What’s New in 6.10

OpenNebula 6.10 “Bubble” is the sixth stable release of the OpenNebula 6 series. This new release features the first complete implementation of the Sunstone UI functionality on the FireEdge server, as well as improvements in backups, support for new versions of operating systems for the Front-end node, new features included in the Community Edition, and streamlining by removing obsolete or little-used components, or providing them as legacy components.

The first major highlight in this release is the new Sunstone UI. The full power of OpenNebula’s web UI is now provided by the FireEdge server, which delivers the complete set of features previously offered by legacy Ruby-based Sunstone. The new Sunstone UI brings a clean, fast, highly-customizable and easy-to-use UI.

../../_images/sunstone-full_dashboard.png

The Sunstone UI provided by FireEdge is now the default. The Ruby-based Sunstone UI is included in this release as a legacy component, but will not be updated with new features or receive maintenance, and will be removed in a future release.

In another major highlight, this release offers the possibility of performing automatic, DevOps-like deployment of an OpenNebula cloud, using OneDeploy. OneDeploy is a set of Ansible playbooks that allow you to automatically deploy a complete OpenNebula cloud, including advanced features such as Ceph storage, High Availability for the Front-end, federation, and installing the Front-end on a VM. The documentation includes tutorials for two common architectures, and the OneDeploy Wiki contains references for all available configuration options.

This release also brings significant improvements in simplifying migration from VMware, by introducing OneSwap, a command-line tool for automatically migrating VMs from vCenter to OpenNebula. Designed to run from the OpenNebula Front-end, OneSwap automatically creates the resources for each Virtual Machine, greatly speeding up the migration process.

Another highlight in this release is improved backup functionality, thanks to the addition of the in-place restore backup mode. This feature replaces the old procedure for restoring a VM from a backup, and allows you to replace the disks of a VM with a backup copy without manually generating new images and VM templates. The feature is available through the CLI and the Sunstone UI, where it can be easily accessed in the Host controls for the selected VM (in Instances -> VMs).

This release also includes myriad improvements in core functionality, the API and CLI; such as support for PCI attach and detach operations, improved OneFlow message logging, and new functionality for searching for VMs.

Finally, OpenNebula is being streamlined by removing obsolete or little-used components. The following table lists components no longer included in the OpenNebula distribution, as well as their alternative components:

Component

Alternative

LXD driver

LXC

Firecracker driver

KVM

Docker Machine

OneKE

DockerHub Marketplace

OneKE

Docker Registry

OneKE

TurnkeyLinux

LXC

PostgreSQL - TP

MySQL

The components in the table below are now included in the distribution as legacy components. They no longer receive updates or bug fixes, and will be removed in future releases:

Component

Documentation

Ruby Sunstone

Ruby Sunstone

vCenter driver

VMware Integration

For the full documentation please refer to the Legacy Components section.

Beginning on version 6.10, users of the Community Edition can access two features previously only available in the Enterprise Edition:

  • Backups using Restic, an open source backup program designed for speed and security. The Community Edition now includes the possibility of using Restic as a backend for backup operations.

  • System monitoring using Prometheus, a set of open source monitoring and alerting tools. The Community edition now includes the possibility of using Prometheus as a backend for monitoring infrastructure.

OpenNebula 6.10 is named after the Bubble Nebula (NGC 7635) in the constellation Cassiopeia. It is a young, glowing emission nebula energized by a hot, massive central star. Partly located in a group of stars between 7000 and 8000 light-years away from Earth, the Bubble Nebula is in expansion, with a central “bubble” measuring between six and ten light-years and an estimated temperature of more than 37,000 degrees Celsius (67,000 Fahrenheit). It was discovered by the celebrated astronomer William Herschel in 1787.

OpenNebula 6.10 ‘Bubble’ is considered to be a stable release and as such it is available to update production environments.

We’d like to thank all the people that support the project, OpenNebula is what it is thanks to its community! Please keep rocking.

OpenNebula Core

  • Generic Quotas: Option to specify custom quotas for OpenNebula VMs.

  • PCI attach/detach: generic PCI devices (e.g. GPU/vGPUs) now support attach and detach operations in poweroff and undeployed states. Note that this functionality (in any state) is already present for NIC PCI passthrough/SRIOV devices.

  • Search Virtual Machines: The new JSON search syntax allow advanced search by onevm list --search command. It also greatly improves the performance of searches. See also the compatibility notes.

  • Additional settings at cluster level: The FEATURES attribute for CPU_MODEL can be set at cluster level so all VMs running in a given cluster will use the same CPU features by default.

  • Warning attribute for Scheduled Action: The WARNING attribute can be used to highlight the Scheduled Action in the CLI and Sunstone, before it is executed.

Storage & Backups

  • In-place restore: Users now have access to a streamlined operation for restoring VM disk backups directly onto existing VMs, eliminating the need of generating new images and VM templates. For further information, please refer to the backup documentation.

  • Restic driver has been included in the CE and updated to version 0.16.5

FireEdge Sunstone

API and CLI

KVM

Automatic Deployment

  • Automatic deployment of an OpenNebula cloud with OneDeploy.

Automatic Migration of VMs from VMware

  • Automatic migration of VMs from VMware to OpenNebula with OneSwap.

Features Backported to 6.8.x

Additionally, the following functionalities are present that were not in OpenNebula 6.8.0, although they debuted in subsequent maintenance releases of the 6.8.x series:

Other Issues Solved

Also, the following issues have been solved in the FireEdge Sunstone Web UI: