Five Elements for Successful OpenStack Deployment

Many IT professionals admit to the draw of OpenStack, but have to be resilient and work through the challenges that arise with deployment.

Due to the complex nature of many projects, managed services and OpenStack distributions are increasingly the deployment choice for users who are failing to find success with the do-it-yourself deployment approach. As more and more businesses embrace open-source options for deploying private clouds, a safer approach is to implement a commercial distribution that provides durable, stable and enterprise-class solutions that meet business needs. Enterprise vendors test all new versions and maintenance updates to guarantee compatibility and ensure that third-party hardware and software continue to perform seamlessly and provides lifecycle support.

When deploying OpenStack solutions, take into consideration your long-term growth strategy. Does the distribution lock you in, or give you freedom against vendor lock-in? How will your support issues be handled? Flexibility is a key advantage in choosing open-source solutions, as 63 percent of IT pros in the United States expect elastic solutions that cater to each business’ specific needs. Understand your immediate and long-standing goals prior to making any decisions.

Another barrier to the advancement of private cloud is a skills shortage in the industry. Seventy-eight percent of IT professionals who have yet to adopt private cloud are being put off by the growing lack of talent. While the demand for skilled professionals continues to grow, another resource for businesses is to engage the OpenStack Foundation on certification and training programs. OpenStack is consistently being transformed due to an enormous pressure to innovate faster, and vendors are turning to the collaborative nature of open source. The OpenStack Foundation and OpenStack solution providers are always developing a range of training courses and continued expansion of certifications.

It can be easy to admit defeat and throw in the towel after the first failed attempt. Yet results from SUSE’s study show that the more difficulty companies experience in their OpenStack attempts, the more determined they seem to be to make it a success in the future. Once your business succeeds, it makes the benefits that much sweeter. Furthermore, SUSE’s research found that 88 percent of respondents believe that within five years, the majority of business workloads will be deployed as lightweight containers on cloud infrastructures. So consider this: by quitting, how far will you fall behind?

One of the key advantages of OpenStack is its flexibility. To get the most from this benefit, it’s important to examine OpenStack distributions that work well with existing IT resources and environments. Enterprises have increasingly deployed multiple hypervisors in their data centers to optimize workload performance and lower licensing costs, making it important to have a distribution that includes support for mixed virtualization environments from KVM, Xen, Hyper-V and vSphere. This allows for a more efficient investment in technology and skills, helping obtain the highest value from an OpenStack deployment.