Implementing an OpenStack cloud computing platform can be a lot of work. Which is why there’s such a lot of interest in the Ubuntu Orange Box, which crams everything you need to set up an OpenStack system inside the confines of its rectangular chassis.
Need to quickly create a private cloud server for your office? This will do the trick. How about one in a disaster zone when aliens suddenly invade a city? Same thing. Basically, this gives companies, organizations, and superhero squads a way to quickly and easily deploy what would otherwise take many days’ worth of manhours.
Designed by Canonical and assembled by TranquilPC, the Ubuntu Orange Box, literally, crams an entire one-stop cloud computing platform in a relatively portable enclosure. Measuring just 22.8 x 11.4 x 9.0 inches and weighing 37.4 pounds without a case, it can be towed around from office to office and even shipped as checked luggage in commercial flights. Inside the chassis sits 10 Intel NUC micro-servers, each one packing a quad-core Ivy Bridge i5-3427U CPU, Intel HD Graphics 4000, 16GB of DDR3 RAM, and a 128GB SSD root disk. That’s one machine with 40 cores, 160GB of RAM, and 1.2TB of solid state storage (with the very first node packing an extra 2TB HDD), complete with options for adding more storage to several of the nodes.
All the micro-servers are connected to a D-Link DGS-1100-16 managed gigabit switch, with cooling managed by a single fan on the power supply and passive aluminum heatsinks along the sides for the individual nodes. It comes with WiFi, six Ethernet LAN ports, separate USB/HDMI slots for each node, 64‐bit Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS, MAAS and Juju.
The Ubuntu Orange Box is available now, with prices starting at £7,575.