OpenStack Ocata, is the 15th release of the open source software for building private and public clouds. This version brought a focus on stabilization, scalability, and performance. This version was also developed during a shorter release cycle of four months vs. the typical six-month cycle. My understanding is that this was a one-time event.
For the last few years, we’ve seen containers making their way into the mainstream, and this release continues to grow support for the container ecosystem. Container-based application frameworks and deployment tools saw the most growth in the release cycle. As OpenStack COO Mark Collier told TechCrunch, the container projects are growing faster than the other projects.
Be sure to check out the other container related improvement in Kolla(containerized OpenStack services), Kuryr (bridging container networking and storage with OpenStack) and Zun (container management). If you want to learn more about Kolla, read this – Getting started with Kolla.
There is also a new Nova “placement” API that helps users intelligently allocate resources based on application needs, in addition to these;
- Horizon dashboard now supports keystone-to-keystone federation as new os-profiler UI, which gives operators the ability to detect performance issues across OpenStack service
- Auto-provisioning for Keystone federated identity dynamically creates a project and assigns a federated user a role upon successful authentication
- Ironic bare metal service becomes more robust with networking and driver enhancements
- Zaqar messaging service added Swift object storage as a backend to easily leverage an existing Swift cluster without deploying another MongoDB or Redis cluster
- Greatly improved performance and CPU usage for Telemetry projects: storing millions of metrics per second is now possible using Ceilometer with Gnocchi storage engine
- Active/Active HA in Cinder service can now be implemented by drivers
Congress governance framework now has policy language enhancements to enable network address operations for better network and security governance
Pre-Flight Check with Ocata
A useful and new command line option available is the “nova-status upgrade check” which will your OpenStack deployment and determine if you can upgrade to Ocata. It will also identify what actions must be taken before a successful and safe upgrade can happen.
OpenStack has seen a 20 percent increase in production deployments year-over-year, according to the latest OpenStack survey. These ‘pre-flight’ checks will give administrators a degree of comfort when introducing a new version.
Download OpenStack Ocata and give it a go. If you have experience with OpenStack, let me know on Twitter your thoughts on the new release or if you have general thoughts on OpenStack, and as always thanks for reading!