OpenStack Unleashes Bobcat: A Leap Forward in Open-Source Cloud Infrastructure

The OpenStack community unveiled Bobcat, its 28th version, on October 4, 2023. This new Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud release came with 10,476 changes and was authored by over 580 contributors. This milestone is integral to the Linux, OpenStack, and Kubernetes Infrastructure (LOKI) stack. LOKI has become an open-source standard and the backbone of modern cloud infrastructure.

Among other significant updates, Bobcat boasts:

• Manila, OpenStack's shared file system, introduces a 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, OpenStack's web dashboard, adds time-based one-time password (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 OpenStack's identity service, Keystone, it gets activated on Horizon as well.

• Ironic, OpenStack's bare metal provisioning service, now has basic servicing nodes support. This enables 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.

• Nova, OpenStack's compute daemon, now has two new schedulers for more precise control of resources and now allows you to configure the libvirt driver to use the QEMU virtual machine (VM) manager's translation block features to reduce VMs' memory footprints.

Bobcat is the second in a new OpenStack release cadence. In the past, the expectation was that operators would upgrade every six months. That was a bit much! Now, you can opt into a once-a-year upgrade cycle with every Skip Level Upgrade Release Process (SLURP) release. Not-SLURP releases are available each six-month interim for those wishing to upgrade more frequently. OpenStack Bobcat is a not-SLURP release.

Kendall Nelson, a senior OpenInfra Foundation developer advocate, lauded the collaborative efforts that birthed Bobcat. “The engagement of operators and end users with the upstream community has been instrumental in shaping the features of Bobcat,” Nelson noted. OpenStack’s reputation for stability and innovation is unwavering, driving advancements in AI, machine learning, and edge computing.

This stability is critical to the numerous telecommunications companies that rely on it for their 4 and 5G deployments. They can't afford downtime.

For more details on what's in Bobcat, check out its release notes. Bobcat is now available for download. Looking ahead, OpenStack's next major update, Caracal, should be out in April 2024.

Noteworthy Linux and open-source stories:

• Patch now: This serious Linux vulnerability affects nearly all distributions

• New cryptographic protocol aims to bolster open-source software security

• Linux tries to dump Windows' notoriously insecure RNDIS protocol