The OpenStack Summit is fast approaching and that means new prognostications or maybe repeat prognostication’s about OpenStack being a bubble that is about to pop. This past May The Street put out this bubble piece on OpenStack and I just spotted this new it’s a bubble about to pop piece by After Nines Inc. It seems like the waters have been especially frothy in the OpenStack ecosystem lately. Over the past couple of months we have seen the following developments:
- VMware introduced a beta of VMware Integrated OpenStack – a VMware-supported OpenStack distribution – this one bears watching!
- VMware and CSC team up announcing plans for a web scale OpenStack Infrastructure-as-a-Service platform
- Blue Box announces a $10M Series B Financing – a well-known private cloud as a service provider in the OpenStack community
- Docker and Microsoft combine forces to create Docker Engine for Windows Server
- Cisco and Red Hat begin collaboration on OpenStack powered cloud solutions – these solutions look eerily similar to our current Dell and Red Hat solutions that are available TODAY – Cisco announced future intensions only, no firm dates for availability…
- Cisco acquires MetaCloud and its OpenStack based cloud platform – what this means for Cisco’s intended offers with Red Hat is an open question
- EMC acquires CloudScaling a well-known vendor in the OpenStack community
- Mirantis announces a $100M Series B Financing – this one raised some eyebrows given the amount and the very recent MetaCloud and CloudScaling acquisitions
In an earlier post I predicted a period of convergence and divergence in the OpenStack world. Recent activities further reinforce this trend. On the one hand we see new partnerships emerging and integrations like the VMware Integrated OpenStack offering along with significant venture investments and vendor consolidation. I believe we can expect these frothy waters to continue as the market sorts out OpenStack and its massive eco-system of technologies and vendors.
Are we in an OpenStack bubble? I think we are seeing some deflation of the OpenStack hype bubble – and that is probably good thing.
Dell and Red Hat can help you navigate the frothy waters of the OpenStack world
As we stated back in July 2014, “we believe that when mainstream organizations look to adopt OpenStack they will look to Dell and Red Hat solutions to help clarify the options and enable innovation with lower risk.” Given all the recent chop and churn in the OpenStack global ecosystem we think this continues to be sage advice.
We recently enhanced our Dell Red Hat Cloud Solutions powered by Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform 5 with new system sizing options, optimized Red Hat Inktank Ceph, support for Dell EqualLogic, support for Cinder ”multi-back” end capabilities which provides for multiple storage back ends to operated simultaneously, and last but not least active-active High Availability .
We also continue to extend our solution to support enhanced service level objectives for trust and performance. We are very excited to be working with Intel engineering and their Service Assurance Administrator (SAA) software to deliver monitoring, remediation, and reporting capabilities to assure that virtual machines and applications run and meet defined service level and performance objectives. Intel SAA addresses the ‘noisy neighbor’ problem where application performance can be compromised by miss-behaving virtual machines.
SAA can assess contention metrics in real time to assure that applications continue to run and meet their proscribed SLA. We have Intel SAA in the Dell cloud solution labs now under test to assess how best to tie this valuable new tool into our OpenStack-powered private cloud solution stack.
Software defined is a key to future innovation
Dell’s involvement with OpenStack started at the very first OpenStack design meeting in July 2010. We believe now, as we did back then, that OpenStack has an important role to play in the software defined data center as well as with other standards-based platforms and technologies. Our work with OpenStack will accelerate adoption of open massively scalable private clouds, just like our work in open networking is accelerating the adoption of software defined networking. See this recent Dell announcement on our efforts to create fully-converged, virtualized infrastructure to execute virtual network functions (VNFs) with OpenStack as a foundational technology.
Dell will continue to develop software defined technologies with our key partners like Red Hat and Intel because we know standards-based solutions are key to helping our customers transform their IT systems and operations.
Dell @ OpenStack Summit 2014
As we have at every previous Summit, Dell is proud to sponsor the upcoming OpenStack Summit Nov 3-7 in Paris. Make sure to stop by Dell Booth #D9 and we will be happy to review all the new capabilities in our joint Dell and Red Hat Cloud Solutions. We will have Intel SAA on display as well!
If you are attending OpenStack Summit, please make sure to add these sessions to your schedule.
Monday, Nov 3, 11:40-12:20 Open Networking and SDN for Next-generation OpenStack Clouds
Monday, Nov 3, 12:30-13:10 An Exploration of OpenStack Networking – Misconceptions, Assumptions and Expectations
Monday, Nov 3, 14:30-15:10 Dell Red Hat OpenStack Clouds – Optimizing Performance and Service Assurance with Intel SAA
It’s going to be cool – See you there! If you have questions or would like additional information please contact us: openstack@dell.com
