The 15th version of OpenStack has officially hit the streets.
The OpenStack Ocata release focuses on stabilization, including scalability and performance of the core compute and networking services, and brings greater support for container-based application frameworks at the networking layer, as well as containerization of OpenStack services for easier deployment and upgrade management, treating OpenStack as a microservice application.
OpenStack.org noted growing support for container-based application frameworks and deployment tools, with Kolla (containerized OpenStack services), Kuryr (bridging container networking and storage with OpenStack) and Zun (container management) projects seeing the most contributor growth in the release cycle. Other container-related enhancements include:
- Magnum now supports Mesosphere DC/OS as a cluster type and Kubernetes support now includes the new SUSE distribution
- Kolla support for Kubernetes at the control plane
- Kuryr container networking service now supports Docker Swarm
- The new Fuxi (“FOO-si”) subproject of Kuryr connects Cinder and Manila storage to container environments
“A year ago, people thought contai
ners might be the death of OpenStack,” said Jonathan Bryce, executive director of the OpenStack Foundation, “but they were actually a new source of momentum for the cloud platform. Using container orchestration frameworks to run OpenStack like an application makes it easier to operate. That means it takes fewer people to run the cloud, making OpenStack a more accessible and practical option to those running at smaller scale.”
Other updates include:
- New Nova compute “placement” API that helps users intelligently allocate resources based on application needs. Cells v2 has also become default to increase scalability of Nova
- Horizon dashboard now supports keystone-to-keystone federation as new os-profiler UI, which gives operators the ability to detect performance issues across OpenStack services
- 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
- A new “nova-status upgrade check” command line interface enables operators to test the readiness of their deployments to see if they can safely upgrade to Ocata or find out what needs to be addressed before upgrading to ensure stability and reliability. This is especially important as OpenStack’s adoption shows increasing maturity, with a 20 percent increase in production deployments year-over-year, reaching 71 percent in production or full operational use, according to the latest OpenStack User Survey.
