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I'm looking to make a sort of at-home mini-cloud. I have several Ubuntu boxes lying around and thought I'd make them into something useful.

I'm being a little vague on purpose since I'm not quite sure what I'm looking for. Somebody mentioned installing OpenStack, but I don't know how to link the computers.

Ideas?

tekknolagi
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1 Answers1

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Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) uses OpenStack by default, which makes it easy to add, install, and maintain your cloud computing environment. An alternative to UEC is Eucalyptus (which was UEC before Ubuntu changed it to OpenStack), which is easy to set up and install.

To install OpenStack, just install Ubuntu Server, and select 'Install Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud,' and follow the prompts to install the cloud manager software. Once you've got the cloud controller installed, it'll walk you through installing the cloud nodes, and then you just make API calls to the cloud controller who will call the individual cloud nodes to create the instances that you request.

Installing Eucalyptus is a bit more time consuming than installing OpenStack (as it's not automated from the Ubuntu Server install), but, it will provide you the same basic functionality as OpenStack will once completed.

Ian Wilson
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  • Should, then, the computers simply be all on the same network? – tekknolagi Jun 30 '12 at 22:10
  • Need they be on the same network at all? – tekknolagi Jun 30 '12 at 22:10
  • Yes -- they'll need to be on the same network, and, depending on the complexity of your cloud, you can put your machines into 802.11x trunking mode to allow the cloud to handle the vlan changes. In Eucalyptus as well as OpenStack there are methods of putting the system into a dumb network mode where they'll use the defined and static network settings. You can have them on a complex network, which will allow the cloud software to manage the network and vlans between the hosts, or, use it on a simple, non VLAN'ed network, which is what I'd recommend. – Ian Wilson Jul 01 '12 at 23:02