Red Hat has just shipped out the latest version of its Red Hat OpenStack Platform. Aimed at service providers like ISPs, telcos and cloud providers, RHELOP5 is built to let them spin up OpenStack powered clouds, and is based on the recently released OpenStack Icehouse platform that came out in April.

One of the main changes in this release is that Red Hat now offers double the length of support – three years instead of the usual 1.5 years that was available with previous releases. Red Hat also boasts support from more than 250 OpenStack partners.

Offering multiyear support can be a challenge due to how OpenStack’s development moves so fast, with two major releases each year. But Red Hat is used to working with fast moving open-source projects, and already provides ten years of support with its Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) operating system – typically, new features are backported for the first five years, with only bug and security fixes offered for the next five.

Radhesh Balakrishnan, Red Hat GM of Virtualisation and Openstack, told eWeek this wouldn’t be a problem for RHELOP5. “We’ll provide production support for the entire three years, which will include all bug fixes, security and backported features,” Balakrishnan said. “Our three-year product support will be equivalent to the Production 1 support that RHEL offers.”

Features include VMware infrastructure integration to allow virtualization management, networking and storage, while existing VMware vSphere resources are also seamlessly integrated to power virtualized nodes, which can be managed via the OpenStack Dashboard. New cryptographic security based on the para-virtualised random number generator that first appeared in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 is also included, together with improved support for virtual machines.

Users will also find workload management has been enhanced across their various cloud resources, with server groups being spread across the cloud. This should have the effect of improved performance and lower communication latency, says Red Hat.

“We see momentum behind Openstack as a private cloud platform of choice from enterprise customers and service providers alike,” said Balakrishnan. “Red Hat Enterprise Linux Openstack Platform 5 not only offers a production-ready, supported version of Openstack Icehouse, but it brings a number of features that will simplify its use, and enhance dependability for enterprise users.”

RHELOP5 is available now with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, with support for RHEL6 set to follow in the next few weeks.

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