IBM Storage with OpenStack Brings Simplicity to the Cloud

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This IBM Storage white paper is the latest addition to the insideHPC White Paper Library.

ibm storageThe modern supercomputing platform involves new types of applications, high-density workloads, and a lot more data. Because of this explosion in data storage and utilization – storage is now front and center in contemporary IT. This is partly because of the vast amount of data that businesses use and store these days; but it is also because the modern, virtualized, rapidly flexible, real-time world makes tremendous demands upon—and for—a malleable, affordable, and highly competent storage infrastructure.

Nowhere is this truer than in the various cloud implementations—be they public, private, or (increasingly) hybrid. The pressures on storage are intense, so it makes sense to have access to and integration with the most sophisticated and capable storage systems in order to optimize cloud experiences in terms of functional and financial advantages. This paper reviews the increasingly popular OpenStack cloud platform and the abilities that IBM storage solutions provide to enable and enhance OpenStack deployments. But before addressing those specifics, it is useful to remind ourselves of the “whys and wherefores” of cloud computing.

Download this paper today to learn about the key aspects around cloud, virtualization, modern computing clusters, and how data and storage impact it all. This includes:

  • Understanding why nothing can happen in IT without storage
  • How the cloud has evolved and developed
  • Choosing open vs proprietary systems
  • A look at OpenStack, IBM, and storage
  • Understanding IBM’s commitment to OpenStack
  • The OpenStack and the IBM Storage Solutions portfolio

Cloud computing is a new wave in IT, and open source cloud computing is a dramatic element of that wave. Vendors and users alike are expected to contribute to open source cloud in an effort to make them simple to use and implement. To a significant degree, you reap what you sow in this space. IBM is sowing by not only demonstrating itself to be a committed member of the developing OpenStack world, but also by making significant efforts in specific areas—with storage as a highlight—to ensure that all its system abilities are seamlessly integrated for OpenStack users. The breadth and range of those IBM storage abilities are just as necessary and valuable in OpenStack environments—indeed perhaps more so, because of the invariably flexible nature of cloud operations— as they are in more traditional data centers.

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