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IT-Infrastructure

OpenStack Deployments Q4/2014: On-Premise Private Clouds continue to lead the pack

Around 4.600 attendees at the OpenStack Summit in Paris made a clear statement. OpenStack is the hottest open source project for IT infrastructure and cloud environments in 2014. The momentum, driven by an ever-growing community, is reflected in the technical details. Juno, the current OpenStack release, includes 342 new features, 97 new drivers and plugins together with 3,219 fixed bugs. 1,419 contributors supported Juno with code and innovations. An increase by 16 percent from the former Icehouse release. According to the OpenStack Foundation, over the last six month the ratio of production environments has increased from 33 percent to 46 percent. Most of the users are coming from the US (47 percent), followed by Russia (27 percent) and Europe (21 percent).

Thus, even though the total number of new projects in Q4 went up by only 13 percent as compared to Q3, the appeal is still unabated. On-premise private clouds are by far still the preferred deployment model. In Q3 2014, the OpenStack Foundation registered 114 private cloud installations worldwide. In Q4, the number grew to 130. By comparison, the number of worldwide OpenStack public clouds grew by 13 percent. With 3 percent, hosted private cloud projects reveal the merest growth.


Note: The numbers are based on the official statistics of the OpenStack Foundation.

Annualized, the worldwide growth of the overall OpenStack projects increased by 128 percent in 2014, Q1 (105) –> Q4 (239). Regarding the total number of deployments, on-premise private clouds are by far the preferred model. In Q1 2014, the OpenStack Foundation counted 55 private cloud installations worldwide. In Q4, the number grew to 130. However, with an increase by 140 percent, hybrid clouds show the biggest growth.

Private clouds clearly have the biggest appeal, because through them cloud architects have found an answer how to build cloud environments tailored to specific needs. OpenStack supports the necessary features in order to build modern and sustainable cloud environments based on the principles of openness, reliability and efficiency. The project makes a significant contribution, especially in the areas of openness and efficiency. After years of “trial and error” approaches and cloud infrastructure with an exploratory character, OpenStack is the answer when it comes to implementing large-volume projects within production environments.

OpenStack on-premise private cloud lighthouse projects are run by Wells Fargo, Time Warner, Overstock, Expedia, Tapjoy and CERN (also hybrid cloud). CERN’s OpenStack project in particular is an impressive example and shows the capabilities of OpenStack to be the foundation of an infrastructure for massive scale. Some facts about CERN’s OpenStack project were presented by CERN Infrastructure Manager Tim Bell at the OpenStack Summit in Paris:

  • 40 million pictures per second are taken
  • 1 PB of data per second are stored
  • 100 PB archive of data (plus: 27 PB per year)
  • 400 PB per year by 2023 are estimated
  • 11,000 servers
  • 75,000 disk drives
  • 45,000 tapes

The CERN operates a total of four OpenStack based clouds. The largest cloud (Icehouse release) runs around 75,000 cores on more than 3,000 servers. The three other clouds have a total of 45,000 cores. The CERN expects to pass 150,000 cores by Q1 2015.

Further interesting OpenStack projects can be found under http://superuser.openstack.org.

By Rene Buest

Rene Buest is Gartner Analyst covering Infrastructure Services & Digital Operations. Prior to that he was Director of Technology Research at Arago, Senior Analyst and Cloud Practice Lead at Crisp Research, Principal Analyst at New Age Disruption and member of the worldwide Gigaom Research Analyst Network. Rene is considered as top cloud computing analyst in Germany and one of the worldwide top analysts in this area. In addition, he is one of the world’s top cloud computing influencers and belongs to the top 100 cloud computing experts on Twitter and Google+. Since the mid-90s he is focused on the strategic use of information technology in businesses and the IT impact on our society as well as disruptive technologies.

Rene Buest is the author of numerous professional technology articles. He regularly writes for well-known IT publications like Computerwoche, CIO Magazin, LANline as well as Silicon.de and is cited in German and international media – including New York Times, Forbes Magazin, Handelsblatt, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Wirtschaftswoche, Computerwoche, CIO, Manager Magazin and Harvard Business Manager. Furthermore Rene Buest is speaker and participant of experts rounds. He is founder of CloudUser.de and writes about cloud computing, IT infrastructure, technologies, management and strategies. He holds a diploma in computer engineering from the Hochschule Bremen (Dipl.-Informatiker (FH)) as well as a M.Sc. in IT-Management and Information Systems from the FHDW Paderborn.