Can Red Hat Do For OpenStack What It Did For Linux?

Brandon Butler writes "Red Hat made its first $1 billion commercializing Linux. Now, it hopes to make even more doing the same for OpenStack. Red Hat executives say OpenStack – the open source cloud computing platform – is just like Linux. The code just needs to be massaged into a commercially-hardened package before enterprises will really use it. But just because Red Hat successfully commercialized Linux does not guarantee its OpenStack effort will go as well. Proponents say businesses will trust Red Hat as an OpenStack distribution company because of its work in the Linux world. But others say building a private cloud takes a lot more than just throwing some code on top of a RHEL OS."

Comments

RedHat be unsmart?

[mwvdlee]

But others say building a private cloud takes a lot more than just throwing some code on top of a RHEL OS

And somehow those "others" also believe Red Hat to be incapable of doing any more than just throwing some code on top of RHEL?

Re:RedHat be unsmart?

[AvitarX]

Red Hat better hope that throwing on the code isn't all it takes. Being an Enterprise Linux company takes more than throwing code on top of the kernel, and that's why Red Hat made a billion dollars, and Slackware didn't (not trying to knock Slackware, just trying to contrast two fairly early distros I used 15 or so years ago).

If all it takes is the code, Red Hat is screwed.

Re:RedHat be unsmart?

[eric_herm]

Well, that's the point, ie you need more than hobbyist. IE, when it come to be "enterprise" ready, people expect documentation, training, certification, support, and this is not free ( because while some people enjoy writing documentation or making support, there isn't that much people doing it for free ). And also, when you start to pay, you tend to expect someone to handle the sales, someone to negociate, etc, etc.

Re:RedHat be unsmart?

[Arker]

"Redhat is an enterprise Distro. Slackware is a hobbiest Distro Tow very different things."

True that they are two different things, sure. Though they are actually extraordinarily similar (to the point I usually get modded down when I say that they should be treated as two different, though closely related, Operating Systems, rather than being carelessly referred to as 'Linux'.)

"IT's like comparing Boeing to Cessna. They both make airplanes... but they both target completely different markets."

A very misleading analogy. It's more like if Boeing and Cessna were both building a plane based on the same chassis and engine. Slackware just produces one that lifts off a thousand pounds lighter, has engines that produce more thrust, and a stark, functional control layout, and gives it away for free expecting whoever uses it to have pilots, airplane mechanics, etc. on staff and to do their own due diligence and accept their own liability, while Redhat produces a much heavier version on the same airframe that they essentially rent to you, under a support contract where their mechanics keep it flying and they accept (some of the) liability.

That analogy isnt great either actually but it's a lot better than one that implies that RHE is somehow going to 'lift more weight' than Slackware. Given the same hardware the opposite would be true.

The headline is a question and the answer is Yes

[Attila Dimedici]

I think this is a headline that breaks the law of headlines which says the answer to a headline that is a question is always no. Red Hat certainly CAN do for OpenStack what they did for Linux. That does not mean that they will do so, even if they put the necessary effort into it. The last statement of the summary is irrelevant because Red Hat certainly knows that and almost certainly understands the magnitude of the project they are undertaking here. Red Hat is the sort of company that can do this. However, the project is complicated enough that they may fail.

Cloud computing platform

[ArcadeMan]

After all these years I still don't know what that is supposed to mean. I know about servers, FTP, server-side languages, etc. But "cloud computing platform" just sounds like a buzzword clusterfuck from the marketing department.

If I look on wikipedia then even a simple website with a CMS is "cloud computing".

Re:Cloud computing platform

[pLnCrZy]

What you're describing is virtualization.

"Cloud" is a stupid buzzword that quite simply means "resides on someone else's stuff."

Whether it's Amazon's stuff, Rackspace's stuff, or Microsoft's stuff -- it's not your stuff. You don't worry about physical servers, disks, or OS (in many cases.) Take it a level higher and if your cloud service includes databases or middleware, you don't worry about that either. Or even applications. Amazon's Elastic Beanstalk basically lets you publish your website code directly to it and the rest is magic that you don't have to mess with.

