Openstack Appliance

An OpenStack Appliance^[1] is the name given to software that can support the OpenStack cloud computing platform on either physical devices such as servers or virtual machines or a combination of the two.

Typically a software appliance ^[2] is a set of software capabilities that can function without an operating system. Thus, they must contain enough of the essential underlying operating system components to work.

Therefore, a strict definition might be: an application that is designed to offer OpenStack capability without the necessity of an underlying operating system.

However, applying this strict definition may not be helpful, as there is not really a clear distinction between an appliance and a distribution.^[3] It could be argued that the term appliance is something of a misnomer because OpenStack itself is referred to as a cloud operating system ^[4] so using the term OpenStack appliance could be a misnomer if one is being pedantic.

If we look at the range of Appliances and Distributions one could make the distinction that distributions are those toolsets which attempt to provide a wide coverage of the OpenStack project scope, whereas an Appliance will have a more narrow focus, concentrating on fewer projects.

Vendors have been heavily involved in OpenStack since its inception, and have since developed and are marketing a wide range of appliances, applications and distributions.

History

OpenStack was established as an initiative of NASA and Rackspace in 2010^[5] with the following mission statement,  "to produce the ubiquitous Open Source Cloud Computing platform that will meet the needs of public and private clouds regardless of size, by being simple to implement and massively scalable".^[6]

The OpenStack organization has grown rapidly and is supported by more than 540 companies.^[7]

In 2012 NASA withdrew from OpenStack as an active contributor, and instead made the strategic decision to use Amazon Web Services for cloud-based services.^[8]

The OpenStack challenge

Openstack is a complex entity, and adopters face a range of challenges when trying to implement OpenStack in an organisation. For many organisations trying to implement their own projects, a key issue is the lack of skills available.^[9] In an article on The New Stack, Atul JHA succinctly identifies five challenges any organization wishing to deploy OpenStack will face.^[10]

Installation challenges

OpenStack is a suite of projects rather than a single product, and because each of the various applications needs to be configured to suit the user's requirements, installation is complex and requires a range of complementary skill-sets ^[11] for an optimum set-up. One obvious solution would be to take a complete vendor supplied package containing hardware and software, although due diligence is essential.^[12]

Documentation

This is more a function of the nature of documentation with open source products than OpenStack per se, but with more than 25 projects, managing document quality is always going to be challenging.^[13]

Upgrading OpenStack

One of the main objectives of using cloud type infrastructure is that it offers its users not only high reliability but also high availability,^[14] something that public cloud suppliers will offer in Service Level Agreements.^[15]

Such is the nature of OpenStack, due to its multi-project development approach, is that the complexity involved in synchronising the different projects during an upgrade implementation may mean that downtime is an unavoidable consequence.^[16]

Long term support

It’s quite common for a business to keep using an earlier release of software for some time after it has been upgraded. The reasons for this are pretty obvious and referred to above. However, there is little incentive for developers in an open source project to provide support for superseded code. In addition, OpenStack itself has formally discontinued support for some old releases.^[17]

Given the above challenges the most appropriate route for an organization wishing to implement OpenStack would be to go with a vendor, and source an OpenStack appliance or distribution.        

Selecting a vendor

A large number of vendors offer OpenStack solutions, meaning that an organization wishing to deploy the technology has a complex task in selecting the vendor offer that best matches its business requirements.^[18] Barb Darrow offered this over view in Fortune on May 27 2015,^[19] pointing out that there may be some consolidation in the market that will clarify things.

There are other aspects that people need to consider, for example, the real costs involved.^[20] How much of the actual OpenStack platform is offered? Some vendors will make an offer which encompasses most of the OpenStack projects; others will only offer certain components. Please refer to the table below for details. Other considerations: to what extent has a vendor injected proprietary code to manage a lack of maturity in an OpenStack component? ^[21] And to what extent does proprietary code mean vendor lock-in?^[22]

The most authoritative information on vendor products is at the OpenStack Foundation website.^[23]

