Red Hat builds on OpenStack

Following its preview of an OpenStack distribution, Red Hat is now offering an updated version of the software as part of an "early adopter program". The company has also initiated the RDO community project, which offers up-to-date OpenStack versions for Linux distributions within the Red Hat ecosystem. The Linux distributor announced the news at the ongoing OpenStack Summit Portland 2013.

RDO offers a simple means of installing the recently released OpenStack version Grizzly on top of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 and distributions derived from it such as CentOS and Scientific Linux. There are also package repositories for installation under Fedora 18 and the forthcoming Fedora 19. Red Hat has also developed PackStack, an application for setting up a cloud infrastructure using OpenStack components installed via RPM packages. RDO will also enable users using OpenStack on Linux distributions from the Red Hat ecosystem to communicate and share information.

A taster of the commercial OpenStack distribution from Red Hat is provided by the distribution in the early adopter programme, which uses code from last autumn's Folsom OpenStack version – the preview version had still been using Essex. The final version of Red Hat's OpenStack distribution will be based on Grizzly. Red Hat has also launched a partner programme, enabling other companies to adapt their products for use in Red Hat's cloud infrastructure.

(djwm)