OpenStack Series: Part 2 – What’s new in the Juno Release

OpenStack Juno, the tenth release of the open source software for building public, private, and hybrid clouds. According to Solinea the Juno release has 3 main theme:

• Enterprise Maturity
• Foundation for NFV Support
• Data Processing Capability

Storage Policies of Object Storage
Under the umbrella of the "Enterprise Maturity" is the storage policy for Swift that is worth mentioning.  Storage policy has been in place for Cinder but not until this Juno release that it is also available for object storage.  Back in 2013 VMware has the storage profile feature.  In fact policy is an hot yet in an infant stage within OpenStack.  There is a new project call Congress that makes "Policy as a Service" to provide a common interface to define policy or policies for the various services in OpenStack such as Nova, Neutron and of course the storage services (Cinder, Swift and Glance).

Network Function Virtualization

NFV (Network Function Virtualization) is an hot topic these days.  It is to move the Layer 4 to Layer 7 network function such as firewall, IPS/IDS or load balancing from the traditional hardware platform into virtual machines.  This will make the provisioning of these network function faster as well as easier to automate thus meeting the demands of the other core components of a cloud or virtualized infrastructure.  VMware NSX has a notion of micro-segmentation where distributing the firewall function onto the individual hypervisor.  This helps to mitigate localize security risk closest to the virtual machine.

Distributed Virtual Router
Another big feature in the Neutron is the DVR (Distributed Virtual Router).  While SDN (Software Defined Networking) is favoring a centralized controller, the network functions even for a Layer 3 router is moving to a distributed mode.

New Project
Only one project is moved from incubated to integrated status in the Juno release.  It is the Sahara project - "Data Processing as a Service".  Currently it support Hadoop and Spark where I think the support for Hadoop in the Sahara project is more mature.

Enhancements to the Incubated Projects
For the incubated projects there are more feature enhancements in TripleO and Marconi as well as better QA for Tempest and Grenade.  Rich Bowen (@rbowen) has an good article on these changes.

Enhancements to Integrated Projects
Below is extracted from the OpenStack Juno release announcement.  It listed the changes to all the integrated projects. I have made the description in note format for easier reading:

Compute (Nova)

• A Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) cross-project development team formed at the May Summit, and features began to land in the Juno cycle starting with the Compute project.
• Many operational updates were also made this cycle including improvements for rescue mode that users requested as well as allowing per-network setting on nova-network code.
• Key drivers were added such as bare metal as a service (Ironic) and Docker support through StackForge.
• Additional improvements were made to support scheduling and live upgrades.

Block Storage (Cinder)

• Block Storage added ten new storage backends this release and
• Improved testing on third-party storage systems.
• Cinder v2 API integration into Nova was also completed this cycle.
• The block storage project continues to mature each cycle building out core functionality with a consistent contributor base.

Dashboard (Horizon)

• Dashboard rolled out the ability to deploy Apache Hadoop clusters in seconds, giving users the ability to rapidly scale data sets based on a set of custom parameters.
• Additional improvements include extending the RBAC system to support OpenStack projects Compute, Networking, and Orchestration

Orchestration (Heat)

• In Juno, it is easier to roll back a failed deployment and ensure thorough cleanup.
• Also, administrators can delegate resource creation privileges to non-administrative users.
• Other improvements included implementation of new resource types and improved scalability.

Database Service (Trove)

• The database service went through its second release cycle in Juno delivering new options for MySQL replication, Mongo clustering, Postgres, and Couchbase.

Data Processing (Sahara)

• The new data processing capability automates provisioning and management of big data clusters using Hadoop and Spark.
• Big data analytics are a priority for many organizations and a popular use case for OpenStack, and this service lets OpenStack users provision needed resources more quickly.

Object Storage (Swift)

• Object Storage hit a major milestone this release cycle with the rollout of storage policies.
• Storage policies give users more control over cost and performance in terms of how they want to replicate and access data across different backends and geographical regions.
• Other new features include updated support for the Identity project (Keystone) and
• Account to account copy feature rollout.
• Additional work on erasure coding within object storage continues and is expected sometime during the Kilo release cycle.

Networking (Neutron)

• Networking features support for IPv6 and
• Better third-party driver testing to ensure consistency and reliability across network implementations.
• The release enables plug-ins for the back-end implementation of the OpenStack Networking API and blazes an initial path for migration from nova-network to Neutron.
• Supporting Layer 3 High Availability, the networking layer now allows a distributed operational mode.

Identity Service (Keystone)

• Federated authentication improvements allow users to access private and public OpenStack clouds with the same credentials.
• Keystone can be configured to use multiple identity backends, and integration with LDAP is much easier.

Telemetry (Ceilometer)

• Telemetry reported increases in performance this cycle as well as efficiency improvements including metering of some types of networking services such as load balancers, firewalls and VPNs as a service.

Image Service (Glance)

• The Image Service introduced artifacts as a broader definition for images during Juno.
• Other key new features included asynchronous processing, a Metadata Definitions Catalog and restricted policies for downloading images.

Related Post:

OpenStack Series Part 1:  How do you look at OpenStack? 
OpenStack Series Part 3:  Keystone - Identity Service
OpenStack Series Part 4:  Nova - Compute Service. 
OpenStack Series Part 5:  Glance - Image Service
OpenStack Series Part 6:  Cinder - Block Storage Service
OpenStack Series Part 7:  Swift - Object Storage Service
OpenStack Series Part 8:  Neutron - Networking Service  
OpenStack Series Part 9:  Horizon - a web based UI Service
OpenStack Series Part 10: Heat - Orchestration Service 
OpenStack Series Part 11: Ceilometer - Monitoring and Metering Service 
OpenStack Series Part 12: Trove - Database Service
OpenStack Series Part 13: Docker in OpenStack
OpenStack Series Part 14: Sahara - Data Processing Service
OpenStack Series part 15: Messaging and Queuing System in OpenStack
OpenStack Series Part 16: Ceph in OpenStack
OpenStack Series Part 17: Congress - Policy Service  
OpenStack Series Part 18: Network Function Virtualization in OpenStack
OpenStack Series Part 19: Storage Polices for Object Storage
OpenStack Series Part 20: Group-based Policy for Neutron
Reference:
"OpenStack Juno." Latest Release » OpenStack Open Source Cloud Computing Software. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Oct. 2014.