Virtualisation vendors still have a long way to go before cloud interoperability is reached,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], according to a new report from end user organisation, The Open Data Centre Alliance (ODCA).
The ODCA conducted a series of interoperability tests to produce a new proof-of-concept paper (POC) designed to show the current state of play.
The tests looked at moving workloads from one hypervisor to another under three different operating systems, but the results will not make happy reading for companies looking to avoid vendor lock-in,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych].
With Windows Server 2008 and Ubuntu 12.04 as the server operating systems, the only wholly successful migration took place when workloads were moved from Citrix Xen to Hyper-V implementations. When CentOS was the operating system, no workloads could be successfully transferred.
The ODCA warns in the report the methodology only provides a snapshot of the current state of play.“The goal for this research was to provide a broad indication of the state of the art for VM interoperability and not to carry an exercise in ratings tools,” it states.
"The success rate varies depending on the OS image run on the VM, even though the same tool was used to perform any given conversion. Windows Server 2008 was the most forgiving; CentOS the least with Ubuntu somewhere in between.
"The results reflect the methodology used in the experiments, and should not be construed to indicate the level of support for interoperability of any operating system," the report added.
According to Ryan Skipp, chair of the management and services workgroup within ODCA, the tests will provide a benchmark for vendors. “We’ll have some indication for industry [as to] how far we’ve come towards interoperability.”
He also flagged a change in approach from the big vendors, who were hesitant at first but have become more interested in what the ODCA is doing. “We’re now talking to vendors and they ask why certain results are happening,” he explained.
But, he warned, there was not a universal acceptance. “When you’re in the technical rooms, there’s acceptance from the vendors that interoperability is the way forward but then you get the sales and marketing teams and from them there’s a desire to get as much market share as possible and get it right now.”
According to Skipp, customers are not looking for proprietary ways going forward. “I look back to the network wars,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], before we standardised on TCP, we had to have interoperability.
"It’s the same with the cloud: how can you commit to having a workload in the cloud if you can’t interoperate. We call it ‘creating the legacy of the future' – how do we get out of that legacy,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych]?"
He added that the lack of interoperability was diminishing cloud’s effectiveness. “Cloud is meant to be providing economies of scale,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], you can’t have that without interoperability.”
ODCA hopes to use the POC paper as a springboard for further discussion, and will hold a 17 June panel at Forecast 2013 where the report's results will be discussed and steps for addressing the current gaps in VM interoperability developed. “We hope the vendors will participate on that panel, “ added Skipp.

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