Can OpenStack only be used for private clouds? Why are users building their own private clouds when they don't use the public cloud? Can SMB users navigate OpenStack? Among them, and to pay attention to what issues. To this end, the reporter interviewed Mr. Li Hua, Technical Director of AWcloud, a professional OpenStack service provider.
Why OpenStack
First of all, for users, Amazon, Google, their systems are not public, users have no way to learn from their system architecture, only to use the services they provide. Although these public clouds can bring agility and resource elasticity, but for enterprise users, data exists on the public cloud, always feel uneasy. That trust is not built.
Li Hua said, "Some small-scale users, such as those not involved in data confidentiality, will choose public cloud services. But for medium and large-scale users, the data is more sensitive, similar to financial data, human resources, etc., are not willing to put into the public cloud, while the need for agility and resource elasticity efficiency, for which the user will consider building their own private cloud." Li Hua said
OpenStack has obvious advantages when it comes to private clouds. As an open source software, OpenStack is recognized by more enterprises and developers than OpenNebula, Eucalyptus, CloudStack, etc., and has become a de facto standard.
It's important to note that OpenStack is not completely competitive with commercial software like VMware.
"They are a competitive relationship, OpenStack underlying Hypervisor can be VMware, Hyper V, KVM, no relationship. Users can use OpenStack to replace the relatively expensive vCloud, etc., to build a cloud service platform. openStack is able to interface with ESX server, vCenter." Li Hua said.
Inch by inch, OpenStack small vendor advantage
If the user does not have the technical expertise to be able to navigate OpenStack, choosing the right partner is imminent. Choosing a big brand vendor to work with, or choosing a specialized brand, that is the question.
"Essentially, regardless of brand size, we all provide services around the community open source version and get the same raw material. What is done is to cook a dish on this basis, and the flavor cooked by different chefs will definitely be different." Li Hua said.
"There are two most important things to understand about the OpenStack open source community: one is to make full use of the community resources, focusing on the wisdom of engineers around the world to provide users with a stable and reliable product platform services. At this point, there is not much difference between vendors. The big difference lies in the second point, whether to insist on giving back to the open source community." Li Hua said.
Li Hua pointed out that some closed-source originated companies, do and do will be disconnected from the open source community, technology does not feed back to the open source community. In the short term do not see the problem, the open source community develops quickly, every six months there will be a new version, then the product and the new version can not be combined, it brings a series of problems for the subsequent development. For these companies, support OpenStack purpose, or to sell servers to sell networks, servers, storage and other hardware, OpenStack is just subsidiary. Under the guidance of such thinking, the big brands will also realize a lot of maladaptation, bringing hidden dangers to user applications.
Compared with the big brands, AWcloud is a relatively small company, but it is an OpenStack professional enterprise. The company's management has more than 10 years of experience in the open source market, which gives them a deeper understanding of open source and a better grasp of the laws. They will be more focused than big brands and more able to follow the spirit of open source, and this professionalism is more able to ensure the interests of users. Compared with the big brands, professionalism makes it easier for specialized vendors such as AWcloud to get rid of the interference of hardware factors, and more in line with and reflect the future trends and changes in OpenStack.
"Understanding of the open source community is the basis for choosing an OpenStack partner, and whether or not they insist on technology giving back to the community is a key point for making a judgment." Li Hua said.
The challenge of version compatibility
The compatibility between different versions of OpenStacK is also a challenge that plagues user applications and is often criticized.
Li Hua said, from the first version in 2010, OpenStack only four companies, and then slowly developed to dozens, hundreds, and now there are thousands, so OpenStack development. Resulting in A, B, C, D, E, 5 versions of OpenStack is an architecture, upgrading without much problem. However, from version E and F, with many new vendors joining, the original architecture was split, and the architecture was different, leading to compatibility problems. In the last few versions, the architecture has not changed significantly, and version upgrades can be kept smooth. This is a basic status quo.
To address compatibility, AWcloud suggests that if a user's production environment is running well on a particular version of OpenStack, it is not recommended to perform large-scale upgrades, but only small version upgrades. If it appears that resources are indeed insufficient, or new features need to be introduced, the best practice is to build another cluster, and the new cluster adopts the new OpenStack version.
"This is a more robust approach." Li Hua said.
DevOps and O&M
As they scale, users encounter a variety of issues, such as O&M challenges. OpenStack is a scheduling and resource management platform software that does not have comprehensive monitoring and alerting capabilities, said Li Hua.
If there is no technical strength as a guarantee, which physical server or virtual machine failure, how to locate these failures, the so-called log analysis, security, etc., these are not inherent in the OpenStack platform, these issues with the help of open-source or big data analysis tools, the so-called DevOps, the concept of automated operation and maintenance management.
Now it seems that DevOps is the value point for professional OpenStack service providers.
OpenStack service providers to have the ability to DevOps, physical machine high availability support, for example, the OpenStack community believes that the problem should be solved from the upper layers of the application. However, in real applications, users often need such functionality. To do or not to do, to provide support or not to provide support, there will be differences between vendors.
To this, AWcloud's attitude is that based on its understanding of users, it should provide technical support and services for users.
Experience shapes the advantage
AWcloud is Li Hua and partner Zhang Zhengyu founded the company in 2010, before that, Li Hua worked at RedHat for about 6 years, Zhang Zhengyu worked at IBM for more than 4 years, and worked at RedHat for 4 years, the two people in the field of open source more than 10 years of crawling around and accumulated a lot of rich experience.
"We hope to use the experience accumulated in open source open technology platform to help enterprise customers build a stable and reliable IaaS service platform." Li Hua said
In the past two years, AWcloud has done many successful cases. Many of them are users with more than 10,000 virtual machines, including many customers such as Beijing Computing Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences Network Center, Samsung China Research Institute of Wuhan University, Ningxia ICT, and State Grid.
"We have experience in building large-scale open source platforms, which we give back to the open source community, and at the same time we use the experience we gained to help companies build their internal enterprise-scale cloud platforms, which can help them save a lot of time and ensure the stability and reliability of their platforms." Li Hua said.
AWcloud professional strength is not only recognized by users, but also by Intel. Intel invested in Mirantis, one of the largest OpenStack companies in the U.S. When Intel invested in China, it did not hesitate to choose AWcloud as its funding partner when looking for a project.
With Intel, AWcloud is the only company in the world that has the ability to deliver the most advanced OpenStack platforms.
With the backing of the Intel brand, AWcloud is more than capable of winning the favor and trust of its users!
"This is our opportunity!" Li Hua said proudly.