VMware and KVM: OpenStack hypervisor race is gaining momentum
Author: Boris Rensky
The default KVM hypervisor in the OpenStack cloud software is facing increasing competition from VMware ESX Server. One of the founders of Mirantis, Boris Rensky, considers this race in context.
InformationWeek Editor's Note: One of the founders and executive vice president of Mirantis, Boris Rensky, on September 11, 2012, called the adoption of VMware into the OpenStack organization a mistake. Now he takes some of his words back.
Until now, the open-source KVM virtualization solution has been an unquestionable leading position as the default cloud hypervisor in OpenStack. This is largely due to the fact that OpenStack runs on Linux, and that KVM includes all Linux distributions as standard. A recent survey of 822 OpenStack users by the OpenStack User Committee clearly demonstrated the dominance of KVM. KVM share is represented by 86 users versus 6 ESX users based on server clusters with 1 to 100 cores. Larger clusters with 101 to 500 cores also have a big gap: 33 KVM users versus 4 ESX users.
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Be that as it may, trends begin to show that ESX Server is challenging the KVM hypervisor. About a year and a half ago, in my presentation at the OpenStack Summit, I shared my opinion on the dynamics of the OpenStack perception curve, saying that 2014 will be the year when companies start to take OpenStack seriously. Today, it seems, my prediction was correct. If you look at the customers of Mirantis and its sales channels, we will see a significant surge in the development of OpenStack traditional companies, especially those operating in the field of financial services.
When it comes to the corporate market, we all know that there is no equal to the VMware virtualization management system vSphere. And although you can argue day and night about whether the OpenStack / ESX Server combination makes sense, one thing is certain: companies will not be able to get rid of their VMware investments overnight. This means that as the number of companies using OpenStack grows, it will increasingly be used on top of the vSphere infrastructure, offering self-service functionality to users. This, in turn, will increase the share of ESX among the hypervisors used with OpenStack.
This year, VMware announced the release of the long-awaited hybrid cloud service . Good news for VMware. Bad for cloud service providers who built their business on VMware technologies. Now they will have to compete with the vendor whose technology they have resold for many years. VMware service providers are now forced to insure against possible losses, and OpenStack comes to the rescue here.
Again, the problem cannot be solved by abandoning VMware and replacing the tools of the entire stack. Using OpenStack on top of vSphere means greater freedom of choice for customers and insurance against potential losses associated with VMware. The result is an increased use of OpenStack with ESX.
In addition, VMware announced the separation of the vCloud Automation Center (vCAC) product from vCloud Director , which was the result of its acquisition of provider DynamicOps. At the same time, a gap was formed in the VMware product portfolio built around DevOps self-service functionality. vCAC is a heavy software, in many respects similar to a product responsible for managing IT services, which requires deep integration with IT business processes and implementation according to a scenario like ERP. On the other hand, vCenter itself is designed for system administrators and is not endowed with the self-service features of the cloud, which are set by WS as the standard for the next-generation technological ecosystem.
Moreover, today companies are concerned about the problem of vendor dependence. Considering the possibility of switching to a private cloud bypassing virtualization, they can choose: either to increase investment in VMware, or to continue on the tactically difficult, but strategically advantageous path of openness — open — like in open-source and OpenStack.
Using OpenStack over vSphere is a smart choice that companies can gradually get closer to using the cloud. On the one hand, they will get the self-service functionality that was available in the abolished vCloud Director. On the other hand, they are taking a step forward in the path of freeing their stack from vendor dependency.
And last but not least. Despite my previous assumptions , VMware actually made a very tangible commitment to ensure the smooth operation of OpenStack with VMware products, a reasonable step for a company that does not want to lose importance in the data center segment.
The company actively hires employees to increase the number of its representatives in the OpenStack organization and is always in the list of the top 10 companies by the number of code contributed in an open project.
In addition, VMware has teamed up with some of the major OpenStack players, such as Mirantis and Canonical , to ensure the success of OpenStack / VMware implementations by its customers.
Although all these factors are unlikely to dislodge KVM from a leadership position, they will lead to significant progress in favor of ESX in 2014.
I see this as a positive trend. After all, there are two philosophical camps in OpenStack. Representatives of one of them believe that OpenStack is a set of open source code fragments intended for reuse by commercial vendors in an integrated solution dependent on their vision (the so-called “opinionated”). Representatives of the second believe that this is an open, standards-based architecture designed to unify a variety of infrastructure pools. The first camp equates OpenStack to another chaotic project based on open source code, the second to a very breakthrough phenomenon that is changing the industry. At Mirantis, we rely on a second point of view. More diversity at the hypervisor level, OpenStack will bring OpenStack closer to this development concept.
This article was originally published on December 18, 2013 on the InformationWeek website.