OpenStack Appliances and Distros

Supplier	Product	Block Storage App	Compute API	Dashboard	Database API	Elastic Map Reduce	Identity API	Image Service	Network API	Storage API	Orchestration API	Telemetry
Ubuntu	Ubuntu OpenStack	Trunk Cinder v2.0	Trunk Nova v3o	Trunk Horizon	Juno Trove	Juno Sahara V1.0	Trunk Keystone v3.0		Trunk Neutron v2.0	Trunk Swift v2.0	Trunk Heat v1.0	Trunk Ceilometer v2.0
Swiftstack	Object Storage Platform									Trunk Swift V1.0
TransCirrus	Cloud Appliance	Icehouse Cinder v2.0	Icehouse Nova v2.0				Icehouse Keystone v2.0	Icehouse Glance v2.0	Icehouse Neutron v2.0		Icehouse Heat v1.0	Icehouse Ceilometer v2.0
Oracle	OpenStack for Oracle Linux	Icehouse Cinder v2.0	Icehouse Nova v2.0	Icehouse Horizon			Icehouse Keystone v2.0	Icehouse Glance v2.0	Icehouse Neutron v2.0	Icehouse Swift 2.0
EMC	Project Caspian	Cinder	Nova	Horizon				Glance	Neutron		Heat
EasyStack	ES Cloud 2	Icehouse Cinder v2.0	Icehouse Nova v2.0	Icehouse Horizon			Icehouse Keystone v2.0	Icehouse Glance v2.0	Icehouse Neutron v2.0	Icehouse Swift 2.0	Icehouse Heat v1.0	Icehouse Ceilometer v2.0
VMWare	Integrated OpenStack	Icehouse Cinder v2.0	Icehouse Nova v2.0	Icehouse Horizon			Icehouse Keystone v2.0	Icehouse Glance v2.0	Icehouse Neutron v2.0	Icehouse Swift 2.0	Icehouse Heat v1.0
Red Hat	Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform	Juno Cinder v2.0	Juno Nova v2.0	Juno Horizon		Juno Sahara v1.0	Juno Keystone v3.0	Juno Glance v2.0	Juno Neutron v2.0	Juno Swift v2.0	Juno Heat v1.0	Juno Ceilometer v2.0
Bright Computing	Bright OpenStack	Juno Cinder v2.0	Juno Nova v2.0	Juno Horizon			Juno Keystone v3.0	Juno Glance v2.0	Juno Neutron v2.0	Juno Swift v2.0	Juno Heat v1.0
IBM	Cloud Management with OpenStack	Juno Cinder v2.0	Juno Nova v2.0	Juno Horizon			Juno Keystone v3.0	Juno Glance v2.0	Juno Neutron v2.0	Juno Swift v2.0	Juno Heat v1.0	Juno Ceilometer v2.0
Huawei	Fushionsphere OpenStack	Juno Cinder v2.0	Juno Nova v2.0	Juno Horizon			Juno Keystone v3.0	Juno Glance v2.0	Juno Neutron v2.0	Juno Swift v2.0	Juno Heat v1.0	Juno Ceilometer v2.0
Oracle	OpenStack for Solaris	Juno Cinder v2.0		Juno Horizon			Juno Keystone v3.0	Juno Glance v2.0	Juno Neutron v2.0	Juno Swift v2.0	Juno Heat v1.0
Piston	OpenStack	Icehouse Cinder v2.0	Icehouse Nova v2.0	Icehouse Horizon			Icehouse Keystone v2.0	Icehouse Glance v2.0	Icehouse Neutron v2.0	Icehouse Swift 2.0
Cisco	OpenStack Private Cloud	Icehouse Cinder v2.0	Icehouse Nova v2.0	Icehouse Horizon			Icehouse Keystone v2.0	Icehouse Glance v2.0	Icehouse Neutron v2.0	Icehouse Swift 2.0	Icehouse Heat v1.0
SUSE	Cloud	Icehouse Cinder v2.0	Icehouse Nova v2.0	Icehouse Horizon			Icehouse Keystone v2.0	Icehouse Glance v2.0	Icehouse Neutron v2.0	Icehouse Swift 2.0	Icehouse Heat v1.0	Icehouse Ceilometer v2.0
IBM	Spectrum Scale for Object Store						Juno Keystone v3.0			Juno Swift v2.0
Rackspace	Private Cloud Software	Juno Cinder v2.0	Juno Nova v2.0	Juno Horizon			Juno Keystone v3.0	Juno Glance v2.0	Juno Neutron v2.0	Juno Swift v2.0	Juno Heat v1.0
Platform 9	Managed OpenStack	Juno Cinder v2.0	Juno Nova v2.0	Juno Horizon			Juno Keystone v3.0	Juno Glance v2.0	Juno Neutron v2.0		Juno Heat v1.0
CloudScaling	Open Cloud System	Icehouse Cinder v2.0	Icehouse Nova v2.0	Icehouse Horizon			Icehouse Keystone v2.0	Icehouse Glance v2.0		Icehouse Swift 2.0	Icehouse Heat v1.0	Icehouse Ceilometer v2.0
Stratoscale	Stratoscale		Juno Nova v2.0
Mirantis	Mirantis OpenStack	Juno Cinder v2.0	Juno Nova v2.0	Juno Horizon		Juno Sahara v1.0	Juno Keystone v3.0	Juno Glance v2.0	Juno Neutron v2.0	Juno Swift v2.0	Juno Heat v1.0	Juno Ceilometer v2.0
HP	Helion OpenStack	Juno Cinder v2.0	Juno Nova v2.0	Juno Horizon	June Trove v1.0	Juno Sahara v1.0	Juno Keystone v3.0	Juno Glance v2.0	Juno Neutron v2.0	Juno Swift v2.0	Juno Heat v1.0	Juno Ceilometer v2.0
Enovance	Service Provider Cloud	Icehouse Cinder v2.0	Icehouse Nova v2.0	Icehouse Horizon			Icehouse Keystone v2.0	Icehouse Glance v2.0	Icehouse Neutron v2.0	Icehouse Swift 2.0	Icehouse Heat v1.0	Icehouse Ceilometer v2.0
ONXY	Electra Stack	Icehouse Cinder v2.0	Icehouse Nova v2.0	Icehouse Horizon			Icehouse Keystone v2.0	Icehouse Glance v2.0	Icehouse Neutron v2.0	Icehouse Swift 2.0	Icehouse Heat v1.0	Icehouse Ceilometer v2.0
Breqwatr	Cloud Appliance	Juno Cinder v2.0	Juno Nova v2.0				Juno Keystone v3.0	Juno Glance v2.0			Juno Heat v1.0	Juno Ceilometer v2.0

