Can OpenStack Get Operations Right?
Are you trying to manage a production OpenStack implementation? Are you still stuck with the Essex Release because there is no easy way to upgrade to Havana? You are not alone. According to many industry pundits—including Forrester—OpenStack is well on its way to becoming a standard, but the platform is still struggling to develop the proper tools to operationalize it.
Stepping back a few years to the beginnings of OpenStack, it quickly becomes obvious why it lacks operational and administrative tools. The project initially started as a mash-up of a NASA-funded skunk works (Nova) and a storage platform developed by a startup that was subsequently purchased by Rackspace (Swift).
Since the originators of the project were developers, not operations engineers, there were, right from the launch, inconsistencies between the components and a distinct lack of interest in building operational tools. The original concept was that the project team would build the core elements, and an ecosystem of tools vendors would emerge to create utilities to monetize and support companies that wished to build deployments of the platform for their private use.
So far, the project is progressing nicely, with new components such as Heat and Cellometer joining the growing toolset. But the vendor ecosystem is still very much a work in progress—with no clear winner yet.
Obviously it is possible to run a commercial service based on the OpenStack Platform. HP, Rackspace, and DreamHost are all successfully selling commercially available OpenStack-based public cloud services. These companies have the expertise and wherewithal to build their own operational tools.
So where does that leave smaller providers or companies that want to manage a private in-house OpenStack cloud environment? In the last year or so, the OpenStack community has been developing some promising solutions to address this obvious technology and market gaps.
For companies that lack the ability to hire one of the 2000 or so best and brightest OpenStack engineers in the world to run operations, there are several approaches that can be taken to remedy the situation. Mirantis will be more than happy to build your private cloud for you, but you are still stuck managing the deployment afterward.
Another way to solve the problem is to outsource the management of the OpenStack environment to a professional. Metacloud, Blue Box, and StackOps are companies that are offering to manage your private cloud for you. Rackspace Private Cloud takes a best of both worlds approach with a private edition that they will manage either on premise or in their data centers—with the capability to seamlessly connect to their public cloud services.
There is hope. Many companies are looking for more flexible cloud service options beyond AWS and VMWare. Ken Pepple, CTO of Solinea, noted in a recent interview on the CUBE that tools are maturing so quickly that in twelve months, OpenStack will be ready for consumption by normal IT. I, for one, cannot wait!
