Dell EMC World 2017: RedHat Ready Bundle Update!

The week before Dell EMC World we released a critical update to the Dell EMC RedHat Ready Bundle – and while many eyes are on Las Vegas, it will figure prominently at the OpenStack Summit occuring in Boston.

First – I don’t want to bury the lead: if you’re deploying the RedHat Cloud stack – with ever bit of goodness, from CloudForms (an IaaS CMP), OpenShift (the Redhat PaaS based on Kubernetes), you should evaluate consuming it rather than building it…  Because the Dell EMC Redhat OpenStack Platform Ready Bundle = the easy button.

As a reminder:

Ready Nodes, Ready Bundles, Ready Systems is the taxonomy we use for our prog(ram where we bring multiple technology pieces together at Dell EMC.   Ready Nodes = software + server; Ready Bundles = software + servers/network/storage; Ready Systems = software + CI/HCI.   

In each case – Ready = more than a simple combo of products.  Ready = designed to provide all the end-to-end assists for simplified configuration, sizing, quoting, deployment, financial packaging.   BTW – IDC calls this category of “thing” Certified Reference Systems.  

The Ready Node/Bundle/System program is also how we bring our open technology partner ecosystem (SAP, Microsoft, RedHat, VMware, Pivotal, Cloudera, Splunk, Hortonworks, the HPC ecosystem and many others) to life – and strive to make things SIMPLER for people who are more on the “build” end of the “build-to-buy” continuum.

This is the 10th generation of this package and we’ve never been able to take the simplicity as far as we can now.

What’s new in the latest revision?

A ton.  The latest RedHat releases, but also two big additions from Dell EMC.

• The first is JetPack.   The Dell EMC team (and thank you team!) have done a TON of work around full stack deployment from the lowest level all the way to the top of the stack.   This is something that goes far beyond what I have seen anywhere else (would love customer feedback to validate/dispute – please comment!)  This can represent an order of magnitude greater simplification of getting up and running.
• Dell EMC PowerEdge FX2.   This was by customer popular demand.  FX2 is a pretty cool platform – very flexible, and enables a broad set of configurations at a ton of scales.   The innovations in FX2 are an interesting hint to where we could go next on next generation modular disaggregated systems – we’re working on some cool stuff.

It’s SO the “easy button” for customers going down this path that it powered the live demonstration at the Boston OpenStack summit showing full “from bare metal” standup including Ironic, Neutron setup and more.     Look closely at the picture :-)

A picture of what is in the stack is shown below. 

Note: while we have made this solution ridiculously turnkey relative to “build it yourself” it’s been my experience that the RedHat OpenStack Ready Bundle (and OpenStack, Kubernetes, CloudForms in general) are best directed towards and used by customers who have a cloud operations team that has software development expertise and experience.

How serious are we about this?   There are a lot of #1s we’ve been delivering together with RedHat – from being the first to co-engineer a stack solution, the only OpenStack config with full support with multiple concurrent storage backends, the first to publish the SPEC Cloud IaaS benchmark results.

This is just the latest of years of collaboration.

Like all Ready Bundles – there’s more than just packaging together things – Dell EMC takes L1/L2 support, can transact the full solution (with OEM SKUs), we have an Automated Design and Sizing tool. 

Note: one area that I’m pushing the team to add in future releases is the ability to augment Ceph with our SDS portfolio.   I know that for continued alignment with RedHat, we will keep Ceph (their SDS) as part of the stack for as long as it’s core to RedHat (the foreseeable future).   I think it’s very defensible that ScaleIO can be a superior transactional SDS, and Elastic Cloud Storage (ECS) can be a superior S3 compliant object store – with the necessary Glance/Keystone integration.   In the end, the customer would chose what they deploy.   To be clear – these are not in scope of the Ready Bundle yet, but customers can absolutely use them together (along with the entirety of the Dell EMC Portfolio – with broad Cinder, Manila support).

