A new open source project has gotten underway to develop a Data Center Operating System for running containers and distributed apps in production.
The DC/OS project, which is derived from Mesosphere’s Datacenter Operating System, the 100 percent open source DC/OS offers powerful capabilities for container operations at scale and single-click, app-store-like installation of 20+ complex distributed systems (called DC/OS “services”), including HDFS, Apache Spark, Apache Kafka, Apache Cassandra and more.
DC/OS is an evolution of the Apache Mesos technology originally developed at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2009. Mesos was inspired by the types of systems that manage datacenter resources for companies such as Microsoft and Google, and simplifies the work of managing data centers and the process deploying modern datacenter-scale applications. It works essentially by aggregating data center resources — tens of thousands of servers in its largest deployments — into a single logical computer on which many workloads (Docker containers, Hadoop, Spark and Kafka, to name a few) can run simultaneously.
Backers of the project said DC/OS will let every company deploy the automated infrastructure that powers applications at some of the world’s largest technology companies. More than 60 partners are backing the DC/OS project, including Accenture, Cisco, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and Microsoft.
“The world needed a better architecture for all modern apps, not just containers,” said Florian Leibert, CEO & Co-Founder of Mesosphere. “DC/OS represents a major industry transformation, delivering today’s enterprises an open source datacenter-scale operating system that pools compute resources into what looks like one big computer, running containers, microservices, big data systems and other components of modern applications with ease. The open source community has come together around DC/OS to deliver an amazing ecosystem of products and datacenter services.”
“DC/OS is the inevitable next step for Apache Mesos,” said Benjamin Hindman, Co-Creator of Mesos and Mesosphere Chief Architect and Co-Founder. “Organizations that run Mesos quickly discover they need all of the components we’ve built into DC/OS. DC/OS will democratize large-scale distributed systems and the applications they power, building on the work of the Apache Mesos kernel. By open sourcing DC/OS we’re enabling organizations of all sizes to harness the same computing infrastructure as the Twitters and Apples of the world.”
“Hybrid and multi-cloud deployments are the new reality,” said Ihab Tarazi, CTO of Equinix. “We see DC/OS as a critical part of the true hybrid cloud. Equinix is home to 1,100 network providers across 145 datacenters in 21 countries and we will be using DC/OS to form the foundation for an open source ecosystem that innovates around multi-cloud and IoT. We believe that DC/OS, combined with other initiatives like Open Compute, will drive rapid innovation in the manageability, performance, security, and reliability of modern applications in hybrid environments.”
The project also includes DC/OS Universe, an app-store with an open catalog of services built to run on DC/OS. The DC/OS Universe simplifies packaging and delivery of its services for use in datacenter and cloud environments and provides a low-friction distribution path for ISVs that is analogous to app stores on desktop and mobile devices.
Mesosphere Raises $73M for its Containerized Data Center OS
Mesosphere raised $73.5 million in a Series C round of financing backed by strategic partners, including Microsoft and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). Also participating in this round are previous Mesosphere investors Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures and Fuel Capital, as well as new investors A Capital and Triangle Peak Partners. This brings Mesosphere’s total funding to nearly $126 million.
Mesosphere’s data center operating system (DCOS) is used for building, deploying and running containers and distributed systems in production. The solution also includes:
- Marathon: a production-grade container orchestration system, which is a standard part of the DCOS.
- Velocity: The newly launched developer agility and CI/CD platform for the DCOS, which leverages open source tools like Jenkins to make it possible for development teams to go from source code to production with ease and speed.
- Infinity: a big data and real-time analytics platform, which harnesses open source services such as Spark, Cassandra and Kafka so enterprises can easily build world-class analytics into their businesses.
