PayPal is on a mission to remake its data center. It’s taking it from a typical enterprise-style operation to a more agile, flexible one to better compete in offering payment methods on the Web.
Exactly what it’s doing in its data centers remains somewhat under wraps. PayPal isn’t eager to disclose too many details of its software infrastructure or its operations. But one thing is clear. Even though it’s an implementer of OpenStack cloud software, it’s still relying on VMware for core virtualization services.
That was a flaming topic in the news last March, as Business Insider and Forbes, among others, reported that PayPal was moving away from use of VMware in its data centers to OpenStack, replacing the one with the other. At that time PayPal had implemented OpenStack as a pilot project on three servers. Over the intervening six months, it has expanded its use to many more. OpenStack-equipped servers now handle about 20% of PayPal’s payment processing traffic.
“We are not moving away from VMware,” said Nat Rajesh Natarajan, VP of platform engineering and operations, in a recent interview. “We are leveraging our investment in VMware as we grow our capacity with OpenStack.”