OpenStack vs. Ganeti

OpenStack has gained a lot of prominence in the cloud ecosystem, but it can be a difficult platform to setup and maintain. Ganeti is a lesser known FOSS virtualization platform created by Google that …

OpenStack has gained a lot of prominence in the cloud ecosystem, but it can be a difficult platform to setup and maintain. Ganeti is a lesser known FOSS virtualization platform created by Google that primarily provides a simple to use compute service. Both of these platforms have their strengths and weaknesses. At the OSU Open Source Lab, we have been long time users and promoters of Ganeti since 2009. It’s enabled the lab to better serve its FOSS hosting activities in a stable yet easy to use manner. Over the past year we have been also building and using OpenStack clusters to fill other computing needs that Ganeti doesn’t fill very well. Ganeti is software developed at Google which can be used to manage physical hardware in order to host virtualization workloads. Used worldwide and highly customizable, Ganeti architecture makes it easy to install, maintain, extend and use. Compared to other platforms, Ganeti is a great fit for medium to small organizations that need a simple virtualization cluster will few to no cloud features. This session will cover the Ganeti platform, how it’s being used, how the project and community is evolving and how to deploy it into your infrastructure.