OpenStack Distributions

OpenStack
Distributions
A comparative Analysis
This syndicated research report evaluates and analyzes popular OpenStack Distributions
against common metrics that are of interest to customers while choosing an OpenStack
distribution, such as feature completeness, degree of openness, ease of deployment,
support matrix etc.
Sriram Subramanian | April 2016

OpenStack Distributions
A comparative Analysis
Contents
Key Findings ............................................................................................................................................................4
About CloudDon .....................................................................................................................................................5

Evaluation Metrics...................................................................................................................................................6
Ease of Deployment ............................................................................................................................................6

Feature Completeness .........................................................................................................................................6
User Experience ...................................................................................................................................................7
Degree of Openness ............................................................................................................................................7
Accompanying Eco-system ................................................................................................................................7

Support..................................................................................................................................................................8
OpenStack Distributions under Evaluation .........................................................................................................9
Hardware Setup .....................................................................................................................................................10

Executive Summary ..............................................................................................................................................11
Participants .............................................................................................................................................................12
Canonical ............................................................................................................................................................12
HPE ......................................................................................................................................................................12
Mirantis ...............................................................................................................................................................12
Red Hat ...............................................................................................................................................................12
OpenStack Distributions at a Glance ..................................................................................................................13

Introduction ........................................................................................................................................................13
Evolution of OpenStack Distributions ............................................................................................................13

Packaging ........................................................................................................................................................14
Tooling ............................................................................................................................................................14
Appliances ......................................................................................................................................................14
Custom Features ............................................................................................................................................14
pg. 1
Scenarios .........................................................................................................................................................15
Hyper Convergence ......................................................................................................................................15
HPE Helion OpenStack.........................................................................................................................................16
Strengths .............................................................................................................................................................16
Caution ................................................................................................................................................................17
Recommendation ...............................................................................................................................................17
IBM Cloud Manager ..............................................................................................................................................18

Strengths .............................................................................................................................................................18
Caution ................................................................................................................................................................19
Recommendation ...............................................................................................................................................19
Mirantis OpenStack ...............................................................................................................................................20
Strengths .............................................................................................................................................................20
Caution ................................................................................................................................................................21
Recommendation ...............................................................................................................................................21
Rackspace Private Cloud ......................................................................................................................................22
Strengths .............................................................................................................................................................22
Caution ................................................................................................................................................................22
Recommendation ...............................................................................................................................................23
Red Hat OpenStack Platform ...............................................................................................................................24

Strengths .............................................................................................................................................................24
Caution ................................................................................................................................................................25
Recommendation ...............................................................................................................................................25
Canonical Distribution of Ubuntu OpenStack ..................................................................................................26
Strengths .............................................................................................................................................................26
Caution ................................................................................................................................................................27
Recommendation ...............................................................................................................................................27
Summary.................................................................................................................................................................28
References ...............................................................................................................................................................29
pg. 2
pg. 3
Key Findings
OpenStack Distributions have evolved from just a collection of packages to more complete solutions,
each with varying degrees of support for additional features orchestration, logging, monitoring,
metering, billing and more.
Major OpenStack distributions have recognized the pain in deploying and managing OpenStack
clouds and have attempted to alleviate that, albeit with varying degree of success.
Each OpenStack distribution has its own strengths and weaknesses. Each distribution also has its
own eco-system of vendors, partners and solutions around it. These eco-systems tend to have some
level of exclusivity as well as some level of overlap (for example, networking vendors) among them.
Major OpenStack distributions have enabled support to Containers, either through OpenStack
Container Service (Magnum) or through custom implementations.
With every OpenStack Distribution vendor, there are limitations on what hardware, add-on
software, or operating system they support. Due to this reason, customers need to fully understand
what vendors claim as no lock in with their software.
pg. 4
About CloudDon
CloudDon is a strategic advisory firm enabling Modern Enterprise IT Transformations through

