Platform9, a private cloud specialist has released OpenStack drivers that can be used in OpenStack to create hybrid cloud implementations using the Amazon Web Services Inc. platform.
The company was established in 2013. It offers an OpenStack-based private Cloud solution that can run on any hardware or platform. Its goal is to provide private-cloud benefits like global visibility and control and self-service provisioning.
Madhura Maskasky, a company executive, wrote in a blog Wednesday that “Today we announced the first of its-kind set OpenStack drivers to control & manage resources on AWS.” The drivers allow core OpenStack projects like Nova, Glance and Neutron to be integrated with AWS. They also provide an easy way to manage AWS endpoints using OpenStack. This is a community-driven initiative that will help support other popular public clouds in future.
Maskasky pointed out that OpenStack was designed to break vendor lock-in in technology stacks like VMware — lock in that now exists in the public cloud space. She stated that if an organization fails to implement their cloud strategy well they could be doomed by huge operational costs owed AWS (or their favorite private cloud vendor) due to lock-in.
One solution is to extend OpenStack’s standardization and cost-reduction advantages beyond the private cloud space. OpenStack can be transformed into a hybrid cloud layer that uses an open API standard for managing private and public clouds.
This is a benefit to IT departments as it gives them one standard against which to deploy and govern, while developers can focus on developing against that API.
OpenStack-Omni hosts the new drivers on GitHub. Its description says: “OpenStack Omni is a standard OpenStack API that allows for the management of hybrid and multi-cloud environments. This repository contains OpenStack drivers to support various public cloud environments. These drivers allow you to spin up OpenStack images, volumes, networks, and instances on Amazon EC2. We need your support for other public cloud environments such as Azure, Google Compute Engine and Rackspace. The following OpenStack projects are supported: Nova, Neutron and Cinder Glance.
The project description also states that it is currently in development and available for individual testing.
Maskasky stated that “our goal is to contribute to OpenStack” and include these drivers in the core OpenStack drivers shipped out-of-the box.
Similar blueprints for Cinder, Glance, Nova, and Neutron are available.
These OpenStack components are used to manage networking, images and compute, as well as block storage.
