Delivering on the promise of OpenStack clouds

Today we are announcing the next generation of our co-engineered OpenStack Cloud solution powered by Red Hat OpenStack Platform (OSP) 8. Version 5 of the Dell Red Hat OpenStack Cloud solution implements an adaptive approach to cloud architecture by adding innovative extensions from the OpenStack community to Dell’s core reference architecture to deliver the promise of OpenStack with open, highly flexible reference architecture. No other cloud partnership in the industry has the same level of joint commitment, co-engineering, and expertise with OpenStack than the combination of Dell and Red Hat.

Dell Red Hat OpenStack Cloud Version 5.0

Our version 5.0 solution features a unique combination of Dell-optimized modular infrastructure, with new and innovative automation tooling jointly engineered with Red Hat. This unique Dell and Red Hat automation tooling spans the entire core architecture and establishes the foundation for in-place seamless version upgrades going forward. We designed this solution to overcome the adoption challenges inherent in OpenStack and to speed time-to-value in a radically simplified way.

This latest generation offering is powered by Red Hat OSP 8 – Red Hat’s newest highly scalable IaaS platform based on the OpenStack community “Liberty” release. Red Hat OSP 8, also announced today, integrates the proven foundation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux with Red Hat’s OpenStack software distribution and is becoming the gold standard for production OpenStack deployments. In this new Dell release, the storage system is powered with Red Hat Ceph V1.3, and we have enhanced the compute engine with the newest 13thgeneration Dell PowerEdge servers with Intel Xeon E5-2600V4 family processors.

This integrated open cloud solution features:

  • New flexible reference architecture provides validated core architecture detailing optimized compute, storage and networking designs with a portfolio of innovative validated extensions
  • Unique deployment automation across all layers, hardware and software, integrated with Red Hat OSP Director
  • Seamless in place OpenStack version upgrades (Liberty going forward updates)
  • Dell PowerEdge R630/R730xd 13th generation servers powered with the latest generation Intel Xeon E5-2600V4 (Broadwell) processors
  • Guest high availability to minimize downtime in the event of outage
  • Host live migration to move VMs from one host to another without downtime

Embracing and Enhancing the Open in OpenStack

A key advantage of OpenStack is its flexibility and open attributes that provide the opportunity for levels of customization both at the foundation open source code level and with supplemental extensions available from the large collaborative OpenStack community. This flexibility and customizability have helped make OpenStack attractive to early adopters of cloud technology. OpenStack continues to gain interest and adoption as an open source software framework to implement private cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS), and as a foundation platform for solutions like NFV and HPC.

While viewed as a positive, the ever-growing OpenStack community ecosystem is driving a trend where some vendors are building increasingly larger monolithic OpenStack implementations. While this model can provide some benefits, it can be concerning to customers as they sense a danger of lock-in which flies in the face of why organization are adopting OpenStack in the first place. Dell customers have made it very clear that they want to integrate innovative best-of-breed components and have choice over what is in their OpenStack environment today and in the future. The importance of driving innovation with fully open environments is also clearly articulated in the 2016 OpenStack User Survey.

Adaptive, Extensible Architecture

With OpenStack evolving so quickly, the challenge becomes how to take advantage of the robust and vibrant options for customization from the OpenStack community without creating unnecessary complexity, and avoiding forcing customers into a locked down platform.

Our co-engineering work with Red Hat and others is solving this dilemma for our customers today with a new adaptive flexible reference architecture approach that brings together the combination of a  powerful, scalable core architecture with selected extensions. The extensions are all thoroughly validated just like the core architecture is validated to ensure a consistent seamless environment that just works.

We are building out a portfolio of validated extensions that can be categorized into Cloud Management, Performance Management, Software Defined Networking, Software Defined Storage, and Application Management categories. Further, our architecture also provides component level configuration options and platform options for the core compute storage and network devices. The concept is simple, but the execution requires making a series of carefully considered design decisions that balance simplifying the complexity in OpenStack while maintaining flexibility and providing innovative options to customize an environment with fully validated extensions. Learn more about our validated extensions in this detailed blog post.

On-Ramp to OpenStack – Your Path to Cloud 

Dell, Red Hat and Intel now are offering “On-Ramp to OpenStack”, a joint program which makes it easy to evaluate and validate the Dell Red Hat OpenStack Cloud solution powered with the latest generation Intel Xeon Architecture. This partnership was born from our shared belief that OpenStack is a leading choice for enterprises looking to unlock the potential of the private/hybrid clouds. On-Ramp to OpenStack provides mechanisms for our customers to assess best-of-breed software and hardware systems to bring enterprise-grade security, stability, and reliability to their OpenStack clouds.

Our customers inspire us to continue to refine our cloud solutions, and to continue focusing on creating flexible, modular, precision engineered solutions with truly comprehensive end-to-end lifecycle support. With Dell and Red Hat at your side, you can achieve the business outcomes and results that matter to you.

OpenStack summit comes to Austin April 25-29. If you’re at the conference, be sure to come to our sessions (detailed here) and stop by the Dell Expo booth to say hi!

About the Author: Brent Doncaster

Brent Doncaster - Senior Strategist, Product Marketing Leveraging his 20+ years of technology experience into the creation of portfolio messaging for Dell EMC Cloud Solutions in support of global marketing campaigns and initiatives in Dell EMC’s Integrated Solutions Group. Twitter: @Brent_BWD