MOSK, Mirantis OpenStack for Kubernetes

Aiming to provide a lower cost and open source alternative to VMware, that optimises performance and automates workload distribution, “strategic infrastructure” company Mirantis has released Mirantis OpenStack for Kubernetes (MOSK) 24.2 this month.

Shipping with what the company calls a dynamic resource balancer feature that automates workload distribution, the technology aims to solve hotspot and “noisy neighbour” problems. 

In working operation, MOSK automatically redistributes workloads within a cluster to balance resource consumption to prevent hypervisor overloading and degraded performance of cloud workloads. 

Dependency freedom

Developed for contribution to OpenStack upstream, the new dynamic resource balancer is – according to Mirantis, “Comparable to VMware’s Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS). Mirantis is the first to implement this capability for OpenStack without complex dependencies on other services.”

MOSK 24.2 is built on OpenStack 2024.1/Caracal and the most recent Ceph Reef open-source software-defined storage technology. The new release also includes support for the Open Virtual Network (OVN) software-defined networking (SDN) for supplying network services to virtual machines.

“MOSK is a viable and proven open source-based technology option especially relevant as many VMware users seek alternatives,” said Shaun O’Meara, chief technology officer, Mirantis. “MOSK makes the operation of OpenStack-based cloud and virtualisation solutions simpler, and can be deployed as a unified solution on a range of cost-effective, hyperconverged, modular hardware, providing a full-featured, scalable on-premises cloud. It is engineered as an ideal host environment for migrated VMware VM workloads – enabling businesses to achieve optimal resource management and network performance on open infrastructure with proven reliability.”

MOSK enables on-premise cloud infrastructure for cloud-native and traditional applications, ensuring reliability and complete control over application data.

Simple operator experience

It provides what Mirantis calls a “simple operator experience” through automated full-stack management of the underlying infrastructure, from hardware provisioning to software configuration, plus centralized logging, monitoring, and alerting.

The basic MOSK setup can be expanded to manage multiple clouds, as well as hybrid cloud configurations leveraging public cloud or hosted bare metal cloud resources. 

MOSK is available in its simplest configuration in a range of simple packages, with 24/7 or fully-managed support, optional integrations, VMware application migration and application modernization services, and Mirantis training.