Mesosphere opens test access to its OS for data centers



    They started talking about operating systems for data centers relatively recently. And just six months ago , Mesosphere announced the successful development of such an operating system. Now the company has made a second statement: it opens test access to its OS, while during the test period the OS from Mesosphere will not be available to everyone, but will be provided at the request of interested organizations.

    It is worth noting that some organizations and startups have received such access. For example, Kubernetes , a third-party Google project, is now fully integrated with the Mesosphere OS. The integration process began last year, and now, as we see, it has been successfully completed. By the way, the project from Mesosphere interested not only representatives of the telecommunications sector, but also investors,who have already allocated about $ 50 million for this project. Other investors include Andreessen-Horowitz, Khosla Ventures, SV Angel and Fuel Capital.

    What is an OS for a data center, and why is it needed?



    Mesosphere did not immediately begin to develop an operating system. About a year ago, a startup showed a number of cloud tools for DCs, called Apache Mesos. At the same time, the code of these software products was open, and giants such as Twitter and Airbnb began to use the company's experience almost immediately.



    A few months later, the company thought about creating its own OS, which would include applications and tools created by the company earlier, as well as new software products. At the same time, the enveloping shell should play the role of a control panel for its applications, which, as planned, should cover all aspects of DC management.

    The OS is called DCOS (Data Center Operation System), and it represents, as mentioned above, a set of data center management tools with an individual user interface. Using these tools, the operator can quickly deploy, for example, a set of software for working in the Hadoop system for the Cassandra and Accumulo databases and the Kubernetes container management system.

    The OS is equipped with a graphical control interface, which greatly simplifies and speeds up the process of working with the resources that are currently needed, which can be transferred without delay to the operator panel.



    System features


    DCOS allows you to manage resources in DCs of any size. According to the developers of the system, the OS can cover the infrastructure of 50 thousand nodes (the beginning of the development of the system), with an increase by an order of magnitude by the end of 2016.

    You can work not only with the graphical interface, but also with the command line. However, the graphical interface significantly speeds up the process of managing all data center systems.

    The OS is compatible with a number of Linux distributions, including CentOS, Redhat, Ubuntu, and CoreOS, plus cloud services from companies such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft.

    According to the developers, the OS can manage any data center, and over time the product will be improved and refined.

    Time to collect stones


    About a week ago, the company announced its intention to open access to its OS for companies who want to try it out. Until now, there have been companies that have gained access to the OS, while there are both positive and negative reviews. Now a large number of companies will be able to evaluate the performance of the system themselves.

    It is worth noting that Mesosphere releases two versions of the system: free, which will be presented in partnership with cloud service providers, and paid corporate.

    By the way, earlier this year, Google joined forces with Mesosphere to facilitate the launch of the OS. The operating system is now compatible with the Google Cloud Platform. The commercial version of the OS for DC was also developed with Google, as mentioned above, this is the technology that now works in Kubernetes. According to Google, now access to Kubernetes will receive a new class of users and companies who can appreciate the merits of the corporate version of the OS for DC. Mesosphere developers say that their OS will help data center owners work much more efficiently with DC capacities, with the possibility of deploying new software systems in the shortest possible time.

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