Cloud control systems tame the ether

a prebuilt grid architecture for lashing together clusters of virtual machines in a "producer-consumer" structure, making it easy to build large-scale processing systems without getting bogged down in the details.

Finally, I can only recommend Enomaly's ECP for the technically savvy. The engineers at Enomaly were extremely helpful in answering questions, and I applaud any system based on open source technology. I would heavily encourage involvement in Enomaly's community edition. But the lack of substantial documentation and missing application configuration capabilities leaves me reluctant to advocate ECP for production deployment. A new release is expected this summer, and perhaps the added features will erase my doubts.

Cloud management systems

3tera AppLogic

Release: 2.4.8

Platforms: Private and hosted AppLogic clouds

Pros and cons:

+Graphical "wiring" of applications is easy to work with.

+Lots of pre-built applications.

+Application-centric view of system.

-ADL requires a modest learning curve.

-Built on proprietary AppLogic runtime system.

Bottom line: 3Tera's graphical user interface captures your application's architecture in an easy-to-manage form. Its treatment of components as appliances also simplifies system construction. But it locks you into 3Tera's AppLogic environment.

Enomaly ECP

Release: 2.2.3

Platforms: Private and hosted ECP clouds

Pros and cons:

+Built on open source technology.

+Freeware version available.

+Runs a variety of virtual machines.

-Documentation is seriously lacking.

-No visible tools for managing applications on target OSes.

Bottom line: You can't argue with Enomaly's price tag: free is as good as it gets. And you are not tied to any proprietary software or cloud infrastructures. But Enomaly has a way to go before deployment is as simple as with the other tools.

Kaavo IMOD

Release: 1.4.5

Platforms: Cloud service providers including Amazon EC2

Pros and cons:

+Excellent control panel UI.

+Graphical view of application is easy to manipulate.

+Lots of pre-built appliances.

-Currently only supports EC2.

-Some configuration steps not readily apparent.

Bottom line: Kaavo's bundling of an application's descriptive and executable information into a single System Definition file unclutters application management, and allows for easy transfer of an application from one installation to another. However, it does require study of the underlying XML and Velocity syntax.

RightScale

Release: April 21, 2009

Platforms: Private clouds and cloud service providers including Amazon EC2

Pros and cons:

+Excellent documentation.

+Free version available.

+Large selection of RightScripts and machine images.

-Machine-centric view, rather than application-centric view.

-RightScripts require understanding of scripting language.

Bottom line: Where some of the other tools abstract the underlying structures of a cloud-based application, RightScripts require you to develop at the level of those structures directly. This produces some significant starting friction. Nevertheless, once mastered, RightScripts are phenomenally flexible and powerful.

Rick Grehan is contributing editor of the InfoWorld Test Center.