Mainstream

On the one hand, the cloud wave is rolling, but on the other hand, there is a lack of Cloud computing There is a great need for information among IT managers and specialists in order to separate the factual from the cloudy.

Events and trade congresses have shown that while there is a great deal of interest in Cloud computing but that there is a need to catch up on the basics and classification of one or the other point.

For example with Openstack.

At Openstack it is a matter of Open Source-project, which was launched under the Apache license stands.

This project has set itself the task of creating a Cloud computing framework. It was started by Rackspace and Nasa.

In the meantime, more than 260 well-known companies have joined this project, including both software and hardware companies.

IT key players such as IBM or HP participate in Openstack, as well as Dell and Ciscowhich already offers Suse Cloud based on Openstack offer to their customers.

Furthermore SAP joined the Openstack community; relies on Openstack as a cloud platform.

And, it is also a fact that the first Openstack Enterprise product on the market was developed by Suse introduced under the name Suse Cloud in the fall of 2012.

In addition Suse-Employee Alan Clark Chairman of the Board of the Openstack Foundation.

After Folsom now Grizzly

About the modules and release cycles of Openstack is important to know: Individual release candidates are given names in alphabetical order.

In 2012 there were the releases named Essex and Folsom, the current one is called Grizzly. Provided are:

• A dashboard (Horizon) that supports monitoring of the most important parameters in the cloud
• Quantum network management, which automates the integration of physical and virtual devices in the network.
• the Blockstorage Cinder, which provides virtual block storage in the form of virtualized storage media, where the block storage can be attached to virtual machines

An API interface allows Cinder to connect to Swift object storage so that block storage media can communicate with object storage.

The object memory is responsible for redundant data storage, the compute module Nova in turn can manage groups of virtual machines and the virtualized machines can be distributed across any number of compute nodes.

Likewise, XEN, KVM, Hyper-V and ESX are supported as hypervisors. Furthermore the Openstack Image Service Glance virtual machine images available.

These are then used by Nova used as a template to compile virtual machine instances.

And last but not least, the Keystone identity management module secures identity exchange between Nova and Swift.

As already mentioned Suse became the first Linux distributor to join Openstack.

As the oldest Linux distribution in the market, QA processes are embedded in the DNA of Suse over. And that is to make such complex Open SourceMaintain or support business-level projects to make it as easy as possible for customers to deploy and maintain the technology.

By the way, the close cooperation of Suse and SAP gets food for thought that SAP-workloads can also be transferred to the Suse Cloud.

The fact is: Suse has its Openstack-Suse Cloud distribution updated for the implementation of a private IaaS cloud.

Suse Cloud 2.0 uses the Grizzly version and supports the mixed use of the hypervisors KVM, Xen and Hyper-V.

Also the use of VMware ESXi is available as a Technical Preview.

Should Hana in the future for production on ESX are released, it becomes possible, Hana or NetWeaver with Suse Cloud powered by Openstack.