Red Hat recently launched its latest OpenStack Platform update showing that both the OpenStack and Red Hat’s OpenStack Platform still have plenty of life in them despite an increasing push toward more cloud-native management platforms. But, Red Hat also realizes where the future is headed and is angling its efforts in that direction.

The OpenStack Platform 16 update is built on Red Hat’s Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8 platform and has had its lifecycle aligned with that base to reduce platform updates moving forward. It also includes OpenStack ecosystem updates from the “Rocky,” “Stein,” and “Train” releases. Red Hat claims there are more than 1,000 “enhancements and new features” in the release.

Azhar Sayeed, chief architect for service providers at Red Hat, said that the update includes a big focus on simplifying the deployment and management of infrastructure running on OpenStack. These efforts are typically referred to as “Day 2” issues that are hoisted onto the overworked shoulders of IT departments.

“It’s really about better automation and the simplification of delivery of applications,” Sayeed explained. “The Platform 16 improvements are really around how do we make the operations and deployment model easier.”

Sayeed noted that one aspect of this was building an assurance framework that made it easier to deal with lifecycle management of virtual machines (VMs). There was also work on bolstering security and risk management of larger VM deployments.

“We want to ensure that the resources used are optimized better and are visible to the people who are running their infrastructure,” Sayeed said.

The latest release is considered a major one for the vendor, and Sayeed explained that the release is a “long-life” iteration that garners at least three years of standard support and two years of extended support. Red Hat’s last long-life OpenStack release was Platform 13, which it unveiled in mid-2018. And for perspective, OpenStack Platform 15 was released last September. As part of that Platform 15 release, Red Hat said that all subsequent releases would be of the long-life variety.

While its OpenStack platform remains a staple, Red Hat has been increasing its focus on its Kubernetes-focused OpenShift distribution. This move has been echoed by other vendors that have adjusted their future roadmaps onto a cloud-native path.

Sayeed noted that while Red Hat will likely continue offering its OpenStack and OpenShift platforms side-by-side for the near term, it was looking toward a future where those two platforms are combined. This is being driven by customers wanting to take advantage of the cloud-native agility inherent in OpenShift, containers, and Kubernetes.

“We have worked over a period of time to control the OpenStack control plane itself to run in containers, so there is literally a merging of technology on both sides and coming together,” Sayeed said. “Our vision is to create one common platform that runs any workload in [virtual machines] or containers across any footprint, which is public, private, hybrid, or on bare metal with the same experience across the board. That’s the vision we are marching toward and that’s the vision we believe will be realized as these things come together.”

However, Sayeed noted that while there are continuing efforts to run VM workloads in containers, maturity concerns have limited the interest.

“At this moment in time, until some of those projects mature in a way that we have the ability to run and manage this and orchestrate this in a common way … you will have the need for OpenStack as an infra manager and as a way to run those virtual machine workloads specifically,” he said. “I keep telling people that if you gotta go deploy something in production that is really tried and tested, and very robust and very rock solid then that is OpenStack today.”