Weekly Roundup: OpenStack Grizzly is Out

Here’s a quick summary of cloud happenings over the last week.

Early last week, IaaS leader Amazon has launched a new Punched Card Cloud (PC2). The PC2 is compatible with all mainframe operating systems. Users can upload, compile and run the FORTRAN, COBOL, and PL/I programs on PC2. Plus, the AWS Cloud Control Language allows users to create, manage, and destroy cloud resources using line-oriented statements specified on punch cards. Next, Amazon has announced about the expansion of Amazon Redshift clusters and EC2 High Storage instances in the US West (Oregon) Region. Amazon has extended the AWS access policy language to include support for variables. Policy variables make it easier to create and manage general policies that include individualized access control.

They have also added a new Tags page in the EC2 Console that help users browse EC2 resources and to add or remove Tags from multiple resources. Their final announcement of the week was price reduction of up to 26% on Windows On-Demand instances. This reduction applies to the Standard (m1), Second-Generation Standard (m3), High-Memory (m2), and High-CPU (c1) instance families.

OpenStack has rolled out its 7th release, called ‘Grizzly’. This release supports the compute, storage, and networking technologies with greater scale and ease of operations. Grizzly lets customers manage multiple OpenStack compute environments as a single unit. And, Grizzly also expands block storage options.

Google Compute Engine has made some significant announcements on expanded availability, new features and price drops. New features include boot from persistent disks, improved administration console, five new instance type families with 16 new instance types, an enhanced metadata server. They have expanded availability in two new zones in Europe. And they have made 4% reduction on all Compute Engine pricing.

Microsoft has introduced a new class at the Microsoft Accelerator for Windows Azure, powered by TechStars. This session gives early stage startups full access to Windows Azure and to help them succeed by connecting each company to leading technical and business mentors.

Stay tuned until next week!

- Janakiram MSV, Chief Editor, CloudStory.in