[one-users] Does OpenNebula work or replace VMware vCenter?

[Carlos Martín Sánchez]

Hi Florian and all, thanks you for your comments.

Although Tino is the main VMware driver developer and he will be able to
provide more low-level details, let me say some words to clarify how
OpenNebula compares with VMware products. OpenNebula 2.2 can be
used on top of VMware ESX and vCenter.

- On top of ESX, OpenNebula provides all its features for
public/private/hybrid cloud and virtualized data center management
(http://opennebula.org/documentation:features)
- On top of vCenter, OpenNebula can orchestrate several vCenter
instances and offers cloud functionality not offered by vCenter:
multi-tenancy, VM provisioning, cloud interfaces (EC2 and OCCI),
public/hybrid cloud computing… so there are many benefits from using
OpenNebula 2.2 on top of vCenter.

vCloud Director is the new VMware product that on top of vCenter
offers cloud functionality, mainly multi-tenancy and cloud API
(vCloud). The functionality for grouping users and creating virtual
data centers is something provided by vCloud that is not offered by
OpenNebula 2.2. However, OpenNebula 3.0 (due in 2 weeks), and its
powerful ACLs management, will offer  much richer functionality for
grouping users, creating projects, defining different levels of
administration, managing virtual data centers….

Summarizing, you can replace vCenter with OpenNebula if you want a
more cost-effective, open, standard-based, flexible and hypervisor
independent solution. However given that OpenNebula provides a
management layer with hypervisor independence, there may be VMware
specific functionality that is not leveraged by OpenNebula. You can
also use OpenNebula on top of vCenter, but I think that in such a
case, OpenNebula should have full control over vCenter and you should
manage the cloud through the OpenNebula interfaces. Finally,
OpenNebula 2.2 is not ready to replace vCloud Director, but this will
be solved in OpenNebula 3.0.

Please let us know if you need further information.

Best regards,
Carlos.
--
Carlos Martín, MSc
Project Major Contributor
OpenNebula - The Open Source Toolkit for Cloud Computing
www.OpenNebula.org <http://www.opennebula.org/> | cmartin at opennebula.org


On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 1:16 AM, Derrick LIN <klin938 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks Florian,
>
> We are not very sensitive with downtime. Somehow we are lucky enough to
> receive vSphere Enterprise plus and vCenter licenses for free due to
> affinity with a university. And we benefit so much from vSphere's
> proprietary features. So the cost is not an issue for us. :D
>
> Based on what you said, we will lose more than what can gain if we replaced
> vCenter with OpenNebula. :(
>
> And I guess it's a bad idea to use both at the same time on the same
> cluster?
>
> But still good to hear the open source solutions always improving.
>
> Cheers,
> Derrick
>
>
> On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 9:12 PM, <florian.feldhaus at tu-dortmund.de> wrote:
>
>>  Hi Derrick,
>>
>>  from my past experience I can say, that OpenNebula in the current
>> version is not ready to replace VMware vCenter. But, with OpenNebula 3.0
>> many of the missing features are implemented and as far as I could test
>> them, OpenNebula seems to be a good / cost efficient choice to replace
>> vCenter. Integrating OpenNebula with vCenter and usage of ESX is possible,
>> but from my point of view this is only valid as a migration path to replace
>> it with a KVM or XEN infrastructure.
>>
>>  If you have a production setup where a downtime of your service costs a
>> lot of money, then you're probably better off with vCenter and buying all
>> their licenses. If you want to provide a cheap IaaS plattform, then
>> OpenNebula 3.0 could be right for you. BTW: From a recent comparison of
>> OpenNebula 3.0 and the current version of OpenStack I got the impression
>> that OpenNebula will be better suitable for IaaS environments. Especially
>> the Sunstone Webinterface has more potential than the OpenStack
>> webinterface.
>>
>>  Cheers,
>> Florian
>>
>>   Von: Derrick LIN <klin938 at gmail.com>
>> Datum: Thu, 23 Jun 2011 13:44:22 +1000
>> An: <users at lists.opennebula.org>
>> Betreff: [one-users] Does OpenNebula work or replace VMware vCenter?
>>
>>  Hi guys,
>>
>>  My institute is running a cloud platform which is VMware vSphere based
>> with its Enterprise Plus license. We also have a vCenter server for managing
>> the platform.
>>
>>  I have been seeking a way to allow me to automate the VM deployment
>> process and contextualize the Linux VMs.
>>
>>  OpenNebula seems to be a solution. I have read through some
>> documentations as well as the VMware Driver Addon guide. But I still not
>> quite understand many basic aspects of OpenNebula, particularly:
>>
>>  1) What's the position for OpenNebula in a VMware based platform that
>> vCenter already exists?
>> 2) Our Enterprise Plus license gives us full features of the vSphere
>> platform, work with the vCenter, does OpenNebula interact with those
>> features as well?
>>
>>  I'd keen to hear from anyone who has the experience on this.
>>
>>  Thanks in advance.
>> Derrick
>> _______________________________________________ Users mailing list
>> Users at lists.opennebula.org
>> http://lists.opennebula.org/listinfo.cgi/users-opennebula.org
>>
>
>
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>
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