Linux-Based SUSE Cloud Gets Hyper-V Enhancements -- Redmondmag.com

Linux-Based SUSE Cloud Gets Hyper-V Enhancements

By Kurt Mackie
05/01/2013

Microsoft and SUSE on Tuesday announced improved Hyper-V hypervisor interoperability for organizations running the Linux-based SUSE Cloud.

SUSE Cloud is an "automated" platform for deploying private clouds. It consists of a few components, such as an administration server, control node, and compute and storage nodes. It's based on OpenStack, which supports multiple hypervisors. However, the collaboration work done with Microsoft has improved the integration of Microsoft's Hyper-V. For instance, it facilitates the installation of compute nodes based on Hyper-V on the SUSE Cloud platform, according to a SUSE blog post.

The collaborative work makes it easier for organizations that use Hyper-V for their private cloud environments to also work with SUSE Cloud.

"Organizations can standardize their open source based clouds on the same Microsoft hypervisor technology they will also use in public clouds, such as Windows Azure, or on the Windows Server machines used in their datacenters," explained Alfonso Castro, director of strategic partnerships at the Microsoft Open Solutions Group, in a Microsoft blog post.

Castro added that there are about 1,000 customers that currently benefit from Microsoft's collaborative efforts with SUSE.

Microsoft's work with SUSE is part of its early open source Linux collaboration experiments that have become institutionalized in Microsoft Open Technologies Inc. Microsoft had originally struck a somewhat controversial interoperability arrangement with Novell about six years ago that involved providing indemnity in the form of SUSE Linux Enterprise certificates along with interoperability support. The idea was to support enterprise customer needs with mixed computing environments (Windows and Linux). However, the Attachmate Group bought Novell in November 2010 and spun off a SUSE group focused on SUSE Linux Enterprise. Later that year, Attachmate indicated that SUSE would continue the Microsoft indemnity program started with Novell, and the collaboration work has continued apace.

Earlier this month, SUSE announced that both SUSE and openSUSE Linux-based operating systems are available via the Microsoft Windows Azure cloud computing platform. It's also possible to use SUSE Studio to deploy applications to SUSE Linux Enterprise or openSUSE and push it up into Windows Azure via a virtual machine. Windows Azure accommodates various Linux operating systems that can be spun up into virtual machines via Windows Azure Infrastructure Services, which Microsoft rolled out commercially this month.

SUSE sells support for its SUSE Linux Enterprise Server OS running on Windows Azure. The two plans were announced earlier this month. The Basic Support plan provides security patching, bug fixes and new features in the form of automatic maintenance for the OS. SUSE's Priority Support plan includes OS maintenance plus 24 x 7 technical phone support.

"The practical deployment of production Linux workloads on-demand in Windows Azure is now possible through Basic and Priority Support for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server," explained Michael Miller, SUSE's vice president of global alliances and marketing, in a released statement.

About the Author

Kurt Mackie is senior news producer for 1105 Media's Converge360 group.

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