How OpenStack Breaks the "Application Wall"

Say that OpenStack is the leader in the cloud computing field. Hardly anyone will disagree with it. Even Google, IBM, VMware and other vendors have joined in. Open-Stack or commercial cloud computing projects have almost no match with OpenStack.

About the OpenStack Project OpenStack is an open source cloud management platform project. There are now 37,059 engineers from 178 countries around the world and sponsored by 574 companies. The project code is over 2 million lines. At the beginning of its establishment in 2010, with the goal of building an open source AWS project that meets the needs of public cloud and private construction, it initially provides only virtual machine management, network management, object storage management, and volume management, and can now provide application services. Database services, big data services, and bare-metal management have become more and more sophisticated and complete.

Outstanding versatility OpenStack is applicable to various application scenarios such as public cloud, private cloud, hybrid cloud, and big data. It can meet customer needs in the government, finance, telecommunications, video, medical, health, education and other industries, and its excellent universality. Sex first comes from the integrity of the project. The OpenStack project is divided into two categories of core services and shared services, totaling 12; core services include computing, storage, and networking. They are Nova, Swift, Cinder, and Neutron. Other components besides core services are called shared services, which are Keystone (authorization and verification), Glance (directory of virtual disks and libraries), Horizon: (interface of all services), Ceilometer (accounting system access module) , Heat (orchestration service for cloud applications), Trove: (provides DBaaS configuration), Sahara (big data), Magnum (container scheduling engine), etc.

Universal but not easy to use - The 12 service modules of OpenStack can be arbitrarily combined according to actual needs. Moreover, the feature set of each service also has the same elasticity. The functions of each component in OpenStack's 12 components are also Can be added and deleted at any time. The flexible combination of LEGO bricks guarantees the flexibility and versatility of OpenStack, making OpenStack suitable for almost every cloud computing and big data user.

In the survey, most users expressed their preference for OpenStack. However, there are still no plans to use OpenStack because there are too many problems in practical applications such as selection, deployment, and subsequent operation and maintenance. The number of OpenStack modules and the choice of plug-ins for each module make the actual selection more complex. Among them, the network is the most typical. OpenStack provides functions such as network, subnet, routing, DHCP, firewall, security group, VPN, LBASS, etc. It supports Vlan, Vxlan, and GRE network models, and supports network equipment of different vendors such as Openvswitch, Cisco, and SDN. The process of using the OpenStack architecture network by users is very complicated and faces many challenges.

Common but not easy to use - Inadequate value-added features In addition, OpenStack components are not comprehensive, and software projects such as billing and services have not yet been introduced. Indispensable monitoring of practical applications is also a weakness of OpenStack. OpenStack itself lacks servers and compute nodes. The monitoring function of storage nodes and network devices will cause a lot of trouble for users' subsequent operation and maintenance.

Common but not easy to use - The difficulty of deploying OpenStack components is very strong, and basically all of them are developed individually. Considering the user's integration needs is very little. Users deploy general information systems, and deployment objects are overall solutions. When deploying OpenStack, deployment objects are many components. The deployment order and parameter adjustment of each component are problems.

Although OpenStack is also aware of this issue, it has already had RDO and container-based OpenStack solutions that can solve some deployment challenges. However, for ordinary users, the deployment of OpenStack is still a difficult technical challenge.

OpenStack's "Application Wall"

The above problems have been restricting the wide use of OpenStack.

The forecast report released by 451 Research in early 2014 pointed out that in 2014, the revenue of the OpenStack market was approximately 883 million U.S. dollars, which increased to 33 billion U.S. dollars in 2018.

IDC released a report that the global cloud computing infrastructure spending in 2015 will reach US$33.4 billion, and in 2019 it will reach US$54.5 billion.

From the above two figures, OpenStack's growth rate is very high, but compared to the overall market of cloud computing, the share is difficult to match the leader's status. As the popularity of OpenStack in large-scale users and professional groups continues to increase, if the "application wall" problem is not resolved well, the development of OpenStack will inevitably encounter ceilings.

Inspur cracked the application wall: OpenStack deployment is the "next step"

OpenStack, as an open source technology project, cannot organize the power to research user needs and upgrade products. This is a common problem of open source technology, and it is also why the most widely used Linux operating system is difficult to open the desktop market. This problem can only be solved by commercial companies.

To this end, Inspur has developed the OpenStack distribution version of InCloudOpenStack, which is the core component of the operating system of Cloud OS Cloud Data Center. Based on the OpenStack architecture, Yunhai OS V4.0 has mature value-added modules such as billing, monitoring, and security. These modules first solve the problem of insufficient value-added features of OpenStack. Second, Inspur has developed a tool kit to simplify the selection of users. , deployment and follow-up management.

Yunhai OSV4.0 has automatic node discovery and pre-verification capabilities. Only need to boot, the deployment and configuration of the operating system and application software only need one key operation in the management interface. The verification tool will automatically check whether the node meets the deployment requirements. At the same time, the UI interface provides wizard tools to guide users through environment creation, node role definition, network configuration, disk partition configuration, and environment deployment. In the deployment process, users only need to complete several options, and then click "Next" to complete.

At the same time, Cloud OS V4.0 provides Restful API with rich integration functions such as environment query, node query, dynamic addition of calculation/storage nodes, and log query. The management is very convenient; the built-in health check tool can detect whether the OpenStack environment is running. Normally, pressure benchmark tests can also be performed to provide inspection reports to assist users in managing the OpenStack environment.

Make OpenStack Linux in Cloud Computing

Since 2015, China's private cloud market has begun a truly explosive period. Analytical firm Wikibon predicted that 2016 will be the year when the “real” private cloud is delivered as a comprehensive solution, which is why OpenStack goes The critical period of the user.

As a member of OpenStack, Inspur will focus on the promotion and development of OpenStack. It is hoped that OpenStack will soon be able to cross the “application wall” and become Linux in the cloud computing field, allowing more users to enjoy the value of OpenStack's leading technologies.