The OpenStack Architecture Design Book Authors Speak

Posted on 4 mins read

In the OpenStack Design Summit I asked the authors the same 5 questions in order to get their thoughts and feelings on OpenStack, the community and the future.

  1. How many years have you been working with OpenStack?
  2. What is your favorite thing about OpenStack?
  3. What is that you dislike about OpenStack?
  4. If there was only one thing you could change/improve in OpenStack - what would it be?
  5. Where do you think Openstack will be 3 years time?

Here are their responses.

Beth Cohen, Cloud Technology Strategist – Verizon

  1. 3 years.
  2. It is a strong community of companies and people who want to build the best cloud platform in the world.
  3. It is a bunch of petty developers snipping at each other from their little fiefdoms.
  4. Better integration of the parts.
  5. Everywhere!

Sean Winn, Cloud Services Network Engineer – CloudScaling

  1. 2 years.
  2. I love that OpenStack is an open-source, community-developed system which, when leveraged properly within an organization, can have tremendous impact on every aspect of how that company does business. The effects of OpenStack on business operational efficiency and agility are incredible to me.
  3. Lack of cohesiveness between projects is one of the biggest problems that I see facing OpenStack. Features are sometimes developed without consideration of other OpenStack projects implementations of same or similar features.
  4. More cooperative efforts between projects to develop features with parity.
  5. The most widely deployed data center and cloud solution.

Kenneth Hui, Business Development Manager, Cloud Solutions – EMC

  1. 2 years.
  2. The collaborative nature of the community.
  3. Lack of focus in terms of development. Too many people chasing the newest shiny thing.
  4. Better product management.
  5. Leading private cloud platform.

Nick Chase, Technical Marketing Manager - Mirantis

  1. 2 years.
  2. The “open” nature of OpenStack means that anybody can get involved, and anybody can make it do what they need it to, if they are willing to put in the work. The possibilities are endless, and I’m passionate about that.
  3. I’m sure there’s much that I “dislike” exactly, though there are some things I wish worked better, or were easier to use. Deployment could be a little easier, of course.
  4. Public perception. :)
  5. Complete convergence so that hybrid and multi-cloud are not just normal but transparent.

Kevin Jackson, Principal Cloud Architect – Rackspace

  1. 3 years.
  2. The fact it’s an open source, globally collaborated project that is the first choice when discussing cloud technologies that you can deploy yourself.
  3. Release cycle of 6 months with very little support at present to easily upgrade to match this cadence.
  4. Neutron/Networking - we need to quickly move on from the “Nova-network” vs “Networking” discussion ASAP.
  5. We’ll see “OpenStack Compatible” stickers on hardware and software showing ease of integration with the standard privately deploy cloud software.

Anthony Veiga, Senior Network Engineer - Comcast

  1. 2 years.
  2. The flexibility to plug the parts I want and omit the parts I don’t. Plus, it’s open source so I can’t parts I need (which my team has done a lot of).
  3. I dislike the primarily vendor-driven nature of its development. More users need to get involved, and the Foundation should recognize that coders aren’t the only contributors.
  4. Add community processes for locking out intentional roadblocking.
  5. A multi-billion dollar per year industry.

Sean Collins, OpenStack Developer – Comcast

  1. 2 years.
  2. Being able to make design decisions that affect the entire company I work for.
  3. Gerrit, Nitpickers.
  4. Nitpickers.
  5. Probably where it is currently.

Vinny Valdez, Principal OpenStack Enterprise Architect - Red Hat

  1. 1 year.
  2. I particularly enjoy how expansive, dynamic and flexible all of the projects yet they all come together in unison.
  3. Many concepts sound great in theory but are not always proven or tested.
  4. Move everything to MongoDB.
  5. The de facto standard way to run applications.

Alexandra Settle, Technical Writer – Rackspace

  1. 1 year.
  2. The community involvement and dedication everyone has to the project.
  3. Unfortunately the documentation is not up to the greatest standard it could potentially be. This however is an ongoing project and I hope to see it through.
  4. Documentation.
  5. Hopefully still progressing. Lots of community based projects die once a ‘bigger and better’ project is introduced.

I would like to thank all the authors for an amazing week in San Jose – and amazing experience – and an amazing outcome.