Openstack Enters Feature Freeze Stage

Openstack (see previous CloudAve coverage here), the open source cloud computing play by Rackspace, NASA and many other vendors, has entered an interesting milestone last week. According to Openstack roadmap, the first version of the stack will be released on October 21st 2010. In preparation for this release date, they have entered the feature freeze state.

When the project is in Feature Freeze state, developers are asked to find and file bugs, misfeatures, or missing features, prioritize the bus so that the critical ones are taken care off first and write documentation so that they have a decent documentation for the final release on 21st October. The first version of Openstack is called the Austin release.

Preparing for this release, Jim Curry, the chief stacker at the project, wrote a blog post in early September highlighting some of the features that will be available on 21st October release. Some of the features include

The Openstack API, a RESTful API based on Rackspace Cloud API but with additional features like role based access control and networking support. The support for Amazon API will be preserved
Support for hypervisors such as XenServer, KVM, UML and Virtualbox
The authentication system for both Compute and Object Storage will be unified
Support for real Internet IP addresses; and private IP addresses within a dedicated subnet, connected via NATing from a private VPN to the public internet

For more detailed information, I recommend you to read Jim Curry’s post. I am following this project closely and very excited about an open source cloud computing stack. The project is at a very important phase with lots of excitement among the developers participating in the project. I am waiting for the release of Version One so that we can see how much traction it gains in both the service provider market and the enterprise. I will come back to this space after the release and update on it.