OpenStack: The "Essex" Release

OpenStack Essex, the fifth version of OpenStack, focuses on quality, usability and extensibility across enterprise, service provider and high performance computing (HPC) deployments. OpenStack Essex allows users across the globe to leverage pools of on-demand, self-managed compute, storage and networking resources to build efficient, automated private and public cloud infrastructures.

Read The Press Release Essex Release Notes

Essex is a very important milestone, as it marks a point where OpenStack has become complete and mature enough to be a solid foundation for large-scale projects on top of it. This will grow the momentum of OpenStack in the market.

Phil Zamani, SVP of the Digital Business Unit Cloud Services at Deutsche Telekom
OpenStack Essex sets the pace for open source cloud infrastructure, and we're delighted to include it in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. The combination makes a robust platform for utility computing with tremendous momentum among early adopters and large scale deployments. OpenStack and Ubuntu are the key ingredients in multiple new public clouds.

Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu founder and VP, Product Strategy, Canonical
Deployments of OpenStack have taken off, and we look forward to the upcoming OpenStack Design Summit to see how companies are using Essex, and innovating on OpenStack.

Jesse Andrews, Director of Rackspace Cloud Builders, Rackspace
The diversity of contributors, from the smallest start-ups to the largest companies, is what will keep OpenStack at the forefront of innovation in providing the next generation of computing platforms.

Chris C. Kemp, co-founder of OpenStack and CEO of cloud systems company Nebula, Inc.
Here at SolidFire, we have made great progress within the core Nova project, including the integration of our high-performance block storage system as a supported Nova volume storage option within Essex. We are looking forward to helping drive further enhancements into the Folsom release and beyond.

Dave Wright, CEO and founder, SolidFire
Our customers have expressed increasing interest in deploying an OpenStack-based private cloud. The user and architectural advancements in Essex demonstrate the power of community-driven development, and make enterprise deployment a practical reality - delivering the control and management that organizations require to meet their compliance and security requirements

Michael Miller, vice president of Global Alliances & Marketing, SUSE
The Essex release represents an exciting time for both OpenStack users and for NetApp as it marks a significant step forward in the flexibility of the platform and our first contribution to the community. With NetApp technology integrated into OpenStack Compute, users will be able to build on a storage platform that delivers a unique array of storage efficiency technologies

Jeff ONeal, Senior Director, Solutions Integration Group, NetApp
Morphlabs is excited about the OpenStack release of Essex. We believe that this release positions OpenStack to become the foundation for next generation dynamic cloud infrastructure.

Winston Damarillo, CEO, MorphLabs

Essex Features & Screenshots

OpenStack Dashboard

The OpenStack Dashboard allows cloud administrators to create and manage projects and users, defining resources available to them.

Launching Instances

Users can simultaneously launch and manage multiple compute instances, as well as storage and networking resources in the OpenStack Dashboard.

User Limits

Users can launch and customize instances in the OpenStack Dashboard within the limits their administrators have set.

Dashboard Video Demo

Walk through Essex with a 5-minute video overview of some of the new features of Essex.

More Essex Features

OpenStack Compute (code-name Nova)

Focus on stability and integration with Dashboard and Identity, including enhancements to feature parity among the tier one hypervisors -- making it a seamless user experience across each hypervisor -- improved authorization and live migration with multi-host networking. There were also contributions to support high-performance computing and additional block storage options, including support for Nexenta, SolidFire, and NetApp storage solutions.

OpenStack Object Storage (code-name Swift)

Significant new features to improve compliance and data security with the ability to expire objects according to document retention policies, more protections against corruption and degradation of data, and sophisticated disaster recovery improvements. Also new capabilities important to service providers including the ability to upload data directly from an authenticated web page and the ability to restrict the maximum number of containers per account.

OpenStack Dashboard (code-name Horizon)

The first full release of OpenStack Dashboard provides administrators and users the ability to access, provision and automate cloud-based resources through a self-service portal. The extensible design makes it easy to plug in and expose third party products and services, such as monitoring.

OpenStack Identity (code-name Keystone)

The first full release of OpenStack Identity unifies all core projects of the cloud operating system with a common authentication system. The technology provides authorization for multiple log-in credentials, including username/password, token-based and AWS-style logins.

OpenStack Image Service (code-name Glance)

The Image Service received several key updates to improve usability, authorization and image protection.

