Partners Building on OpenStack Release Innovations

The OpenStack event in Hong Kong this week has generated news around networking and switches.

Enabled by the recent eighth edition of OpenStack (Havana) and heading into OpenStack Summit Hong Kong this week, vendors Brocade, Midokura, Cloudian and Mellanox have OpenStack-related announcements, highlighting storage, networking and switch innovations.

Brocade's DNRM Blueprint

At the OpenStack event, Brocade (BRCD) will discuss and demonstrate Neutron - its blueprint proposal to extend the advanced networking capabilities of the OpenStack Networking framework. The Dynamic Network Resource Manager (DNRM) blueprint is intended to simplify the deployment and management of physical and virtual networking resources within cloud infrastructures. With  a native, heterogeneous approach delivered by DNRM, OpenStack cloud environments can address the needs of specific applications or services.  Features include policy-based management of physical and virtual network resources from multiple vendors, Supervisor, Interceptor, Plugins and Appliance Container components, support for NFV, and continued work with partners of the OpenStack community to deliver DNRM capabilities as part of the Spring 2014 OpenStack release.

"Public and private clouds are evolving from basic, homogenous entities to rich, service-oriented clouds that combine best-of-breed solutions, including both physical and virtual resources," said Ken Cheng, CTO and Vice President, Corporate Development and Emerging Business at Brocade. "To ensure these next-generation cloud architectures properly serve customers, Brocade is continuing to expand its investment and participation in open projects such as OpenStack and OpenDaylight. It is our belief that contributions such as the Dynamic Network Resource Manager equip customers to build the next-generation services cloud to deliver the flexibility and agility it needs."

Midokura Releases Updated MidoNet

Midokura announced the latest release of its  MidoNet technology, with Layer 2 Gateway support, advanced Layer 3 Gateway functionality and other new features. MidoNet offers  integration and full support for OpenStack Grizzly and Havana releases, providing an efficient, simple and seamless network virtualization integration for OpenStack customers. The new release boasts advanced L3 gateway functionality, new management tools, and a command line interface.

"With a deep understanding of OpenStack, our team has been tirelessly driving enhancements to our game-changing MidoNet network virtualization technology,” said Dan Mihai Dumitriu, co-founder and CEO of Midokura. “With our new release, Midokura solidifies its disruptive position in the market and MidoNet as the natural network virtualization platform for the OpenStack community. We will continue to innovate alongside current OpenStack advances, and help advance the market.”

Mellanox Equipment Accepted to Havana Distribution

Mellonox (MLNX)  announced that several key InfiniBand and Ethernet adapter and switch components for Nova, Cinder and Neutron have been accepted into OpenStack’s newly released Havana distribution. Leveraging Mellanox 10/40GbE or FDR 56Gb/s adapters and switches and the OpenStack Cinder block storage and Neutron plug-ins, cloud vendors can significantly improve storage access performance and run virtual machine traffic with bare-metal performance, while enjoying hardened security and QoS; all delivered in a simple and tightly integrated package.

“We are pleased to have Mellanox’s early support for the Red Hat Certified Solution Marketplace and collaborate with them on OpenStack’s enterprise advancement,” said Mike Werner, senior director, Global Ecosystems, Red Hat. “We look forward to OpenStack users seeing the intersection of Red Hat and Mellanox’s technologies during their deployments of the Havana distribution.”

Cloudian Brings Object Storage Product to Market

Cloudian announced a coordinated effort with partners Penguin Computing and Intel to bring their production-hardened object-storage product to market as a bundled turnkey solution for OpenStack users.

Built by Penguin Computing, the new scale-out, multi-datacenter capable solution boasts ultra-low power consumption and high drive density, enabled by the Intel Atom C2000 processor’s 64-bit architecture. The solution will be provided to enterprise users through Penguin’s global network of VAR partners. Cloudian is also available as software-only for customers to install on hardware of their choice.

“We are excited to work with Penguin Computing and Intel to deliver our carrier grade storage on OpenStack, which precisely addresses the demands of our customers,” said Michael Tso, Founder and CEO, Cloudian.