OpenStack gets an “A” for its “F” release

On September 28th, the OpenStack Foundation announced general availability of Folsom, the next stable release of the leading open source solution for building infrastructure-as-a-service clouds. This is the sixth release from the project (Yes, “F” as in Folsom, is the sixth letter in the alphabet). While there are significant enhancements to all of the core components of the Essex release, the biggest change is the inclusion of two new core components: Cinder and Quantum.

Cinder is a new block storage service that replaces nova-volume and makes it easier to add third party drivers, improves boot from volume, and delivers enhancements to Ceph RBD.  Quantum provides a new network service that enables support for more complex network topologies and is designed to be more easily extensible through pluggable network backends such as Open vSwitch, Cisco virtual switch, and NEC OpenFlow. Taken together, Cinder and Quantum are major steps to enable enterprises to deploy fully virtualized or software defined data centers.

The enhancements to the other core projects include better standardization and discovery of APIs, new filters for dispatching architecture dependent workloads, live migration, and security improvements – all important features for our enterprise customers.

Equally important as the specific technical progress contained in Folsom, is the demonstration of the health and vitality of the open source community behind it, with a 65% increase in the number of contributors. Following on the heels of the creation of the OpenStack Foundation, the growth of the community continues to validate that OpenStack will be the “Linux of the cloud” and confirms our decision to deliver SUSE Cloud, the first enterprise private cloud solution based on OpenStack.

So, what is the impact on SUSE Cloud? While we are not ready to share specific dates, we have already begun the process of integrating Folsom with SUSE Cloud and details will be available within the next two months.

We are always eager to hear what you think, so please let us know if there are key features you are still looking for in OpenStack or how you are interested in using cloud in your organization.