OpenNebula 4.2 Beta (4.1.80)
July 19th, 2013. The OpenNebula team is pleased to welcome the summer with a beta release of a new version of OpenNebula, 4.2 codename Flame. This release includes an important subset of the features originally planned for 4.2, all the missing features have been automatically rescheduled to 4.4. Our goal with this release is to reduce your waiting time to test some exciting new features that are currently ready!
OpenNebula Flame includes a more polished Sunstone interface, after its redesign in 4.0; with important usability enhancements. Datastore capacity is now monitored and used to limit the amount of storage size used by images. This is a first step to also control the runtime storage used by the VMs. The VMware backend has been completely redesigned with a more comprehensive storage scheme, more functionality and less dependencies. Also we have upgraded the Xen backend to support the new interfaces introduced in Xen 4.0. And last but no least, OneFlow, the multi-tier application (a.k.a. service) manager, it is included and fully integrated in the distribution. It includes also important new features related to service management and elasticity/auto-scaling.
We are now set to basically bug-fixing and feature-freeze. Note that this is a beta release aimed at testers and developers to try the new features, and send a more than welcomed feedback for the final release.
As usual OpenNebula releases are named after a Nebula. The Flame Nebula (catalogued as NGC 2024 and Sh2-277) is an emission nebula in the constellation Orion. It is located about 900 to 1,500 light-years away from Earth.
In the following list you can check the highlights of OpenNebula Flame organised by component (a detailed list of changes can be found here):
OpenNebula Gate (onegate) is the VM gate to OpenNebula.
Sunstone has been polished since its redesign in 4.0:
This release is the first one to include the OpenNebula OneFlow component (former AppFlow component available in OpenNebulaApps). OneFlow allows users and administrators to define, execute and manage multi-tiered applications, or services composed of interconnected Virtual Machines with deployment dependencies between them. This version also comes with handy new features:
There have been minor changes in the OpenNebula DB schema to support the new datastore monitor subsystem. These changes are automatically managed by the migration process, but if you have developed any customisation you may need to update it.
A detailed upgrade process can be found in the documentation. For a complete set of changes to migrate from a 4.0 installation please refer to the Compatibility Guide.
OpenNebula is released under the Apache 2.0 open source license. The complete source tree and binary packages for OpenNebula can be downloaded here.
Packages for the beta are available for various distros: Ubuntu LTS and latest, CentOS, OpenSUSE and Debian.
Please report any bug or send feedback at the development portal or at the mailing list.
The documentation of OpenNebula 4.2 can be found here.
The OpenNebula project would like to thank the community members and users who have contributed to this software release by being active with the discussions, answering user questions, or providing patches for bugfixes, features and documentation.
The new features for service elasticity (oneFlow) introduced in OpenNebula 4.2 were funded by BlackBerry in the context of the Fund a Feature Program.
More information about the project can be found at the project web page. You may be also interested in checking the OpenNebula Ecosystem that includes many interesting projects contributed by the community to enhance or add new features to OpenNebula.