The default KVM hypervisor in the OpenStack cloud software is facing increasing competition from VMware ESX Server. One of the founders of Mirantis, Boris Rensky, considers this race in context.
InformationWeek Editor's Note: One of the founders and executive vice president of Mirantis, Boris Rensky, on September 11, 2012, called the adoption of VMware into the OpenStack organization a mistake. Now he takes some of his words back.
Until now, the open-source KVM virtualization solution has been an unquestionable leading position as the default cloud hypervisor in OpenStack. This is largely due to the fact that OpenStack runs on Linux, and that KVM includes all Linux distributions as standard. A recent survey of 822 OpenStack users by the OpenStack User Committee clearly demonstrated the dominance of KVM. KVM share is represented by 86 users versus 6 ESX users based on server clusters with 1 to 100 cores. Larger clusters with 101 to 500 cores also have a big gap: 33 KVM users versus 4 ESX users.
')
Be that as it may, trends begin to show that ESX Server is challenging the KVM hypervisor. About a year and a half ago, in my presentation at the OpenStack Summit, I shared my opinion on the dynamics of the OpenStack perception curve, saying that 2014 will be the year when companies start to take OpenStack seriously. Today, it seems, my prediction was correct. If you look at the customers of Mirantis and its sales channels, we will see a significant surge in the development of OpenStack traditional companies, especially those operating in the field of financial services.
When it comes to the corporate market, we all know that there is no equal to the VMware virtualization management system vSphere. And although you can argue day and night about whether the OpenStack / ESX Server combination makes sense, one thing is certain: companies will not be able to get rid of their VMware investments overnight. This means that as the number of companies using OpenStack grows, it will increasingly be used on top of the vSphere infrastructure, offering self-service functionality to users. This, in turn, will increase the share of ESX among the hypervisors used with OpenStack.
VMware is a threat to partner companies that are service providers.
This year, VMware announced the release of the long-awaited hybrid cloud service . Good news for VMware. Bad for cloud service providers who built their business on VMware technologies. Now they will have to compete with the vendor whose technology they have resold for many years. VMware service providers are now forced to insure against possible losses, and OpenStack comes to the rescue here.
Again, the problem cannot be solved by abandoning VMware and replacing the tools of the entire stack. Using OpenStack on top of vSphere means greater freedom of choice for customers and insurance against potential losses associated with VMware. The result is an increased use of OpenStack with ESX.
Rest in peace, vCloud Director!
In addition, VMware announced the separation of the vCloud Automation Center (vCAC) product from vCloud Director , which was the result of its acquisition of provider DynamicOps. At the same time, a gap was formed in the VMware product portfolio built around DevOps self-service functionality. vCAC is a heavy software, in many respects similar to a product responsible for managing IT services, which requires deep integration with IT business processes and implementation according to a scenario like ERP. On the other hand, vCenter itself is designed for system administrators and is not endowed with the self-service features of the cloud, which are set by WS as the standard for the next-generation technological ecosystem.
Moreover, today companies are concerned about the problem of vendor dependence. Considering the possibility of switching to a private cloud bypassing virtualization, they can choose: either to increase investment in VMware, or to continue on the tactically difficult, but strategically advantageous path of openness — open — like in open-source and OpenStack.
Using OpenStack over vSphere is a smart choice that companies can gradually get closer to using the cloud. On the one hand, they will get the self-service functionality that was available in the abolished vCloud Director. On the other hand, they are taking a step forward in the path of freeing their stack from vendor dependency.
VMware is committed to working with OpenStack
And last but not least. Despite my previous assumptions , VMware actually made a very tangible commitment to ensure the smooth operation of OpenStack with VMware products, a reasonable step for a company that does not want to lose importance in the data center segment.
The company actively hires employees to increase the number of its representatives in the OpenStack organization and is always in the list of the top 10 companies by the number of code contributed in an open project.
In addition, VMware has teamed up with some of the major OpenStack players, such as Mirantis and Canonical , to ensure the success of OpenStack / VMware implementations by its customers.
Although all these factors are unlikely to dislodge KVM from a leadership position, they will lead to significant progress in favor of ESX in 2014.
I see this as a positive trend. After all, there are two philosophical camps in OpenStack. Representatives of one of them believe that OpenStack is a set of open source code fragments intended for reuse by commercial vendors in an integrated solution dependent on their vision (the so-called “opinionated”). Representatives of the second believe that this is an open, standards-based architecture designed to unify a variety of infrastructure pools. The first camp equates OpenStack to another chaotic project based on open source code, the second to a very breakthrough phenomenon that is changing the industry. At Mirantis, we rely on a second point of view. More diversity at the hypervisor level, OpenStack will bring OpenStack closer to this development concept.
This article was originally published on December 18, 2013 on the InformationWeek website.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/215243/
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