Red Hat releases Openstack preview

ENTERPRISE LINUX VENDOR Red Hat has released a technology preview for the infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) Openstack software.

Red Hat, which is one of the big name contributors to the Openstack IaaS project has been a vocal supporter of the project as it tries to unseat proprietary clouds such as Amazon Web Services. Now the firm has released a technology preview of Openstack so its customers can get a taste of the fast growing software that is likely to lead future cloud deployment.

Red Hat has configured a version of its popular Red Hat Enterprise Linux distribution with Openstack, with the technology preview available for download. The firm said it expects to ship a fully supported version of Openstack running on its Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) distribution in 2013.

According to Red Hat the idea is that its customers can get a feel for Openstack and it said it has been working with a select few of its customers to hone its Openstack distribution. Now the firm wants more firms to chip in with feedback before its full production release.

Brian Stevens, CTO and VP of worldwide engineering at Red Hat said, "Through our expanding involvement with Openstack, we've seen a thriving community develop and are excited in reaching this milestone along the way to delivering an enterprise-class product based on this open cloud technology. Our current productisation efforts are focused around hardening an integrated solution of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Openstack to deliver an enterprise-ready solution that enables enterprises worldwide to realise infrastructure clouds."

As Red Hat is arguably the leading Linux vendor supplying a number of blue-chip companies, its gently-gently approach to pushing Openstack is a sign that the market is starting to warm to the idea of open source cloud infrastructures. The firm said Openstack will become a significant part of its business, in the same way as its Enterprise Linux distribution and Jboss middleware.

Red Hat isn't the only Linux vendor pushing Openstack. Canonical and Suse are also big supporters of the project. Recently the hosting service Rackspace announced its first public Openstack based cloud. µ