Dell has announced what the company claims is the "first available" cloud solution offering based on the OpenStack platform. The launch of the Dell OpenStack Cloud Solution is being presented as a major play on the road to further advancing the adoption of open source Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) technology.

Dangling a fresh open source carrot in the face of customers seeking alternatives to existing cloud options based on proprietary, licensed software models, Dell says its branded OpenStack Cloud Solution integrates the OpenStack cloud operating system, cloud-optimized Dell PowerEdge C servers, the Dell-developed "Crowbar" OpenStack installer, and services from Dell and Rackspace Cloud Builders.

The Dell OpenStack Cloud Solution comes with a reference architecture designed to help cloud-focused developers integrate, deploy, and manage their IT resources in an OpenStack environment.

Dell's USP with this release (other than its first-to-market assertion), is that the reference architecture provided is based on Dell PowerEdge C Series servers, which (so says Dell) capture the efficiencies and design lessons learned from some of the world's largest hosting and cloud providers, while being engineered to maximize revenue per-square foot within the data center.

This solution also incorporates Dell's popular Crowbar software framework, which manages the OpenStack deployment from the initial server boot to the configuration of the primary OpenStack components, allowing users to complete bare metal deployment of multi-node OpenStack clouds.

"Once the initial deployment is complete, Crowbar can be used to maintain, expand, and architect the complete solution, including BIOS configuration, network discovery, status monitoring, performance data gathering, and alerting. Dell has released Crowbar to the community as open source code to enable users to build functionality to address their specific system needs, and is working with the community to submit Crowbar as a core project in the OpenStack initiative," said the company, in a press statement.

Dell has been part of the OpenStack community since its creation, and has worked closely with a number of key OpenStack partners, including Rackspace, Citrix, Opscode, Canonical, and Intel.

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