VMware, the undisputed king of
server virtualization, recently announced the launch of their own OpenStack solution
while at VMworld 2014: VMware Integrated OpenStack. But beyond the announcement on stage during the keynote session, I wanted to get an OpenStack community member's
perspective on VMware's expansion into the space. So to do that, I spoke with Mirantis
Co-Founder and CMO, Boris Renski.
VMblog:
What is Mirantis' relationship with VMware like currently?
Boris Renski: Our relationship is very
positive. Mirantis and VMware have had a partnership in place since the
OpenStack Summit in Hong Kong to support the integration of Mirantis OpenStack
with VMware vCenter Server and VMware NSX technologies. We have a very sizable
team of engineers, exclusively dedicated to maintaining interoperability
between Mirantis OpenStack distribution and VMware's suite of products.
VMblog:
VMware mentioned that their products are integrated with Mirantis OpenStack
(among other distros), how does that work?
Renski: The Mirantis OpenStack
distribution integrates natively with VMware's vCenter Server and NSX
technologies, which can be deployed automatically via the Mirantis Fuel control
plane. The integration is officially supported by both Mirantis and VMware.
VMblog:
Do you view VMware as a credible player in OpenStack?
Renski: VMware has been a player in
OpenStack for some time; their latest announcement just cements that. VMware is
a Gold Member of the OpenStack Foundation, the same level of sponsorship as
Mirantis. They have interoperability partnerships in place not just with
Mirantis, but also with other prominent members of the community like
Canonical, HP, Piston, Red Hat and SUSE. We look forward to cementing our
partnership with VMware even more deeply in the future.
VMblog:
Does OpenStack compete with VMware products?
Renski: Neither VMware nor OpenStack are
a single product, but a suite of solutions. There are definitely areas where
the two intersect and compete. However, there are also many areas where the two
complement each other. VMware views OpenStack as a tenant-side cloud fabric,
capable of gluing together various datacenter infrastructure components. At the
same time, VMware itself is one of the vendors providing such best of breed
components across compute, storage and networking. This is also exactly the way
Mirantis views OpenStack and with this view in mind, there is definitely a
great deal of benefit to the end user in leveraging OpenStack to orchestrate
VMware environments.
VMblog:
Has OpenStack gained traction among VMware customers?
Renski: VMware owns enterprise
virtualization and private cloud. OpenStack today has matured to the point
where we see many large enterprises starting to adopt it. Naturally, as this
trend accelerates further, we'll see more and more enterprise customers looking
for ways to use OpenStack to orchestrate their VMware environments. I think
that VMware going all in with OpenStack can benefit both a pure-play company
like Mirantis and a company with a wider software portfolio like VMware.
VMblog:
What does VMware contribute to OpenStack?
Renski: VMware has long been a major
code contributor to OpenStack and currently has 30+ engineers working full-time
to improve the upstream OpenStack codebase. Their work on the OpenStack
networking module (Neutron), where they dominate code contributions, has been
particularly notable.
VMblog:
How do VMware's OpenStack contributions compare to those of other ecosystem
vendors, including Mirantis?
Renski: VMware's contributions to
OpenStack Neutron have outpaced those of any other vendor. In terms of overall
code contributions VMware is either in the top five of code contributors or the
top ten, depending on how one is calculating contributions. Mirantis is the
third largest code contributor, behind only HP and Red Hat.
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Thanks again to Boris Renski, Co-Founder
and CMO at Mirantis for taking time out to speak with VMblog and answer a few
questions.