Red Hat Ties Kubernetes Platform Closer to OpenStack

Red Hat this week moved to tie application development and deployment environments based on Kubernetes closer to the latest version of the OpenStack cloud computing framework.

The Red Hat OpenStack 14 release is based on the Rocky distribution of OpenStack. With this release, Red Hat is making it easier to automate the deployment of its distribution of Kubernetes on both virtual machines and bare-metal servers running Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

Other capabilities added include automated deployment of production-ready, high-availability Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform clusters based on Kubernetes and the ability for OpenShift container-based and OpenStack workloads based on virtual machines to share the same virtual network using the open source Kuryr container networking software developed under the auspices of the OpenStack Foundation.

In addition, Red Hat OpenStack 14 now includes built-in load balancer services for container-based workloads and built-in support for OpenStack object storage to more efficiently host container registries.

Red Hat OpenStack 14 also brings tools for dynamically scaling out OpenShift nodes as workload requirements change in addition to tightening integration with its Ansible open source automation framework. IT operations teams can now preview a Red Hat OpenStack Platform deployment before it goes live. Additional visibility is being provided into the deployment process itself to enable faster identification of failure points, including an ability to repeat and reapply isolated deployment steps, if needed.

Finally, Red Hat is extending its infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) platform based on OpenStack 14 to include a technology preview of support for NVIDIA GRID Virtual PC (vPC) capabilities, tighter integration with Red Hat Ceph Storage to enable sharing of the same Cinder storage volume across multiple virtual machines, and a Skydive network analysis tool.

Nick Barcet, senior director for OpenStack product management at Red Hat, says being able to support bare-metal servers is becoming more important as container workloads are deployed in production environments. Workloads based on databases or that involve emerging artificial intelligence (AI) are being deployed more on bare-metal servers to maximize application performance, he says.

Naturally, there’s been some debate to what degree Kubernetes might eliminate the need for frameworks such as OpenStack. But Barcet says OpenStack provides critical management capabilities that both service providers and enterprise IT organizations require to deploy and manage Kubernetes clusters at scale. Enterprise IT organizations are especially interested in a framework that allows them to deploy Kubernetes clusters on virtual machines and bare-metal servers regardless of whether those machines are running on-premises or in a public cloud, he adds.

Red Hat is clearly betting the rise of Kubernetes will increase demand for frameworks such as Red Hat OpenStack 14. It remains to be seen to what degree the rest of the enterprise IT community concurs. OpenStack enjoys broad support among service providers, but adoption of OpenStack in the enterprise has been uneven. The challenge Red Hat faces now is convincing more of those enterprise IT organizations to give up more proprietary frameworks that are optimized for one specific type of virtual machine.

Mike Vizard

Mike Vizard is a seasoned IT journalist with over 25 years of experience. He also contributed to IT Business Edge, Channel Insider, Baseline and a variety of other IT titles. Previously, Vizard was the editorial director for Ziff-Davis Enterprise as well as Editor-in-Chief for CRN and InfoWorld.

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