IBM Strengthens Cloud Infrastructure Offerings with Management Tool for OpenStack

IBM Strengthens Cloud Infrastructure Offerings with Management Tool for OpenStack

By Laura Stotler

IBM has announced a new management tool designed to automatically allocate cloud resources and balance workload demands in OpenStack environments. The new IBM Platform Resource Scheduler dynamically allocates resources for private and public OpenStack clouds to ensure adherence to SLAs and offer high levels of performance.

The new management tool, part of IBM’s software defined environment (SDE) portfolio, is tailored toward OpenStack-based cloud management solutions. It works with the IBM Smart Cloud Entry and SmartCloud Orchestrator offerings, helping cloud administrators improve the quality of service for their tenants.

The Platform Resource Scheduler helps prevent hypervisor resources from becoming oversubscribed and assists admins in managing complex cloud environments more effectively. The solution also better automates cloud operations and improves average utilization to reduce infrastructure costs while accommodating new tenants on existing infrastructure.

IBM has been shaping up to be a major cloud player with a host of cloud infrastructure and service management announcements over the past few months. On the big data front, the company announced its intent to acquire file transfer specialists Aspera last month. IBM will integrate the company’s technology with its cloud computing infrastructure initiatives.

IBM has also had an international focus on the cloud, announcing deals in China with energy distributor ENN Energy and 21Vianet, a data center provider. The computing giant is also working with Brazilian service provider Alelo on a cloud data center and has several cloud infrastructure and managed service initiatives underway in Europe.

"IBM Platform Resource Scheduler provides a fully virtualized, open and programmable architecture that ensures enterprises are taking advantage of all available cloud resources - from application software licenses to available network bandwidth," said Jay Muelhoefer, director strategy, IBM Platform Computing. "IBM Platform Resource Scheduler is an important building block of SDE and helps cloud clients optimize infrastructure usage, reduce cost of cloud ownership, and deliver higher workload quality of service."

Features of IBM’s new cloud tool include a set of intelligent, policy-driven scheduling capabilities for continuous resource optimization and refinement of hypervisor placement decisions based on both usage and workload patterns. Virtual machine (VM) live migration capabilities are also enabled for re-balancing VMs to meet business objectives without the need for user intervention.

The Platform Resource Scheduler expands on OpenStack’s Nova scheduling capabilities by providing a set of out-of-the-box policies for resource selection. It also includes an SQL-like query language, enabling cloud admins to match workloads more precisely to available resources and also creating opportunities for hardware utilization and service levels.




Edited by Cassandra Tucker
Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. [Free eNews Subscription]

MSPToday Contributing Editor

SHARE THIS ARTICLE
Related Articles

Shining a Light on the Dark Web: Searchlight Cyber Debuts Comprehensive Hub

By: Greg Tavarez    3/28/2024

The Dark Web Hub is a one-stop shop for crucial context and continuously updated information on dark web marketplaces, ransomware actors, hacking foru…

Read More

Stellar Cyber and Trellix Bridge the Gap in Security Operations

By: Greg Tavarez    3/28/2024

Stellar Cyber announced the integration with Trellix Endpoint Security HX to allow customers to deploy more robust security solutions and improve thei…

Read More

CyberSaint Raises $21M in Series A Funding to Continue Securing its CyberStrong Customers

By: Alex Passett    3/27/2024

CyberSaint announced that it succeeded in a huge $21 million Series A funding round. This was led by Riverside Acceleration Capital (RAC) with other i…

Read More

US Education Receives Security Upgrade with Free Browser Protection Offered by Conceal, Carahsoft

By: Greg Tavarez    3/27/2024

Conceal and Carahsoft recently unveiled an initiative to fortify the cybersecurity infrastructure of U.S. educational institutions.

Read More

Cato's AI Takes Control of Security and Incident Response

By: Greg Tavarez    3/27/2024

With Cato's recently announced Network Stories for Cato XDR, advanced AI algorithms instantly identify outages in customer networks and conduct root c…

Read More