Cloud management software - OnApp thoughts

[DermicSavage]

So in my firm(managed services and hosting), it was decided we would build a cloud hosting provider across a few data centers based on Xen v4.3 and using OnApp to manage the entire thing(because it's crazy cheap). I'm wondering if anyone else had used OnApp and if they have thoughts on any of the competition, namely open stack. OnApp itself provides a very easy way to control basic features of VMs across a cluster of hosts, but leaves a LOT to be desired compared to a licensed vCenter build out.

I have in the last few months learned a ton about not only Linux (CentOS 6), but Xen management. Really, it kills me we lack the ability to do most simple procedures for online VMs(ie. Hard disk resize, storage migration, and live migration of windows 2012/8). Most of these noted procedures must be offline operations, which are an incredible pain when running production level servers for clients.

I've read we can do open stack with VMWare vSphere (free version). My CTO has been pushing we go this route and abandon OnApp entirely specifically because we can go VMWare fully on the back end. While I'm all for going ESXi on the back end, does open stack give us the ability to live migrate machines, or regain any feature complained about in the paragraph above? I thought that most of those features were specifically a licensed vCenter feature only.

Does any one have experience with OnApp or any other enterprise level cloud management software that can help me understand the playing field when it comes to this software? We are pretty much stuck running on completely open source or super cheap cloud management software, as VMWare's licensing structure is too expensive a route for a small managed service provider like us. I'd just like to furtherer understand what other options are out there since OnApp thus far has left me underwhelmed

 

[4saken]

http://www.rackspace.com/blog/architecting-vmware-vsphere-for-openstack/

Basically, vmware isnt ready yet. We are using vmware beta openstack for our companies implementation right now, and it should be GA sometime in the first half of 2015. Also, i should note is that we are not a provider, we are a finance company changing our culture to DevOps. We are using AWS/Heroku/Vsphere/and openstack on vmware to allow us to seamlessly move between public and private clouds as needed with our homegrown development. We are using tech such as Chef, chef-metal, fog(ruby), docker, other containers, etc to accomplish always available systems/applications. For us, if an app/system dies, we just launch another in it's place(in a nutshell).

So if your CTO is considering OpenStack(which i love) with vmware, there is still a lot of work to do before its considered Prod ready imo.

 

[DermicSavage]

That is a great link. Thank you

We are working on putting a lab together to give open stack a test run, but it certainly looks like there is a lot to be desired with vSphere this far. Hopefully ESXi 6 will have some significant updates with nova/open stack support