The OpenStack Community today released 2024.2 Dalmatian, the 30th version of the popular open-source cloud infrastructure software, which features new enhancements for artificial intelligence workloads, security and user experience.

OpenStack is a popular open-source cloud infrastructure software that enables organizations to build and manage public and private clouds by deploying virtual machines, containers and bare-metal resources. OpenStack is used by its users for its scalability, flexibility and integration with tools such as Kubernetes, which make it a strong choice for AI, machine learning and high-performance computing workloads.

The new release today comes as OpenStack is seeing a significant surge in adoption, attributed in large part to the software’s popularity as a VMware LLC alternative, along with its unique suitability for supporting AI, machine learning and other high-performance computing workloads. Another driver of OpenStack’s surge in popularity is its integration with Linux and Kubernetes in the “Open Infrastructure Blueprint,” which allows users to deploy container-based, virtual machine-based and bare metal-based workloads in the same infrastructure.

The new releases today start with advancements in OpenStack’s support for AI and high-HPC workloads, with the Dalmatian release introducing several key features that enhance the platform’s capabilities in these areas. Blazar, an OpenStack service that enables the reservation of cloud resources, now supports the reservation of compute instances based on existing Nova flavors, allowing users to reserve GPU instances more effectively. The enhancements are particularly valuable for users involved in AI system training, since they provide more flexibility and scalability for GPU resource allocation.

OpenStack’s Nova compute service has also been upgraded to offer better support for hardware accelerators. With the libvirt driver (version 7.3.0 or newer), mediated devices for virtual GPUs can now persist across reboots of a compute host, improving convenience and efficiency for users running AI and HPC workloads, reducing downtime and resource reallocation efforts.

Security improvements are a key focus in the OpenStack Dalmatian release, with the OpenStack bare-metal provision service Ironic now requiring hashed rescue passwords to minimize sensitive data logging during node cleaning and also mandate HTTPS for communication between services.

OpenStack’s Neutron networking service now has a manager role to support its application programming interface, while Nova now detects virtual Trusted Platform Module support and allows Transport Layer Security connections for Simple Protocol for Independent Computing Environments consoles, further enhancing protection for compute services.

On the user experience front, OpenStack Dalmatian introduces several enhancements aimed at improving usability, particularly for organizations migrating from VMware. The OpenText Skyline dashboard, now fully supported and production-ready, adds new feature, including support for Masakari, Designat and FWaaS.

Additionally, Ironic introduces runbooks for self-service maintenance. The OpenText shared file system service Manila now allows users to manipulate storage capabilities through shared metadata, with operators controlling updates and notifying users via asynchronous messages.

“The upgrades, new features and maintenance work delivered in the Dalmatian release demonstrate a hallmark of the OpenStack community: its commitment to collaborating globally to address evolving technology needs,” said Thierry Carrez, general manager of the OpenInfra Foundation. “Also reflected in the Dalmatian release is the community’s determination to integrate with a wide variety of open-source tools and platforms as well as cutting-edge hardware.”

Photo: OpenStack