Linux of the cloud is OpenStack!

Recently, I have turned back to Linux [1] as I find it overwhelming to see the potential for what OpenStack [2]  has to offer to the community. Yes, in the world of the internet, Linux made a revolution by booting any OS on any Hardware. Similarly, I see only parallels with OpenStack and such open source tools, with respect to how these can scale the computing power in the cloud and beyond. This analogy describes far more reaching of any type of computing power, even needed with mechanics to thrive in the Quantum spaces. Hence, I am writing down here are few similarities I see that help support the open source nature of both technologies. The comparison highlights several key characteristics.

• Open Source: Just as Linux is a free and open-source operating system, OpenStack is an open-source cloud platform. This means its source code is publicly available, allowing for community collaboration, customization, and innovation.
• Foundation for Infrastructure: Linux serves as the foundation for many operating systems and applications. Similarly, OpenStack provides the foundational Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) layer for building and managing private and public clouds. It controls and orchestrates compute, storage, and networking resources.
• Flexibility and Customization: Linux offers immense flexibility and can be tailored to specific needs. OpenStack, with its modular architecture and numerous projects (components), also provides a high degree of flexibility, allowing organizations to build and customize their cloud environments to meet unique requirements.
• Vendor Neutrality: Linux is not tied to a single hardware vendor, promoting choice and avoiding vendor lock-in. OpenStack similarly aims for vendor neutrality, supporting multi-vendor hardware pools and allowing organizations to choose their preferred hardware and software components.
• Community-Driven Development: Both Linux and OpenStack benefit from large and active open-source communities that contribute to their development, maintenance, and support.

In essence, the analogy suggests that OpenStack provides an open, flexible, and community-driven platform for cloud infrastructure, much like Linux does for traditional operating systems. There will be a time when dominant cloud vendors like AWS, Google, and Microsoft, among others, assume a gatekeeper role for computing and dissolve their proprietary systems to OpenStack, as AT&T did with Unix, allowing Linux to become a powerful OS for over three decades since its invention. Red Hat [3] and Oracle [4], while settling scores themselves, the similarities will emerge for the benefit of end-users only. Ultimately, if the scientific community adopts OpenStack, industry players will follow suit. Hence, my Thesis is titled Elastic Intelligent Cloud Architecture for the academic community,[5] elucidating the frameworks that need strengthening. 

In the future, if AI holds features alongside OpenSource like OpenStack, why not Quantum Mechanics follow the same path? There is a lot of future work required to enable Quantum [6] as an open source to match and then to surpass its predecessors, like Linux, OpenStack. I welcome your comments and suggestions.

References

[1] Linux Foundation - Decentralized innovation, built with trust

[2] OpenStack: Open Source Cloud Computing Infrastructure

[3] Red Hat Announces Preview Version of Enterprise-Ready OpenStack Distribution

[4] Oracle announces Oracle OpenStack for Oracle Linux — and cooperation deal with Canonical seen as poking Red Hat

[5] Elastic Intelligent Cloud Architecture for the academic community,

[6] The Quantum Open Source Foundation

OpenStack could for quantum computing

 

Even though OpenStack does not directly manage quantum hardware, it can serve as the foundational classical infrastructure for a quantum cloud computing platform. In this article the several parameters that make the OpenStack cloud as fundamental model to extend techniques like quantamizing.

For example: 

Orchestration: An OpenStack-managed classical cloud can host the middleware and APIs that send quantum circuits to remote quantum processing units (QPUs).

Hybrid workloads: Many quantum problems are hybrid, meaning they require both classical and quantum processing. OpenStack could manage the classical portion of the workload, such as data preparation and post-processing, that runs alongside a quantum job.

Quantum simulators: Quantum simulators, which run on classical supercomputers, could be managed and made available to users through an OpenStack-based infrastructure. 

Distributed computing: In all computing requirements there is never a time one size fits for all. Coming to the way the resources discovered and distributed to only merge as qbits OpenStack cloud shall support a hybrd model.

OpenStack vs. Quantum Computing features  

Technology

An open-source suite of tools for building and managing classic cloud computing infrastructure.

An emerging technology that uses the principles of quantum mechanics (qubits, superposition, entanglement) to solve highly complex problems.

Primary Resources

Manages large pools of conventional compute (CPU/GPU), storage, and networking hardware.

Utilizes qubits, which can exist in multiple states simultaneously, to perform certain calculations exponentially faster than classical computers.

Use Cases

Deploying virtual machines and containers, managing storage, and running traditional enterprise and scientific applications.

Solving specialized problems in cryptography, drug discovery, financial modeling, and materials science.

Hardware

Runs on conventional server hardware, which can be virtualized.

Requires specialized hardware that often needs to operate in extreme environmental conditions, such as cryogenic temperatures.

OpenStack is here to stay

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Berkeley, Cambridge, Melbourne, Pittsburgh, and Toronto have something in common. The university in these places invested in OpenStack the only stable and reliable open-source distributed environment. That is saving infrastructure costs. They all use it for academic record keeping, hosting research applications, class learning, delivery online, IT infrastructure management, and students and faculty access to a single cloud thereby gaining a return on investment on the IT costs. 

What is OpenStack?

As the name suggests it is a stack of open software that the customers can plug in and pay without any cost rather than the power of the internet.

How did OpenStack start?

To make the cloud affordable to common users, NASA first standardized its websites. Then the same was extended by other services for other organizations. The way it worked is based on the power and storage. Cloud computing is powerful as long as the subscriptions are active on its usage. The inherent nature of having pooled open source codes would make more consumers share their best practices.

Extending OpenStack further, IT is anticipated to implement the necessary changes to existing devices that are not constantly in use, enabling them to share their resources with others when available.

Research continuum

Once the open source software was used for base infrastructure, the researchers started contributing back to the OpenStack in these universities.

DataSets

Workloads for Cloud Computing

K. B., “REAL WORKLOAD CHARACTERIZATION AND SYNTHETIC WORKLOAD GENERATION,” Int. J. Res. Eng. Technol., vol. 05, no. 05, pp. 417–429, May 2016. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1106094/it-workloads-clloud/, Accessed 16.7.2021.

M. C. Calzarossa, M. L. D. Vedova, L. Massari, D. Petcu, M. I. M. Tabash, and D. Tessera, “Workloads in the clouds,” Springer Ser. Reliab. Eng., vol. PartF1, no. December, pp. 525–550, 2016.

M. A. Rodriguez and R. Buyya, “Deadline Based Resource Provisioning and Scheduling Algorithm for Scientific Workflows on Clouds,” IEEE Trans. Cloud Comput., vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 222–235, Apr. 2014.

G. Juve, A. Chervenak, E. Deelman, S. Bharathi, G. Mehta, and K. Vahi, “Characterizing and profiling scientific workflows,” Futur. Gener. Comput. Syst., vol. 29, no. 3, pp. 682–692, Mar. 2013.

http://www.cloudbus.org/workloads.html
https://registry.opendata.aws/
https://github.com/lsv/fifa-worldcup-2018/blob