SUSE OpenStack Cloud 5 to simplify private cloud management

SUSE has launched SUSE OpenStack Cloud 5, the newest version of SUSE's OpenStack distribution for building Infrastructure-as-a-Service private clouds.

Formerly called SUSE Cloud, SUSE OpenStack Cloud 5 is based on the latest OpenStack release (Juno) and provides increased networking flexibility and improved operational efficiency to simplify private cloud infrastructure management. It also provides “as-a-service” capabilities to enable development and big data analytic teams to rapidly deliver business solutions along with integration with the new SUSE Enterprise Storage and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 data center solutions.

According to Donna Scott, Gartner vice president and distinguished analyst, and Arun Chandrasekaran, Gartner research director, by 2019, OpenStack enterprise deployments will grow tenfold, up from just hundreds of production deployments today, due to increased maturity and growing ecosystem support.*

“Furthering the growth of OpenStack enterprise deployments, SUSE OpenStack Cloud makes it easier for customers to realize the benefits of a private cloud, saving them money and time they can use to better serve their own customers and business,” said Brian Green, managing director, UK and Ireland of SUSE. “Automation and high availability features translate to simplicity and efficiency in enterprise data centers.”

SUSE OpenStack Cloud 5 offers the following benefits to enterprise customers:

Enhanced networking flexibility – SUSE OpenStack Cloud 5 provides additional networking functionality and additional support for third-party OpenStack networking plug-ins. In particular, it provides for the implementation of distributed virtual routing, which enables individual compute nodes to handle routing tasks individually or as clusters. Configuring distributed virtual routing as part of a SUSE OpenStack Cloud installation increases scalability, performance and availability by enabling the network to automatically expand as compute nodes are added, reduce traffic through central routers, and decrease exposure to a single point of network failure.

Increased operational efficiency – The SUSE OpenStack Cloud installation framework has been enhanced to seamlessly incorporate existing servers running outside of the private cloud into the cloud environment. In addition, SUSE OpenStack Cloud 5 centralizes log collection and search, giving cloud administrators a single view into cloud operations and improving problem resolution speed.

Integrated with SUSE Enterprise Storage and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 – SUSE OpenStack Cloud 5 includes support for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 as compute nodes within the cloud, giving customers the most current versions of KVM and Xen. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 nodes can exist alongside SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP3 nodes. SUSE OpenStack Cloud 5 also integrates the recently announced SUSE Enterprise Storage, powered by Ceph. This provides an enhanced platform for object, block and image storage within the SUSE OpenStack Cloud, while retaining the same ease of installation of Ceph components that was available in earlier releases of SUSE OpenStack Cloud.

Simplified services deployment – Since many workloads require additional services, standardization in an “as-a-service” model simplifies and speeds installation by eliminating the need for users to manage and configure these services. Simplified services deployment makes it easy to deploy private clouds tailored for development and big data.

SUSE OpenStack Cloud 5 also includes data processing project “Sahara,” which provides a simple means to provision a data-intensive application cluster like Hadoop or Spark on top of OpenStack. SUSE and MapR have teamed to provide support for MapR Enterprise running on SUSE OpenStack Cloud using the MapR Sahara plugin.

“As OpenStack has matured and grown in enterprise adoption, more and more users want to leverage spare capacity for Hadoop data services,” said Tomer Shiran, vice president of product management for MapR Technologies. “With Sahara support in SUSE OpenStack Cloud 5 and the MapR Distribution including Hadoop, users can provision dynamic Hadoop clusters in just a few minutes for frequent development and test use cases. This is all backed up with enterprise support from MapR and SUSE.”

Maria Olson, vice president of Global & Strategic Alliances for NetApp, said, “Together, SUSE and NetApp are collaborating to build OpenStack-powered private and public clouds that deliver high-performing, efficient and scalable cloud services with enterprise-class storage and data management capabilities. As a charter member and gold level sponsor of the OpenStack Foundation, NetApp has a rich history of upstream OpenStack community contributions and is the most widely used commercial storage option for Cinder deployments.”

Adam Johnson, VP Business for Midokura, said, “Our MidoNet network virtualization technology enhances OpenStack Neutron by replacing Open vSwitch, all while providing performance and stability to the Neutron framework. Since open sourcing MidoNet last year, we've seen rapid adoption and to that end, Midokura is committed to supporting OpenStack distributions like SUSE OpenStack Cloud so customers can run MidoNet on the distribution of their choice for their OpenStack implementations.”