OpenStack vs VMware vCloud

Topics

● IT Managers Important Points
● OpenStack Pro/Cons
● VMware Pro/Cons
● Technical Compare
● Non-technical Compare
● Who Should Use OpenStack ?
● Who Should Use VMware ?

IT Managers Important Points

The important points for IT managers in organizations and companies to
manage infrastructure services are:
● Easy to use
● Management tools & Optional web interfaces
● Easy to find skills and support
● Entry cost and maintenance, The lower the better
● Integration with other platforms
● Other points by you

OpenStack Pro/Cons

The advantage of OpenStack by our experiences at innfinision:
● The most successful Open Source project after Linux kernel
● Support from many OEMs and OS vendors
● Interoperability with many components, just pick your favorite one and plug it in
● Standard and well accepted APIs

The disadvantage of OpenStack by our experiences at innfinision:
● Very complex to setup and troubleshoot
● Although common code base, might differ from implementations
● Need high numbers of management nodes
● High skills required to run the cluster

VMware vCloud Pro/Cons

The advantage of VMware vCloud by our experiences at innfinision and
our customers advises:
● Feature rich (vSphere HA, vMotion, DRS, I/O control)
● Very large ecosystems
● All os vendors make it supported and certified under ESXi

● ESXi can be downloaded and used freely

The disadvantage of VMware vCloud by our experiences at innfinision and
our customers advises:
● Per core license - expensive
● Proprietary platform
● ESXi can not be APIs accessed - need to buy licenses
● Most of applications are based on Windows

OpenStack at a Glance



VMware vCloud at a Glance


Technical Compare

Hypervisor:
● OpenStack supports variants of hypervisor and container such as KVM, Xen, VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix XEN, Docker, LXC

● VMware vCloud suppors ESXi as the only and default hypervisor

Customer and operations access :
● OpenStack native dashboard, 3rd parties dashboards, CLI
● VMware Windows clients, vCloud Director (EOL’d)

Storage:
● OpenStack Default non-persistent images. Pluggable Cinder:block volumes, Ceph, Several vendor SAN
● VMware VMFS over SAN and iSCSI

Network:
● Traditional switching and Software Defined Network
● VMware traditional switching infrastructure, SDN with additional products

Image management:
● OpenStack Glance Image Service, support all popular image formats
● VMware Catalogs & templates, OVF import

Management System:
● Nova (Cluster Controller)
● VMware vCenter

High Availability:
● Nova for VMs HA; OpenStack HA project for infrastructure components
● VMware vCenter Heartbeat

APIs:
● For OpenStack based on Open REST APIs, compatibility with Amazon EC2 & S3
● For VMware is Proprietary, mostly only under Perl and Powershell

Non-technical Compare

Costs:
● For OpenStack everything is free but Some might charge for a maintenance fee for enterprise support

● In VMware the costs contains License + Maintenance fee

Industries :
● OpenStack is for cloud management platform for large providers, carriers and large outsourcers
● VMware is for virtualization for enterprises

Skills:
● For OpenStack high-end skills required, including system and network
● For VMware, basic system administration is needed

Expansion :
● No actual limitation on OpenStack (might be handy create different Availability Zones)
● Max 32 physical nodes on VMware vCloud, though not recommended

Migration:
● OpenStack any to any through built-in qemu tools
● VMware converter for P2V and other virtualization formats

Flexibility:
● OpenStack primarily created for Linux, Windows supported on the same infrastructure
● Great guest OS support and large ecosystem on VMware vCloud

Who Should Use OpenStack ?

If you are a large company or ISP with hundreds of VMs and networks being destroyed and created daily and have budget of having more than 15 physical nodes to start, go for OpenStack

Who Should Use VMware ?

If you need certified traditional workloads (ex: Oracle, SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, ...) and you have money and also you want all the point-and-click features, this is a no-brainer decision go for VMware

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