Advisory, Consultancy and Training services. We have extensive experience with modern Enterprise IT
technologies and multiple cloud platforms including OpenStack, Microsoft Azure, VMware and
Amazon AWS.
pg. 5
Evaluation Metrics
For this evaluation, we have used key metrics that customers consider while considering OpenStack.
Based on our conversations with current and potential OpenStack customers, we identified set of key
metrics that impact the choice of how they consume OpenStack. We evaluated the OpenStack
distributions based on those key metrics. We have also avoided some marketing metrics that vendors
like to use but are less impactful, such as code contribution ranking (Subramanian n.d.).
It is to be noted that we have evaluated the distributions against each metric individually. We didnt
grade them against each other. Based on our discussions with customers, an objective what-does-what
type of reporting is more valuable than a comparative grading. Such an evaluation also enables the
customer more by providing them with necessary data to arrive at a decision than just providing
recommendations. These metrics and such approach are validated by responses from current users to
OpenStack User Survey (OpenStack User Survey - A snapshot of OpenStack users attitudes and
deployments 2015)
Ease of Deployment
Ease of use and deployment has been one of the major concerns for OpenStack customers ( (Lauren E.
Nelson 2015), (Committee 2015)). Ease of deployment includes many attributes such as size of
downloads, ease of downloads, discoverability of downloads, clarity in documentation, ease of
deployment process, how easy it was to fix issues, and the type of support provided. We also evaluated
the types of deployments supported command line vs UI, amount of automation supported during
deployment, is any installer provided, how easy it was to use the installer, ease of configuration,
validation, and finally, methods provided to scale out existing deployment.
Feature Completeness
OpenStack software is an ever-growing project with additional features and capabilities enabled
frequently (OpenStack Software n.d.). Proprietary OpenStack distributions try adding more value to
customers by providing more features than those enabled by the corresponding release of OpenStack
software. These could be proprietary features, security patches, bug fixes or integration with additional
tools/ software. It is to be noted that some OpenStack distributions provided certain features like
orchestration, monitoring even before these services were enabled as OpenStack projects.
For our evaluation, we have prioritized following features which are key requirements for enterprise
customer. We have evaluated each distribution against these metrics towards Feature Completeness. It
pg. 6
is to be noted that for complex software like OpenStack and given its varied usage patterns, it is
impossible to list all possible feature asks and hence we have prioritized only the top requirements
from enterprise customers. Please also note that ease of deployment is evaluated separately given how
important it is to OpenStack customers.
High Availability
Scalability
Security
Upgradability
Monitoring
Logging
Support for Containers
Robustness
User Experience
OpenStack software provides two ways to manage resources - through dashboard and through APIs.
Almost all OpenStack distributions leverage these, with some even providing more capabilities. We
have also evaluated additional capabilities, if any, provided to make day-to-day operations easier and
to make user experience better overall. Such capabilities include better logging, monitoring,
troubleshooting or error reporting capabilities.
Degree of Openness
As we have seen earlier, providers enable additional capabilities in their OpenStack distributions,
either through proprietary code or through integration with their other offerings or with related open
source software. The more proprietary code a distribution has, less open it is. We evaluated the
OpenStack distributions on the degree of open-ness. This doesnt impact the functionality of a
distribution as much as it impacts the flexibility by increasing lock-in to a specific vendor.
Accompanying Eco-system
A typical OpenStack deployment employs variety of software and tools be the types of workloads
that run on it, developer tools, related open source tools or special software enabling specific use cases.
OpenStack software, together with such tools and solutions, constitutes a thriving eco-system. Specific
scenarios such as NFV and HPC already have such eco-systems, with OpenStack software fast
becoming their enabler. Usage trends such as Application Catalogues, enabling PaaS capabilities on
pg. 7
OpenStack and Containerization also nourish similar eco-systems. We evaluated each OpenStack
distribution on the basis of the eco-systems they enable.
Support
Almost all providers offer some kind of support bundled with subscriptions. They also offer more
support (for example, 24x7 instead of Business Hours support) for additional cost. We also evaluated
their other means of support errata notifications, relevancy of documentation for self-service
debugging, forums etc. We have stayed away from price comparisons of subscriptions/ support
services since they are not straightforward.
pg. 8
OpenStack Distributions under Evaluation
In this report, we have evaluated following OpenStack distributions (listed alphabetically). For more
details on the evaluation metrics, please jump to Evaluation Metrics. Proprietary OpenStack
distributions under evaluation have their own cadence of releases, different from the bi-annual release
cycle of the OpenStack software (Release Management n.d.). Due to this difference, it is not guaranteed
that the most recent version of the evaluated distribution will be in sync with the most recent release of
the OpenStack software.
Following table lists the release version of the OpenStack distributions under evaluation alphabetically
and the OpenStack release version they are based on.
OpenStack Distribution Release Version OpenStack Release Version

HPE Helion OpenStack 2.1 Kilo
IBM Cloud Manager with V4.3 Kilo
OpenStack
Mirantis OpenStack V7.0 Kilo
Rackspace Private Cloud V10.1.51 Juno
Red Hat OpenStack Platform V7.0 Kilo
Ubuntu OpenStack Ubuntu 15.042 Kilo
Table 1 Vendor OpenStack Distributions Versions vs OpenStack Software Release Version
1 We had difficulty installing current version of Rackspace Private Cloud (v11) and all our evaluation of RPC is
based on earlier version.
2 Ubuntu OpenStack distribution doesnt follow a distribution specific versioning system, but uses the version of
the Ubuntu operating system it is based on. In other words, one needs to use Ubuntu 15.04 or later if Ubuntu
OpenStack matching the Kilo release of OpenStack.
pg. 9
Hardware Setup
A typical OpenStack cloud deployment has two types of nodes (servers) Controller nodes and
Resource nodes. Controller nodes are one or more servers that have OpenStack services installed on
them. Resource nodes are those that provide virtual compute, storage or networking resources. Most of
the OpenStack distributions support all-in-one configuration in which single server will act as both
Controller node and Resource node. Each distribution also has its own requirement of minimum
number of servers in order to be deployed in a scalable way which is not all-in-one configuration. They
also have different hardware configuration requirements in terms of CPU speed, RAM size and hard
disk spec.
We took consideration of such requirements and employed servers that satisfied both requirements
(count and hardware configuration) for all OpenStack distributions under evaluation.
pg. 10
Executive Summary
This first of its kind report provides a comparative analysis of major OpenStack Distributions based on
hands-on technical evaluation. These distributions are evaluated individually against top metrics that
customers use while considering OpenStack. This report also provides recommendations on when to
consider each OpenStack Distribution, based on its strengths.
pg. 11
Participants
We thank following vendors (listed alphabetically) for participating in this syndicating research as
sponsors. It is to be noted that this research evaluates more distributions than those offered by the
participants. Vendor descriptions below are standard marketing descriptions supplied by participating
vendors and are provided as-is.
Canonical
Canonical offers services to help governments and businesses the world over with migrations,
management and support for their Ubuntu deployments. Together with their partners, they ensure that
Ubuntu runs reliably on every platform from the PC and the smartphone to the server and, crucially,
the cloud.
HPE
Hewlett Packard Enterprise has worlds leading position in servers, storage, wired and wireless
networking, converged systems, software, services and cloud. And with customized financing
solutions and strategy, HPE can provide the right tech solutions for your unique business goals. HPE
also offers consulting and support services to cloud-enabled, mobile-friendly and traditional IT
environments.
Mirantis
Mirantis is the pure play OpenStack company, providing all the software, services, training and
support to run a production of OpenStack at scale. They offer all open-source, non-proprietary
solutions to avoid vendor lock-in.
Red Hat
Red Hat is the world's leading provider of open source software solutions, using a community-
powered approach to reliable and high-performing cloud, Linux, middleware, storage, and
virtualization technologies. Red Hat also offers award-winning support, training, and consulting
services. As a connective hub in a global network of enterprises, partners, and open source
communities, Red Hat helps create relevant, innovative technologies that liberate resources for growth
and prepare customers for the future of IT. Red Hat solutions and technologies are 100% open source to
avoid vendor lock-in.
pg. 12
OpenStack Distributions at a Glance

