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OpenStack Appliances

An Openstack Appliance is the name given to software which can support the Openstack cloud computing platform on either a physical devices such as servers or virtual machines or a combination of the two.

Typically a software appliance is a set of functionalities that can function without the presence of an operating system, thus they mus contain enough essential underlying operating system functionality to work..

So a strict definition might be an application which is designed to offer Openstack capability without the necessity to have an underlying operating system.

However applying this strict definition may not be helpful as there is not really a clear line between what is an appliance and a distribution.

Vendors have been heavily involved in Openstack since it's inception, and have since developed and are marketing a wide range of appliances, applications and distributions.

History
Openstack was established as an initiative of NASA and Rackspace in 2010 with the following mission statement  “to produce the ubiquitous Open Source Cloud Computing platform that will meet the needs of public and private clouds regardless of size, by being simple to implement and massively scalable”.

The Openstack organisation has grown rapidly and is supported by more than 540 companies.

In 2012 NASA withdrew as an active contributor from the Openstack and instead made the strategic decision to use Amazon Web Service s for cloud based services.

The Openstack Challenge
Openstack is a complex entity and adopters face a range of challenges when trying to implement Openstack in an organisation. For many organisations trying to implement their own project a key issue is the lack of skills available. In an article in on the New Stack Atul JHA succinctly identifies 5 challenges and Organization wishing to deploy Openstack will face.

Installation Challenges
Openstack is as much a suite of projects rather than a single product, and each of the various applications needs to configured to suit the users requirements then the installation is complex and requires a range complimentary skill-sets for an optimum set-up. One obvious solution would be to take a complete vendor supplied package containing hardware and software although due diligence is essential

Documentation
This is more a function of the nature of documentation with open source products than Openstack per se, but with more than 25 projects managing document quality is always going to be challenging.

Upgrading Openstack
Again this is a function of the multiplicity of projects, and given that Openstack projects are constantly evolving, the requirements of the upgrades may force user to have down-time, a situation which does not occur in the public clouds.

Long Term Support
It’s quite common for a business to stay on a historical release of software for some time after it has been upgraded. The reasons for this are pretty obvious and referred to above. However there is little incentive for developers in an open source project to provide support for historic code. In addition Openstack itself has formally discontinued support for some old releases.

Given the above challenges the most appropriate route for an organisation wishing to implement Openstack would be to go with a vendor, and source and Openstack appliance or distribution.

Selecting a Vendor
There are a large number of vendors offering Openstack solutions meaning that an organisation wishing to deploy the technology has a complex task in selecting which vendor offer best matches his business requirements.. . Barb Darrow offered this over view in Fortune on May 27th 2015 pointing out that there may be some consolidation in the market that will clarify things.

There are other aspects that people need to consider for example the real costs involved. How much of the actual Openstack platform is offered, some vendors will make an offer which encompasses most of the Openstack projects, others will only offer certain components, please refer to the table below for details, to what extent has a vendor injector proprietary code to manage lack of maturity in an Openstack component, to what extent does proprietary code mean vendor lock in.

The most authoritative information on vendor products is at the Openstack foundation website.

Openstack Appliances and Distros