Open Source Insider

OpenStack Bobcat scales new heights

Adrian Bridgwater
Adrian Bridgwater

Virtualised cloud services need sharp teeth.

That may be why Bobcat is called Bobcat, or there may be some other unknown rationale.

The OpenStack community has this month announced the release of the 28th version of the world’s most widely deployed open source cloud infrastructure software – and the version name being used here is Bobcat.

OpenStack is central to the LOKI stack (Linux, OpenStack and Kubernetes Infrastructure), a technology grouping widely agreed to be the open source standard for running modern cloud infrastructure.

Made up of some 10,476 changes authored by over 580 contributors, OpenStack Bobcat includes features added in response to operators engaging directly with the upstream community.

According to the team, ninety percent of the world’s largest telcos run OpenStack, and established users continue growing their deployments. The Million Core Club now comprises eight organizations that each have more than 1 million OpenStack cores in production.

OpenStack Bobcat’s features

Project Team Leads (PTLs) and core contributors of three well-known OpenStack projects have shared how the new features in their respective projects came to be in this series of blog posts:

  • Manila introduces resource lock framework. Manila shares and access rules can now be locked against deletion. A generic resource locks framework has been introduced to facilitate this. Users can also hide sensitive fields of access rules with this feature.
  • Horizon adds TOTP authentication support. To provide enhanced security, Horizon has added TOTP authentication. So, for instance, if a public cloud user’s password is compromised (e.g., device stolen or hacked), the TOTP requires authentication through a second device. This feature leverages the already existing 2FA from Keystone, so if a user activates TOTP on Keystone, it gets activated on Horizon as well.
  • Ironic now has basic support for servicing nodes. Servicing allows operators to use steps, like you would for cleaning, to perform service on deployed nodes in active state. Previously, Ironic would not perform operations on active nodes.

The 2023 OpenStack user survey documented that organisations of all sizes are leveraging the feature enhancements in recent releases with over 80% of organizations reporting that they run one of the last six OpenStack releases (Victoria through Antelope). The user survey also showed over 70% of OpenStack deployments continue to manage applications with Kubernetes, effectively running the LOKI stack in production all over the world.

“One of the highlights of the Bobcat release cycle has been seeing how operators and end users are getting their features landed by engaging directly with the upstream community,” said Kendall Nelson, senior developer advocate at the OpenInfra Foundation. “Once again in Bobcat, OpenStack developers have responded to operator needs with acumen and dedication. It’s for this reason that OpenStack has a well-earned reputation of being ‘boringly stable’ and at the same time is providing the infrastructure that is driving innovation in AI, machine learning, edge computing, and more in production at scale.”

Free image use: Wikimedia Commons