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SUSE on Cloud 9 for love-in with OpenStack and Kubernetes
Running HPE Helion? Time to start thinking about that 'seamless' transition
SUSECON '19 At its Nashville SUSECON gathering, the German open-source software maker told more than a 1,000 attendees that version 1.4 of its Cloud Application Platform (replete with Kubernetes goodness) and its take on OpenStack Rocky will be inbound before the month is out.
With the Cloud Application Platform 1.4, SUSE has set its sights on a multi-cloud world laying claim to being the first software distribution to go 100 per cent Kubernetes for Cloud Foundry.
SUSE CEO Nils Brauckmann is very keen on the whole multi-cloud thing, and told us that he aimed to "advance my capabilities faster in the area of multi-cloud management. Everything that has to do with cloud-native, container-first application delivery tools."
With that ethos in mind, the newly Kubernetes-native platform now includes support for Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) extending the options available to customers, including Amazon EKS or Azure AKS. Equally, users could run it on-premises with something like the SUSE Container as a Service (CaaS) platform – or a multi-cloud combo.
The juice comes from Cloud Foundry's Project Eirini, which allows devs to seamlessly switch between Kubernetes or Cloud Foundry Diego as their container scheduler. An organisation already invested in the Kubernetes world therefore does not have to faff around with the Cloud Foundry Application Runtime orchestration. A single scheduler should do the trick.
SUSE has also prepped OpenStack Rocky for its enterprise customers in the form of SUSE OpenStack Cloud 9. While the next version of OpenStack, Stein, Brauckmann said that in "an enterprise context to come out with a release every six months, of course it's just not very feasible".
Enterprises do like things to be stable, right?
Brauckmann did, however, point out that he was getting some mixed messages from enterprise customers on the approach, telling us that: "In the cloud native computing context, there's more of this constant development, constant improvement concepts that are starting to prevail and and also spin out into other areas of enterprise customers."
He added: "So I hear both things, to be honest."
This release is the first to integrate tech from SUSE OpenStack Cloud and HPE's OpenStack into a single service, and SUSE would very much like customers to "transition" off the HPE product. Although with an eye on that much-vaunted stability, Brauckmann was quick to insist that HPE Helion OpenStack users "can consume support as long as they have an active subscription".
He went on to emphasise: "Although when it's out of life cycle, then customers must migrate to something else."
As well as the simplified deployment to which users have become accustomed and the Cloud Lifecycle Manager interface, SUSE was also keen to trumpet enhanced support for OpenStack Ironic and its ability to hit bare metal servers.
But maybe think about that transition, m'kay? ®