Opscode Releases New Chef Software to Rapidly Deploy and Automate OpenStack Clouds

In collaboration with Dell and Rackspace®, Opscode developed Chef Cookbooks that automate the installation and management of OpenStack. These Chef Cookbooks enable easy deployment and automation of the core components of OpenStack, including computing, object storage, virtual machine image services, dashboard and identity.

Opscode has served as a deployment pioneer to the OpenStack open source cloud project since the association’s inception and worked closely with Rackspace and Dell to make the creation and deployment of OpenStack clouds easy and consistent. Opscode Chef powers the majority of sites deploying OpenStack, including Voxel, Mercado Libre and Cloudscaling, among others. OpenStack, founded in 2010, has earned rapid industry support with 110 organizations now participating in the project.

"This is a critical step in the evolution and maturity of OpenStack," said Jesse Robbins, Opscode Co-founder. "Opscode provides the quickest, easiest, and most scalable way to build and operate an OpenStack cloud. We love working with Rackspace and Dell, and we’re proud to be launch partners and contributors to Crowbar."

"As pioneering members of OpenStack, both Dell and Opscode see the value of cloud platforms that are not only open, but easy to deploy and scale," said John Igoe, executive director of Cloud Solutions at Dell. "As such, Dell sees tremendous value in our existing collaboration with Opscode and looks forward to working together more in the future."

"As founding members of OpenStack, Rackspace has been fortunate to work with Opscode and the Chef community from the very early days. The recent collaboration around cookbook development is yet another sign of our mutual commitment to making the benefits of OpenStack even easier for customers to achieve," said Mark Collier, vice president of Rackspace Cloud Builders.

"There is growing interest in OpenStack, and Opscode has been involved in the development of the open standard from the early days," said Rachel Chalmers, research director for The 451 Group. "Opscode brings expertise in infrastructure automation for both public and private clouds. As OpenStack continues to evolve, Opscode’s automation infrastructure and new cookbooks will be of value as companies look to scale easily and predictably, saving developers and systems engineers time and money."

The new Opscode Chef Recipes include deployment cookbooks for five core OpenStack projects, including:

OpenStack Compute: Open-source software designed to provision and manage large networks of virtual machines, creating a redundant and scalable cloud computing platform. ( www.openstack.org/projects/compute/ )

OpenStack Object Storage: Open source software for creating redundant, scalable object storage using clusters of standardized servers to store petabytes of accessible data. ( www.openstack.org/projects/storage/ )

OpenStack Image Service: Provides discovery, registration and delivery services for virtual disk images. ( www.openstack.org/projects/image-service/ )

OpenStack Dashboard: Enables administrators and users to access and provision cloud-based resources through a self-service portal, and an incubator project from the last OpenStack release. ( http://wiki.openstack.org/OpenStackDashboard )

OpenStack Identify: Provides unified authentication across all OpenStack projects and integrates with existing authentication systems, and an incubator project from the last OpenStack release. ( http://keystone.openstack.org/ )

As rapid adoption and deployment continues on thousands of servers using OpenStack with Opscode Chef, Opscode will continue to update its cookbooks for these new features. Additionally, as new systems are brought online, Opscode will provide support for deploying additional infrastructure and automating the management and configuration of updates.