OpenStack Compendium

I'm a great fan of Amazon Web Services, perfect for creating pure cloud architectures without compromises, and I follow with great interest the evolution of Microsoft Azure. Anyway, both are proprietary platforms, but what about open platforms?
The open approach has always been a revolutionary concept in the computer history, it decided the success of the platforms and technologies: the success of DEC with PDP was also due to the publishing of detailed specs about inner workings and interfaces; the IBM and the era of  PC-compatible computers based on an open architetture and non-proprietary components; the use of the C language and the openness of the source code by AT&T; the GNU\Linux and the OpenSource movement; the open approach of the Java architecture with "write once and execute anywhere"…..

Recentlty, I had the opportunity to evaluate this compelling cloud platform so I decided to share with you some notes taken during my investigations.

The OpenStack Project aims to create an open source cloud-computing platform for public and private clouds aimed at scalability without complexity. One of the defining core values behind the project is its embrace of openness with both open standards and open source code.

OpenStack has been released under the Apache 2.0 license. Since that first release it has grown into a large community supported by over 12,000 contributors in nearly 130 countries, and more than 850 companies including Red Hat, Canonical, IBM, AT&T, Cisco, Intel, PayPal, Comcast, CoudWatt (see http://www.openstack.org/foundation/companies/ ).

     13/11/2013 

The platform is open and designed to support a broad range of products, technology and standards. It has no proprietary hardware or software requirements, and it integrates legacy systems and third-party products. It also provides a management API with a compatibility layer with the Amazon Web Service platform and Eucalyptus.

The OpenStack is a collection of open source technologies delivering a massively scalable cloud operating system. It has been architected and designed using a modular approach where each component is developed independently by a dedicated project.
A specific OpenStack implementation may leverage of all components or only a subset according the specific needs. The cloud platform provides a full set of feature required to cover any aspect of a cloud service.

Self-management
The easy provisioning (and deprovisioning) of computing capabilities according the needs automatically, without requiring human interaction with each service provider, allows a formidable way to respond just-in-time to any change required by the business.
The on-demand self-service management includes virtual instances, network, VPN, etc…

Easy VM provisioning
The platform includes a complete images management system with a catalog service for storing and querying virtual disk images. The images can be used as a template with a preconfigured application to get new virtual servers up and running in a very short time.

Metering and reporting for billing
The metering capabilities allow keeping a detailed track of the resource usage in order to adopt a pay-per-use approach based on consumed resources.

Monitoring
An extensive monitoring system allows controlling the infrastructure in order to identify exactly the system usage and carefully plan for future expansion. The on-demand resource provisioning can also be used to cope with peak periods when the service is heavily loaded.

Automation
The entire platform can be fully managed by using a broad set of API. The instance provisioning/deprovisioning, network configuration and monitoring can be fully managed programmatically. This reduce drastically the effort to manage the infrastructure and reliability of the delivery processes.

Interoperability and Portability
The Open Source approach of the architecture facilitates a seamless integration of different platforms and technologies. It provides the support to a wide range of visualization platforms ranging from proprietary software (VMWare ESXi and MS Hyper-V) to open source solution (KVM or Citrix XenServer). Additionally, the support of the project by the best of breed HW vendor like Intel, HP, IBM, Dell and Cisco guarantees a great level compatibility.

The Open Stack is one of the most promising platform for cloud computing due to the open source nature and the wide adoption for the cutting the edge technology providers:
 - IBM: cloud offer, IBM Smart Cloud, based on Open Stack project. Last year IBM aquired Softlayer which is based on a different platform, CloudStack, but currrently it is working on a  compatibility layer called Jumplayer (http://blog.softlayer.com/2014/building-bridge-openstack-api)
 - HP: enterprise-grade public cloud based on OpenStack technology
 - Canonical: release of Ubuntu Open Stack solution for private cloud
 - Red Hat: Red Hat's OpenStack Cloud Infrastructure Partner Network is the world's largest commercial OpenStack ecosystem
 - Rackspace: worldwide leading provider of cloud service based on OpenStack
The first class contributors embracing the project guarantees a stable development of the platform. The top corporate contributors are Red Hat, HP, Rackspace and IBM (http://activity.openstack.org/dash/releases/index.html?data_dir=data/havana ). The Havana release has been developed with the contribution of 933 developers.
The roadmap is very challenging with new features added every release (2 releases yearly at April and October). The community around the project is very active and spread around the world including Italy and France. Many conferences are dedicated to OpenStack (14 in the 2013) with a great participation. More than 3,500 people attended the 2013 OpenStack Summit in Hong Kong.

All the premises are very good, but what the future holds?