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Comment by jpgvm | Hacker News Reader

More provocative over insightful.

Infrastructure software isn't dead - but Openstack is.

It may still be used, and may continue to see a bit of media now and then but really it's gone the way of Puppet/Cfengine/<many proprietry infra software here>.

It missed it's chance to be good by allowing itself to be corrupted a massive design by committee disaster. Openstack needed a cohesive vision if it was to stand a chance against the integrated enterprise stacks or the custom in-house ones it sought to supplant. It never had it and at this point it never will.

I don't mean any ill-will to any of the Mirantis boys or the other countless hackers that worked on Openstack circa Cinder/Neutron introduction. I was there too, we tried to right the ship before it got too far off-course and we failed. Many smart people tried to make Openstack good but it was out of the hands of the hackers.

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>Infrastructure software isn't dead - but Openstack is.

Same tired old hype cycle trope. Openstack is dying in the same way that 'virtualization is dead'. Containers are in the spotlight now so openstack is dead - a.k.a enterprises are actually adopting it now so it's addressing all sorts of boring requirements that aren't sexy to developers.

I think I was a little too melodramatic, the articles overbearing provocative language rubbed off on me a bit.

I don't really mean that it's "dead" persay, only that I don't think it will be anything other than bad. Which the author also agrees with.

The bit I contend with is that -all- infrastructure software is dead. I think there is some really good stuff out there right now that hasn't fallen prey to previous mistakes that could really change the infrastructure landscape. There is also some stuff where exactly the same things are happening though...

Yup, and those boring requirements is where the money is. Thanks, enterprises!

and I have the complete opposite view. Openstack is killing it even though it's as crappy as everything else in many ways. It's without cost, it's automatable, you don't build inhouse software to handle it, and you build applications that can withstand software and hardware failures.

Openstack isn't a replacement for configuration management.

The massive design by committee is fantastic, because you can help change and adapt where openstack goes. You don't have that option with insert vendor.

We just disagree completely

> It's without cost

The hell it is. Of course it has a cost. Cost of a product is more than what you pay for the license.

I've worked for two companies that hemorrhaged money trying to set up functional open stack environments. I was on an openstack security team for one company. Omg...yea I'm not going three. I don't feel like raging before bed.

I work for a company that is doing fine setting up functional openstack environments. It depends on how much you're willing to spend on it.

We've put enough resources to make it happen, and it's working out fine.

> It's without cost

Openstack is so expensive in implementation effort that I've repeatedly had to implement custom solutions because the effort requires to use Openstack would have totally blown the budget.

That there's no license cost does not make it without cost.

This is also true with paid software, it's still so expensive to implement.

So I'm saying, both are expensive to implement, but one I don't pay for the software on top of it.

What I was saying is that OpenStack is so expensive in terms of complexity that it often even pays to do custom development to avoid using it.

you build applications that can withstand software and hardware failures

Well with OpenStack you sure have to try to build apps that withstand software failure, because you get a lot of experience with it...

All open-source software has a cost. Here's a nice summary of where it shows up:

http://www.joetheitguy.com/2013/10/23/hidden-costs-of-open-s...

OpenStack even had its own assessment:

https://opensource.com/business/16/4/openstack-summit-interv...

My favorite part is this quote: "Hardware was a bit of a surprise, frankly. It's clearly a lot of money, but even doubling the utilization had a tiny impact compared to helping people get work done."

That's right. People in business, IT teams prefer to get shit done over see some utilization numbers go up. That they were surprised by this shows a disconnect from reality. Especially given all the cloud marketing talks about helping one get stuff done by focusing on core business instead of IT infrastructure. Double fail.

Openstack is really expensive.

It's free as in "here's a horse, it's free"; it actually has supremely high costs!

The marketing hype far exceeds the technical credibility. But the train has left the station.

"free like a puppy" http://www.zdnet.com/article/open-source-is-free-like-a-pupp...

Puppet is dead? A Fortune 500 company I'm familiar with adopted it a few months ago to start doing configuration management.

There are plenty of Fortune 500 companies using CFEngine as well. I'm consulting for a Fortune 10 company using it at massive scale. However its role in a container-centric role will be reduced -- it'll run on the infrastructure hosts but not inside immutable containers.

What will they be using instead?

Phoenix servers. See http://martinfowler.com/bliki/ImmutableServer.html Personally, I believe this is a non-confront of the complexity inherent in modern systems. It's a cop out! You're just saying, we don't need to know the details of the configuration to troubleshoot a problem, we'll just nuke it from orbit and create a new instance. But if you don't UNDERSTAND what went wrong, how can you control the situation well enough to fix it? (This is just not my client, I'm talking about the industry trend.)

Thanks for the info. I absolutely agree with you there. It may have a place with fast-evolving, short-lived or highly distributed technologies, but it's not conducive to solving problems - it just enables to avoid them when they're not serious enough.

Right. :) And you are welcome!

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