Mirantis OpenStack 9.1 - Continuing to Simplify the Day-2 Experience

Mirantis OpenStack 9.1 makes it easier for cloud operators to consume upstream innovation on a periodic basis, both for bug fixes and minor feature enhancements, and you can get access to this capability through an easy and reliable update mechanism. In addition, along with a number of additional features in Fuel, Mirantis OpenStack 9.1 simplifies the day-2, or post-deployment, experience for operators.

Improved Day-2 Operations

Streamline OpenStack updates

The prior mechanism of applying Maintenance Updates (MU) had several limitations. First, the MU script could only apply package updates to controller and compute nodes, and not to the Fuel Master itself. Next, the previous mechanism suffered from the inability to restart services automatically, and lacked integration with Fuel.

In 9.1, a new update mechanism has been introduced that uses Fuel’s internal Deployment Tasks to update the cloud and the Fuel Master. This new mechanism delivers the following:

• Reliability: It is tested and verified as part of the Mirantis OpenStack release. This includes going through our automated CI/CD pipelines and extensive QA process.
• Customizations: It provides users the ability to detect any customizations before applying an update to a cloud to enable operators to decide whether an update is safe to apply.
• Automatic restart: It enables automatic restart of services so that changes can take effect. The prior mechanism required users to manually restart services.

Simplify Custom Deployment Tasks With a New User Interface

In Mirantis OpenStack 9.0, we introduced the ability to define custom deployment tasks to satisfy advanced lifecycle management requirements. Operators could customize configuration options, execute any command on any node, update packages etc. with deployment tasks. In the 9.1 release, you get access to a new Deployment Task user interface in Fuel that shows the deployment workflow history. The UI can also be used to manage deployment tasks.

Automate Deployment Tasks With Event-Driven Execution

Consider an example where you need to integrate third-party monitoring software. In that case, you would want to register a new node with the monitoring software as soon as it is deployed via Fuel. Items such as these can now be automated with 9.1, where a custom deployment task can be triggered by specific Fuel events.

Reduce Footprint With Targeted Diagnostic Snapshots

With prior releases, diagnostic snapshots continued to grow over time to consume multiple GB of storage per node in just a few weeks. To solve this problem, 9.1 features targeted diagnostic snapshots to only allow log retrievals of recent N (configurable) days for a specific set of nodes.

Enhanced Security

Mirantis OpenStack 9.1 includes a number of important security features:

• SSH Brute Force protection on the Host OS
• Basic DMZ Enablement to separate the API/Public Network from the Floating Network
• RadosGW S3 API authentication through Keystone to enable the use of the same credentials for Ceph object storage APIs

The latest versions of StackLight and Murano are compatible with 9.1, so you will also be able to benefit from the latest features of the logging, monitoring and alerting (LMA) toolchain and application catalog and orchestration tool.

Because it's an update, installation of the Mirantis OpenStack 9.1 update package requires you to already have Mirantis OpenStack 9.0 installed, but then you're ready to go.  All set? Then hit the 9.0 to 9.1 update instructions to get started.