Running OpenStack in a data center

Operation Troubles

HA for VMs

One of the big criticisms aimed at OpenStack is the lack of a feature for deploying high-availability VMs at the OpenStack level (i.e., the failure of a hypervisor node does not automatically cause OpenStack to restart the VM on another host), but not because the OpenStack developers would be unable to implement the appropriate functionality. However, they pursued a different approach and pointed out that a virtual environment in OpenStack must be designed in such a way that it can cope with the failure of individual VMs without self-destructing. Ultimately, the discussion is rather ideological rather than technical. Nevertheless, users should keep it in the back of their minds.

Conclusions

At the end of this series of OpenStack articles, one thing is clear: Gaining an initial overview of the OpenStack components is not particularly difficult; nor is it complicated to create a small OpenStack environment based on MaaS and Juju or other tools. However, it is a real challenge to configure and operate OpenStack in the data center in such a way that the provider and the customer are given proven added value.

While planning your platform, you must answer central questions about deployment, the OpenStack distribution you use, SDN and SDS tools, and everyday maintenance tasks. This initial investment pays off later with an OpenStack environment that is up and running and lets you support many customers without the hassle that would result outside of a cloud. The path is long and stony, but in the end, genuine added value lies at the end of the rainbow.

Infos