OpenStack Releases Dalmatian: Enhancing AI Support and Security in Cloud Infrastructure

OpenStack releases 2024.2 Dalmatian with AI and security enhancements - SiliconANGLE

OpenStack releases 2024.2 Dalmatian with AI and security enhancements The OpenStack Community today released 2024.2 Dalmation, 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. OpenText'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 Dalmation 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."

OpenStack Dalmatian debuts with better dashboard, security

OpenStack Dalmatian, the 30th edition of the open source cloud stack, has bounded out of the kennel. The Open InfraFoundation, which tends the project, is excited about this release amid what it calls "a significant surge in adoption, attributed largely to the software's popularity as a VMware alternative." The stack also apparently possesses "unique suitability" for AI, ML, and HPC workloads. VMware users may find this release a little more approachable as it has mainlined Skyline - a new dashboard that's said to make OpenStack easier to wrangle and offers a more refined and intuitive design. For AI/ML/HPC users, Dalmatian adds the ability to reserve GPU-powered instances - a handy change as nobody running a training or inferencing wants their accelerators to be assigned to other workloads mid-job. That change came in the Nova module, which offers IaaS services for VMs. Also new in Nova is the ability to automatically detect virtual Trusted Platform Module (vTPM) support for compute services if libvirt version is above 8.0.0 and if swtpm is installed on the node. It will also automatically get the TPM models that are supported. That's a nice security management tweak. The Ironic module, which deals with bare metal provisioning, has gained runbooks - described as "a new API concept to enable self-service of maintenance items on nodes by project members" that apply curated lists to replace procedures for manual cleaning or servicing. Ironic has also added a requirement for rescue passwords to be hashed, has reduced the logged nodes information during the cleaning phase to avoid showing sensitive data, and has hardened the communication between its services and agent by making HTTPS URLs a default requirement. The Cinder block storage service has new drivers to better support storage kit from Dell, NetApp, HPE, Fujitsu, and Hitachi. OpenStack is big: the project encompasses 33 sub-projects, 21 of which have release notes you can read on the Dalmatian release page. Dalmatian is a non-SLURP release - meaning it's a filler between more substantial OpenStack versions under the project's new-ish release cadence plan. OpenStack Epoxy, due in April 2025, is next off the rank. Dalmatian will go end of life in April 2026. ®