OpenStack to remove Microsoft Hyper-V support

Despite Microsoft's stated commitment to Hyper-V in OpenStack, buggy code designed to support the hypervisor will be removed from the next version of the stack, developers have decided.

An OpenStack developer wrote a patch that removes the Hyper-V support code, and two members of the core OpenStack team have approved the patch. That means the code will be removed when the next version of OpenStack, called Essex, is released in the second quarter. The code would have allowed a service provider to build an OpenStack cloud using Hyper-V.

Microsoft announced in late 2010 that it had contracted with a company to build support for Hyper-V in OpenStack. "But they never really finished it and the company hasn't supported it since then," said Joshua McKenty, CEO of Piston Cloud Computing. McKenty was the technical architect of NASA's Nebula cloud platform, which spun off into OpenStack, and is involved in the OpenStack community.

Developers working on Essex suggested late last week dropping the Hyper-V support code. The code is "broken and unmaintained," Theirry Carrez, a developer handling release management for OpenStack, wrote in a news group when suggesting that it be dropped.

After reports surfaced that the code might be removed, Microsoft sounded interested in figuring out a way to retain it. "Microsoft is committed to working with the community to resolve the current issues with Hyper-V and OpenStack," Microsoft said. The company did not reply to a request for comment about the decision to remove the code.

The move impacts very few people; McKenty doesn't know of any OpenStack clouds being built on Hyper-V. But it indicates that few cloud providers are using Windows Server in their OpenStack deployments, which could be a concern for Microsoft, noted James Staten, a Forrester Research analyst.