Adding Speed and Agility to Virtualized Infrastructure with OpenStack
Customer Company Size
Large Corporate
Country
- United States
Product
- OpenStack
- VMware vSphere
- VMware NSX
- VMware Integrated OpenStack (VIO)
- VMware Virtual SAN
Tech Stack
- OpenStack APIs
- VMware ESXi
- KVM
- Xen
- Hyper-V
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Digital Expertise
- Innovation Output
- Productivity Improvements
Technology Category
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - API Integration & Management
- Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Connectivity Platforms
Applicable Industries
- Professional Service
- Software
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
- Product Research & Development
Services
- Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
- Software Design & Engineering Services
- System Integration
About The Customer
The article discusses the challenges faced by large enterprise organizations that are operating in today's software-defined economy. These organizations are looking to enhance their speed and agility to keep up with competitive demands for new applications and big data analytics while maintaining their existing infrastructure. Many of these enterprises have large VMware-based virtualized infrastructures that support a legacy of mission-critical, scale-up applications and enterprise databases. They value VMware for its compute, network, storage, and management technologies. However, they are also encountering new use cases that demand agility, prompting them to explore the potential of OpenStack for its open APIs, flexible architecture, and large commercial ecosystem. The article highlights the need for these enterprises to combine the agility offered by cloud computing with the stability and resiliency of their traditional environment.
The Challenge
Many enterprise organizations are seeking to enhance their agility and speed in the software-defined economy. They are turning to OpenStack for its open APIs, flexible architecture, and large commercial ecosystem to compete in a new paradigm of software development and deployment. However, these enterprises also operate large VMware-based virtualized infrastructures to support a legacy of mission-critical, scale-up applications and enterprise databases. They value VMware for its compute, network, storage, and management technologies but are encountering new use cases that demand agility. The challenge is to combine the agility offered by cloud computing while maintaining the stability and resiliency of their traditional environment. Enterprises are questioning whether OpenStack can replace their current VMware ESX servers, if there is feature parity between OpenStack and vSphere, and if there are benefits to using both.
The Solution
The article outlines three approaches to using VMware technology with OpenStack to address the challenges faced by enterprises. The first approach involves using OpenStack as the control plane to manage a multi-hypervisor cloud, running both vSphere and alternate hypervisors such as KVM or Xen. This approach provides common, self-service provisioning and API access, consolidating cloud management while allowing applications to be hosted on the environment best suited for them. The second approach involves using OpenStack on vSphere (single hypervisor) using commercial distributions. Enterprises can leverage VMware technologies with OpenStack by implementing a commercial OpenStack distribution that supports the VMware ESXi hypervisor in a cloud environment. This approach offers OpenStack CLI and REST API control of VMware compute, storage, and networking resources for simplified, more agile cloud automation while retaining use of VMware tools like vMotion. The third approach involves using VMware Integrated OpenStack (VIO), which combines OpenStack and vSphere (ESXi) for compute, NSX for networking, and VSAN for storage components in a single stack. VIO provides VMware monitoring and troubleshooting tools in the OpenStack environment, enabling enterprises to deploy both traditional and cloud-native applications with common and familiar VMware tools.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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