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Mirantis OpenStack 6.1 offers solid foundation for PaaS deployments, multi-hypervisor clouds, and scaling

Denise Walters - June 24, 2015
Mirantis OpenStack 6.1 is the newest release of our OpenStack cloud, which is a 100% open software environment with open APIs. It provides the Fuel tool for easy deployment and lifecycle management, implements new features and partner drivers, includes production-ready core packages and a point-and-click interface to easily deploy applications from the OpenStack Community Application Catalog based on Murano.


Fuel’s task-based deployment gives you granular control when setting up your cloud environment, providing a framework that allows you to configure OpenStack components to your specifications as you go, rather than deploying a monolith that you’ll need go back and modify.


This release also supports:

  • Deploying workloads from the OpenStack Community Application Catalog 
  • Flexibility of technology choice including vSphere and KVM hypervisors in a single cloud
  • Resilience at scale with 200-node support out-of-the-box

We’ll go into more detail about these features and discuss other infrastructure enhancements in the Mirantis OpenStack 6.1 release that can increase your cloud performance. We’ll also address new out-of-the-box abilities to scale.

Deploy workloads that meet your needs, fast

To help you get the most out of your cloud as expediently as possible, Mirantis 6.1 supports deploying workloads from the OpenStack Community App Catalog. The App Catalog provides on-demand workload deployment on an OpenStack cloud and allows you to share templates for setting up apps and services quickly and easily, with infrastructure settings and scripts to reconcile dependencies. 

What the OpenStack Community App Catalog provides

The OpenStack Community App Catalog enables access to ready-to-use, preconfigured applications that you can deploy with the click of a button, provided as:

  • Ready-to-deploy Murano open source or commercial application packages
  • Heat templates, which are YAML files, for orchestrating infrastructure services such as networking, VMs, and cloud storage
  • Glance images delivered as mountable files with a VM and bootable operating system
  • Application bundles that deliver pre-configured, ready-to-deploy combinations of applications, Heat templates, and Glance images 


The launch of the App Catalog signals OpenStack’s emphasis on meeting the needs of application providers and users in addition to promoting infrastructure development and deployment. With Mirantis OpenStack 6.1, you can use the Community App Catalog to deploy workloads and Platform as a Service (PaaS) frameworks on your Mirantis OpenStack cloud, including:



These solutions, along with others from across the OpenStack community, represent the types of applications and services available through the App Catalog, which includes both free and licensed software, as well as commercial software. Any packages requiring payment or special licensing display that information in the specific packages. In addition, you can contribute your apps to the catalog, though it’s not a requirement.


Now that you know more about the developments in application availability and deployment, we’ll turn to new infrastructure improvements.

Maximize infrastructure flexibility

Mirantis OpenStack 6.1 provides greater infrastructure flexibility that enables you to expand your cloud capabilities with support for a variety of hypervisors, new certified Mirantis partners, a broad range of plugins and drivers, and optimization for Ubuntu as well as CentOS.

VMware support

Mirantis OpenStack 6.1 offers a consistent, simple API and self-service provisioning to extend the value of the VMware infrastructure and supports the use of VMware tools. New additions to support robust VMware options allow you to:

  • Run vSphere and KVM simultaneously to operate multi-hypervisor clouds. See screencast (7 mins).
  • Perform functions such as automated cluster scaling via integration with vCenter metering
  • Pool resources and automate VM placement across one or more vSphere clusters

More Infrastructure Choices

Along with the developments that enable multi-hypervisor clouds and automated cluster scaling and VM placement, Mirantis OpenStack 6.1 also includes new certified partners in the Mirantis Unlocked Technology Solutions program. Mirantis Unlocked ensures product compatibility with Mirantis OpenStack and includes support, provides driver testing and certification, and simplifies configuration and product deployment with Fuel.


New certified partners for Mirantis 6.1 include:





Check out more information on plugins and how to create your own Fuel deployment plugins

Enhance scalability and resiliency

With the production-ready functionality in Mirantis OpenStack 6.1, you’ll be able to expand your cloud capabilities, so here we address scaling enhancements as well improvements in monitoring, analysis, and system functionality.


Scale it on up

With the features that increase your ability to scale, Mirantis OpenStack 6.1 also offers out-of-the box certified deployment for up to 200 nodes, an extension that builds on our existing comprehensive hardening of OpenStack at scale. The release also supports more than 200 nodes with tuning.

Take advantage of enhanced infrastructure monitoring and analysis

To increase resiliency, new Fuel plugins for log analysis, monitoring, analytics, and visualization are available in the Mirantis OpenStack 6.1 release, including:


See the Monitoring Best Practices Guide for more information.

Check out new system functionality

System functionality improvements in the Mirantis OpenStack 6.1 release include:

  • Streamlined patch delivery and deployment using familiar Linux package management tools, such as apt-get and yum. See screencast (25 mins).
  • Documentation and tooling for experimental in-service upgrades
  • Optimization for running on Ubuntu 14.04.1, in addition to CentOS 6.5
  • Flexibility to specify deployment source repositories for the host OS, patches, and more
  • Support for the Juno maintenance release 2014.2.2

See the Release Notes for a complete list of features and improvements in Mirantis OpenStack 6.1.


Learn more and download Mirantis OpenStack 6.1 here for a nice evolution in ease-of-use and heightened functionality. You can also take advantage of the new Mirantis OpenStack training course and the “Use Case Validation” professional services offering that validates OpenStack for your specific use/business case before adopting it.

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