News
BackUpgrading OpenStack from Kilo to Liberty
At cloudscale.ch, we have been using OpenStack ever since we started out in 2014. Recently, we upgraded from OpenStack "Kilo" to the newer "Liberty" release. It has been an interesting journey, and we would like to share some of our experiences with you:
Why we upgraded to Liberty
Having access to security updates is vital – what is true for your own devices applies to cloud service providers even more. While OpenStack's Kilo release was reaching end of life, we considered upgrading to a newer release for yet another reason: new and improved capabilities in OpenStack Liberty allow us to provide you with new features faster than before.
We are aware that the even newer OpenStack "Mitaka" has been released recently, so why did we choose Liberty anyway? We are really serious about providing you with a stable cloud infrastructure. Therefore we wanted to gain more experience with Mitaka in our lab before entrusting it with the orchestration of your servers.
How we prepared for the upgrade
Knowing how to proceed in theory is one thing, having tested the procedure is another. That is why we built a lab environment using hardware components identical to our live cloud infrastructure. This allowed us to replicate the then-current setup and go through the whole upgrade process several times, sorting out potential problems and eliminating pitfalls.
In preparation for upcoming features in our cloud control panel, we have also taken this opportunity to adjust and extend our OpenStack settings. We will cover those features in separate posts.
What this means for the future
OpenStack Liberty is a big step forward. It provides continuity and reliability, given the fact that it is well-proven yet supported for quite some time. But more important, it is a cornerstone for the future evolution of our cloud infrastructure, allowing for numerous advanced features which we will release over the next weeks and months.
With a dedicated and independent lab environment, we can now test things in a more efficient way. Be it a new feature, an optimized configuration or the next major upgrade, we have the means to safely do as many dry runs as we want before actually touching a productive system.
After this upgrade, we have an even better technological base to build on. And on top, we gained another powerful tool to meet the quality standards we are committed to.
On your mark, test, go!
Your cloudscale.ch team