| h1. Apache Whirr |
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| Apache Whirr is a set of libraries for running cloud services. Whirr is currently in the [Apache Incubator|http://incubator.apache.org/]. |
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| Whirr provides |
| * A cloud-neutral way to run services. You don't have to worry about the idiosyncrasies of each provider. |
| * A common service API. The details of provisioning are particular to the service. |
| * Smart defaults for services. You can get a properly configured system running quickly, while still being able to override settings as needed. |
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| Find out more about Whirr at our [wiki|https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/WHIRR]. |
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| h2. Which services and cloud providers are supported? |
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| Whirr uses [jclouds|http://code.google.com/p/jclouds/] for provisioning, so in principle it should support all the cloud providers that jclouds supports. The following table shows |
| the cloud provider and service combinations that have been tested. |
| |
| ||Cloud provider||Cassandra||Hadoop||ZooKeeper||HBase|| |
| |Amazon EC2|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes| |
| |Rackspace Cloud Servers|Yes|Yes|Yes|Yes| |
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| h2. Download |
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| Download a release of Whirr from a [nearby mirror|http://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi/incubator/whirr/]. |
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| h2. Getting Started |
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| You can use Whirr's CLI or APIs to [get started with Whirr|quick-start-guide]. |
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| There is also an [FAQ|faq] which covers how to achieve common |
| tasks with Whirr, and a [configuration guide|configuration-guide] for reference. |
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| h2. Getting Involved |
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| Have you got a suggestion for improving Whirr? It's easy to [get involved|https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/WHIRR/How+To+Contribute]. |
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| h2. History |
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| The code that would become Whirr started out in 2007 as some |
| [bash scripts in Apache Hadoop|https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/HADOOP-884] |
| for running Hadoop clusters on EC2. Later the scripts were |
| [ported to Python|https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/WHIRR-3] |
| for extra features (such as EBS support) and a wider range of cloud providers. |
| These Python scripts are available today in Whirr under _contrib/python_. |
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| In May 2010 the [Apache Whirr Incubator|http://incubator.apache.org/whirr] |
| project was started to give a home to |
| the existing work that had been done, but also to create a Java version |
| using [jclouds|http://code.google.com/p/jclouds/] as the cloud provisioning |
| library. jclouds supports many providers and has a very rich API for running |
| code on instances, so it provides a very solid foundation for building Whirr on. |
