The VAR Guy is booked to meet software giants and disruptive upstarts at Parallels Summit 2010 in Miami. Among the anticipated meetings: A sit-down with Cloud Linux Inc. founder and CEO Igor Seletskiy. The big question: Does the hosting world really need yet another Linux distribution? Seletskiy and Cloud Linux certainly seem to think so. Here's why.

The VAR Guy

February 22, 2010

3 Min Read
CloudLinux OS Set to Surface At Parallels Summit

cloudlinux

cloudlinux

The VAR Guy is booked to meet software giants and disruptive upstarts at Parallels Summit 2010 in Miami. Among the anticipated meetings: A sit-down with Cloud Linux Inc. founder and CEO Igor Seletskiy. The big question: Does the hosting world really need yet another Linux distribution? Seletskiy and Cloud Linux certainly seem to think so. Here’s why.

During a Feb. 23 keynote, Seletskiy is expected to describe how hosting service providers can leverage CloudLinux to maintain balance between number of users per server and the load the server can carry. The Parallels event is expected to mark the first time Seletskiy takes the stage to talk about the CloudLinux OS.

Launched in 2009 and based in Princeton, N.J., Cloud Linux claims the company’s CloudLinux OS is the “only Linux–based, commercially supported operating system (OS) optimized for shared hosting providers and datacenters.”

Hmmm… The VAR Guy is always skeptical when technology companies claim to have the “first” or “only” offering in a particular market. No doubt, folks like Red Hat and Novell have been working with Linux-centric service providers for several years.

In fact, Red Hat even has a cloud certification for its partners. And Novell will be at the Parallels event talking up cloud computing. Oh, and Canonical‘s Ubuntu Server Edition now ships with Eucalyptus-based cloud software.

Still, the CloudLinux OS seems to be catching on fast with a few partners. True believers in the operating system appear to include Cartika, Altaire, VPS.NET, ServeTheWorld, Lions Park and SingleHop, according to a prepared Cloud Linux Inc. statement.

So what makes CloudLinux OS different from other Linux distributions? Cloud Linux Inc. offers up the following example and claims:

Hosting providers often host thousands of customers on one server so, if not monitored, just a few clients can affect performance of the entire server adversely. With CloudLinux OS, service providers can now control CPU resources, significantly improving operations and customer performance. Its cutting-edge technology offers service providers and datacenters the ability to double the density on its servers and control server resources via its new Lightweight Virtual Environment™ (LVE) that optimizes the number of users on a server while maintaining a high level of server stability. Priced at a fraction of the cost of other options, CloudLinux LVE provides datacenter and service providers the ability to host more websites per server, and is optimized to work with hosting control panels, delivering faster updates.

Those are some lofty claims. The VAR Guy wonders: Can CloudLinux OS live up to those marketing statements? The VAR Guy will search for answers at this week’s Parallels Summit in Miami.

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