SUSE Cloud 2.0 Improves OpenStack Deployments

Linux vendor SUSE is releasing its latest open-source OpenStack cloud platform-based product today, SUSE Cloud 2.0.
The SUSE Cloud 2.0 release comes just over a year after the first SUSE Cloud release in August 2012. The timing of this release is also noteworthy in that it is coming out several weeks ahead of the next major OpenStack release, code-named Havana.

“SUSE Cloud 2.0 is ready now, and we have customers who are looking to deploy with the existing level of functionality offered by SUSE Cloud 2.0,” Doug Jarvis, Cloud Solutions marketing manager at SUSE, told eWEEK. “Our intention is to follow the major OpenStack release with a new version of SUSE Cloud two to three months later, allowing us to harden and test the code.”

SUSE Cloud 2.0 is based on the OpenStack Grizzly release that debuted in April of this year. SUSE is a key member of the OpenStack Foundation, with SUSE employee Allan Clark serving as chairman of the board. OpenStack is a multi-stakeholder open-source cloud development effort that has the support of many leading IT vendors, including IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Cisco and Intel.

One of the new improvements in the SUSE Cloud 2.0 release is an enhanced installer. SUSE Cloud leverages the Dell Crowbar open-source project to provide installation services.

“We continue to use Crowbar, but it is an updated version of Crowbar that provides for, among other things, greater scalability, an improved user interface and other usability enhancements,” Jarvis said. “Also, added to the installation framework is the ability to install and support Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware compute nodes, and an allowance for the deployment of mixed hypervisor environments.”

Although SUSE Cloud 2.0 can support the installation of VMware ESXi hypervisors, SUSE still considers the technology support to be a technical preview.

“We wanted to take it through greater levels of additional testing and quality assurance before we announced full support,” Jarvis said. “VMware ESXi environments are diverse, and we wanted to engage more fully with customers in their varied environments before declaring full support.”

Jarvis added that the wait for full VMware ESXi support won’t be too long as SUSE plans to declare full support at some point in the near future and before the launch of the next version of SUSE Cloud.

While VMware ESXi support is only a technical preview, support for Microsoft’s Hyper-V is now fully supported.

“Now, SUSE Cloud 2.0 support for compute nodes running Microsoft Hyper-V can help customers create private clouds that include multiple hypervisors, providing increased flexibility and workload optimization,” Mike Schutz, general manager of product marketing at Microsoft, said in a statement. “We’re pleased to take this next step in our longstanding efforts with SUSE.”

SUSE Studio

One key technology that is in SUSE Cloud 2.0 that was missing from SUSE Cloud 1.0 is support for SUSE Studio. SUSE Studio is a technology that enables developers to easily build and deploy Linux software appliances.

“With SUSE Studio you can build an image and deploy it directly into the SUSE Cloud image repository for deployment within a SUSE Cloud environment,” Jarvis said. “You can also take the same image and deploy it into public clouds or into your data center.”

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at eWEEK and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.