Why Wind River is serious about moving from VMware
VMware products are one of the virtualization platforms that have long supported corporate IT. However, due to changes in the product portfolio and licensing system, an increasing number of companies are facing challenges such as increased costs. There is also a movement to review IT infrastructure from scratch when it comes to the next system upgrade.
When reviewing IT infrastructure, the key issue is not only achieving “aggressive IT,” but also how to reduce operational costs, which account for the majority of the IT budget. When thinking about the entire corporate IT landscape from a zero-base perspective, it is important to consider not only the IT infrastructure environments in office operations, but also those in manufacturing, distribution, customer contact points, and other diverse locations. By streamlining these distributed environments, we can expect to see operational efficiency improvements.
The power of highly reliable cloud infrastructure with no vendor lock-in
“One of the strengths of Wind River Cloud Platform is that it is based on open source software, eliminating the risk of vendor lock-in. It also quickly keeps up with trends in modern IT systems,” said Paul Miller, CTO of Wind River.
Wind River is a company that has led the way by providing commercial real-time operating systems and embedded Linux operating systems to mission-critical fields such as aerospace and defense, industrial equipment, medical equipment, and communications, where downtime can affect human lives and social infrastructure. However, in recent years, the company has been transforming into a cloud technology company, and is actively investing in cloud-related open source software development communities.
“Over the past decade or so, Wind River itself has become keenly aware of the need to transition to new technologies, and has transformed from a leading software company for OT equipment into a company that leverages cloud technology to enable collaboration between IT and OT,” says Miller, explaining the company’s shift to the cloud.
The company offers its own on-premise commercial private cloud platform, the Wind River Cloud Platform (hereafter referred to as Cloud Platform).While there are several options for commercial cloud platforms, Wind River’s particular strengths lie in its commercialization of open source technology with no vendor lock-in, and its expertise in building and operating large-scale, mission-critical systems, cultivated in the OT field.
Cloud Platform is built on open source software such as StarlingX, Kubernetes, and OpenStack, and its reliability has been proven through deployments with global telecommunications carriers such as Verizon and Vodafone.
The OS uses a real-time extended Linux kernel and is characterized by a high reliability of 99.9999% uptime. It has an operational track record of handling over 50,000 nodes with no downtime.
The Cloud Platform also features automation functions for various workloads and automatic recovery functions that allow operations to continue even in the event of a network outage, thereby increasing system availability while achieving efficient and stable operation.
A support tool that realizes a simple licensing system and centralized operations
One of the attractions of Cloud Platform is its simple licensing system. Commercial IaaS platforms, such as VMware products, often have complex licensing systems based on the number of virtual machines (VMs) and cores. In this case, the hardware configuration must be adjusted to account for each vendor’s billing rules, adjusting the number of cores and VMs. However, if the billing rules change, unexpected costs can increase.
Cloud Platform takes these risks into consideration and adopts a simple node-based licensing system, making it easier to choose hardware configurations that maximize system performance without being caught between license costs and the risk of losing out.
Another feature is its configuration, which is designed with operational consolidation in mind. StarlingX is a cloud infrastructure development project aimed at high-performance, low-latency edge environments. It is based on a low-latency version of Debian GNU/Linux and is configured for distributed cloud computing. The entire distributed infrastructure can be managed from a single system controller, and the latest version of Cloud Platform is said to be able to manage up to 5,000 sub-clouds with a single system controller. This system can also be used in corporate IT infrastructure, allowing for centralized management of the entire IT infrastructure of various entities, such as subsidiaries, offices, factories, warehouses, and stores.
Wind River is a leading member of the StarlingX project and continues to actively provide feedback on its development. The Cloud Platform will incorporate the results of this project into a commercial product, combining various tools to support operations, commercial support, and system migration support services.
The company’s operational support tools include “Conductor” and “Analytics.” Conductor automates application deployment tasks in distributed cloud environments, provides orchestration functions that automate management with zero touch, and centralizes end-to-end management of distributed cloud environments, significantly reducing the burden of system construction and operation. Analytics collects and analyzes data from the Cloud Platform to enable efficient operation of distributed cloud systems.
We provide comprehensive support for migration from VMware with individual optimization, and we also have precedent cases
Cloud Platform also provides a path to integrate existing IaaS services based on the container technology Kubernetes.
Cloud Platform supports OpenStack, and because its control plane is containerized, it can run seamlessly as a container application on the platform. In addition to migrating virtual machines from VMware products, containers, which have recently become popular, can also be operated within the same cluster.
In fact, there are cases where companies have used the company’s migration services to migrate VMware products to a container platform.
Boost Mobile, a telecommunications company providing 5G network services in the United States, has adopted VMware products as the infrastructure for its services and is now migrating to Cloud Platform to improve operational efficiency and automate its operations.
However, migrating VMware products to a container platform is by no means an easy task. Wind River’s migration services thoroughly consider requirements in advance and provide the wide range of support desired by user companies, such as estimating the cost benefits of migration. Another attractive feature is that they are able to address issues specific to the OT field that can only be supported by companies with in-depth knowledge of the requirements and challenges of each industry, and have a system in place to provide migration services and professional services tailored to each individual company.
Re-consolidating IT infrastructure that has been individually optimized
As every business operation at every company location becomes IT-based, the systems that IT departments must manage are becoming more diverse, complex, and distributed. If these systems continue to be managed individually, it will be impossible to avoid a situation where operational costs will put pressure on the IT budget, no matter how hard you try to cut costs on a daily basis.
To ensure there is room for future aggressive IT investment, a stable system for comprehensively operating a distributed environment is necessary. Cloud Platform, which has a proven track record in the operation and management of carrier networks and offers advantages in terms of scalability, availability, and cost performance, is one option that should be considered when building the next robust IT infrastructure.
