OpenStack advances hybrid cloud proposition with interoperability and federation initiatives

VANCOUVER: The OpenStack Foundation is continuing to move its cloud framework forward, announcing new interoperability testing requirements for OpenStack-branded products. It has also touted rapid adoption of the federated identity service introduced in the latest OpenStack release that makes it easier to combine private and public cloud resources.

Foundation executive director Jonathan Bryce said at the first OpenStack Summit event of 2015 that the vision for the OpenStack project was to create a "global footprint of interoperable clouds" that would enable users to seamlessly mix and match resources from their own data centre with those of public cloud providers, delivering a so-called hybrid cloud model.

To this end, Bryce announced new interoperability testing requirements for products that are branded as 'OpenStack Powered', including public cloud and hosted private cloud services as well as OpenStack distributions.

"This is a big milestone and introduces common code in every distribution that brands itself as OpenStack, and common APIs that have been tested and validated," he said.

In practice, this means that, along with an OpenStack Powered logo, products will carry a badge to show certification.

This currently applies only to some of the platform's core modules, such as Nova (compute), Swift (object storage), Keystone (identity service) and the Glance image service.

But it is intended as a guarantee to users that a certified product contains a set of core services consistent with all other OpenStack products that are similarly certified.

Vendors already offering certified products include HP, IBM, Rackspace, Red Hat, Suse and Canonical, but the list is set to expand this year.

"During 2015, this will go across all products that are OpenStack. You will be able to know what you are getting in an OpenStack Powered product, and you will be able to count on those as your solid foundation for cloud," Bryce said.

Meanwhile, the Kilo release of OpenStack, available since last month, added the Keystone service as a fully integrated module for the first time.

Despite this, OpenStack said that over 30 products and services in the OpenStack application catalogue support federated identify as of today, and that many OpenStack cloud providers have committed to supporting it by the end of this year.

Together, these two announcements are significant for OpenStack's hybrid cloud proposition, as they will make it much easier to link a customer's private cloud resources with those of a public cloud provider.

OpenStack Powered certification means that users can count on a consistent environment across the two, while Keystone provides a common authentication system that can integrate with directory services such as LDAP.

One company already taking advantage of this is high-tech post-production firm DigitalFilm Tree which has been working with HP and hosted private cloud firm Bluebox to build a totally cloud-based production system for film and TV content.

The firm demonstrated at the summit how the system enables footage to be captured and uploaded to one cloud, then transferred to another cloud for processing.

Bryce explained that this is just one example of how OpenStack is driving new use cases and expanding what people can do across a variety of industries.

"Interoperability means you can share your cloud footprint. It shows the power of the ‘OpenStack planet' we are trying to build," he said.

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• Topics
• Cloud Computing
• Business Software
• Datacentre
• OpenStack