Then we turn it all around and create "private clouds" which means "we want to be trendy but don't trust someone else's stuff."

The pundits and pedants will mix in all kinds of semi-fabricated points about things that "must" be true in order for something to qualify as a "cloud," private or not, such as auto-provisioning and/or automated management, etc.

We used to call it "hosted services." Some marketing knob decided that the industry needed a more bandwagonny word for people to latch onto. Thus the term "cloud" was born, and it continues to be confused, misunderstood, and abused in perpetuity -- a condition that illustrates what a huge failure the very forces that coined this nonsense have done in making it clear to the consuming public what it actually is supposed to be about.

Probably won't....

[Junta]

RHEL has been angling at shooting down vmware in the enterprise space. They have made a go of it with RHEV-M and thusfar have failed to get traction. This is despite RHEV-M having a lot of the most common capabilities available that vmware offers. It's a tad different and in some ways exposing users to quirks that don't make a lot of sense (vmware has its own quirks, but being first has advantages). Openstack in general is aimed in a pretty divergent direction than where vSphere went and isn't particularly well off in heading even in that direction. If RH couldn't dislodge vSphere with a solution that matches capabilities, I can't imagine how they come back with a less resilient architecture and suddenly be view favorably...

Re:Show what an inferior OpenStack might look like

[Archangel Michael]

What? You data isn't backed up ... three times?

And you patched a production server, without testing?

You're screwed because you didn't do your job. For the crap that happens with RedHat, if you're paying for that support, pointing fingers at RedHat for their part of the blunder is why you pay for that service. Everything else, is your problem.

If you did that while working for me, I'd fire you. Quit trying to impart your mom and pop Linux views on Enterprise environments.

Obama, PRISM, NSA killed the cloud

[Anonymous Coward]

The cloud is dead. Dump your stock, and move your stuff back inhouse before your vendor goes broke, and stuff just stops working in the middle of the night and YOUR phone starts to ring because it is YOUR problem.

This is only one of the massive repercussions.

"A phantom limb is the sensation that an amputated or missing limb (even an organ, like the appendix) is still attached to the body and is moving appropriately"

The undenied Snowden leak makes the massive spying official. It is no longer a myth, a conspiracy theory. It is public record. It must be dealt with.

So can the 'oh they have been doing it for years' crap. And the if 'everybody else is doing it' as an excuse for committing crimes against humanity.

Don't dress the cloud up in 'open source' and 'linux' and try to steal the good will and Karma of Linux either.

THE CLOUD IS DEAD.

Fives Stages of Grief

1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance.

But the industry is still in the DENIAL stage, has a long ways to go yet. I know. I understand. It's hard. Especially when they did it too themselves.

Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo and the rest destroyed trust, violated privacy, but they still expect to sell a Cloud? Clouds are based on massive trust and privacy!

Re:Obama, PRISM, NSA killed the cloud

[aztracker1]

In this case we're talking about products and infrastructure for building in-house clouds... in a lot of ways cloud-style infrastructure management on internal servers makes sense, as you can allocate resources generically, as needed so long as your IT systems departments keep a margin of available infrastructure so that departments can spin up/down projects as needed.

Re:Show what an inferior OpenStack might look like

[Anonymous Coward]

Not everybody has a dev environment for everything.

Why the hell not? It's 2013 and virtualization is cheap.

Not everything works because it's been tested. Every time we release something out of software in-house dev, it goes through a month of dev testing. Then... it breaks 15 minutes after it's released, and takes 3 hours to un-break.

It sounds like your team is pretty bad at testing, then. Do you have dev or staging servers? Do they mirror the production setup? Is software versioning equivalent between the two (I'm talking distribution + supporting packages, clearly, not the software you're releasing)? Have you load tested to make sure your new shit isn't introducing something that will crush all resources in its path as soon as X people hit it? Do you have proper tests set up?

"Every time" is terrible, and I don't know your organization, but I'm pretty sure you should feel terrible, if only for having to work in such an environment.