Mirantis supports SUSE with Mirantis OpenStack, SUSE supports Mirantis OpenStack with RHEL
Nick Chase - August 16, 2016
Events often include product or company announcements, and OpenStack Days Silicon Valley was no exception, with Mirantis following up its recent announcement that it would work with Intel and Google to rearchitect OpenStack for containers and continuous delivery with the news that it would partner with SUSE to ensure that Mirantis OpenStack can run on that distribution — and a couple of other important ones.
Mirantis CMO and Co-Founder Boris Renski joked that as MOS has always supported Ubuntu and had agreements for Oracle Linux support, the addition of SUSE meant that there was just one major Linux distribution missing, but one that was about to be resolved.
SUSE, you see, in addition to providing SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES), provides support for customers running Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) — and now they would do the same for Mirantis customers.
As you might imagine, Red Hat, which used to be an investor in Mirantis but had a falling out in recent years, was none-too-thrilled with the announcement. "We aren't clear what kind of support Mirantis and SUSE can claim to provide for another company's offerings," Margaret Dawson, senior director of product marketing at Red Hat told CRN. "but this makes no sense to us, and it would certainly be confusing and potentially dangerous for customers."
Red Hat has always maintained that the best way to create a solution such as OpenStack is through "co-engineering", in which the operating system and OpenStack distribution are provided by the same vendor and that it's "unheard of" for one vendor to support another vendor's product.
"Enterprise support agreements have often seen vendors willing to take on the support of other vendors’ products," wrote Ian Murphy in EnterpriseTimes. "This is nothing new, and in many cases, those agreements are not subject to any agreement between vendors. In the Open Source market where access to the source code is part of the deal, companies are often willing to do whatever it takes to ensure software runs smoothly."
The issue here, of course, is that some companies take exception to the notion of being locked into a single vendor's products and want flexibility. That is, in fact, how SUSE wound up supporting RHEL in the first place — it's a part of their offer for customers who are ready to move off RHEL onto SUSE but need support during the transition.
Mark Smith, a Global Products and Solutions Manager from SUSE, was quick to point out that the announcement in no way signals a pullback from OpenStack for the company. "There is no change in our commitment to OpenStack. This is just about allowing customers to choose which OpenStack they want to run on SUSE Enterprise Linux.”
According to the arrangement, Mirantis will offer Level 1 and Level 2 support for any RHEL-related issues and will call on SUSE for any Level 3 issues that arise with customers. Mirantis offers packages that include 1-year and 3-year subscriptions, with up to 24x7x365 email and phone support, with a one-hour guaranteed response time.
Mirantis CMO and Co-Founder Boris Renski joked that as MOS has always supported Ubuntu and had agreements for Oracle Linux support, the addition of SUSE meant that there was just one major Linux distribution missing, but one that was about to be resolved.
SUSE, you see, in addition to providing SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES), provides support for customers running Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) — and now they would do the same for Mirantis customers.
As you might imagine, Red Hat, which used to be an investor in Mirantis but had a falling out in recent years, was none-too-thrilled with the announcement. "We aren't clear what kind of support Mirantis and SUSE can claim to provide for another company's offerings," Margaret Dawson, senior director of product marketing at Red Hat told CRN. "but this makes no sense to us, and it would certainly be confusing and potentially dangerous for customers."
Red Hat has always maintained that the best way to create a solution such as OpenStack is through "co-engineering", in which the operating system and OpenStack distribution are provided by the same vendor and that it's "unheard of" for one vendor to support another vendor's product.
"Enterprise support agreements have often seen vendors willing to take on the support of other vendors’ products," wrote Ian Murphy in EnterpriseTimes. "This is nothing new, and in many cases, those agreements are not subject to any agreement between vendors. In the Open Source market where access to the source code is part of the deal, companies are often willing to do whatever it takes to ensure software runs smoothly."
The issue here, of course, is that some companies take exception to the notion of being locked into a single vendor's products and want flexibility. That is, in fact, how SUSE wound up supporting RHEL in the first place — it's a part of their offer for customers who are ready to move off RHEL onto SUSE but need support during the transition.
Mark Smith, a Global Products and Solutions Manager from SUSE, was quick to point out that the announcement in no way signals a pullback from OpenStack for the company. "There is no change in our commitment to OpenStack. This is just about allowing customers to choose which OpenStack they want to run on SUSE Enterprise Linux.”
According to the arrangement, Mirantis will offer Level 1 and Level 2 support for any RHEL-related issues and will call on SUSE for any Level 3 issues that arise with customers. Mirantis offers packages that include 1-year and 3-year subscriptions, with up to 24x7x365 email and phone support, with a one-hour guaranteed response time.
Resources
- Mirantis and SUSE: Creating a One-Stop Shop for OpenStack Support on Major Linux Distros
- Mirantis Partners with SUSE to Deliver Complete Enterprise Linux Support
- Mirantis Sidesteps Red Hat Resistance To Rival OpenStack Software Running On Its Dominant Linux, Red Hat Calls Foul
- SUSE and Mirantis to collaborate on OpenStack
- Remember that RHEL/Mirantis storm? SUSE helps to sidestep the issue
- Mirantis and SUSE support multiple Linux OpenStack clouds
