OpenStack’s latest release is now available, the first ever production ready open cloud infrastructure. Diablo is OpenStack’s fourth release.

It includes updates to the storage, compute and image services.

We should place an asterisk to what is meant by production ready. It is ready but few have the expertise to build production ready environments with it.

Randy Bias and his engineers at CloudScaling represent that small group who can and have already built production ready clouds with the OpenStack cloud infrastructure.

Bias said in an interview today that Diablo requires people who know how to do such things as integrate hypervisors, develop the network and generally have the knowledge to build a cloud infrastructure.

But with OpenStack, Diablo is far more stable, Bias said. What it does need, for example, is better multitenancy and unified authentication.

Another issue is governance. Rackspace still pretty much controls the open-source project. Some argue OpenStack needs a benevolent dictator to keep the dozens of service providers in line that are contributing to the project.

Services Angle

Here is what’s new in Diablo:

OpenStack Compute (Nova) – New capabilities include a distributed scheduler allowing for virtual machines to be deployed globally, a high-availability networking mode to avoid downtime if a primary server fails and support for a new authentication system, OpenStack Identity Management.

OpenStack Object Storage (Swift) – New multi-cluster container sync allows a user to choose on a container by container basis which data to replicate in order to a separate cluster located in multiple geographical locations.

OpenStack Image Service (Glance) – Updates to the Image Service include new filtering and searching capabilities through the API, a highly requested feature by service providers that support a large number of customers globally.