IT certification has always been vendor-specific – but that’s about to change for the open-source OpenStack cloud platform.
Rather than relying on vendor-specific certifications, a new effort being led by OpenStack vendor Mirantis is aiming to open-source certification for the cloud. The new effort is different from an existing effort known as Refstack.
B
“What we are doing is about exposing objective information with regard to drivers and plug-ins that third-party vendors write (like NetApp, VMware, Ceth, etc.) about compatibility with particular versions of OpenStack,” Renski said.
For example, Renski said that if an IT person has EMC storage in-house and wants it managed via OpenStack, there will now be a place for that person to go and see what specific EMC storage products work with what version of OpenStack.
When it comes to Linux certification, many vendors have typically tied certification to a specific kernel that is in use on a given system. Renski said that the OpenStack drivers translate the respective OpenStack API calls into the API calls that a certain vendor’s solution can understand.
“For most of these drivers, there are few kernel-level dependencies,” Renski said.
At first, there will be no third party verification of vendors’ own certifications. At this point, the testing will be a self-audit, Renski said, with vendors deploying the test harness in their internal test labs and linking it directly to the upstream OpenStack Continuous Integration (CI) system.
“Down the road, we may push for a foundation-sponsored physical lab to be added for the next level of testing rigor, but this won’t happen until later in 2014,” Renski said.
As to Mirantis’ role in the effort, Renski said his company is helping the community build the internal test harness. In addition, Mirantis is writing instructions for vendors to follow to deploy this test harness and run the tests. Mirantis is also working with individual vendors, supporting them on a pro bono basis in order to successfully build the test harness. Finally, Mirantis is building a public dashboard that will expose the results of the tests.
“It is a big project with many parties involved, so while there are no immediate roadblocks per se, it will take a bit of rigour and persistence to make this thing work,” Renski said.
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at eWEEK and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.
How is your open source knowledge?
Originally published on eWeek.
X's global affairs head, Nick Pickles, confirms departure after a decade working at the platform…
British competition regulator closes investigation into Microsoft's hiring of Inflection AI staff, which it deems…
First public response made by Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, after arrest in France over alleged…
US authorities probe fatal four-vehicle crash caused by Ford Mustang Mach-E electric vehicle using BlueCruise…
Margrethe Vestager set to step down as EU competition commissioner after a decade in office…
EU regulators to seek views from industry players on Google's DMA compliance plans ahead of…