Introduction
OpenStack software can be consumed in multiple ways (Subramanian n.d.), with consuming through a
distribution being the most popular method among them (OpenStack User Survey - A snapshot of
OpenStack users attitudes and deployments 2015). An OpenStack Distribution is loosely defined as a
collection of necessary and sufficient packages (built for a specific operating system) required for
deploying and running OpenStack services, along with necessary configuration files.
Apart from free OpenStack distributions for major Linux distributions such as Debian, Fedora, Red
Hat, and Ubuntu there are also lot of commercial OpenStack distributions offered by various providers.
We have tracked more than 20 of them (Subramanian n.d.), with each of them providing their own
value additions. Among these distributions, we have evaluated the most popular and widely adopted
Top 6 OpenStack Distributions under Evaluation.
Evolution of OpenStack Distributions

In the past five years, along with the growth of OpenStack software, OpenStack distributions
themselves have evolved from simple collection of packages to converged solutions. This section
describes presents an overview of this evolution along with current landscape. Following diagram
depicts the evolution of OpenStack distributions from just collection of packages to hyper-converged
solutions.
Figure 1 Evolution of OpenStack Distributions
pg. 13
OpenStack Distributions have gone through these phases of innovation in their continuous evolution,
often times same distribution going through more than one of these phases. Under each phase, some of
the representative distributions are highlighted. Please note that this list is by no means complete.
Packaging
Earliest OpenStack distributions were focused on bundling together various components of OpenStack
software in to an easily downloadable format (usually available as an ISO image). Their primary goal
was to make all the necessary components (both part of OpenStack software and other operating
system related) readily available. They were also focused on providing a simple interface for
configuration (such as network configuration, IP addresses, names etc.). There were neither any bare-
metal discovery mechanisms to find available servers nor any way to use popular automation tools.
StackOps, Piston CloudOS were representative of this category of distributions. Ubuntu OpenStack
distribution, and RDO, Red Hats upstream community distribution, (first available in 2013) were
representative of distributions specific to underlying operating systems.
Tooling
For any OpenStack deployment of decent scale, automation and supporting tools were needed to
perform day to day operations, such as orchestrating servers and virtual machines, monitoring health
of services and resources, troubleshooting issues, user management and more. Before such features
were enabled natively through OpenStack services, providers started enabling these feature through
integration with other open source tools. Providers also started supporting automated deployments
with popular automation tools such as Puppet (What is Puppet n.d.). For example, Mirantis OpenStack
was one of the early OpenStack distributions to enable support for monitoring (Release Notes for Fuel
v2.1-folsom n.d.) through integration with Nagios (Nagios n.d.).
Appliances
OpenStack Appliances (or Private Cloud in a Box) are special category of OpenStack based solutions
with OpenStack software bundled on a tested (possibly certified) hardware. Advantages of such
OpenStack Appliances included ease of deployment, simplified configuration and better
manageability. Piston Cloud, Metacloud (both acquired by Cisco now) are representative of such
solutions.
Custom Features
While some of the early tooling involved integrating with related open source projects, next phase of
innovation included enabling additional capabilities through proprietary code or services. Such
capabilities include proprietary capabilities which were not part of OpenStack services yet (such as
Custom Installer, Service Delivery, and Chargeback), improvements over existing features (such as
Security fixes, advanced Logging) or integration with other proprietary offerings (such as HPE CSA).
pg. 14
Distributions such as Red Hat OpenStack Platform, HPE Helion OpenStack are representative
distributions with such features.
Scenarios
Among the workloads that run on OpenStack clouds varied from Dev/Test to Web Services to
Analytics (OpenStack User Survey - A snapshot of OpenStack users attitudes and deployments 2015),
customers have found more success running a certain category of workloads on OpenStack clouds. For
example, most vendors are attempting to address the needs of the Telecommunications industry for
network functions virtualization (NFV). Some vendors address this scenario by incorporating a select
set of features and functions within their single offering. Other vendors have started offering separate
OpenStack distributions catered to these specific workload types, enabling these user-specific
scenarios. For example, HPE Helion OpenStack Carrier Grade (HPE Helion OpenStack Carrier Grade
1.1 n.d.) is one of the earliest OpenStack distribution in this category.
Hyper Convergence
With Hyper-Converged Infrastructure solutions being relatively new to market (How to Evaluate
Vendors in the Hyperconverged Space 2015), only few OpenStack based Hyper-Converged solutions
are available in the market, such as StratoScale and Breqwatr. It is to be noted that in the current state,
OpenStack software doesnt play a larger role in such solutions. We consider Hyper-Converged
solutions to be natural progression for OpenStack based solutions and more work needs to be done to
be called with distributions playing larger role than in Appliances. We expect more providers offering
such solutions in the next 12 18 month. Please note that evaluation of these solutions is out of scope
for this report.
pg. 15
HPE Helion OpenStack
HPE Helion OpenStack 2.1, based on OpenStack Kilo release,

HPE Helion
provides improved installation and management features. It is to be OpenStack
noted that HPE Helion OpenStack employed the OpenStack

