Open Stack Cloud Goes Global to Draw in Developers, Technologies

by Sean Michael Kerner

While the U.S is a key hotspot for OpenStack Foundation members, Europe is also well-represented.

OpenStack Foundation members are those that are part of the organization that leads the development of the OpenStack cloud platform. In terms of developers, the map shows a somewhat different concentration, with Beijing being one of the leading locations in the world.

OpenStack cloud deployments are global with known deployments in more than 200 cities around the world.

Web services was identified by the user survey as being the top application workload, followed by the use of OpenStack for developer quality assurance testing environments.

OpenStack can run on any number of different Linux distributions, though according to the user survey, Ubuntu Linux dominates with more than half of all deployments.

The OpenStack Nova Compute component is a framework that enables organizations to choose the virtualization technology that is used. The vast majority (62 percent) choose Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM).

When it comes to deploying OpenStack clouds, organizations also have a number of choices. The user survey found that Puppet is the top choice.

Unlike the hypervisor choice, no one storage option holds the majority share for deployments.

Choosing the networking virtualization technology that is used inside OpenStack’s Neutron networking component is another choice users need to make. The Open vSwitch technology, which is part of the latest Linux kernel releases, is the top user choice.

While OpenStack can be used for public cloud deployments, the vast majority of users have chosen to use the open-source cloud technology to build private clouds.