OpenStack platform continues to be followed. But the usual question comes in mind that why passion found in favor of open source standardization? Interoperability in the cloud is a great feature of OpenStack, but this is not the only reason. There are many good things about this platform which we need to know.
OpenStack is the foundation of most of the new open architecture of cloud computing. With its ability to support the majority of Virtualization platforms market and open to the data center of the future.
The approach open source platform to OpenStack cloud fits into the strategy of the major players in the IT industry. For example, the adoption of OpenStack is placed in line with a policy that is intended for ‘clients’.
In declaring its love for OpenStack, IBM launched a message that reaffirms its commitment to the open source world and the world of standards. This is to reassure the community that the success of the platform.
Architecture of interoperability
The choice of OpenStack IBM offers a way to offer its customers more value, not just economic. In particular by ensuring interoperability imperatively associated with a platform in the cloud. Open source, open standards, shared, but also open to third-party resources and often competing APIs. This is reflected in the company offered to its ability to connect to cloud platform the majority of its ‘assets’ – servers, storage, and network – wherever they come from.
In addition, this unique open architecture can cover the entire portfolio as cloud operators and company can integrate its features more smartly to build private, public, or hybrid cloud. The concepts of interoperability and portability are therefore more correct here and make the deepest sense, because clients expect these things from infrastructure providers.
Platform platforms…
How does it become a reality? Technically, OpenStack does not really bring new things to the user. He needs a cloud platform, why not adopt OpenStack? Financially, the choice of the cloud causes a strategic investment, but over the long term. The licenses will weigh a little, the service is essential; it is not necessarily where the difference lies. It is otherwise when the constraints of proprietary approaches to infrastructure are evoked.
We are not here to discuss the benefits of open source; the literature on this subject is more than thriving. Just remember OpenStack, there are now over 500 developers, nearly 10,000 members of the Foundation and over 200 sponsors … We rather wish to refer to the technological independence of OpenStack, taking the literal meaning of an open technology with which everyone can communicate.
Also take the example of Virtualization platforms. Cloud architecture must support these platforms in the enterprise and should be covered by the cloud. In IBM’s strategy, this means support for VMWare and Hyper-V (Microsoft) unavoidable, PowerVM and ZVM in IBM environments, KVM and Xen open source environments.
The customer finds a step towards the League and SDDC…
Let us widen the perspective to the data center, the essential physical infrastructure on which to build any cloud computing architecture solution. We have seen the OpenStack open architecture lends itself to recognize the majority of the components of this infrastructure, even when all these components are based on standards.
This interoperability is requested by customers. Manufacturers have understood that for most of them provide connectors and / or APIs that are connecting their products to the platform. There is even a universal protocol that aims to fulfill this mission: OpenFlow. A close relative of OpenStack.
One of the great challenges of the future, it is precisely interoperability. This requires a new approach to infrastructure, the creation of a layer of abstraction from the hardware layer. Just like server Virtualization creates an abstraction layer where VMs (virtual machines) running.
Interoperability necessarily goes through connectivity, so the Virtualization of network disappears behind its administration tool regardless of its components layer. Because it is a feature of cloud computing, the user provides requirement for its virtual resources, but did not need to know what is happening below.
The challenge is to virtualize the network layer. It is the mission of the SDN (Software Defined Networking), creating a layer of abstraction of the physical layer of the network, which will be controlled by the administrator, and especially in the near future full automation in the infrastructure layer of cloud. An open architecture is essential, OpenStack is right.
We thus understand why IBM chose to join “The Open Daylight Project”, an open source project which is even Platinum Sponsor of SDN. The automation process, as expected by the cloud solution users, and delivered by the OpenStack platform, will therefore be completed by the League technology. All the more easily as The Open Daylight Project will be in the form a plug-in for OpenStack Networking Service…
This integration is a further step towards full Virtualization of data centers, transforming the entire control and management of the data center as a software platform, also known as Software-Defined Data Center. OpenStack will have its place in support of the cloud, the cloud automatically host all our infrastructure. But then perhaps our prospective may go too far.
(Paul Lopez is a technology writer and sales & marketing executive at bodHOST.com, a cloud & dedicated server hosting company based in New Jersey.)
