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OpenStack's next release: 'Havana'

The next version of the popular open source cloud operating system gets a name, but a bear of a release precedes it.
Written by Andrew Nusca, Contributor
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The next release of OpenStack's cloud software will be named Havana, the company announced last week after putting the name to a vote.

That's after the unincorporated community in Oregon, rather than the better-known Cuban city.

The release will follow Grizzly (so-named after the bear portrayed on the State of California's flag), which followed Folsom, Essex, Diablo, Cactus, Bexar and Austin. The company's code names intend to reflect cities or counties near where its corresponding design summit takes place; the next summit is planned for April 15 through 18 in Portland, Ore.

The current stable release of the company's scalable cloud software is actually Folsom; it debuted in January 2012 with support for networking, block storage and Hyper-V and saw updates through late September. Grizzly, still under development, is expected on April 4, 2013. (A release candidate is planned for mid-March.)

Why should you care? Because the biggest enterprise companies support the open source infrastructure-as-a-service project, including AMD, Intel, SUSE Linux, Red Hat, Cisco, Dell, HP, IBM, NEC and VMware. The goal of the venture is to provide a simple to implement, massively scalable solution for public and private clouds. It does so through the extensive use of application programming interfaces, or APIs.

For more on how that works, Victoria Martínez de la Cruz has a finely written explanation on her website.

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