Mitaka - Latest version of OpenStack

Mitaka was developed and implemented by an international community of 2,336 developers, operators and users from 293 organizations.

Since OpenStack has now been on the market for almost six years, its core is generally considered to be mature and stable. As a result, the OpenStack community has recently focused primarily on making the software easier to deploy, use and scale.

Simplified handling

The Mitaka version contains numerous enhancements that simplify and improve the daily tasks of cloud operators and administrators. One of the highlights is the simplified configuration of OpenStack Compute (Nova):

Additional default values mean that fewer options need to be selected manually. The Keystone identity module has also been significantly simplified: the multi-step process for setting up the identity management functions of a cloud network (installation, start, authentication, distribution of tokens, etc.) has been significantly shortened to just one step.

Another example of the improved handling in Mitaka is Neutron, which now offers better networking on layer 3 and supports distributed virtual routers (DVR).

Mitaka should also offer numerous enhancements to the scalability of OpenStack Clouds. For example, Heat's Convergence Engine, introduced in the Liberty version, can handle higher loads and more complex actions for horizontal scaling, while also providing better performance for stateless operations.

Likewise, Fernet tokens now increase the number of supported API operations in the Keystone identity module. The developers have also made great progress with Cells v2, another feature introduced with Liberty that supports the horizontal scaling of OpenStack compute clouds.

User experience

Mitaka clearly demonstrates the community's commitment to improving the experience for cloud users, both cloud operators and end users who are developing or deploying applications on cloud systems.

For example, a unified OpenStack client provides a consistent set of commands for creating resources, so end users do not have to learn the many intricacies of each service API.

In addition, Mitaka now offers more support for software development kits (SDKs) in a whole range of different languages. The new "Give me a network" function in Neutron, which is currently still under development, will further improve the user experience for application developers.

This function will perform all the following steps with a single action: Creating a network, linking to a server, assigning an IP address, and allowing network access. Individual elements of this new function are already implemented in Mitaka.

Availability

The developer community plans to release the first Mitaka-based products and services in the coming weeks and months. In the OpenStack Marketplace, users can find distributions and cloud service providers that are labeled "OpenStack Powered" and meet the interoperability tests. To test Mitaka, the open source code can be downloaded here.

OpenStack supports companies in a very special way if they want to "double-track" - i.e. still use conventional IT systems on the one hand, but also build modern, agile systems on the other. Thanks to shorter software development cycles, OpenStack ensures a competitive advantage that companies can pass on to their customers