VMware and KVM: OpenStack Hypervisor Race Gains Momentum

Original author: Boris Renski
  • Transfer
Author: Boris Rensky The

default KVM hypervisor in OpenStack cloud software is facing increasing competition from VMware ESX Server. One of the founders of Mirantis, Boris Rensky, considers this race in context.

Note by InformationWeek Editor: One of the founders and executive vice president of Mirantis, Boris Rensky, on September 11, 2012, called VMware into OpenStack a mistake. Now he takes some of his words back.

Until now, the KVM open source virtualization solution has been unchallenged as the default OpenStack cloud hypervisor. This is largely due to the fact that OpenStack runs on Linux and that all Linux distributions are included in KVM by default. A recent survey of 822 OpenStack users by the OpenStack Users Committee clearly demonstrated KVM dominance. The KVM share is represented by 86 users versus 6 ESX users based on server clusters with the number of cores from 1 to 100. On large clusters with the number of cores from 101 to 500, there is also a big gap: 33 KVM users versus 4 ESX users.

Be that as it may, trends are beginning to show that the 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 begin to take OpenStack seriously. Today, it seems, my prediction was true. If you look at Mirantis customers and distribution channels, we will see a significant surge in the development of OpenStack by traditional companies, especially those working in the financial services sector.

When it comes to the enterprise market, we all know that there is no equal to VMware's vSphere virtualization management system. Although you can argue day and night about whether the combination of OpenStack / ESX Server makes sense, one thing is certain: companies will not be able to get rid of their investments in VMware overnight. This means that as the number of companies using OpenStack grows, it will be used more and more on top of the vSphere infrastructure, offering users self-service functionality. This, in turn, will lead to an increase in the share of ESX among hypervisors used with OpenStack.

VMware threatens service provider partner companies


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 resold for many years. VMware service providers are now forced to insure against possible losses, and here OpenStack comes to the rescue.

Again, the problem cannot be resolved by abandoning VMware and replacing the entire stack of tools. Using OpenStack on top of vSphere means greater freedom of choice for customers and insurance against potential losses associated with VMware. As a result, increased use of OpenStack with ESX.

Rest in Peace, vCloud Director!


In addition, VMware announced the separation from vCloud Director of vCloud Automation Center (vCAC) , which was a result of its acquisition of DynamicOps. At the same time, a gap has formed in the VMware product portfolio, built around self-service functionality based on DevOps. vCAC is a heavyweight software, in many ways similar to the product responsible for IT service management, which requires deep integration with IT business processes and implementation according to a scenario like ERP. On the other hand, vCenter itself is intended for system administrators and is not endowed with the self-service features inherent in the cloud, which are set by WS as the standard for the next-generation technology ecosystem.

Moreover, today companies are worried about vendor dependency. Considering the possibility of moving to a private cloud bypassing virtualization, they can choose: either increase investment in VMware, or continue moving along the tactically difficult but strategically advantageous path of openness - open - both in open-source and OpenStack.

Using OpenStack on top of vSphere is a smart choice that can help companies get closer to using the cloud. On the one hand, they will get the self-service functionality that was available in the discontinued vCloud Director. On the other hand, they take a step forward towards freeing their stack from vendor dependency.

VMware is set up to work with OpenStack


And last but not least. Despite my previous assumptions , VMware actually made a very tangible commitment to guarantee the smooth operation of OpenStack with VMware products, a reasonable step for a company that does not want to lose significance in the data center segment.

The company actively hires employees to increase the number of its representatives in the OpenStack organization and is invariably in the list of 10 leading companies by the number of code entered 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 its customers' deployments of OpenStack / VMware.

While all of these factors are unlikely to displace 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 lot of fragments of open source code intended for reuse by commercial vendors in an integrated solution depending on their vision (the so-called “opinionated”). Representatives of the second believe that this is an open architecture based on standards, designed to combine the diversity of infrastructure pools. The first camp equates OpenStack with another chaotic open source project, and the second with a very breakthrough phenomenon that is changing the industry. At Mirantis, we rely on a second perspective. More variety at the hypervisor level OpenStack will bring OpenStack closer to this development concept.

This article was originally published December 18, 2013 on the website of the magazine InformationWeek.

Also popular now: