OpenStack achieved great market share among popular IT vendors and grabbed the attention of enterprise, telcos and SaaS companies. Finding the right OpenStack strategy is cruсial to meet your digital transformation requirements.
Not all companies can cope with such sophisticated, complex and changing software as OpenStack. Therefore, most of them are forced to utilize professional services from a distribution vendor. But choosing the best implementation and support partners in a wide and confusing OpenStack ecosystem is a challenge for the majority of end-users.
The main enterprise OpenStack distributions:
1. Red Hat OpenStack (RHOPS)
Red Hat is the leading developer and supplier of open source software for enterprises. Red Hat OpenStack Platform is a platform that provides a comprehensive foundation for creating, deploying and scaling a secure and reliable public or private OpenStack cloud. Red Hat OpenStack platform combines the fastest growing OpenStack cloud infrastructure platform, which is tightly integrated with the underlying, and time-tested Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system.
2. Mirantis OpenStack (MOS)
It’s one of the first vendors that offers an open source distribution for simple, flexible and reliable cloud deployment. The distro is based on fully open free modules that are part of openstack.org and does not have proprietary or commercial software included. They offer wide service portfolio related to OpenStack including the software itself, training and consulting.
3. Rackspace OpenStack Private Cloud
This system has been under constant improvement since its inception in 2010 when Rackspace co-founded OpenStack with Nasa. Rackspace Private Cloud is based on OpenStack with an opportunity to download it for free. Like Mirantis, Rackspace also provides customers with a variety of training and consulting services to deploy OpenStack in production environments.
4. Ubuntu OpenStack
Canonical designs, builds, operates and supports OpenStack private clouds on Ubuntu with a mission to simplify OpenStack deployment. They provide easy-to-use, browser-based control panel, which makes it is possible to manage machines from anywhere.
5. Vanilla OpenStack
Vanilla OpenStack is the name of ‘pure’ OpenStack, without special modification or optimization. It is free, open-source, and globally available. You absolutely need experienced operators and developers to succeed. The advantage of Vanilla OpenStack is that you can independently develop all automation based on unique requirements.
6. Cisco OpenStack
Cisco provides customers with an opportunity to build and operate OpenStack clouds with unified networking. They simplify the integration and accelerate deployment with smart automation for better performance. OpenStack is also the base of Cisco’s hybrid cloud infrastructure platform.
OpenStack provides a list of distributions to find the best option for you.
Migrate to OpenStack or between different OpenStack distributions
After you’ve chosen an OpenStack distribution it’s time to build your cloud migration strategy and to transform your IT environment. To find out all the challenges and solutions, watch this video on how to migrate to OpenStack in a painless way.
Fully-automated software allows switching between different OpenStack distributions or from any other source to OpenStack. We offer a simple way of deployment IT infrastructure to any OpenStack-based platform without performance impact or complications arising from large-scale migration of servers. Manual deployment is possible; however, migration without an automated solution will not be sustainable. Lift-and-shift workloads to any OpenStack distro in a couple of clicks using Hystax Acura.
Follow these steps to succeed:
1. Start live background replication of production workloads
Start consistent replication of any types of workloads, business applications, machines data, and metadata. The software uses background data replication between two sites; no downtime or performance impact on production workloads. Network utilization is optimized by built-in deduplication and WAN-optimization technologies. To start replication of machines, just select the machines and click ‘Start replication’ under bulk actions or for any of the machines specifically.
2. Automated orchestration launches fully operational business applications on target OpenStack distributions
All machines described in the plan will be automatically started in accordance with the orchestration conditions. Fully automated software allows to split workloads across multiple clouds and non-cloud platforms like bare metal in a few minutes and without any impact on production and create hybrid infrastructure depending on customer‘s needs.
3. Run an unlimited number of test migrations before switching production to target OpenStack
Hystax Live Cloud Migration software provides an automated way to launch test business applications on a target OpenStack without stopping production to build confidence before doing final migration or cutover. Migration is based on migration plans which are scenarios of what needs to be migrated and in what order. When the migration plan is ready, you can run test or production failovers.
4. Do final migration or cutover in a few minutes
Do final migration or cutover after you 100% sure. Hystax Acura is an advanced software to take deployment to OpenStack without experiencing downtime or complexities arising from large-scale migration of workloads.
Hystax helps companies to take a right step to a successful cloud migration between different OpenStack distributions or to any other cloud platform. Our solution provides background replication of IT workloads without stopping production, agentless replication in case of real-time migration and ability to do test migration against an isolated environment on a target side without influencing production in any manner.
Read how to create a successful digital transformation strategy in our previous article.
