OpenStack allows companies to manage their own private AWS-like clouds on-premises. Even after 29 releases, it remains one of the most active open source projects in the world and this week the OpenInfra Foundation which leads the project announced the launch of version 29 of OpenStack. Dubbed “Caracal,” this new release focuses on new features for hosting AI and high-performance computing (HPC) workloads.
The typical OpenStack user is a large enterprise. This could be a retailer like Walmart or a large telecommunications company like NTT. What virtually all companies have in common right now is that they are thinking about how to put their AI models into production, while keeping their data secure. For many, this means maintaining full control of the entire stack.
Mark Collier, CEO of the OpenInfra Foundation
As Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently noted, we are on the cusp of a wave of multibillion-dollar investments that will go into data center infrastructure. Much of that comes from investments by large hyperscalers, but a lot of it will also go to private deployments – and those data centers need a software layer to manage them.
This puts OpenStack in an interesting position right now as one of the only comprehensive alternatives to VMware’s offerings, which is facing its own problems as many VMware users are not very happy with its sale to Broadcom . More than ever, VMware users are looking for alternatives. “With Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware and some of the licensing changes they made, a lot of companies came to us and took another look at OpenStack,” explained Jonathan Bryce, executive director of the OpenInfra Foundation.
Image credits: Frédéric Lardinois/TechCrunch
Much of OpenStack’s growth in recent years is due to its adoption in the Asia-Pacific region. Indeed, as the OpenInfra Foundation announced this week, its new Platinum member is Okestro, a South Korean cloud provider with a strong focus on AI. But Europe, with its strict data sovereignty laws, is also a growing market and the British supercomputer Dawn AI runs OpenStack, for example.
“Everything is gearing up for a strong recovery and adoption of open source for infrastructure,” Mark Collier, COO of the OpenInfra Foundation, told TechCrunch. “That mainly means OpenStack, but also Kata Containers and some of our other projects. So it’s very exciting to see another wave of infrastructure upgrades giving our community important work to do for many years to come.
Specifically, some of the new features added in this release include the ability to support vGPU live migrations into Nova, OpenStack’s core compute service. This means that users now have the ability to move GPU workloads from one physical server to another with minimal impact on workloads, which is something businesses are demanding as they want to be able to manage their expensive GPU hardware as efficiently as possible. Live migration for CPUs has long been a standard Nova feature, but this is the first time it’s also available for GPUs.
The latest release also brings a number of security improvements, including policy-based access control for more essential OpenStack services such as the Ironic bare-metal-as-a-service project. This is in addition to network updates to better support HPC workloads and a host of other updates. You can find the full release notes here.
BURBANK, CA – JULY 10: A general view of the atmosphere during the 7-Eleven 88th Anniversary Celebration at 7-Eleven on July 10, 2015 in Burbank, California. (Photo by Chris Weeks/Getty Images for 7-Eleven)
This update is also the first since OpenStack moved to its Skip Level Upgrade Release Process (SLURP) a year ago. The OpenStack project releases a new version every six months, but that’s too fast for most companies — and early in the project, most users would describe the upgrade process as “painful” (or worse).
Today, upgrades are much easier and the project is also much more stable. The SLURP cadence introduces something akin to a long-term release, where, on an annual basis, every second release is an easy-to-upgrade SLURP release, even as teams continue to produce major updates on the initial six-month cycle for those who want a faster pace.
Over the years, OpenStack has gone through cycles of ups and downs in terms of perception. But it is now a mature system and supported by a sustainable ecosystem – which wasn’t necessarily the case at the height of its first hype cycle a decade ago. In recent years it has enjoyed a lot of success in the world of telecommunications, which has allowed it to go through this maturation phase and today it may find itself in the right place and at the right time to also capitalize on the AI boom.
techcrunch
