com and participating in this Expert Interview Series.
I invite readers to check out Vapor IO to learn more.