How to build a public cloud
Edora Cloud is a public cloud offering by the Danish IT vendor Edora A/S. It is currently the only public cloud offering in Denmark as far as we know, and was built in only 3 months using Origo OS. Commissioned in September 2024 and launched December 5th.
Europe and the Nordics are at a crossroads when it comes to cloud and Big Tech. All companies use cloud services. You can continue supporting Big Tech by using Microsoft Azure or AWS, you can use a local alternative, or you can build your own private or public cloud using open source orchestration platforms like OpenStack, ProxMox or Origo OS. Origo OS leverages standard Linux technologies like KVM, libvirt, qcow2 images and zfs to deliver an out-of-the-box private cloud experience. It is licensed as open source and available to use for free on up to 24 CPU cores. Origo OS will give you a head start if you are building a public cloud, because it can be linked to origo.io and provide services, like Kubernetes, managed databases, billing, DNS services, user synchronization and other services you otherwise would have to build yourself, out of the box.
Let us walk you through how Edora Cloud was built using Origo OS.
Hardware, networking and datacenter
It if of course imperative to have access to a large quantity of IPv4 addresses, which by now is a scarce ressource. However many network providers like e.g. TDC still offer class C subnets, as long as you have a plausible business need for these. They are typically not provider independent (PI) addresses, meaning that we would have to change IP addresses if we ever changed network provider.
Physical servers and network switches are of course also needed. It makes absolutely no sense to buy new hardware – CPU performance, PCIe and memory bus bandwith has been stagnant for many years. Plenty of memory, as many cores per CPU as possible and NVMe storage. Add to this at least two 10 Gbit/s NICs per physical node, 10 Gbit/s switches with 25 Gbit/s uplinks, and you’re good to go.
In Denmark the leading data center is the one operated by Digital Realty in Ballerup, so we went with that. As firewall we use pfSense in a redundant configuration, which is rock solid.
Virtual orchestration software (IaaS)
Any modern cloud will run workloads in virtual servers, use software-defined networking and some level of storage abstraction. So you need virtual orchestration software like VMware, Nutanix, OpenStack, CloudStack or Origo OS to orchestrate that. We of course used Origo OS. We simply logged into our Dell servers using their built-in out-of-band management tools (iDRAC), uploaded and mounted an Origo OS ISO and had two nodes up and running, ready to start servers and services – all in a few minutes. A bit more time was spent configuring networking, storage, backup policy etc., but all in all configuring and testing the base layer of the cloud took only a few days. This included configuring and testing the ZFS-based backup built into Origo OS.
Services (PaaS)
We were now able to log into the UI of our engines and fire up the basic Ubuntu Server that is included in every Origo OS distribution. We could even upload ISO images, and install any server of our choosing, or simply upload a vmdk or vhd image, click convert, and run these. But what about other services, like Kubernetes, databases and object storage? We call these “stacks”. They are run as collections of prepackaged and configured virtual servers, and one of the advantages you get by linking an engine to the Origo registry and accessing the Origo infrastructure services is, that you get access to all the pre-packaged stacks that are built for Origo OS. They are automatically downloaded from Origo’s registry and ready to install minutes after you link your engine (depending on you bandwidth of course). If you prefer not to link your engine to the Origo Registry, you can of course also build your services from source code. We linked the two engines making up Edora Cloud, and were quickly ready to fire up Kubernetes clusters, WordPress servers, etc.
Metering, billing, user management (UI)
The Origo OS UI can be accessed from the physical admininistration server of every engine (an engine is a single server or a collection of physically connected servers running Origo OS). This is actually fine if you only plan to have a single engine in a single data center. Origo OS even comes with basic metering and user management (and API endpoints for this).
Edora Cloud is however a bit more ambitious and has two engines in two separate data centers, with more to come. At Origo we had previously built a nice, consolidated web application for managing VMs, users, services, metering, billing, DNS services, monitoring and backup across multiple engines, all leveraging the Origo OS API and the Origo infrastructure services an engine gets access to when linked. This web application had powered some of the more experimental clouds we have built over the years for e.g. DTU and OS2. It had powered Origo Cloud, and now it powers Edora Cloud.
Three months you said…
But with IaaS by Origo OS, and prebuilt services delivered by Origo Cloud, why did it even take 3 months? Frankly, most of the time was spent testing, testing again and testing again. Web design, graphic design, translating the entire UI to Danish, it all takes time. But we did it, and we hope you will give Edora Cloud a spin or build your own cloud!
Build your own public cloud
At Origo we envision a decentralized future with infrastructure defined by software rather than by tech giants.
If you agree with this vision, why not build your own private or public cloud? Download Origo OS and start building or reach out to us – we’re here to help.