List of Contributors

Thank you to the global team of 200+ developers who delivered the fifth OpenStack release on time and with every critical feature:

termie
Gabriel Hurley
Brian Waldon
Dolph Mathews
Johannes Erdfelt
Vishvananda Ishaya
Ziad Sawalha
Dan Prince
Mark McLoughlin
Joe Heck
Rick Harris
Russell Bryant
Alex Meade
Jesse Andrews
Eoghan Glynn
jakedahn
Joe Gordon
annegentle
Andy Chong
Anthony Young
Chris Behrens
Mark Washenberger
Monty Taylor
Chmouel Boudjnah
Kevin L. Mitchell
Lorin Hochstein
Brian Lamar
Julien Danjou
Ewan Mellor
gholt
Yogeshwar Srikrishnan
Tres Henry
Naveed Massjouni
Jay Pipes
Jake Dahn
Pádraig Brady
Thierry Carrez
razique
Armando Migliaccio
Michael Still
ZhongYue Luo
Paul McMillan
Hengqing Hu
Daniel P. Berrange
Josh Kearney
Jason Kölker
Brad Hall
Dean Troyer
Aaron Lee
John Dickinson
Adam Gandelman
Chuck Short
Justin Santa Barbara
Tihomir Trifonov
Andrew Bogott
Dan Wendlandt
James E. Blair
jeffjapan
Emma Steimann
Devin Carlen
Stuart McLaren
Soren Hansen
John Postlethwait
Trey Morris
lzyeval
Florian Hines
Philip Knouff
Alvaro Lopez Garcia
Maru Newby
Derek Higgins
David Goetz
Monsyne Dragon
Sandy Walsh
Ed Leafe
Yuriy Taraday
Pete Zaitcev
Yaguang Tang
MotoKen
Todd Willey
François Charlier
Neil Johnston
Duncan McGreggor
John Garbutt
Alan Pevec
Jake Zukowski
Jim Yeh
Mike Pittaro
Peng Yong
Ionu? Ar??ri?i
Carlos Marin
Doug Weimer
Cole Robinson
Mandell Degerness
Justin Shepherd
David Subiros
Andrews Medina
masumotok
Renuka Apte
Michael Basnight
Mike Perez
john-griffith
Tomoe Sugihara
Unmesh Gurjar
Isaku Yamahata
Samuel Merritt
Adrian Smith
Dragos Manolescu
Doug Hellmann
Paul Bourke
Yun Mao
Liem Nguyen
Mike Lundy
Ghe Rivero
Édouard Thuleau
Joseph W. Breu
Matt Dietz
Adam Young
Alvaro Lopez
Eamonn O'Toole
Ben McGraw
Dave Lapsley
Kiall Mac Innes
Ralf Haferkamp
Salvatore Orlando
Thorsten Tarrach
Nikhil Komawar
Andrew Clay Shafer
Tyler North
Deepak Garg
Jason Cannavale
Major Hayden
Nachi Ueno
Asbjørn Sannes
Sumit Naiksatam
Scott Moser
Greg Althaus
Ahmad Hassan
Ivan Kolodyazhny
Paul Voccio
Marcelo Martins
Joshua McKenty
Scott Simpson
Christopher MacGown
Joe Savak
Daniele Valeriani
JC Martin
Wayne A. Walls
yuanke wei
David Mortman
Pavan Kumar Sunkara
MORITA Kazutaka
Brent Roskos
Arvind Somya
Michael Barton
Rainer Toebbicke
Darrell Bishop
Stephane Angot
Jonathan Gonzalez V
monsterxx03
Tomas Hancock
Juan J. Martinez
Felipe Reyes
Donagh McCabe
aababilov
Xiaohua Guan
Guang Yee
Bhuvan Arumugam
garyk
Ollie Leahy
Likitha Shetty
Jimmy Bergman
Ken Thomas
Cor Cornelisse
Gabe Westmaas
Jorge L. Williams
renukaapte
Will Kelly
ziadsawalha
Akira YOSHIYAMA
vishvananda
Andy Smith
Shevek
Darren Birkett
Yong Sheng Gong
Christian Berendt
Nirmal Ranganathan
Tim Simpson
Ken Pepple
Reynolds Chin
Matt Stephenson
Ante Karamati?
John Griffith
Mark McClain
Sean Dague
Andrew Hutchings
Dave Walker (Daviey)
Rob Esker
Mikyung Kang
Devdeep Singh
Evan Callicoat
chris fattarsi
Nick Bartos
Liam Kelleher
sateesh
Mike Milner
dcramer