TripleO service for deployment in its previous version, but is
employing a custom installer in its current release. However, it HPE Helion OpenStack
continues to use YAML based templates to define deployment is HPEs OpenStack
topology. HPOS supports both CLI based and UI based installation. platform that constitutes
The Installation GUI takes through wizard-like fashion. the IaaS layer in their
HPE Helion portfolio.
HPE Helion OpenStack 2.1 uses Ansible for deployment and HPE Helion OpenStack
includes a new feature called Configuration Processor which was announced in Oct
converts YAML templates in to Ansible variables that will be used 2014 (it was called HP
during deployment. HPE Helion OpenStack 2.1 provides tested, Helion OpenStack then),
sample configurations (Entry level and Medium Scale that can be with two versions: a
scaled up to 100 nodes). These configurations can be modified to free-to-use Community
suit customer requirements. For our evaluation, we have used a version and a
configuration closer to Entry-Scale KVM with Ceph model (HPE Subscription only,
Helion OpenStack 2.1,2.0 n.d.). Supported version. HPE
Helion OpenStack 2.1
HPE Helion OpenStack 2.1 supports multiple guest operating
was announced in Oct
systems including Windows Server 2012, (RHEL 7.1, Ubuntu 14.04
2015 (HPOS 2.0 n.d.)
and more. HPE Helion OpenStack 2.1 subscription includes
and the community
Business Hours Support, with optional upgrade to 24x7. HPE also
version has since been
provides professional training.
discontinued. HPE also
Strengths offers an OpenStack
distribution targeting
Telcos HPE Helion
HPE Helion OpenStack 2.1 provides better and reliable
OpenStack Carrier
deployment experience when compared to its previous
versions Grade (not included in
HPE Helion OpenStack 2.1 also has minimized the minimum this evaluation).
number of nodes required when compared to its earlier version
HPE Helion OpenStack 2.1 installation GUI provides intuitive,
wizard-like workflow. GUI also doesnt restrict the number of
nodes that can be deployed using the GUI.
HPE Helion OpenStack 2.1 supports multiple hypervisors
(KVM, ESX). Supported Hardware and Software matrix is
pg. 16
exhaustive, with a variety of supported Guest Operating Systems. HPE Helion OpenStack also has
an eco-system of IHVs providing certified enterprise grade hardware.
HPE Helion OpenStack is well integrated with other solutions and offerings from HP, such as HP
StoreVirtual VSA (storage), HPE SDN (networking), HPE ArcSight (monitoring) etc. However, it is
to be noted that such integrations also mean getting locked in to HPE ecosystem of offerings.
We found the concept of Input Models and the Configuration Workflow provided by HPE Helion
OpenStack 2.1 to be more intuitive and easy to customize.
Caution
Though no size limitations are provided for the installer GUI, command line based deployments are
preferred for large scale deployments (larger than 15 nodes).
HPE Helion OpenStack is only its second major release but has undergone significant design
changes. In its previous major release, it employed TripleO based installer, but has implemented a
custom installer in its current release. Though this particular design change has improved the
reliability and stability of HPE Helion OpenStack (based on our evaluation) such a major design
change within two releases does not exhibit a well thought out design strategy.
While the HPE OpenStack Technical Legal Indemnification program protects customers from third-
party patent, copyright and trade-secret infringement claims directed at OpenStack code, we do not
see that alone as a strong enough reason for choosing HPE Helion OpenStack
Recommendation
HPE Helion OpenStack 2.1 has improved UX, reliable deployment experience and an exhaustive
hardware & software support matrix. HPE Helion OpenStack also benefits from a wide array of
offerings and solutions under HPE Helion portfolio. If you are an enterprise customer with need for
multiple hypervisors and guest operating systems, but prefer single vendor for entire stack of needs
(hardware, software, management tools and support), you should consider HPE Helion OpenStack 2.1
for your infrastructure needs.
pg. 17
IBM Cloud Manager
IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack (abbreviated as IBM Cloud

IBM Cloud
Manager) v4.3 includes a graphical user interface for OpenStack Manager with
deployment. It also supports a command line based deployment. OpenStack
IBM Cloud Manager supports multiple hypervisors such as KVM,
PowerKVM, PowerVM, Microsoft Hyper-V, VmWare and z/VM. It
also supports multiple databases including DB2, MariaDB and IBM Cloud Manager
MySQL. While IBM Cloud Manager supports different guest with OpenStack (shortly
operating systems, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is the only IBM Cloud Manager) is
supported host operating system. IBMs OpenStack
distribution announced
IBM Cloud Manager supports bare-metal provisioning and
in May 2014
management through IBM Cluster Manager. IBM Cluster Manager
(Introducing IBM Cloud
supports multiple deployment topologies (Selecting a topology
Manager with
n.d.), including deploying services in containers. We used a
OpenStack n.d.). IBM
topology similar to HA Controller + n compute.
Cloud Manager with
IBM Cloud Manager uses Chef for service orchestration, with a OpenStack is one of the
dedicated server (called Deployment Server) acting as Chef Server. newest OpenStack
It also hosts the graphical user interface (IBM Cloud Manager distributions, with focus
Deployer). on enabling popular
IBM tools and
From version v4.3, IBM Cloud Manager supports advanced features technologies with
such as Auto-Scaling (Managing auto-scaling and auto-recovery OpenStack. It supports
services n.d.) and Disaster Recovery (Adding disaster recovery to a IBM specific
deployed topology n.d.), both through OpenStack Heat service.
hypervisors such as
IBM Cloud Manager also supports centralized logging using PowerVM and z/VM,
Kibana (Kibana n.d.). utilizes IBM DB2
IBM Cloud Manager also supports an optional self-service user instead of MySQL and
portal (IBM Cloud Manager Self Service) to provide User role can optionally use IBM
level access. Platform Resource
Scheduler as OpenStack
Strengths Compute (Nova)
IBM Cloud Manager advanced deployment topologies such as Scheduler.
Multi-Region with shared OpenStack Identity Service
(Keystone). While any OpenStack distribution can support this
pg. 18
topology, IBM Cloud Manager is the only distribution that supports this deployment topology
natively.
IBM Cloud Manager supports deploying a hybrid cloud with off-premise IBM Cloud OpenStack
Services, with both on-premise and off-premise regions sharing common OpenStack Identity
Service. This involves human-in-loop to create off-premise region by IBM Cloud OpenStack Services
team though. It is to be noted such a hybrid cloud between off-premise and on-premise OpenStack
clouds is possible through any OpenStack distribution; IBM Cloud Manager enables this natively.
Among all OpenStack distributions IBM Cloud Manager provides greatest choice of hypervisors. It
also supports multiple hypervisor in the same environment.
Caution
Some of the capabilities, such as High Availability (HA) are provided with certain limitations. For
example, only IBM DB2 is the supported database under HA configuration.
While there is good amount of documentation available about deployment and configuration, we
found very less documentation about storage and networking options.
Contacting IBM Support to help with troubleshooting appears to be a laborious process. It is not
clear to us whether the type of support (24x7 or Business Hours support) offered by other vendors
participating in this comparison is available to IBM Cloud Manager customers.
It appears that there is no IBM offered training services are offered on IBM Cloud Manager with
OpenStack.
With IBMs acquisition of Blue Box, we anticipate increased focus on Hosted Private Clouds from
IBM and expect to see ramped down investments on IBM Cloud Manager.
Recommendation
IBM Cloud Manager enables support for wide range of hypervisors and supports multiple deployment
topologies including hybrid clouds. If your workloads need PowerVM or z/VM hypervisors, or hybrid
cloud environments, you should consider IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack.
pg. 19
Mirantis OpenStack
Mirantis OpenStack is one of earliest OpenStack distributions to

Mirantis
enable support for features such as High Availability (at a basic OpenStack
level in version v1.0), Monitoring (from v2.1) and Logging (from

