Red Hat pushes cloud computing interoperability
February 15, 2012
Red Hat has announced key steps towards more open and interoperable cloud computing with the promotion of its Deltacloud API to a top-level Apache project and an extension of its partnership with Amazon Web Services that enables hybrid cloud operation of Red Hat Enterprise MRG Grid.
The moves were announced as part of a Red Hat webcast where the company hammered home the need for an open approach to cloud computing that allows customers to expand easily, enables portability between clouds, and avoids a lock-in to proprietary architectures…
"Selecting the right cloud architecture is the most important choice an IT administrator will have to make over the next decade. No other single decision will have such a major impact on the business," said Scott Crenshaw, vice president of Red Hat’s cloud business.
As part of its strategy to drive openness, Red Hat announced that its Deltacloud cross-platform API has been graduated from Apache Incubator level to become a Top-Level Project (TLP) at the open-source foundation.
The development means that Deltacloud is mature enough to be a full open-source project, falling under the management oversight of Apache members.
Deltacloud defines a RESTful web services API for interacting with cloud computing services, and includes implementations for many of the most common cloud computing providers, such as Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, and OpenStack, according to Red Hat.
Red Hat has also extended its link-up with Amazon Web Services (AWS) through the availability of Red Hat Enterprise MRG Grid via Red Hat Cloud Access.
This move essentially means that Red Hat customers using Enterprise MRG Grid for high-performance computing applications can seamlessly shift licences between their on-premise infrastructure and AWS as required, making hybrid cloud computing a reality for these workloads.
"Organisations should be able to make the best use of all their available IT resources," said Crenshaw, who added that many Red Hat enterprise customers are now running workloads on AWS.
Red Hat Cloud Access is the capability that enables Red Hat customers to move subscriptions between on-premise servers and the cloud, and was initially introduced for Red Hat Enterprise Linux in 2010.
Crenshaw commented that in the cloud computing industry, there are varying degrees of openness, and that while some other vendors talked about being open, their strategy was to lock-in customers with proprietary cloud stacks.
"VMware will be open the day they open-source vSphere," he said.