Virtualization and Cloud executives share their predictions for 2015. Read them in this VMblog.com series exclusive.
Contributed article by Arsalan Farooq, CEO Convirture
Maturing of OpenStack Brings Focus to Enterprise Needs for Backup, Disaster Recovery, Data Security
It seems we are seeing the pivot point in the maturation of OpenStack and turning the corner into real-life usage.
That transition brings a new set of priorities for those in IT responsible for the OpenStack
deployments, especially because production, mission-critical,
customer-facing workloads require enterprise-grade data protection, data
security, backup, and disaster recovery.
We consistently hear from OpenStack users, and in particular those on KVM, that backup and restore capabilities have been a major operational gap in the OpenStack ecosystem. So much so, that quite frankly it's hard to imagine any enterprise moving into production with OpenStack on KVM without a comprehensive backup system.
I reference KVM specifically here because data shows that open source KVM dominates in the OpenStack
ecosystem representing 80 percent of deployments, so clearly this is
where the greatest need is right now for backup and restore
capabilities.
OpenStack provides for backup of configuration files and databases and makes clear
that critical data backup is left for the enterprise to handle. There
is KVM snapshot technology, of course, which delivers basic features but
latency can cause issues and it's not really enterprise-grade
backup/restore in terms of the overall feature set.
Specifically, I'm talking about automated, policy-based backup for OpenStack
compute pools and tenants, with fast reliable recovery and an
easy-to-use, web-based management console. Backup and restore that is
designed to minimize the load on virtual machines and hosts, reduce
network bandwidth and storage disk space requirements, shorten backup
windows, and simplify provisioning of backup services.
With this full feature set, OpenStack on KVM can deliver fast, reliable recovery required by enterprises running production workloads.
I believe we'll see those needs fulfilled and OpenStack will see a steep uptick in production deployments in 2015.
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About the Author
Arsalan Farooq is CEO and co-founder of Convirture,
which he started in 2006, with more than 15 years of systems management
experience. Previously, he founded Oracle's Application Service Level
Management division, growing from two engineers to a multi-national
organization. Arsalan's career started as a
software designer and in college, he founded a technology consultancy.
He holds degrees in Theoretical Physics and Computer Science from Reed
College and Caltech.