2.1) using open source tools and software. Though some of the
earlier OpenStack distributions had some kind of graphical Mirantis OpenStack is
interface for deployment Mirantis OpenStacks interface provided the all-open-source
for configuration, deployment and management. OpenStack distribution
from Mirantis. It
Mirantis OpenStack distribution consists of two major components provides flexibility in
the choice of hypervisor,
Fuel: Deployment and Configuration layer that supports both
UI and CLI based deployments. It is to be noted that CLI based guest operating
functionality doesnt match UI based functionality. systems, storage and
OpenStack packages updated by Mirantis with bug fixes (if networking back-ends
any), packages for High Availability, certified partner plugins
in order to avoid any
and couple of non-core OpenStack services which are not
vendor lock-in. Mirantis
included in many of the distributions under evaluation3
OpenStack is also one of
The plugin model supported by Mirantis OpenStack (via its the earliest distributions
Mirantis Fuel) also provides flexibility in using third party, partner
to use third party
or open source software as required (for example, Zabbix for
applications like Nagios
monitoring or Talligent Openbook for billing). to provide additional
The Application Catalog Service (Murano) is enabled by default capabilities. Mirantis
with Mirantis OpenStack and provides a marketplace kind of OpenStack Version 7.0
experience for applications. It also helps with application life cycle includes Mirantis Fuel,
management. a software life cycle
management
Strengths application that
The User Experience (UX) that Mirantis OpenStack provides supports a plugin
during configuration and deployment has been its greatest
model. Until Version
advantage.
The flexibility provided by the plugin model provides a wide
3.2, Mirantis OpenStack
variety of options to customers to enable the optional features was known as Fuel.
they want.
3Mirantis OpenStack enables OpenStack Sahara (Hadoop Cluster as a service) and OpenStack Murano
(Application Catalog) services.
pg. 20
Mirantis has built an eco-system of partners to enables use case specific solutions, such as NFV
(Deploy NFV on OpenStack n.d.) and Mirantis OpenStack Appliance (Unlocked Appliances n.d.).
Mirantis OpenStack supports multiple hypervisors and guest operating systems. It also enables
Microsoft Windows based workloads on OpenStack through Murano (Application Catalog Service).
Caution
We find the user experience and flexibility that Mirantis OpenStack provides adds more value to the
customer than their zero lock-in motto.
While Murano provides an easy way to publish applications, it is important to note that there are
manual steps involved in creating a Murano image for Windows applications.
Though Mirantis has extensive experience in deploying and operating OpenStack clouds, they are
relatively young in supporting enterprise customers and workloads. They also need to expand their
engineering and support partnerships with more vendors in order to be able to support issues with
host/ guest operating systems.
Recommendation
Mirantis OpenStack provides a great user experience and flexibility in not only deploying and
managing OpenStack based cloud environments, but managing workloads running on these
environments. Mirantis has a great eco-system, mindshare and customer base in Telecom sector as
well. If you need to support multiple hypervisors or if you are a Telecom Service Provider with need
for Virtual Network Functions (VNF)/ NFV workloads you should consider Mirantis OpenStack as
your infrastructure platform.
pg. 21
Rackspace Private Cloud
Rackspace Private Cloud (RPC) is essentially a wrapper around

Rackspace Private
OpenStack packages for Ubuntu operating system. RPC uses Cloud
Ansible playbooks and LXC for service orchestration. RPC (as of

v10) doesnt provide fancy GUI for installation and uses a
customized OpenStack Dashboard (Horizon) for management. Rackspace Private
Cloud (shortly RPC) is
RPC provides the flexibility and choice that OpenStack provides in an OpenStack
hypervisors, compute, storage and networking back-ends. RPC distribution from
only supports Ubuntu as the host operating system and leverages Rackspace. RPC,
OpenStack Ironic for bare-metal provisioning. currently in its version
v11 (Rackspace Private
RPC also enables features such as High Availability, centralized
Cloud Powered by
logging and monitoring using popular open source tools. RPC
OpenStack Releases
supports multiple deployment topologies; for our evaluations, we
v11 Based on OpenStack
used a topology that supports High Availability of OpenStack
Kilo n.d.), was
services through three controller nodes.
announced in Aug 2012
Strengths (Rackspace releases its
RPC is the closest one would get to OpenStack packages for an OpenStack private
operating system, with almost no additional custom code. cloud software for free
Ansible playbook based orchestration along with YAML
n.d.). Rackspace Private
templates encapsulation configuration provide a reliable and
consistent way for service orchestration. Cloud is free to
LXC based installation of OpenStack services provides download and
necessary resource isolation and selected network connectivity. supported by
RPC benefits greatly from the legendary Fanatical Support Rackspaces 24x7x365
from Rackspace, with industry best SLAs and uptimes.
Fanatical Support.
Caution RPC uses Ansible and
With only a command line based deployment workflow and Linux Containers to
without a sophisticated installer, Rackspace Private Cloud install and manage
customers need a lot of support. Subscribing to Fanatical
OpenStack services.
Support appears inevitable.
The flexibility that RPC provides in the choice of compute, Rackspace Private
networking and storage components, we found the lack of Cloud Monitoring
sample configurations overwhelming. It is to be noted that Service provides
meaningful defaults to various configurations was one of the monitoring support for
important ask from OpenStack operators (OpenStack User
RPC customers.
pg. 22
Survey - A snapshot of OpenStack users attitudes and deployments 2015).

