Accelerating OpenStack adoption: Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform 6!

On Tuesday February 17^th, we announced the general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform 6, Red Hat's fourth release of the commercial OpenStack offering to the market.

Based on the community OpenStack “Juno” release and co-engineered with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, the enterprise-hardened Version 6 is aimed at accelerating the adoption of OpenSack among enterprise businesses, telecommunications companies, Internet service providers (ISPs), and public cloud hosting providers.

Since the first version released in July 2013, the "design principles” of Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform product offering are:

1. Co-engineer with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and KVM to enable capabilities for a well-managed IaaS implementation

OpenStack is a set of software services that requires a hypervisor to run virtual machines, as well as manage resources like CPU, memory, networking, storage, security, and hardware drivers. And OpenStack services have a complex set of user-space dependencies on the underlying operating system, just like any other application.So that each of these required components can function at the fullest capacity together, we purposefully engineer Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform to combine the world's most trusted, secure, and proven Linux distribution—Red Hat Enterprise Linux —with Red Hat’s rigorously tested OpenStack technology. To meet the enterprise need for predictable life cycle for support and maintenance, Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform brings together innovation across hypervisor, operating system, and OpenStack technologies while creating a stable platform for production deployments.

2. Deliver a single production-ready distribution to meet enterprise and telco needs

Network Functions Virtualization has emerged as a key strategic initiative among Telcos across the globe. To meet the performance and deterministic characteristics of NFV use cases, we’re committed to driving open innovation across OS, hypervisor, and OpenStack layers to make OpenStack enterprise and Telco ready. In Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform 6, features such as IPV6, SR-IOV networking, Neutron high availability (in “active-active” mode), and vCPU configurability are testament to this. In addition, we’re excited about our collaborations with top-tier network equipment providers such as Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia, Huawei, and NEC to jointly innovate and enable accelerated adoption of OpenStack to meet Telco/NFV requirements.

3. Enable broadest OpenStack partner ecosystem

Announced in April 2013, the Red Hat OpenStack Cloud Infrastructure Partner Network includes partners providing compute, storage, networking, management and ISV solutions certified around Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform. Over the past 22 months, the Cloud Infrastructure Partner Network has grown to more than 235 partners, representing nearly 1000 solutions. In addition, we’re excited about the strategic collaborations to jointly engineer solutions with industry leaders such as Cisco and Dell and thereby support broad-based adoption of OpenStack.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform 6 adds over 700 feature/functionality enhancements, bug fixes, documentation changes, and security updates, all focused on creating a stable and production-ready cloud platform. Backed by the extensive ecosystem support and the breadth of training & certification and services offerings, we’re looking forward to promoting accelerated adoption of OpenStack across the globe.

For additional details and a deeper dive on the release, please visits blog entries from my colleagues at http://redhatstackblog.redhat.com.

Radhesh Balakrishnan

General Manager, OpenStack

Red Hat