The post C’mon! OpenStack ain’t that tough appeared first on Mirantis | Pure Play Open Cloud.
Since Rackspace and NASA launched the OpenStack cloud-software initiative in July 2010, there have been 2 releases per year, beginning with the Austin release in October 2010, and most recently with the Stein release in April 2019. As with any software deliverable in its infancy, OpenStack was difficult to install and administer, lacked some usability and functionality, and had more than its share of defects.
Almost 10 years (and 19 releases) later, OpenStack has matured; it has improved in all areas, making it one of the leading choices for customers to implement a private cloud.
But OpenStack is still viewed as difficult to install and administer, as well as to use when managing cloud resources. The goal of this blog is to show that “OpenStack ain’t that tough,” especially after you’ve taken a class and been through the hands-on lab exercises.
Brief introduction to OpenStack
OpenStack is not a product. From the openstack.org web site: The OpenStack project is a global collaboration of developers and cloud computing technologists producing the open standard cloud computing platform for both public and private clouds. It’s backed by a vibrant community of developers and some of the biggest names in the industry. For example, companies such as Mirantis, Red Hat, SUSE, AT&T, Rackspace, Cisco, NetApp, and many more contribute to its development.
OpenStack is divided into many components, called projects, to provide IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) cloud services. Each project provides a specialized service, with names such as Keystone (the Identity service), Nova (the Compute service), Glance (the Image service), Neutron (the Networking service), and so on.
OpenStack can be managed and operated from the Linux command line interface (CLI) or a web-based UI. The UI is provided by the Horizon component and is commonly called the Dashboard UI.
OpenStack is in production at many organizations worldwide, such as Walmart, T-Mobile, Target, Progressive Insurance, eBay, Cathay Pacific, Overstock.com, SkyTV, GE Healthcare, DirecTV, American Airlines, Adobe Advertising Cloud, AT&T, Verizon, Banco Santander, Volkswagen AG, Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, Target, PayPal, and many more.
Previous perceptions
As with many software projects, OpenStack has had a perception of being difficult to install, configure, and use. For example, here are several user quotes from the April 2017 survey:
“Deployment is still a nightmare of complexity and riddled with failure unless you are covered in scars from previous deployments.”
Author’s comment: This is, perhaps, my favorite comment! It is a true statement for anyone who has been around OpenStack for as long as I have been. The only users who were successful with an OpenStack deployment were those who had been through it before (several times). BTW, I have the scars from previous deployments.
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