{"id":14356,"date":"2019-02-28T03:15:41","date_gmt":"2019-02-28T03:15:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/open-source-communities-fight-over-telco-market.html"},"modified":"2019-02-28T03:15:41","modified_gmt":"2019-02-28T03:15:41","slug":"open-source-communities-fight-over-telco-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/open-source-communities-fight-over-telco-market.html","title":{"rendered":"Open-source communities fight over telco market"},"content":{"rendered":"

When you think of MWC Barcelona, chances are you\u2019re thinking about the newest smartphones and other mobile gadgets, but that\u2019s only half the story. Actually, it\u2019s probably far less than half the story because the majority of the business that\u2019s done at MWC is enterprise telco business. Not too long ago, that business was all about selling expensive proprietary hardware. Today, it\u2019s about moving all of that into software \u2014 and a lot of that software is open source.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s maybe no surprise then that this year, the Linux Foundation (LF) has its own booth at MWC<\/a>. It\u2019s not massive, but it\u2019s big enough to have its own meeting space. The booth is shared by the three LF projects: the Cloud Native Computing Foundation<\/a> (CNCF), Hyperleger and Linux Foundation Networking, the home of many of the foundational projects like ONAP<\/a> and the Open Platform for NFV<\/a> (OPNFV) that power many a modern network. And with the advent of 5G, there\u2019s a lot of new market share to grab here.<\/p>\n

\"\"To discuss the CNCF\u2019s role at the event, I sat down with Dan Kohn, the executive director of the CNCF.<\/p>\n

At MWC, the CNCF launched its testbed for comparing the performance of virtual network functions on OpenStack <\/a> and what the CNCF calls cloud-native network functions, using Kubernetes (with the help of bare-metal host Packet). The project\u2019s results \u2014 at least so far \u2014 show that the cloud-native container-based stack can handle far more network functions per second than the competing OpenStack code.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe message that we are sending is that Kubernetes <\/a> as a universal platform that runs on top of bare metal or any cloud, most of your virtual network functions can be ported over to cloud-native network functions,\u201d Kohn said. \u201cAll of your operating support system, all of your business support system software can also run on Kubernetes on the same cluster.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

OpenStack, <\/a> in case you are not familiar with it, is another massive open-source project that helps enterprises manage their own data center software infrastructure. One of OpenStack\u2019s biggest markets has long been the telco industry. There has always been a bit of friction between the two foundations, especially now that the OpenStack Foundation has opened up its organizations to projects that aren\u2019t directly related to the core OpenStack projects.<\/p>\n

I asked Kohn if he is explicitly positioning the CNCF\/Kubernetes stack as an OpenStack competitor. \u201cYes, our view is that people should be running Kubernetes on bare metal and that there\u2019s no need for a middle layer,\u201d he said \u2014 and that\u2019s something the CNCF has never stated quite as explicitly before but that was always playing in the background. He also acknowledged that some of this friction stems from the fact that the CNCF and the OpenStack foundation now compete for projects.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

OpenStack Foundation, unsurprisingly, doesn\u2019t agree. \u201cPitting Kubernetes against OpenStack is extremely counterproductive and ignores the fact that OpenStack is already powering 5G networks, in many cases in combination with Kubernetes,\u201d OpenStack COO Mark Collier told me. \u201cIt also reflects a lack of understanding about what OpenStack actually does, by suggesting that it\u2019s simply a virtual machine orchestrator. That description is several years out of date. Moving away from VMs, which makes sense for many workloads, does not mean moving away from OpenStack, which manages bare metal, networking and authentication in these environments through the Ironic, Neutron and Keystone services.\u201d<\/p>\n

Similarly, ex-OpenStack Foundation board member (and Mirantis co-founder) Boris Renski told me that \u201cjust because containers can replace VMs, this doesn\u2019t mean that Kubernetes replaces OpenStack. Kubernetes\u2019 fundamental design assumes that something else is there that abstracts away low-level infrastructure, and is meant to be an application-aware container scheduler. OpenStack, on the other hand, is specifically designed to abstract away low-level infrastructure constructs like bare metal, storage, etc.\u201d<\/p>\n

This overall theme continued with Kohn and the CNCF taking a swipe at Kata Containers, the first project the OpenStack Foundation took on after it opened itself up to other projects. Kata Containers<\/a> promises to offer a combination of the flexibility of containers with the additional security of traditional virtual machines.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got this FUD out there around Kata and saying: telco\u2019s will need to use Kata, a) because of the noisy neighbor problem and b) because of the security,\u201d said Kohn. \u201cFirst of all, that\u2019s FUD and second, micro-VMs are a really interesting space.\u201d<\/p>\n

He believes it\u2019s an interesting space for situations where you are running third-party code (think AWS Lambda running Firecracker) \u2014 but telcos don\u2019t typically run that kind of code. He also argues that Kubernetes handles noisy neighbors just fine because you can constrain how many resources each container gets.<\/p>\n

It seems both organizations have a fair argument here. On the one hand, Kubernetes may be able to handle some use cases better and provide higher throughput than OpenStack. On the other hand, OpenStack handles plenty of other use cases, too, and this is a very specific use case. What\u2019s clear, though, is that there\u2019s quite a bit of friction here, which is a shame.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunchIt\/~3\/QbgGtQpI01M\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When you think of MWC Barcelona, chances are you\u2019re thinking about the newest smartphones and other mobile gadgets, but that\u2019s only half the story. Actually, it\u2019s probably far less than <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-14356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-enterprise-software","tag-enterprise"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t