RPC appears not to have capitalized the hybrid cloud opportunity combined with Rackspace Public
Cloud. For example, there is no mention of hybrid cloud in the entire Rackspace Private Cloud
Installation Guide (Rackspace Private Cloud Installation Guide n.d.), and only a fleeting reference in
the FAQ (Rackspace Private Cloud - FAQ n.d.).
Recommendation
Rackspace Private Cloud provides reliable way to deploy OpenStack using Ansible playbooks. It has
almost no custom code added to OpenStack services and leverages open source tools effectively to
provide additional capabilities. It largely benefits from the industry best SLAs provided by Rackspaces
Fanatical Support. If you want to use an OpenStack distribution closest to OpenStack trunk we
recommend you to consider Rackspace Private Cloud along with their Fanatical Support.
pg. 23
Red Hat OpenStack Platform
Red Hat OpenStack Platform 7.0 provides an improved, consistent Red Hat
deployment experience through its installer and management tool OpenStack
called Director. The Director is based on one of the OpenStack
Platform
projects called TripleO, which utilizes a set of OpenStack services to
deploy an end user OpenStack cloud. The Director uses OpenStack
Heat orchestration templates to define the deployment topology
Red Hat OpenStack
and supports both UI based and CLI based deployments. The
Platform is Red Hats
Director also comes with default templates for three different
OpenStack distribution
scenarios which are customizable.
built on top of the Red
For our evaluation, we have used CLI based deployment option, Hat Enterprise Linux
with the topology closest to what is described in Scenario 2 in the platform. Red Hat
Red Hat OpenStack Platform installation documentation OpenStack Platform
(DIRECTOR INSTALLATION AND USAGE n.d.). was first announced in
June 2013, compatible
Strengths with OpenStack release
Essex. Red Hat
OpenStack Platform
Red Hat OpenStack Platform Director has significantly
improved the most important pain point of difficulty in Version 7.0 is
OpenStack deployments by providing consistent, reliable and compatible with Kilo
automated deployment experience release and includes an
Red Hat builds upon their expansive Red Hat Enterprise Linux
integrated installation
ecosystem with the addition of upstream compatible
and management tool,
OpenStack that spans enterprise grade software and hardware
solutions, telco solutions, certified partners, and ISVs. based on the OpenStack
Red Hat certifies SUSE, RHEL and Microsoft Windows guest TripleO, which provides
OS. Through their co-engineering relationships with these a template based
guest OS vendors, Red Hat is positioned to take the single
deployment and day-to-
support call.
The integrated Director has overcome the reliability issues with
day management to
the OpenStack TripleO service. It has also cleverly reduced the provide improved,
minimum number of servers required for a TripleO based consistent user
deployment. experience during
Red Hat provides frequent patches and bug fixes to keep it
deployment and
continuously up to date, which can be applied to Red Hat
OpenStack Platform deployments through simple yum updates upgrades.
with minimal disruption.
pg. 24
While all providers offer some type of support for their OpenStack distributions, Red Hat OpenStack
Platform benefits from Red Hats extensive experience and established methods of supporting open
source software. For example, patch notifications which we found to be very helpful, with exact and
accurate information such as patches required, systems affected, and the exact commands to be run
to apply the patch.
Red Hat OpenStack Platform has excellent supporting documentation, datasheets, and related
resources.
Apart from enabling core NFV capabilities on Red Hat OpenStack Platform, Red Hat has also
partnered with key software and infrastructure partners to provide a complete NFV solution. Red
Hat OpenStack Platform is currently being used as NFV platform by major Telcos to build global
networks.
Caution
Based on our evaluation, earlier versions of Red Hat OpenStack Platform didnt provide as
consistent and reliable deployment experience as Version 7.0. With 7.0, we observed greater
consistency and reliability during deployment, albeit minor inconsistencies during initial phases of
deployment4.
UI based deployment is supported only for test/ basic deployment topologies. Any production grade
deployment needs to be deployment using CLI
Red Hat CloudForms provides for operational management aspects such as Monitoring,
Chargeback, Capacity Planning which are lacking in all OpenStack distributions natively (Red Hat
CloudForms 2015) and Red Hat recommends using it in conjunction with Red Hat OpenStack
Platform.
Recommendation
Red Hat stands out it in its history and experience in providing enterprise grade solutions and support
using open source software. Red Hat OpenStack Platform continues this trend. Red Hat OpenStack
Platform also benefits from an expansive eco-system of solutions, services, vendors, OEMs, and
partners. If you are an Enterprise customer considering OpenStack or looking to leverage your existing
Red Hat investments, you should consider Red Hat OpenStack Platform for your infrastructure needs.
If you are a Telecom Service Provider with need to run VNF/ NFV workloads, we recommend you
consider Red Hat OpenStack Platform as your NFV platform.
4Step 3.6 in the install guide, Configuring Director has some hard coded naming requirements on NICs,
expecting to be name eth0 and eth1, resulting in failure if not. However, later stages dont have this requirement.
pg. 25
Canonical Distribution of Ubuntu

OpenStack
Ubuntu
Canonical Distribution of Ubuntu OpenStack (shortly Ubuntu OpenStack
OpenStack) includes OpenStack Autopilot an automated tool for

