[Openstack-operators] openstack vmware

Mark Voelker mvoelker at vmware.com
Mon Sep 21 20:13:39 UTC 2015


Ignazio,

> I know there is a nova driver for vmware.
> I' like to know if glance, heat, ceilometer etc etc work with vmware.


There are VMware drivers for Nova, Neutron (NSX and DVS, though the latter supports far fewer features), Neutron LBaaS, Cinder, and Glance.  Heat and Ceilometer also work fine.  You can find configuration guides here:

http://docs.openstack.org/kilo/config-reference/content/vmware-vmdk-driver.html

http://docs.openstack.org/kilo/config-reference/content/vmware.html

http://docs.openstack.org/kilo/config-reference/content/vmware-glance-backend.html

http://docs.openstack.org/kilo/config-reference/content/networking-plugin-vmware.html

http://docs.openstack.org/kilo/config-reference/content/networking-plugin-nsx.html

> As far is neutron is concerned, in a scenario where there are kvm and vmware nodes, must I have an nsx multihypervisor solution ?
> Must I insall nsx componenents on kvm nodes (a modified ovs version  for kvm) ?
> On vmware must I install the vmware nsx or the multihypervisor version ?

Not necessarily.  A common tactic for dealing with differing hypervisors (or for that matter, different networking or perhaps even storage solutions) is to deploy them into two separate regions: one for KVM and one for ESX.  If you’re not familiar with the regions concept in OpenStack, have a look here:

http://docs.openstack.org/openstack-ops/content/scaling.html

Essentially since these are separate API endpoints, you can have very different capabilities in each without having to worry about mixing and matching solutions.  So essentially you might have one region with ESX hypervisors, NSX for vSphere networking, and vSAN (or any other VMDK storage) for storage.  In the other region you might have KVM hypervisors with OVS for networking and NFS for storage.  Be aware that users must target their API calls to one region or the other though (since they are separate endpoints), and logical networks typically won’t stretch between regions.  Regions are often thought of as a construct for geographically diverse datacenters, but also work well as a means of segregation within a single DC.

At the risk of being accused of advertising on a mailer alias (=p), since you appear to have an interest in the VMware hypervisor and network stack you may want to have a look at the VMware Integrated OpenStack distribution:

http://www.vmware.com/products/openstack/

Other distributions (including I believe Mirantis and HP) also offer support for VMware underpinnings:

http://docs.hpcloud.com/#commercial/GA1/1.1commercial.install-GA-esx.html
https://www.mirantis.com/partners/mirantis-technology-partners/mirantis-partners-vmware/

At Your Service,

Mark T. Voelker



> On Sep 21, 2015, at 1:44 PM, Ignazio Cassano <ignaziocassano at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> We would like to provide cloud infrastracture  multi hypervosor with sdn, multi tenancy, orchestration and self provisioning.
> I think openstack with kvm is a good  start point but we have  hunderds applications on vmware.
> A good compromise could be kvm and vmware with openstack but I am not sure it is a good idea because vmware seems to me limited in this scenario.
> 
> Il giorno 21/set/2015 19:18, "Federico Michele Facca" <federico.facca at create-net.org> ha scritto:
> there is no a proper answer to your question (expecially if you don't provide a bit of a context :) i.e. 
> what are you trying to achieve? what are your constraints?)
> 
> In general, I doubt you can do many of the things you can do with OpenStack using vCenter, and probably also with vCloud... (and the other way around, there are things you can do with vCloud, you cannot do today with OpenStack) on the other hand, by pluging vCenter in OpenStack you can do many things that only vCenter can't achieve :)
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, Sep 21, 2015 at 7:02 PM, Ignazio Cassano <ignaziocassano at gmail.com> wrote:
> Many thanks Federico...
> So the question is: why should I use openstack with vmware ?
> Il giorno 21/set/2015 18:34, "Federico Michele Facca" <federico.facca at create-net.org> ha scritto:
> Hi Ignazio,
> I am not the greatest expert in my team on the topic, so there my be some mistakes (anyone feel free to correct :)), read my reply inline
> 
> On Mon, Sep 21, 2015 at 6:02 PM, Ignazio Cassano <ignaziocassano at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all, I' would like to know which openstack community edition components work with vmware.
> I know there is a nova driver for vmware.
> 
> 
> correct, basically it will act as a "proxy" toward vCenter
>  
> I' like to know if glance, heat, ceilometer etc etc work with vmware.
> 
> AFAIK Heat as no real dependency, so no issue. Ceilometer, we haven't tested, but any implementation may reflect the fact that OS services for VMWare are proxies (i.e. it will see whatever is on the other side like a huge compute or a huge cinder)
> 
> About glance you may have some limitations, since it supports so far (unless anything changed in Liberty) a single backend. actually we had issues in booting a vmware volume from an image (using swift as glance backend - it should work with no issue using the vmware storage, but then I guess you lose the multi hypervisor support).
> 
> 
> As far is neutron is concerned, in a scenario where there are kvm and vmware nodes, must I have an nsx multihypervisor solution ?
> 
> 
> I think you can use other drivers as well (actually we developed one for a customer). Or nova-network.
>  
> Must I insall nsx componenents on kvm nodes (a modified ovs version  for kvm) ?
> 
> we didn't go for NSX solution, but I guess so.
> On vmware must I install the vmware nsx or the multihypervisor version ?
> 
> 
> yes multihpervisor one... I know there were rumors about an opens source release, but I hadn't any update on that.
> 
> 
> Regards,
> Federico
> Regards
> Ignazio
> 
> 
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> 
> -- 
> --
> Future Internet is closer than you think!
> http://www.fiware.org
> 
> Official Mirantis partner for OpenStack Training
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> 
> -- 
> Dr. Federico M. Facca
> 
> CREATE-NET
> Via alla Cascata 56/D
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> 
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> T @chicco785
> W  www.create-net.org
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