VMware: We love OpenStack!

A few years ago VMware and OpenStack were foes. Oh, how times have changed.

This week VMware is out with the 2.5 release of its VMware Integrated OpenStack (VIO). The virtualization giant continues to make it easier to run the open source cloud management tools on top of VMware virtualized infrastructure.

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VIO’s 2.5 release shows the continued commitment by VMware to embrace OpenStack, something that would have seen out of the question a few short years ago.

The 2.5 release comes with some nifty new features: Users can automatically important vSphere virtual machine images into their VIO OpenStack cloud now. The resource manager control plane is slimmed down by 30% so it takes up less memory. There are better integrations with VMware’s NSX too.

The news shows the continued maturation of both the open source project and the virtualization giant. Once VMware and OpenStack were seen as rivals. In many ways, they still are. Both allow organizations to build private clouds. But VMware (smartly in my opinion) realized that giving customers choice is a good thing. Instead of being an all or nothing VMware vs. OpenStack dichotomy, VMware has embraced OpenStack, allowing VMware’s virtualization management tools to serve up the virtualized infrastructure OpenStack needs to operate.

VMware’s doing the same thing with application containers. Once seen as a threat to virtual machines, VMware is making the argument that the best place to run containers are in it’s virtual machines that have been slimmed down and customized to run containers. Stay tuned to see if all these gambles pay off.