So it came as no surprise to me that at VMworld, VMware announced its VMware Integrated OpenStack (VIO). This new software offering, which is available in a limited beta today, is an OpenStack distribution optimized to work with VMware's other software-defined data center components — compute, networking, storage and management, not just the hypervisor — for building enterprise-class OpenStack clouds.
The key word in this announcement is "enterprise." In the past, VMware has supported OpenStack open-source components, talked about how VMware could work with OpenStack, and even partnered with Canonical, among others, to deploy VMware vSphere and Nicira NVP with Canonical's OpenStack distribution. All very nice, but it wasn't anything you could put into ordinary business users' hands.
VIO, however, is meant not for programmers but for customers. VMware says "organizations, particularly enterprises, have found deploying OpenStack can be time and resource intensive, and the underlying infrastructure does not always meet their requirements for security, resilience and performance. Once deployed, an OpenStack cloud can require ongoing consultant support, hard-to-find OpenStack experts or considerable staff education and training in order to maintain operations. IT has also lacked the critical management capabilities to ensure ongoing success of sophisticated OpenStack production deployments in the enterprise."
In short, VIO is an OpenStack distribution. It takes all those messy, techie parts and turns them into an install-and-run package.
Specifically, VMware will be providing customers with an OpenStack VMware running on top of VMware vSphere, VMware NSX and VMware Virtual SAN. The company claims that VIO "VMware will be able to meet the requirements of both IT departments and developers. For developers, the solution provides self-service API access to enterprise-class VMware infrastructure, enabling them to deliver applications faster and more efficiently without worrying about the details of the underlying infrastructure."
As for IT, VIO is meant to "deliver demonstrable operational cost savings and faster time-to-value. IT can be up and running with an OpenStack cloud in minutes, and the solution provides full integration with VMware administration and management tools, allowing customers to leverage existing VMware expertise to manage and troubleshoot an OpenStack cloud. Additionally, an OpenStack on VMware cloud will help customers repatriate workloads that have been moved to the public cloud by creating a more developer-friendly, yet highly secure and reliable private cloud environment."
Can VMware deliver? I don't see why not. They're already a member of the OpenStack Foundation, they've contributed code to the program, and Linux distributors such as SUSE and Ubuntu already support VMware technologies on OpenStack.
Indeed,in a statement, John Zannos, Canonical's VP of cloud alliances, said, "We have worked closely to make mutual customers successful on Ubuntu, the most popular operating system for running OpenStack, OpenStack and VMware products such as VMware vSphere and VMware NSX. Canonical and VMware are focused on driving enterprise adoption of OpenStack as organizations seek to implement developer-friendly OpenStack APIs and tools in their software-defined data center. VMware's continued focus on OpenStack and its collaboration with Canonical show our mutual commitment to offering solutions and services to the growing base of OpenStack users."
So, yes, VMware can, and will, make VIO work. My question is, as more and more companies commit to OpenStack, where will that leave all the other private cloud software stacks such as Microsoft Azure and Apache CloudStack? I see interesting times ahead as OpenStack companies, such as Red Hat and HP, battle with each other and VMware, and all the OpenStack companies take on the rest of he private cloud world
