The OpenStack Foundation has taken the wraps of off the latest release of the OpenStack cloud platform, named Ocata.

OpenStack Ocata is the 15th release of the open-source cloud infrastructure platform, and was completed in just four months, much quicker than typical six months that previous editions were given. Following the OpenStack Newton release in October, it’s the first to be released under a shortened development cycle that will now see three new versions put out each year.

What with developers having to get to grips with the much shorter time frame, OpenStack Ocata is billed as a stabilization release that aims to address scalability and performance issues with the framework’s core computing and networking services. However, Ocata also boasts a number of improvements aimed at enabling container workloads on OpenStack.

The OpenStack Magnum project, which aims to make container orchestration software such as Docker Swarm and Kubernetes first-class resources in OpenStack, has introduced support for Mesosphere Inc.’s open-source Data Center Operating System as an available cluster type. Meanwhile, the OpenStack Kuryr container networking engine has also been enhanced with support for the container networking interface that serves to enable networking in Kubernetes.

OpenStack Ocata also sees improvements aimed at improving cloud operations, with a new “os-profiler” tool that allows administrators to follow requests through the OpenStack system to see if there are any performance issues they need to be aware of. As a result, OpenStack Ocata now can better serve as a platform for microservices, the OpenStack Foundation claims.

Various other improvements have been made under the hood, aimed at addressing the aforementioned scalability and performance issues in compute and networking, which can be read about in greater detail in the accompanying press release and release notes.

The foundation said it’s holding a Project Teams Gathering Feb. 20-24 to discuss what’s on the agenda for the forthcoming release of OpenStack 16, dubbed “Pike.” Assuming the foundation sticks to the new four-month release schedule, Pike should make its debut in June.

Image: OpenStack/Facebook