Mirantis Now Supports Enterprise Linux With SUSE Partnership

Customers who are looking to use SUSE’s enterprise Linux with OpenStack can find a new vendor in the form of Mirantis, which today announced a collaboration with SUSE to offer up enterprise Linux on the Mirantis OpenStack cloud platform.

The two companies will also partner to support Red Hat Enterprise Linux and CentOS, making Mirantis a self-proclaimed ‘one-stop shop’ for OpenStack support on enterprise Linux distributions.

While Red Hat does not yet endorse its Linux on Mirantis, through working with SUSE, Mirantis customers can now indeed take advantage of this.

Alongside selling a ‘pure-play’ OpenStack platform, which offers customers the choice between various operating systems and hypervisors, Mirantis can now sell support, patches and updates for SUSE’s Linux Enterprise Server, as well as Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and CentOS online.

Complete portfolio

The news was announced at the annual OpenStack Days Silicon Valley conference, where Mirantis marketing chief Boris Renski said: “Partnering with SUSE today effectively almost completes the portfolio of Linux partners that we have.

“We are collaborating upstream in a way that makes OpenStack better for everybody. At this point there is only one conspicuous partner that is missing from the equation.”
Renski was alluding to Red Hat, of course, the once partner and now rival.

“Not to worry,” added Renski, as he explained how Mirantis can now support Red Hat Enterprise Linux via SUSE.

Jay Lyman, 451 analyst, told TechWeekEurope that Mirantis has made another step towards being able to entirely support business customers.

“I would expect a company that supports OpenStack for customers would run into some Linux support issues since that is typically a pretty significant part of an OpenStack deployment,” said Lyman.

“There may still be Linux support, certification, assurance and other issues that would require a Linux vendor, but as Linux relates to OpenStack this helps Mirantis more fully support enterprise and service provider customers.”

Michael Miller, president of strategy at SUSE, said: “At SUSE, we believe in openness and choice for our customers and our partners.

“That’s why SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is the most interoperable and robust platform for mission-critical computing and the ideal choice for OpenStack private clouds. And now Mirantis customers can benefit from SUSE’s enterprise-grade Linux solutions for their private cloud.”

But Gina Longoria, analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, said that customers should consider the support options provided by Mirantis before buying in.

“Companies looking for enterprise-class features on Openstack often turn to their Linux vendor of choice for their OpenStack distribution as it is likely to be the most tightly coupled and integrated with their Linux environments,” she said.

“Mirantis is taking a different approach which may be beneficial for customers who are running multiple Linux distributions. This sounds good on paper, but customers need to weigh the risks of this support model. SUSE and Mirantis may run into technical challenges in trying to support RHEL without direct support from Red Hat. Based on Red Hat’s public reaction to this announcement, I don’t see them getting on board with the arrangement anytime soon.”

In fact, Red Hat has gone so far as labelling the deal as harmful. In an email sent to CRN, Red Hat’s director of marketing Margaret Dawson said: “We aren’t clear what kind of support Mirantis and SUSE can claim to provide for another company’s offerings. But this makes no sense to us and it would certainly be confusing and potentially dangerous for customers.”

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