SUSE targets private cloud with OpenStack 6

Linux vendor SUSE has announced the availability of SUSE OpenStack 6 based on the OpenStack Liberty release. The announcement comes just days after Mirantis released their latest version of OpenStack based on the same underlying release.

One of the big points of interest in the press release is that SUSE says this release is already available on the IBM z Systems mainframes. This is not just about z Systems but also the derivative LinuxONE mainframes which recently underwent an upgrade. SUSE appears to have beaten other Linux vendors on IBM z Systems to the punch with this announcement and it will be interesting to see the take-up of the software.

While many will not see support of IBM z Systems as part of a drive to private cloud it is important to note that IBM has seen significant take-up of Linux across its enterprise customers. It has also seen a number of companies purchase IBM z13 mainframes to offer cloud-based services to its customer base. Many of those customers are moving to a hybrid cloud environment and it is surprising that SUSE didn’t talk about this in their release.

According to Nils Brauckmann, CEO of SUSE: “The market has started to realize that do-it-yourself approaches to deploying private clouds are too time consuming, too expensive and too prone to failure. As the first to offer an enterprise OpenStack cloud distribution, SUSE continues to focus on providing the OpenStack solution of choice for businesses.

“We combine rapid and simple deployment, configuration, management and maintenance with enhanced high availability features and the widest hypervisor support in the industry to give our customers access to the benefits of OpenStack without the complexities that hold some companies back.”

Mirantis will be quick to point out that Brauckmann is jumping the gun by claiming to be the first to offer an enterprise OpenStack cloud distribution. On Monday, Mirantis announced and shipped their OpenStack v8 release also based on OpenStack Liberty.

What are the main enhancements in this SUSE release?

The press release highlights a number of key OpenStack Cloud 6 enhancements including:

• Non-disruptive upgrade capabilities to ease migration to future OpenStack releases.
• Enhanced high availability features to enable customers to move legacy or business-critical applications to their cloud with the same level of availability of more traditional infrastructures.
• Support for IBM z/VM alongside existing support for Xen, KVM, Hyper-V and VMware, making SUSE first to include all these hypervisor options. This gives SUSE OpenStack Cloud the widest range of hypervisor support available and allows customers to incorporate their mainframe platforms into their OpenStack private cloud.
• Docker support to let customers build and run new and innovative containerized applications.
• Full support for OpenStack Manila to provide direct access to the performance, scalability and management of the open source Manila shared file system service.
• Support for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 Support Pack 1 to allow customers to build their OpenStack clouds on the latest version of the top platform for enterprise workloads.

These are not the only things that SUSE is calling out in this announcement. It has created its own OpenStack training and certification programme for its customer base. One of the challenges here for employers is that most of the OpenStack distributors are looking to create their own certification programmes. To get around that, SUSE has said that it has developed the course in conjunction with the OpenStack Foundation exam development team.

At present there is only one course listed and that is in Austin, Texas. It will be interesting to see when SUSE start doing European courses and whether they deliver them in-house or contract out to training agencies. There is certainly enough demand for the larger training agencies to certify trainers on all the major OpenStack distributions and do a deal with the OpenStack Foundation. However, we may not see this happen for at least a year as training companies wait to assess the level of customer demand.

Working to eliminate vendor lock-in

One of the concerns being voiced by OpenStack customers is that of the increasing risk of vendor lock-in. Last year the OpenStack Foundation looked to address this by telling distribution owners to remove a lot of proprietary features from their products. The goal was not to stop access to features but make them plug-in services so that customers would be able to move between OpenStack distributions as always envisaged by the community.

SUSE has referenced some customer research claiming that respondents were worried about the risk of vendor lock-in. The details around that research, such as the questions and responses are not available but it seems to mirror other surveys from OpenStack vendors.

What SUSE has said it will do is to: “add non-disruptive upgrade capabilities along with a more business-friendly release cycle and longer support duration. These combine to reduce the load on limited skilled resources by requiring fewer upgrades and minimizing disruption to production environments.”

Conclusion

SUSE has certainly got the jump on Red Hat and Ubuntu by announcing its OpenStack 6 would run on IBM z Systems. It will be hoping that as Linux on z Systems sales continue to soar it can hook into a wider set of customer engagements at the core of the enterprise. Offering its own training and certification around OpenStack is just as important and it will be interesting to see the take-up among its customer base.