Mirantis and SUSE Partner to Give OpenStack Customers an Array of Support Choices

For a long time now, surveys and anecodotal reports have shown evidence that the majority of OpenStack cloud computing deployments are built on Linux. Ubuntu is a particularly common building block, but SUSE and other flavors of Linux have footholds as well.

Now, Mirantis, widely known for its focus on OpenStack, has announced a joint collaboration with SUSE to offer Mirantis OpenStack customers support for enterprise Linux. Both companies will collaborate technically to establish SUSE Linux Enterprise Server as a development platform for use with Mirantis OpenStack. The companies will also collaborate to support Red Hat Enterprise Linux and CentOS, making Mirantis a one-stop shop for OpenStack support on several leading enterprise Linux distributions.

The move expands Mirantis' focus in numerous ways. Support is now available for current versions of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, RHEL and CentOS. Mirantis wants to give customers the flexibility to choose which operating system, and even hypervisors, they want based on workload or skill set. Mirantis will now offer support, patches and updates for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server as well as Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and CentOS online. Priority subscriptions are available in single or three-year terms and include security and other updates plus 24x7x365 email and phone-based support – with guaranteed one-hour response time.

"Many of our larger customers run two or three different Linux flavors. Now OpenStack users can get support for their major Linux distributions in one place from Mirantis," said Mirantis co-founder and CMO, Boris Renski. "Thousands of enterprises worldwide across major industries count on SUSE because they offer enterprise-grade, high reliability, bet-your-business service level agreements. Partnering with SUSE gives Mirantis customers access to this support as they build their private cloud."

"At SUSE, we believe in openness and choice for our customers and our partners," said Michael Miller, president of strategy, alliances and marketing at SUSE. "That's why SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is the most interoperable and robust platform for mission-critical computing and the smart choice for OpenStack private clouds. And now Mirantis customers can benefit from SUSE's enterprise-grade Linux solutions for their private cloud."

In our previous interview with Mirantis' Boris Renski, he noted the following:

"We are not burdened by other products in our solutions portfolio. We focus on supporting those OpenStack configurations that customers really need, not those that pull other products in our list of offerings. This applies to the infrastructure level (under OpenStack) and platform / developer tools level (on top of OpenStack). For instance, you can run Mirantis OpenStack on CentOS, with Ceph storage, Juniper Contrail for SDN and Pivotal's distribution of Cloud Foundry on top - a combination very commonly desired by OpenStack adopters but impossible for any of our big competitors to deliver and support."

 Now, Mirantis will be expanding the scope of what it delivers and supports.