OpenStack Icehouse has been released with a lot of new amenities designed to benefit enterprise cloud storage. Icehouse was designed to incorporate more input from users and the OpenStack community, and the result is a version that includes long-awaited support for rolling/live updates, database-as-a-service, federated identity and object storage replication.
Overall, there are approximately 350 new features in Icehouse, along with more than 2,900 bug fixes. In this post, we will take a look at some of the key changes and assess their impact on OpenStack uptake in the enterprise, which so far has been promising but perhaps slower than one would expect, given the size of the community and the number of leading IT vendors on board.
Rolling updates and other improvements to Nova
The new procedures for updating address one of the longstanding shortcomings of OpenStack. In the past, all cloud infrastructure had to be shut down before OpenStack could be upgraded, a state of affairs that earned the project a reputation for "backbreaking" migrations. Users had particular trouble going from Grizzly to Havana.
"As you build new features, the database schema gets changed and that makes it extremely hard to upgrade in a rolling fashion," an executive at an OpenStack vendor told GigaOM last December. "You have to wipe out your system and reinstall."
At that time, some members of the OpenStack community admitted that the update problem was real and unresolved. Enterprises interested in OpenStack were encouraged to look at packaged commercial solutions rather than pursue do-it-yourself setups, in order to lessen the difficulty of migration and implementation in general.
Icehouse provides a better way forward. Its release notes state that it is now possible to upgrade controller infrastructure first and then do so for individual compute nodes. A complete shutdown is no longer required, reducing the impact on currently running workloads.
The revamped update support is just one of several big changes to the Nova component. Scheduler performance and boot process reliability have also been improved, while overhauled APIs now open up access to new features.
Trove for DBaaS
Trove is now an official part of OpenStack, giving the project a service to rival Amazon's Relational Database Service. For now, organizations can take Trove APIs to manage MySQL users and schema. Support for NoSQL platforms such as Cassandra and MongoDB is forthcoming
"Pretty much every application today has a database," OpenStack Foundation executive director Jonathan Bryce told eWEEK regarding Trove. "Creating a standard way to provision and manage the lifecycle of those databases is a really useful and important feature to have in OpenStack."
Changes to Swift, including storage replication
Swift has a fresh replication process called Ssync. It replaces the existing Rsync-based tool, allowing for more efficient syncing and request handling.
OpenStack users can now use a simple API call to ask anything in their Object Storage cloud about its capabilities. Clients can also communicate with multiple cloud storage clusters, plus there is new support for system-level metadata.
Federated identity through Keystone
Users can now use the same set of credentials to access both private and public OpenStack cloud platforms. The ID is provided by leading federated identity service Shibboleth.
New orchestration features in Heat
The refreshed Heat orchestration mechanism makes some permissions that were previously available only to administrators reachable by end users, too. Heat also supports automated scaling of compute, networking and storage resources across the entire OpenStack implementation
Will Icehouse make inroads for OpenStack into the enterprise?
OpenStack adoption has historically been impeded by its DIY nature, highlighted by its difficult setup process and limited support for updates and data migration. Icehouse adds plenty of new features, especially high-level ones such as the Trove DBaaS, but will it be enough to win over more organizations?
As InfoWorld's Serdar Yegulalp noted, the challenges that OpenStack faces are mostly on the marketing side, with its actual technical abilities (or perceived lack thereof) being a secondary concern. Vendors, with the exception of a few such as Red Hat, have had trouble selling OpenStack-based solutions to enterprises that have gravitated toward public cloud solutions.
Still, OpenStack has an attractive option for organizations that manage substantial assets in their own data centers and systems. The Wall Street Journal's Michael Hickins looked at the case of DigitalFilm Tree, a company that uploads raw video footage to a public cloud. After editing of a particular project is complete, the finished product is moved back to a private cloud that is not reachable over the public Internet.
These types of workflows make the case for cloud storage systems that users can control and manage on their own, without having to rely on third-party service providers. As an open source project, OpenStack also gives users exceptional flexibility, enabling them to interact with a business partner's platform if it comes from a different vendor. In this way, OpenStack users stay in the driver's seat and aren't locked in by their cloud vendors.
Big firms have also taken an interest in OpenStack. Cisco plans to invest $1 billion in an OpenStack-based network infrastructure project, largely to avoid the licensing fees of VMware – using OpenStack is certainly a good way to cut costs by eliminating some proprietary components.
Ericsson also came to an agreement with OpenStack vendor Mirantis to use the software in its data centers and networks. Mirantis, which has previously worked with Seagate Cloud Builder Alliance partners such as Nexenta, is known for stitching together parts of OpenStack for custom deployments for companies such as PayPal and The Gap.
Icehouse, with its critical change to rolling updates and its slew of new features, sets the stage for the upcoming Juno, which will implement Hadoop support through the community's Sahara project. For now, though, Icehouse is primed to perpetuate OpenStack's momentum.
"Everyone we talk to wants cloud resources that let them move faster," said Bryce, according to ZDNet. "The evolving maturation and refinement that we see in Icehouse make it possible for OpenStack users to support application developers with the services they need to develop, deploy and iterate on apps at the speeds they need to remain competitive."
