[colug-432] Red Hat in May

[Jim Wildman]

What I know about MIQ/CF 2.0 (from watching it demo'd asking questions,
reading, etc)...  I should have it in a lab in a week or two.

It speaks to the hypervisors (VMWare, RHEV and Hyper-V (rudimentally))
via the hypervisor's API.  This includes the ability to read the
filesystems of powered off VM's (assuming they have not been encrypted).
<insert Russ's security comments here>

Between the CF 'appliances' themselves it does PostGres DB replication.
I don't know how the appliances communicate (ie what protocol they use),
but it is encrypted with some level of ssl.  It is written mostly in Ruby
and I would suspect some sort of REST interface is used.

It scales horizontally very well.  The largest reference customer I've 
seen is 18,000 vm's under management, rolling up to a single 
reporting/control head.

It has a pretty cool modeling interface and an embedded rules engine
for taking actions.

zVM/PPC haven't been mentioned at all.  That said, IBM
(surprise) has a product that can manage zVM, PPC, VMWare and RHEV
instances, especially if you use their blades (duh).  They are pushing
it pretty hard to their zVM customers.

(non redhat opinion here).  zVM and zLinux are not going away.  I don't 
know that they will ever have RHT's focus simply because it is too hard to 
sell against IBM into a mainframe shop.  There are more winnable battles
for RHT to fight.

I've been told that CF will be open sourced, at which point it wouldn't
surprise me if it grew some more hypervisor support.  But that may take
years to complete (the open sourcing).

To Neal's point, in my 6 months at RHT, I've only met one person who
does not "get" Open Source as RHT uses it.  It appears to me that RHT's
methods have been accepted in the marketplace by the sales people, or
RHT is doing better at screening new hires.  We seem to have added a lot
of sales people with 10-20 years of experience selling technology.


On Fri, 19 Apr 2013, Rick Troth wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 19, 2013 at 5:50 PM, Scott McCarty <scott.mccarty at gmail.com> wrote:
>> So, I don't want to get your hopes up.
>> ManageIQ/CloudForms 2.0 does not manage zVM.
>> In fact, nothing Red Hat does manages zVM per say.
>
> Not surprised.  SAD, but not surprised.
> This is why I'm looking for (and preaching) common APIs and protocols.
> When we have stuff like that, MIQ (or anything) becomes plug-compatible.
>
> Curious: can MIQ/CF do PPC?  Sun/Oracle?  Xen?
>
>> Satellite can manage systems in zVM,
>> but the only end to end (x86 to s390x) "management" tool
>> for the virtualization layer that I am aware of comes from IBM.
>
> Don't get me started.
>
> The older IBM operating systems were bare bones.  Then ISVs came into
> existence filling in the gaps.  This remains true for z/VM in terms of
> managing virtual machines.  There is a virtual machine mangler from
> IBM and another from Computer Associates.  (Whatever feelings we all
> may have about CA, their VM management product is excellent.)  IBM
> then fronted either of these.  The front is ... well ... it's like
> stucco with bad adhesive.  Gimme MIQ (or xCAT or even virt-manager).
>
> IBM has excellent hardware with a hot performing hypervisor, but the
> management they throw on it sucks.
>
> Of course, you can drive the CA product directly.  And it's great!
> But that's not integrated with non-z virtualzation.  Bummer.
>
>
> --
> -- R;   <><
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Wildman, CISSP, RHCE       jim at rossberry.com http://www.rossberry.net
"Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best
state, is a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one."
Thomas Paine