Drizzling from the Rackspace Cloud
March 8th, 2010Since I left Sun back in January, folks have been asking what was next. I’m happy to say that I’m going to continue hacking on open source projects like Drizzle and Gearman, but now at the Rackspace Cloud. Not only will I be there, but I get to continue working closely with a few of the amazing Drizzle hackers who have also joined, including Monty Taylor, Jay Pipes, Stewart Smith, and Lee Bieber.
Why Rackspace Cloud? Late last year I was considering what I wanted to do next with the Oracle acquisition looming near, and this was one of the options that presented itself. Rackspace had been a supporter of Drizzle from early on by offering virtual machines to develop and test on, and when talking to some folks more closely, something really hit home. Rackspace provides first-class service and “fanatical” support – they are not a software company. One might ask why an open source software developer would be interested in a company that doesn’t create software or vice-versa, and the answer is that Rackspace wants to find ways to offer the best possible service now and into the future. What better way than to help develop the next generation of service software and get a jump start into integrating this into their architecture? Both the open source community and Rackspace win.
Another thing I learned while talking with Rackspace is that one of their core principles is transparency. This applies to both customer and employees, and anyone within an open source community can appreciate this. The more I learned about the company and the folks within it, the more impressed I was at the lack of internal barriers or “need-to-know” information. One of Drizzle’s core goals is also transparency, from discussing design decisions on public mailing lists and IRC, to having the entire project management infrastructure hosted out in the open at Launchpad.
What does this mean for the Drizzle project? It means continued support for a number of core developers, more infrastructure for development, and most importantly in my eyes, more context. One of the Drizzle tag-lines is “A Lightweight SQL Database for Cloud and Web,” so what better place to develop a database designed for the cloud than on one of the fastest growing cloud platforms. We’ll get a detailed look at the demands, get feedback from cloud customers, and have the perfect test bed for offering new services. We’ll also be able to work closely with a top-notch group of DBAs, developers, and sysadmins in one of the most demanding service architectures out there. This invaluable context will help the Drizzle developers make more informed decisions moving forward, which also means better software for the community.
Personally, this also means getting back to my hosting roots. Before Sun, I worked at Concentric for almost 10 years in a clustered hosting environment. I’m very familiar with many of the multi-tenant scalability concerns Rackspace has, and I’m excited to be working in this type of environment again. We’ve already been working closely with the MySQL DBAs at Rackspace to learn what the biggest pain points are for a multi-tenant architecture, and we’ll be taking steps to address these as it will help anyone wanting to run Drizzle in a cloud-like environment. Drizzle’s modular architecture has already proved useful, as some of these concerns are easily answered with “oh, we have a plugin point for that.”
I’m excited, this is going to be a fun ride.
Posted in Drizzle, Gearman, Main, MySQL16 Responses to "Drizzling from the Rackspace Cloud"
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That’s excellent news for job security, a good team and great company ideals.
And a huge plus for Drizzle. I wish you all the best and I hope that I can be involved in some way more in the future.
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Yes, a big thank you to Rackspace. Myself trying to hustle around for friends (former collagues) looking for new jobs, it gives me great pleasure and comfort to witness (as a complete bystander in this case) how softly the Drizzle team managed to land their new jobs and continue working full time on the project. This is an excellent turn of events.
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Anonymous says:
Awesome!
As a new Rackspace Cloud developer who works on FOSS, by any chance do you know if Rackspace Cloud has any FOSS developer discounts or similar programs?
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Hi Eric!
congrats on the new position :)
It’s really good to hear you and the rest of the drizzle core team found a new employer. In fact, considering that rackspace has a more direct motivation to use drizzle for their customers is IMO even better.
good luck, see you!
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Welcome to Rackspace Eric!
I’m looking forward to learning a lot from you and the rest of the team.
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Congrats, and- just in case it hasn’t already occurred to you ;)- a Drizzle-based cloud storage service would be sweet.
,Wil
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Congatulations to You and Rackspace!.
I wish Rackspace will provide a fertile soil were you people can drizzle!
wish you people can show to the world what exactly “Cloud” means for a database. -
Eric, Your “About” page is still says “I work at Sun Microsystems…”.
Data inconsistency ;) -
[...] by now we are very happy to now be working on Drizzle at Rackspace Cloud. Check out the blogs from Eric, Jay, Monty and [...]
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[...] by now we are very happy to now be working on Drizzle at Rackspace Cloud. Check out the blogs from Eric, Jay, Monty and [...]
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As a Rackspace Cloud employee, I’d like to say welcome aboard Eric! We’re as excited as you are. :)
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[...] name, even the term “NoSQL” is a bit misleading. I talked with Eric Evans (one of my new co-workers over on the Cassandra team) who reintroduced the term, and even he admits it is vague and [...]
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[...] name, even the term “NoSQL” is a bit misleading. I talked with Eric Evans (one of my new co-workers over on the Cassandra team) who reintroduced the term, and even he admits it is vague and [...]
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[...] by now we are very happy to now be working on Drizzle at Rackspace Cloud. Check out the blogs from Eric, Jay, Monty and [...]
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Context is invaluable. This should help Drizzle move fast and in the right direction.