The OpenStack community continues to evolve as it marks the release of OpenStack Flamingo, its 32nd version, which addresses significant technical debt and emphasizes security enhancements. This new iteration arrives 15 years after the project’s inception, which began as a collaboration between NASA and Rackspace.
After a transformative year that saw the Open Infrastructure Foundation merger with the Linux Foundation, OpenStack continues to thrive with over 55 million compute cores operational globally. Flamingo introduces nearly 8,000 changes contributed by around 480 contributors from a variety of organizations, marking an encouraging spike in engagement within the community.
One of the primary focuses of the Flamingo release has been reducing technical reliance on Eventlet, an outdated concurrency library that originated with Python 2. With OpenStack’s transition to Python 3, various components have migrated to the contemporary asyncio framework, improving the project’s long-term viability and sustainability.
Significant progress was made across several OpenStack components, including Ironic, Mistral, Barbican, and Heat, which have now shifted to use asyncio. This migration has been essential for addressing early architectural decisions that relied heavily on Eventlet, which is facing diminishing support.
Security remains a top priority as reflected in the latest release. For example, the Nova compute project introduces features like one-time-use passthrough devices, enhancing device security before reuse, and adds support for AMD’s Secure Encrypted Virtualization. Additionally, memory management efficiencies were made possible with the libvirt driver, boosting performance by optimizing how virtualized memory is utilized.
Other security enhancements include credential rotation for Kubernetes clusters in the Magnum project and encrypted shared file system capabilities in Manila. The Horizon dashboard has also adopted QR code functionality for simplified multi-factor authentication.
The Neutron networking project has implemented several advances particularly aimed at Open Virtual Network (OVN) integration, enhancing access controls and streamlining network management with new policies and performance optimizations.
Looking forward, the OpenStack community anticipates the next major release, Gazpacho, scheduled for April 2026. The completion of the Eventlet transition is high on the agenda, alongside the integration of features to support the burgeoning demand for AI inference workloads.
As OpenStack adapts and grows, it remains a pivotal player in the cloud infrastructure space, promising to stay relevant and efficient for many years to come.
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