OpenStack Queens, the 17th version of the most widely deployed open source cloud infrastructure software, offers a packed release with advancements benefiting not only enterprises with mission-critical workloads but also organizations investing in emerging use cases like containers, NFV, edge computing and machine learning.
Significant features include operator-friendly additions like Ironic Rescue Mode, a new drag-and-drop method for creating orchestration templates, and registering RBAC policies in project code as opposed to separate project files. Additional new features and projects with emerging applications like support for vGPUs (AI/machine learning, HPC), Cinder multi-attach (HA, enterprise support), OpenStack-Helm for containerizing OpenStack services (edge), and a CNI daemon in Kuryr (container networking).
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A new WYSIWYG feature for creating Heat Orchestration Templates
With Cinder multi-attach, a single volume can be attached to multiple virtual machines.
Zun, a project that lets users quickly start and run containers without having to manage servers, introduces new features like capsules.
Support for vGPUs (virtual graphic processing units) — In Nova, vGPU support lets cloud administrators define flavors to request specific resources and resolutions for vGPUs. End users can boot VMs that have vGPUs, an important capacity for graphics-intensive workloads and many scientific, artificial intelligence and machine learning workloads.
Cyborg — Cyborg, a framework for managing hardware and software acceleration resources such as GPU, FPGA, CryptoCards and DPDK/SPDK, debuts in the Queens release. Acceleration has become a necessity rather than an option, particularly for telcos with NFV workloads. With Cyborg, operators can list, identify and discover accelerators, attach and detach accelerators to an instance, and install and uninstall drives. It can be used standalone or in conjunction with Nova or Ironic.
Cinder Multi-Attach enables operators to attach the same Cinder volume to multiple VMs. If one node goes down, the other takes over and has access to the volume. This redundancy—which supports high availability (HA) for mission critical workloads—is one of the most-requested features in cloud environments and has remained a largely unmet challenge in computing until now.
OpenStack-Helm — This addition to the project portfolio provides a collection of Helm charts and tools for managing the lifecycle of OpenStack on top of Kubernetes and running OpenStack projects as independent services.
LOCI — Another project making its debut, LOCI makes Open Container Initiative-compatible images of OpenStack services that can be dropped into heavy-weight deployment tools like OpenStack-Helm or used individually to deliver standalone services like Cinder block storage.
Kuryr CNI Daemon — OpenStack is the preferred platform for containers deployed in private cloud, and the community continues to expand microservices features in Queens. Kuryr adds a CNI daemon to increase the scalability of operations on Kubernetes. To support HA, the CNI daemon watches for pod events, eliminating the need to wait on the Kubernetes API for each event. Pods can be created even if the controller goes down.
Ironic Rescue Mode — Instance repair—long available for VMs in Nova—is now available for bare metal instances in Ironic. Operators can now troubleshoot misconfigured bare metal nodes or recover from issues like a lost SSH key, an important enhancement since production usage of Ironic has jumped from 9 to 20 percent between April and November of 2017 (source: OpenStack User Survey).
Register & document policy — Across the majority of OpenStack projects, role-based access control (RBAC) policies now live in the project code, as opposed to being a separate file in the project source, providing better communication about service policies and the ability to set more granular defaults for RBAC policies.
To see more release highlights from the project teams, visit the Release Highlights page. Learn more about individual OpenStack Projects in the Project Navigator, and get the full view of OpenStack with the Project Map.
The Queens release has been dedicated to the memory of Shawn Pearce. Shawn was the founder of Gerrit which has been at the center of OpenStack’s development process since the Diablo release. Shawn’s work in the space of developer tooling and collaboration has been essential to OpenStack’s growth and success, as well as many other open source projects.