Internap's Paul Carmody discusses the company's in-development OpenStack cloud
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Managed hosting provider Internap (www.internap.com) recently revealed it is developing a public infrastructure as a service cloud platform that will complement its existing cloud storage service.
Internap is one of the first hosting providers to build a production cloud platform using the OpenStack open source software platform initiated by hosting provider Rackspace and launched last summer.
The IaaS platform is a bit of a departure for Internap, whose previous cloud offerings have been built almost entirely on VMware technology.
And though the platform will offer users the option to run applications on VMware-based virtual instances, the platform will largely be driven by the OpenStack platform.
To be released at some point in the third quarter, the cloud platform will be delivered via Internap’s global Performance IP network and will offer customers a 100 percent network uptime SLA.
In an email interview with the Web Host Industry Review, Internap SVP of product management and business development Paul Carmody discusses the development and upcoming release of its IaaS cloud platform, as well as its participation in the OpenStack community.
WHIR: You’ve revealed that you’re building a cloud using OpenStack, but it’s not a product that’s ready for the market right now. Where are you in terms of the development of this cloud solution as an actual product?
Paul Carmody: We have a broad cloud strategy that includes OpenStack. We are currently offering to the market a private cloud solution that allows customers to leverage VMware. We are also introducing an enterprise public cloud that will be available in Q3 2011. We offer cloud storage as a complement to our cloud compute, colocation, and managed hosting offerings. Our public cloud services – storage and compute – are based on the OpenStack platform. We launched a public beta trial in January for the cloud storage service, which will become generally available in June. Our enterprise public cloud, which will provide compute capabilities, is under development, and will be available in the third quarter of this year. We have been working with the head of OpenStack code for compute, so we will be ready for beta customers virtually as soon as the Diablo release is available.
WHIR: You’re one of the first hosting providers to come out and say “we’re going to use that to build a cloud product,” about OpenStack. Can you discuss the platform as an opportunity for hosting providers, what the advantages or disadvantages might be?
PC: OpenStack offers us the ability to be part of an ecosystem that is building the next generation cloud platform. Just as the Linux kernel has been developed through a collaborative set of activities, we see OpenStack proceeding in exactly the same way. We plan to be an active member of the community, contributing back some elements of code. At the same time, we benefit from advances to the platform contributed by others. No commercial cloud platform can provide the positive feedback loop that open source development offers. OpenStack is structured in a way that we can adjust the platform for our needs, allowing us to differentiate in the marketplace. We can adapt the platform to integrate with our systems and work well with our other product offerings.
Finally, we believe that a robust ecosystem of commonly used APIs and compatible tools will help OpenStack thrive. Because many service providers will ultimately leverage the platform, we believe that customers will be comfortable coding to the APIs and have confidence that the platform will continue for the foreseeable future. That being said, the open source path with OpenStack is not for all service providers. There are some service providers who do not have the engineering teams to effectively deploy an open source platform and participate in the community over time. There may also be service providers that only wish to offer VMware hypervisors and thus are willing to forgo the flexibility of OpenStack to support that single offering.
WHIR: You’ve said there will be elements of your cloud offerings that are based on VMware. Can you talk about what specific things you might take from each platform, how the technologies might work together, and what that’s going to require of Internap, development-wise?
PC: Our OpenStack-based compute services will have support for two different hypervisor environments – VMware and an open source hypervisor, Xen. We have decided to take the unique position of offering these two hypervisors in a cloud environment because we recognize that customers have varying needs which are addressed by each of these solutions. For example, we’re finding that CIOs often use VMware as the dominant platform for in-house server virtualization projects, and they tend to view it as more secure than an open source counterpart. Therefore, a VMware hypervisor offers a seamless transition and provides a certain comfort level for them. In contrast, we typically find CTOs to be primarily concerned with high performance and low cost and are less brand-sensitive when it comes to the hypervisor. They tend to be more amenable to using open source hypervisors. The availability of both the premium VMware hypervisor and a lower-cost, open-source hypervisor gives customers flexibility and choice, depending on their current requirements and priorities, and also lets them transition to a different hypervisor environment as their business evolves. Ultimately, we believe that CIOs will also favor lower-cost, open-source solutions as they become increasingly comfortable moving their applications and workloads to the cloud.
WHIR: Obviously OpenStack is open source software, and there’s a community that exists around it. Have you been participating up to this point, either by contributing code or any other way?
PC: Internap is an active member of the OpenStack community and an authorized committer. We participated in the OpenStack Design Summit last month and have already contributed bug fixes to the community. We believe the community will continue to gain traction with other service providers. More companies will join the community by providing additional tools and services that utilize the OpenStack API, and these add-ons will push broader adoption of the OpenStack API.
WHIR: Is there a danger that a cloud built on an open-source platform would be kind of a generic offering?
PC: Actually, it’s quite the opposite. An open source platform – specifically one that is reliable and proven like OpenStack – provides a great foundation to bring cloud services to market quickly. And precisely because of its openness, it is much easier to modify and extend the platform with new features.
The best analogy to date is how Linux has been used as the basis for the majority of network appliances for over a decade. Linux provides the core building blocks and networking, and companies have innovated by focusing on their particular area of differentiation. We look forward to leveraging the OpenStack platform to advance cloud capabilities for the industry overall as well as having a differentiated offering that meets Internap customer needs.
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