        

References

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5. "Introduction a Bit of Openstack History". Docs Openstack. Openstack Foundation. Retrieved 17 September 2015.
6. "Open Stack Wiki Main Page Mission". 24 May 2010. Openstack Foundation. Retrieved 17 September 2015.
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8. Babcock, Chris (18 June 2012). "NASA Drops OpenStack For Amazon Cloud". Information Week. UBM Tech. Retrieved 17 September 2012.
9. Tsidulko, Joseph (6 August 2015). "OpenStack Community Challenged By Dearth Of Talent, Complexity". CRN. The Channel Company. Retrieved 17 September 2015.
10. Jha, Atul (December 2011). "OpenStack Has Its Issues but it’s Worth a Fortune". Thenewstack.io. The New Stack. Retrieved 17 September 2015.
11. Laube, David (12 January 2015). "Why We Threw 4 Months of Work in the Trash; or How we Failed at OpenStack". Packet.net. Packet. Retrieved 17 September 2015.
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13. Lester, Andy (10 January 2013). "13 Things People Hate about Your Open Source Docs". Smart Bear. SmartBear Software. Retrieved 17 September 2015.
14. "Increased Availability and Reliability". WhatIsCloud.com. Arcitura Education Inc. Retrieved 21 September 2015.
15. Baset, Salman. "Cloud SLAs: Present and Future" (PDF). www.cs.columbia.edu. Retrieved 21 September 2015.
16. Darrow, Barb (20 December 2013). ""Backbreaking" OpenStack migrations hinder enterprise upgrades". gigaom.com. Knowingly Inc. Retrieved 21 September 2015.
17. "Releases". wikiOpenStack.otg. Openstack Foundation. Retrieved 17 September 2015.
18. Allen, Scott (19 May 2015). "5 Questions You Should Ask a Potential OpenStack Vendor". Intel Communities. Intel. Retrieved 17 September 2015.
19. Darrow, Barb (7 May 2015). "Is there such a thing as too many clouds?". Fortune. Time Inc. Retrieved 17 September 2015.
20. Finnegan, Matthew (1 May 2015). "OpenStack ‘more costly’ than VMware and Microsoft for private clouds". Computerworlduk,com. IDG. Retrieved 17 September 2015.
21. Clark, Jack (13 May 2014). "HP: OpenStack's networking nightmare Neutron 'was everyone's fault". The Register. The Register. Retrieved 17 September 2015.
22. Donnelly, Caroline (3 March 2015). "HP updates Helion OpenStack in latest hybrid cloud push". Computer Weekly. TechTarget. Retrieved 17 September 2015.
23. "Distro's and appliances". Openstack.org. Openstack Foundation.