By now, you would’ve see numerous posts, either cynical or glorifying OpenStack/ OpenStack vendor announcements. Some on vendor wars, some on analysts stands.
Here are my observations, as a follow up to my earlier post. These are not just based on the keynotes or executive presentations, but include real conversations.
Enterprise Workloads
I observed two camps — one retrofitting ‘traditional enterprise apps to cloud environments/ OpenStack environments. While their applications don’t need cloud/ elastic environments, their reason is consolidation. Think workloads like ERP/ CRM/ Email, not necessarily elastic in nature. But the choice to run them on OpenStack is to provide uniform environments for all kinds of workloads.
Another camp targeting net-new workloads; think modern enterprise. They are OK with legacy applications running on legacy environments, along with these net-new apps running on OpenStack cloud. Think modern applications in the context of enterprise.
Some considered legacy apps such as SAP more suitable for OpenStack clouds, given their elastic nature (albeit predictable). Though I am not convinced the suitability of SAP workloads specifically, it was interesting to hear about a large Swift Cluster being deployed by SAP at the Operators meetup.
It is also important to highlight some of the interesting customers that presented/ participated during the summit
Wells Fargo & Walt Disney, Sony, AT&T & DigitalFilm Tree (from keynote), SAP, Bloomberg, Budd Van Lines, Time Warner Cable, RGB Networks, Comcast, BioIQ, Big Fish Games, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, USDA and more. Please check their individual presentations here. Check this link for the foundation’s perspective on OpenStack’s growth here.
Operator challenges
We had almost a day of the Operators Meetup (half on Monday and other half scheduled on Friday). What a meetup it was! I got to hear firsthand the challenges Operators face -Operators managing clouds of various sizes, running various applications (I noted at least 1 hand to go up in response to operators managing 10,000+ nodes). Here are few things that stood apart to me from those sessions:
Configuration Management
Operators seemed to prefer some kind of shared knowledge/ guidance on good configurations settings. Almost all hated hard-coded defaults/ settings, but some didn’t want a totally clean setting either. Something to start working on, but can be configured easily.
Neutron
Operators are pissed with neutron — no difference of opinion on that :). It is best for the community that it has been recognized, and with new PTL onboard, I am sure it will get fixed.
Upgrades & ROLLBACK
Whether OpenStack version upgrades or guest OS upgrades, upgrades in an OpenStack cloud has been painful. There have been improvements in the upgrade story, more in progress.
ISSUES AT SCALE
Few issues at scale that were discussed were around ceilometer scaling, database administrative tasks, etc.
Enterprise Gaps
Few interesting asks were around better backup/ restore story, capacity planning, security auditing etc. It was refreshing to hear these from the operators themselves, instead of analysts or pundits. It also showed me there is real adoption, albeit with issues.
Developer Pain-points
One ubiquitous pain-point I observed was the demand for OpenStack developers. Almost all the booths carried ‘hiring’ sign. Yahoo booth looked more like recruiting than product booth :).
Given the dearth of OpenStack developers, it is time for more hands-on OpenStack development training (not operations, but development), in the lines of Upstream training.
As I had noted in the Hong Kong summit, customers still need help with OpenStack deployments. This is also supported by the fact all major vendors offers support/ services now and more OpenStack training providers springing up (also check out the new OpenStack Marketplace with reviewing capability and all, cool!)
Cloud Don Take
No matter what the analysts say/ see, I am seeing increasing OpenStack adoptions. I am very positive about OpenStack’s growth, with enterprise lining up. More work to be done, but this summit, to me, was no doubt, ‘Go Enterprise’ summit!