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SUSE may have given up on the OpenStack Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud, but Red Hat hasn't. The Raleigh, N.C.-based company has just released its latest OpenStack distribution, Red Hat OpenStack Platform (RHOP) 16.

This new OpenStack is built on the foundation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8. The version adds a refined long-life support lifecycle, comprehensive feature consolidation, and a new commitment to delivering continuous community innovation as enterprise-ready features via stream releases. It combines the best features of the last three OpenStack release Train along with Red Hat's own special sauce.

Modular by design, the new Red Hat OpenStack is meant to optimize IT operations for existing traditional applications. But it's not just the same old IaaS file storage cloud it was 10 years ago. It can now be used as the foundation for cloud-native applications such as network functions virtualization (NFV), edge computing, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).

In the past, one of the knocks against OpenStack was that it changed so quickly that it was difficult to standardize on it. Blink twice and there's a new major version.

RHOP 16 is designed to help organizations standardize and remain on the platform for up to five years.

That doesn't mean you have to wait for the best of OpenStack's latest features and improvements. Red Hat will integrate these into RHOP without requiring you to do a major platform update.

As Joe Fernandes, Red Hat's VP of Cloud Platforms, explained in a statement:

"With Red Hat OpenStack Platform 16, we've updated the cadence of innovation to reflect the ability and desire of enterprise IT organizations to consume and deploy new releases. Now aligned with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, businesses can benefit from a more continuous stream of new features like edge computing and NFV without requiring a new version of the platform, helping organizations to innovate at the speed and scale that makes the most sense for their unique operations."

This release comes with numerous new features. Among the highlights are:

Multi-cell deployments using Cells v2 : OpenStack Compute is now powered by cells by default. You can configure larger deployments to use multiple cells, each cell with specific Compute nodes and database. Global services control placement and fail-safe operations, and the separation into cells help improve security and process isolation.

OpenStack Compute is now powered by cells by default. You can configure larger deployments to use multiple cells, each cell with specific Compute nodes and database. Global services control placement and fail-safe operations, and the separation into cells help improve security and process isolation. Colocation of pinned and floating instances on a single host: You can now schedule instances with pinned CPUs on the same host as instances that use floating CPUs

You can now schedule instances with pinned CPUs on the same host as instances that use floating CPUs Open Virtual Network (OVN) internal API TLS/SSL support: RHOP now supports the encryption of internal API traffic for OVN using Transport Layer Security (TLS).

RHOP now supports the encryption of internal API traffic for OVN using Transport Layer Security (TLS). OVN deployment over IPv6: Red Hat OpenStack Platform now supports deploying OVN on an IPv6 network.

You can also use RHOP with Red Hat's Kubernetes-based hybrid cloud. It does this by being tightly integrated with Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform. The net result is, Red Hat promises, that you can "confidently deploy traditional and cloud-native workloads on Red Hat OpenStack Platform."

There are numerous IaaS clouds and OpenStack distributions out there. That said, this new Red Hat release, especially with its new long-term support, deserves a look.

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