OpenStack: Out of its infancy, into the big enterprise

The OpenStack Summit in Barcelona recently showed that OpenStack is heading for large companies. A central topic here is the "OpenStack Multi Cloud".

It enables scalability and interoperability of different OpenStack clouds across multiple regions and data centers.

This is also a core issue for us at NetApp: Our data fabric concept allows data and applications to be moved both within OpenStack clouds and in hybrid cloud models - naturally also in conjunction with SAP systems.

What I find impressive is the enormous number of OpenStack projects that have now been realized - and that many large companies are already presenting their productive environments.

Larger companies

OpenStack is therefore no longer limited to DevOps or R&D. Rather, companies from very sensitive industries are increasingly relying on it - such as banks, online payment providers or video streaming services.

Major IT players such as SAP also have great confidence in the open platform: OpenStack forms the basis of various cloud solutions at the architecture level, which are summarized under the keyword SAP Converged Cloud.

There is currently talk of 20 different cloud infrastructures at SAP. Instead of programming the underlying hardware components individually, OpenStack is used as a standardized API. The result is a cross-vendor control layer for new cloud infrastructures.

OpenStack is thus becoming the infrastructure standard for SAP environments. One of the advantages for customers: Such a solution and open interfaces prevent the dreaded vendor lock-in when building new cloud infrastructures.

The example of the major bank BBVA shows how OpenStack can be successfully deployed in the enterprise environment.

BBVA has set up its customer portals on the basis of OpenStack. With its storage drivers, NetApp contributes to the success of these OpenStack solutions.

An important prerequisite for many SAP applications is the existence of shared file systems, which are mapped by the OpenStack project Manila.

Hierarchical Port Binding

Both SAP and NetApp are working hard to enrich Manila with additional features. The primary goal is to equip Manila for the requirements of highly scalable cloud environments of large enterprises.

One example is the Hierarchical Port Binding (HPB) feature in Newton, the 14th OpenStack release. This no longer only allows shared servers to be created in the backend storage, but also the associated networks and switches to be configured.

The assignment of the required ports to the VLANs takes place automatically. This reduces the manual configuration effort and increases network security at the same time. This is because the assigned switch ports only recognize the currently active VLANs.

Reason for the OpenStack victory

OpenStack has now reached a level of performance, security and automation that is on a par with proprietary solutions. In addition, there are fundamental advantages such as the flexible transfer of data between cloud platforms and high scalability.

In order to make the open system even more attractive for large companies, the community has to further improve the level of automation and thus increase efficiency.

Hierarchical Port Binding is just one example. Until now, a high degree of automation required proprietary solutions. Now we are also on the threshold of a level of automation in the open source environment that large companies expect - and need.