The Ready Bundle also includes CloudForms support – the RedHat CMP (which has integration with multiple public cloud stacks – like Azure, AWS, and others).

… and also includes OpenShift – which is the RedHat PaaS built around Docker and Kubernetes.

BTW – I noticed on Twitter that some pointed out that there’s a “multiple stacking” effect here – with kernel mode VMs (KVM in this case) hosting containers and container managers (Docker/Swarm), which in turn support cluster managers (Kubernetes) and all the elements of a PaaS.

It does seem a little silly (and the picture is funny) – but I would warn people about being holier-then-thou about this.   It’s not dissimilar to our approach in the Dell Technologies aligned Developer-Ready Infrastructure (which has ESXi/NSX at it’s base, BOSH, Diego, persistence and data fabrics in the middle, and PCF and Kubo at the top.  

It’s our job (and RedHat’s) to make the complete stack as compelling as possible – and know that we’re working like crazy on it.

What about the physical build?   The minimal configuration looks like the below.   It’s notable that the controller nodes and admin host create, in effect management domain and tenant domain isolation (VMware VCF team, please take note).

Dear technical VMware readers - this is a similar model to what we do with the Enterprise Hybrid Cloud (where all the elements in the management stack run on a management cluster – currently a small VxRail) – that in turn points at VxRail, or VxRack or VxBlock for the workload/tenant domain itselves.   This element of EHC is the peer of the CloudForms – and is the turnkey instantiation of the vRealize stack.  pay attention VMware field – this is why VCF is the core of VxRack SDDC, but EHC > VCF/VxRack SDDC.   It’s why EHC/NHC is the peer to this RedHat offer, not VCF.  I’ve heard people say “VCF is a turnkey cloud” – it may be in the future as it incorporates the lifecycle management of vRealize (at which point EHC and VCF merge), but that’s not the case today.  If a customer wants a turnkey VMware stack today – the answer is EHC. 

This model is also something that enables the RedHat OpenStack Ready Bundle to scale from the minimal 16U config up to a 90U monster for ~10,000 VM instances (of course the # of VMs is totally dependent on config).

So where do we see the most success?   Here I’ll say something that will make my OpenStack friends get angry with me – but I have to always be honest and transparent.   I’m NOT seeing a ton of success in the enterprise at large.    Most enterprises I see (I’m sure I have my own “sample bias”) tend to struggle with the comment I made at the start:

While we have made this solution ridiculously turnkey relative to “build it yourself” it’s been my experience that the RedHat OpenStack Ready Bundle (and OpenStack, Kubernetes, CloudForms in general) are best directed towards and used by customers who have a cloud operations team that has software development expertise and experience.

I’m personally involved in very notable Enterprise customers that need acknowledgement.   Most, however find that their preference is to leverage their existing VMware stack – and the VMware Integrated OpenStack is seeing much more pickup than I anticipated. 

However, in the telco/SP space, I’m seeing a lot of OpenStack that I see being deployed today is in the NFV use case.

Look – just because I say something doesn’t make it correct – or that it’s a hard and fast rule ;-)

Beyond the offer itself – there’s a strategic statement in here a “meta point” if you will…

You’ll note that I make a similar comment on the Microsoft Azure Stack post here.   It’s because while they are two different stacks (though peers and analagous) the “meta point” applies equally to both.

The Dell EMC RedHat OpenStack Ready Bundle is a vivid illustration of the Dell historical partnership with RedHat continuing in the new Dell Technologies era.

Yes, of course there is an element of “co-opetition” here – we have completely “Dell Technologies” family offers:

• The Enterprise Hybrid Cloud – which is the turnkey instantiation of the VMware and Dell EMC stack up to the IaaS layer deployed on CI (VxBlock) and HCI (VxRail and VxRack)
• The Native Hybrid Cloud – which is the turnkey instantiation of the Pivotal, VMware and Dell EMC stack up to the PaaS layer, Developer-Ready Infrastructure with all of the 4 abstraction models develoeprs need (Cloud Foundry structured PaaS + containers and Kubernetes via Kubo + the best VMs on ESXi – all with rich NSX integration, and the data platform layer including  a rich data fabrics and an object store).