deployment and management that leverages MAAS (Metal as a
Service), Juju (service orchestration) and Landscape (system Canonical Distribution
management). It supports both automated and manual methods of of Ubuntu OpenStack
deployment. (shortly Ubuntu
OpenStack) was
OpenStack Autopilot based deployment starts with setting up
announced in Oct 2014
hardware and command-line setup of required repositories and
(UOS) as public beta
packages including MAAS. MAAS provides browser based UI to
and released in Nov
configure and setup bare-metal servers. Landscape provides browser
2015 (UAP), even
based UI to configure deployment topology, installation and
though OpenStack
monitoring.
packages for Ubuntu
OpenStack Autopilot uses Juju service orchestration in the background operating system were
to deploy OpenStack services. Juju requires service definition files available from Austin
called Charms that contain application specific knowledge such as release (Austin).
configuration, dependencies etc. Juju charms can be written in any Ubuntu is currently the
language and can use existing Chef or Puppet modules. OpenStack most popular operating
Autopilot also provides an option to deploy OpenStack services in system for OpenStack
individual LXD containers. deployment (OpenStack
User Survey - A
Manual deployment follows similar steps, with configurations being
snapshot of OpenStack
represented in YAML format. Juju based orchestration is used here as
well. users attitudes and
deployments 2015). It is
Canonical ensures interoperability between supported versions of also to be noted that this
Ubuntu and various vendor components for network, storage and data is not specific to
compute through rigorous integration testing at its OpenStack the Ubuntu OpenStack
Integration Lab (OIL) (Ubuntu OpenStack Integration Lab n.d.). distribution that is being
evaluated here, but
Strengths includes installs based
Ubuntu OpenStack provides an exceptionally easy way to
configure, setup and manage bare-metal servers through on OpenStack packages
MAAS. for Ubuntu.
pg. 26
Ubuntu OpenStack supports a wide range of server hardware from commodity to converged,
different types of remote management such as IPMI and PXE, through MAAS.
Ubuntu OpenStack provides greater flexibility in the choice of DevOps automation tools (Chef,
Puppet, SALT or Ansible) through Juju service orchestration.
Ubuntu OpenStack also provides greatest flexibility in the choice of network and storage
components and multiple guest operating systems, including Microsoft Windows.
Charm Store provides a marketplace for well tested Juju charms that one can download and use,
alleviating the need to write charms for most common use cases. It is also to be noted that Juju
charms support application deployment across multiple cloud platforms such as AWS EC2,
Microsoft Azure, OpenStack, etc.
Canonical also provides different types of Support, Professional and Training Services to assist with
your OpenStack needs.
Juju, MAAS, and Ubuntu OpenStack together are used as NFV platform of choice by many Telecom
providers such as DT, Etisalat, etc. Juju supports a large number of VNFs and given how Juju adopts
domain neutral model, it is a generic VNF Manager that can enable multiple platforms (hypervisors,
Baremetal and containers) in the backend.
Caution
Ubuntu OpenStack relies heavily on Juju for service modeling and orchestration. While Juju
provides lot of flexibility in the choice of DevOps automation tools, it is to be noted that Juju is a
service modeling tool at a layer above configuration management. Cloud admins now have an
overhead of managing both service models and application configuration.
Those who are used to treating automation scripts and configurations as code may find it difficult to
treat Juju service models and Juju charms similarly.
The flexibility that Ubuntu OpenStack provides in the choice of compute, networking and storage
components, we found the lack of sample configurations overwhelming. It is to be noted that
meaningful defaults to various configurations was one of the important ask from OpenStack
operators (OpenStack User Survey - A snapshot of OpenStack users attitudes and deployments
2015).
Recommendation
Canonical Distribution of Ubuntu OpenStack provides a reliable, easier way to deploy and manage
OpenStack clouds and a wide variety of choice in choosing compute, storage and networking stacks.
Ubuntu OpenStack also benefits from the popularity of Ubuntu operating system among existing
OpenStack users. If Ubuntu is your platform of choice or if interoperability of OpenStack services
across different version of underlying operating system is important to you, we recommend you to
consider Canonical Distribution of Ubuntu OpenStack for your infrastructure needs.
pg. 27
Summary
Each OpenStack Distribution has its own strengths and weaknesses. It is important to note that almost
all distributions are improving upon reliability, stability, scale and feature completeness. Given that
these are moving targets with every new version, based on evaluating their most common individual
release versions, we recommend that
If you are an Enterprise customer considering adopting OpenStack or looking to leverage your
existing Red Hat investments, you consider Red Hat OpenStack Platform for your infrastructure
needs.
If Ubuntu is your platform of choice or if interoperability of OpenStack services across different
version of underlying operating system is important to you, you consider Canonical Distribution of
Ubuntu OpenStack for your infrastructure needs.
If you need to support multiple hypervisors or host operating systems, you consider Mirantis
OpenStack as your infrastructure platform.
If you are a Telecom Service Provider, you consider Red Hat OpenStack Platform or Mirantis
OpenStack as your NFV platform.5
If your workloads need PowerVM or z/VM hypervisors, or hybrid cloud environments, you
consider IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack.
If you are an enterprise customer with need for multiple hypervisors and guest operating systems,
but prefer single vendor for entire stack of needs (hardware, software, management tools and
support), you consider HPE Helion OpenStack 2.1 for your infrastructure needs.
If you want to use an OpenStack distribution closest to OpenStack trunk, you consider Rackspace
Private Cloud along with their Fanatical Support.
5Please note that many Telcos are using Ubuntu OpenStack along with Ubuntu, MAAS and Juju as their NFV
platform of choice. Since this evaluation is only about OpenStack distributions, we have limited our
recommendations to Red Hat OpenStack Platform and Mirantis OpenStack.
pg. 28
References
n.d. https://insights.ubuntu.com/2014/10/28/introducing-the-canonical-distribution-of-ubuntu-
openstack-your-autopilot-for-rapid-customised-openstack-private-cloud-deployment-and-
management/.
n.d. https://insights.ubuntu.com/2015/11/17/canonicals-openstack-autopilot-dramatically-reduces-cost-
of-private/.
n.d. https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Obsolete:NovaInstall/Austin.
n.d. Adding disaster recovery to a deployed topology. https://www-

01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SST55W_4.3.0/liaca/liaca_add_dr.html?lang=en.
Committee, OpenStack User. 2015. "OpenStack users share how their deployments stack up."
OpenStack. May. http://superuser.openstack.org/articles/openstack-users-share-how-their-
deployments-stack-up.
n.d. Deploy NFV on OpenStack. https://www.mirantis.com/solutions/industry-solutions/network-

functions-virtualization-nfv/.
n.d. "DIRECTOR INSTALLATION AND USAGE." Red Hat.

https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-
US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux_OpenStack_Platform/7/html/Director_Installation_and_Usage/i
ndex.html.
2015. "How to Evaluate Vendors in the Hyperconverged Space." Gartner Inc. April 06.
http://www.gartner.com/document/3023018.
n.d. HPE Helion OpenStack 2.1,2.0. https://docs.hpcloud.com/#helion/index.html.
n.d. HPE Helion OpenStack Carrier Grade 1.1. https://docs.hpcloud.com/CarrierGrade/carrier-grade-

index.html.
n.d. HPOS 2.0. http://community.hpe.com/t5/Grounded-in-the-Cloud/HP-Helion-OpenStack-2-0-The-

innovation-of-open-source-with-the/ba-p/6806339#.VqiwnCorLcs.
n.d. Introducing IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack. http://www-

