Tenancy is Critical on a Cloud Platform

With this new VMWare platform, it was ultimately decided to go with ESXi hypervisors, managed by vCenter, and NSX-T.  

During the POC, it was pointed out that this combination of solutions had some improvements and enhancements over OpenStack (DRS, vMotion, et al). But one thing seemed to be overlooked, and we pointed it out: Tenancy

VMWare attempts to address Tenancy with Vertical Stack point solutions, like vCloud Director (positioned at Service Providers), or vRealize Automation. The latter, is going through a complete transformation in its latest version.  These solutions are also expensive. And, if you don't have the budget, what are your options??

One option is to set up Resource Pools and Folders in vCenter. Not the cleanest solution because you cannot set policies, workflows, etc.

What else can you do? Well, you can use a Cloud Management solution.

We had Cloudify as an Orchestrator. And we evaluated that as a Cloud Management solution. But what we found in the end, was that Cloudify excelled at complex orchestration, but it was not designed and built, ground-up, to be a Cloud Management Platform.

It seemed that this (lack of) Tenancy seemed to become apparent to everyone all at once - once the platform came up on VMWare.  And, with Cloudify we lacked the Blueprint development to do the scores to hundreds of tasks that we needed to have. It needed integrations with NSX-T, vCenter, and a host of other solutions.

We looked at a couple of other solutions, and settled on a solution called Morpheus.

I will blog a bit more about Morpheus in upcoming posts. I have been very hands-on with it lately. 

What on Earth is Canonical Doing with Ubuntu? Sheez

I have been using CentOS almost exclusively since I have been working here, first with CentOS 6, and then (now) CentOS7. I have watched the kernels move up from 3.x to 4.x, I have fought with (and still fight with) NetworkManager, etc.

You get used to what you use.

I have also used Ubuntu in the past, 14.04, and 16.04, but it has been a while.

So, I needed to install Ubuntu in order to run OSM, because OSM (on their website at least) wants to use Ubuntu. I think Ubuntu is probably bigger in Europe, is my guess.

So - for two straight days now, I have been trying to install a Ubuntu Cloud image and get it working on a KVM system. Something that SHOULD be simple, right? Wrong.

Here is a rundown of all of the headaches I have run into thus far, which has pissed me off about Ubuntu.

1. On 16.04, the root file system is only 2G for the cloud image you download off the web.

I ran out of disk space in no time flat. Trying to install X Windows and a Display Manager, which by default are not enabled on the cloud image. 

Trying to increase the root file system? Damn near impossible. I tried using qemu-img --resize, and that only created a /vdb file system. The ./dev./sda1 was STILL, and REMAINED, 2G. I could not install X Windows, I couldn't do squat. I am sure if I rolled up my sleeves, and got to work using advanced partitioning tools and whatnot, I could have made this happen. Or, maybe not. Point is, this was a hassle. An unnecessary hassle in my opinion.

2. I realized that the 18.04 Ubuntu uses a qcow2 format - which you CAN resize. Again, why Ubuntu is using 2G as a root file system size is beyond me, and this is ANNOYING. This is the year 2019.

So, I resized the image, and put a password on the image (cloud images are not set up to log in with prompt, only certificates, which of course is a good practice, albeit a hassle for what I needed).

3. I launched 18.04 and guess what? NO NETWORKING!!!! @^%$

I realize no networking was set up. At all! WHAT???

4. Let's go set up networking. Yikes! You CAN'T!!!!!! WHY? Because the iproute2 packages and legacy packages that everyone in the WORLD uses, are not on the machine!

They want you to use this newfangled tool called NetPlan to set up your networking!?!?

Fine. You can google this and set it up, which I did.

BUT WHY ARE ALL OF THESE LINUX DISTRIBUTIONS BECOMING SO DIFFERENT?

THAT IS NOT, I SAY...NOT...WHAT LINUX IS ALL ABOUT?????

I remember when Gentoo came out, and how different a beast it was. Now, the distinction between CentOS and Ubuntu is becoming a very wide chasm.