As much as I believe we’re entering an era of “stack consolidation” (where the only players left standing will need to have “stack completeness” for things that are becoming “fundamental” infrastructure commodities to consume)…   I also believe that customers want opinionated partners – but will reject partners whose opinions are dogmatic, who don’t offer choice. 

Dell Technologies stands for choice – and our embrace of the RedHat OpenStack platform (along with our awesome Microsoft offer)  and others means that it’s not just words – it’s action.

Put it this way – if you agree with the following 3 obvious statements:

• Hybrids with a mix of on- and off-premises clouds are the winning operating cloud model.
• …that there won’t be one that rules them all – but multiple (each federating with the hyperscale public clouds)
• … and the most value is in focusing “above the value line” – making the infrastructure fade away more and more as something to be consumed, not built/maintained, so you can focus your money, talent, and efforts on building new apps and new analytics in new ways…

… Then Dell Technologies is the answer for you.   We have a strong opinion and capabilities in family, and together with our friends, the industries only full complement of choice.

Congrats to the RedHat and Dell EMC team that work so hard, and have worked so hard for many years, together on this latest industrialized, curated, simplification for our joint customers: the Dell EMC RedHat OpenStack Ready Bundle!

So… are you running RedHat OpenStack?   What has your experience been?   Do you want an easy button?

Comments

[Jason]

"one area that I’m pushing the team to add in future releases is the ability to augment Ceph with our SDS portfolio. I know that for continued alignment with RedHat, we will keep Ceph (their SDS) as part of the stack for as long as it’s core to RedHat (the foreseeable future)."

As a Dell Technologies customer who buys RH OpenStack, and Ceph (and was looking at NFV) from your company at a substantial scale, this comment certainly has me concerned. If I wanted ECS, I would have asked for it... The reference architecture my team leveraged to build our solution showed us Dell knew what it was doing, and what was right for the customer. My employee sent me this blog, and it will now make us look at Lenovo or HPE for their comparable expertise in our November procurement.

Regards, J

[Chad Sakac]

@Jason - thanks for the comment.

I'm confused a bit - because I thought I was clear, but clearly, I wasn't. Do you mind re-reading the paragraph and telling me if I missed it? The operative word is "augment". I even note that it's clear to all that if we tried to substitute, we would not be aligned with RedHat.

Is there harm in giving you the choice of using CEPH and/or our Cinder targets and object storage targets? Surely that doesn't take anything away from you.

The whole post, the whole work to produce the RedHat Ready Bundle is a testament to the partnership. Do you think that providing a choice that each customer can decide if it's helpful to them is bad in some way?

(and if so - of course, as you note - you have choices).

[Ricardo]

Are you looking at a similar bundle with SUSE or provide an option around it?

[Kyle Betts]

" ...it’s been my experience that the RedHat OpenStack Ready Bundle (and OpenStack, Kubernetes, CloudForms in general) are best directed towards and used by customers who have a cloud operations team that has software development expertise and experience."

I work for a DellEMC partner, reseller and system integrator. We've seen enterprises have great success with OpenStack when its consumed as-a-service. Managed OpenStack gives customers the best of both worlds: an on-premise purpose built cloud platform, with a completely managed off-prem control plane. Customers receive all the benefits of OpenStack with none of the hassle of managing/hosting any of the components or projects. Plus, you can run it on VxRack Flex nodes! Double Plus, cinder-->ScaleIO = SDS yummyness!!

About 12 months ago I asked several of my VCE-brothas-from-anotha-motha to look at the managed OpenStack providers (like Platform9) as OpenStack-in-a-box-as-a-Service, but i think Neutrino was still the play back then. Maybe time for another look? Its hassle-free OpenStack for the masses (and especially the enterprise)!