Metacloud Boosts Big Data Performance with Advanced OpenStack Network Topology

Metacloud, Inc., a leader in deploying and operating private cloud solutions via their OpenStack as-a-service platform, is pleased to announce that Metacloud OpenStack will support VXLAN networking. Virtual Extensible LAN (VXLAN) is a network virtualization technology that eliminates the typical scalability problems associated with large cloud computing environments. By enabling a full Layer 3 topology Metacloud will be able to ensure that any workload in the cloud can maximize its throughput.

“There was great collaboration involved in making it happen and making sure it was tightly integrated within OpenStack Nova.”

“Over the past year Metacloud has had significant pull from clients that wanted to migrate their big data environments into their Metacloud OpenStack environment,” said Metacloud’s CTO, Rafi Khardalian. “They loved our feature set but had specific performance requirements to achieve. This was a challenge because traditional multi-tenant OpenStack solutions are built on top of isolation within Layer 2. A traditional L2-based design does not allow for full use of the aggregate switching investment, which is a requirement in high packet-rate/low-latency workloads like Hadoop. Our ability to enable a network topology that meets their needs will be a great win for our clients and for anyone looking to run a big data production workload on OpenStack.”

As a proponent of open source networking, Metacloud was excited about developing a VXLAN implementation, as it will allow companies to leverage open standard networking equipment. Metacloud will integrate their solution on Cumulus Networksâ„¢ Linux operating system. The integrated solution will be an important proof point, as it validates the potential of open networking on Linux.

“The combination of Cumulus® Linux® and Metacloud’s VXLAN implementation is a clear example of why open networking is more of a priority now than ever,” said Nolan Leake, co-founder and CTO, Cumulus Networks. “There was great collaboration involved in making it happen and making sure it was tightly integrated within OpenStack Nova.”

Metacloud’s solution will be integrated into Metacloud OpenStack, however VP of Engineering Chet Burgess indicates that the company plans to contribute the code back to the OpenStack Nova project. “We feel strongly about contributing back to the community and we believe in utilizing open networking standards. We think that enabling VXLAN topologies within OpenStack deployments will significantly simplify networking topologies and we plan on making it our standard.”

Chet Burgess and Nolan Leake will be presenting about this topic at the OpenStack Summit later this week. Their talk, called VXLAN Made Practical: VSwitches and Linux Switches, will describe how OpenStack and other open source software tools can be used to provide L2 connectivity to virtual machines via VXLAN over a non-blocking ECMP IP fabric.

Metacloud OnPrem and Hosted Private Cloud solutions will both include the capabilities described above by July 1. To learn more, visit www.metacloud.com or email sales@metacloud.com.

About Metacloud

Founded in 2011 and headquartered in Pasadena, California, Metacloud is a software and services company that delivers OpenStack as-a-service, deploying and supporting production-ready private cloud solutions for organizations worldwide. Metacloud is backed by Silicon Valley Bank, Pelion Ventures, UMC, Canaan Partners, Storm Ventures, and AME Ventures and is led by industry veterans from Yahoo! and Ticketmaster. Metacloud is an OpenStack Foundation member and a Top 20 contributor to the project. For more information, visit www.metacloud.com or connect with Metacloud on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.