03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/43892.wss.
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pg. 29
Lauren E. Nelson, Glenn O'Donnell, Andre Kindness, Michael Caputo. 2015. "OpenStack Is Ready
Are You?" Forrester Research. May 18.
https://www.forrester.com/OpenStack+Is+Ready+Are+You/fulltext/-/E-
RES122728?objectid=RES122728.
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01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SST55W_4.3.0/liaca/liaca_autorecover_service.html?lang
=en.
n.d. "Nagios." https://www.nagios.com/.
n.d. "OpenStack Software." OpenStack. http://www.openstack.org/software.
2015. OpenStack User Survey - A snapshot of OpenStack users attitudes and deployments. Oct.
http://www.openstack.org/assets/survey/Public-User-Survey-Report.pdf.
n.d. Rackspace Private Cloud - FAQ. https://www.rackspace.com/knowledge_center/article/rackspace-

private-cloud-faq.
n.d. Rackspace Private Cloud Installation Guide. http://docs.rackspace.com/rpc/api/v10/bk-rpc-

installation/content/index.html.
n.d. Rackspace Private Cloud Powered by OpenStack Releases v11 Based on OpenStack Kilo.
http://blog.rackspace.com/rackspace-private-cloud-powered-by-openstack-releases-v11/.
n.d. Rackspace releases its OpenStack private cloud software for free.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/2618028/private-cloud/rackspace-releases-its-openstack-
private-cloud-software-for-free.html.
2015. "Red Hat CloudForms." Red Hat. https://www.redhat.com/en/files/resources/en-rhcf-enterprise-

grade-mgmt-tech-detail-INC0277854.pdf.
n.d. Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform. https://www.redhat.com/en/technologies/linux-

platforms/openstack-platform.
n.d. Red Hat NFV Platform.

https://www.redhat.com/en/technologies/industries/telecommunications/nfv-platform.
n.d. Release Management. http://docs.openstack.org/project-team-guide/release-management.html.
n.d. "Release Notes for Fuel v2.1-folsom." Mirantis. https://software.mirantis.com/wp-

content/uploads/files/ReleaseNotesforFuel2.1.pdf.
pg. 30
n.d. Selecting a topology. https://www-

01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SST55W_4.3.0/liaca/liaca_deploy_overview.html.
Subramanian, Sriram. n.d. Mapping OpenStack Ecosystem. www.clouddon.com/download/mapping-

openstack-ecosystem-a-position-paper/.
n.d. Ubuntu OpenStack Integration Lab. http://partners.ubuntu.com/programmes/openstack.
n.d. Unlocked Appliances. https://www.mirantis.com/products/unlocked-appliances/.
n.d. Version 11.0 Software & Reference Architecture Kilo Release. http://034d24a88b3e71fd72a6-
f083e9a6295a3f0714fa019ffdca65c3.r47.cf1.rackcdn.com/cloud/private/openstack-
software/Private_Cloud_Technical_data_sheet_update-web_7-16-15.pdf.
n.d. "What is Puppet." Puppet Labs. https://puppetlabs.com/puppet/what-is-puppet.
pg. 31

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Sriram Subramanian | April 2016

About CloudDon .....................................................................................................................................................5

Ease of Deployment ............................................................................................................................................6

Accompanying Eco-system ................................................................................................................................7

OpenStack Distributions under Evaluation .........................................................................................................9

Hardware Setup .....................................................................................................................................................10

Red Hat ...............................................................................................................................................................12

OpenStack Distributions at a Glance ..................................................................................................................13

Evolution of OpenStack Distributions ............................................................................................................13

IBM Cloud Manager ..............................................................................................................................................18

Red Hat OpenStack Platform ...............................................................................................................................24

Canonical Distribution of Ubuntu OpenStack ..................................................................................................26

CloudDon is a strategic advisory firm enabling Modern Enterprise IT Transformations through

OpenStack Distributions under Evaluation

OpenStack Distribution Release Version OpenStack Release Version

OpenStack Distributions at a Glance

Evolution of OpenStack Distributions

Figure 1 Evolution of OpenStack Distributions

HPE Helion OpenStack

HPE Helion OpenStack 2.1, based on OpenStack Kilo release,

IBM Cloud Manager

IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack (abbreviated as IBM Cloud

Mirantis OpenStack is one of earliest OpenStack distributions to

Rackspace Private Cloud

Rackspace Private Cloud (RPC) is essentially a wrapper around

Survey - A snapshot of OpenStack users attitudes and deployments 2015).

Red Hat OpenStack Platform

Canonical Distribution of Ubuntu

n.d. Adding disaster recovery to a deployed topology. https://www-

n.d. Deploy NFV on OpenStack. https://www.mirantis.com/solutions/industry-solutions/network-

n.d. "DIRECTOR INSTALLATION AND USAGE." Red Hat.

n.d. HPE Helion OpenStack 2.1,2.0. https://docs.hpcloud.com/#helion/index.html.

n.d. HPE Helion OpenStack Carrier Grade 1.1. https://docs.hpcloud.com/CarrierGrade/carrier-grade-

n.d. HPOS 2.0. http://community.hpe.com/t5/Grounded-in-the-Cloud/HP-Helion-OpenStack-2-0-The-

n.d. Introducing IBM Cloud Manager with OpenStack. http://www-

n.d. Kibana. https://www.elastic.co/products/kibana.

n.d. Managing auto-scaling and auto-recovery services. https://www-

n.d. "Nagios." https://www.nagios.com/.

n.d. "OpenStack Software." OpenStack. http://www.openstack.org/software.

n.d. Rackspace Private Cloud - FAQ. https://www.rackspace.com/knowledge_center/article/rackspace-

n.d. Rackspace Private Cloud Installation Guide. http://docs.rackspace.com/rpc/api/v10/bk-rpc-

2015. "Red Hat CloudForms." Red Hat. https://www.redhat.com/en/files/resources/en-rhcf-enterprise-

n.d. Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform. https://www.redhat.com/en/technologies/linux-

n.d. Red Hat NFV Platform.

n.d. Release Management. http://docs.openstack.org/project-team-guide/release-management.html.

n.d. "Release Notes for Fuel v2.1-folsom." Mirantis. https://software.mirantis.com/wp-

n.d. Selecting a topology. https://www-

Subramanian, Sriram. n.d. Mapping OpenStack Ecosystem. www.clouddon.com/download/mapping-

n.d. Ubuntu OpenStack Integration Lab. http://partners.ubuntu.com/programmes/openstack.

n.d. Unlocked Appliances. https://www.mirantis.com/products/unlocked-appliances/.

n.d. "What is Puppet." Puppet Labs. https://puppetlabs.com/puppet/what-is-puppet.

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