Opscode Announces Chef for OpenStack

Opscode, a provider of software that manages cloud automation, has published "Chef for OpenStack," a reference deployment for building and managing OpenStack clouds. It made the announcement Wednesday at the O'Reilly Velocity Conference in Santa Clara, California.

Opscode's software, Chef, is an open-source systems integration framework which assists in automating the cloud. Chef simplifies the process of deploying servers and scaling applications, using a combination of configuration management and service-oriented architectures.

Five "cookbooks" will be released in Chef for OpenStack, supporting quick deployment and automation of compute, object storage, image services, dashboard and identity services for the Essex version of Openstack. Opscode also announced the completion of a new Knife command-line plugin for OpenStack Essex, enabling users to rapidly create, bootstrap and manage OpenStack Essex compute instances. OpenStack is an open source OS for clouds and has been gaining traction since its first version rolled out in 2011.

"OpenStack is rapidly evolving into the primary open source platform for deploying private and public clouds," said Bryan Hale, Director of Marketing, Opscode. By providing a centralized, defined collection of code for automating entire OpenStack infrastructures, Opscode is helping organizations leverage the potential of the OpenStack platform, reaping such benefits as greater business agility and operating efficiencies.

The effort is sponsored by Intel and driven by contributions from Rackspace, along with Dell, DreamHost, HP and the wider OpenStack community. Versions of the cookbooks will also be published for the Intel CloudBuilders community, a cross-industry initiative aimed at making it easier to build, enhance and operate cloud infrastructure.

Opscode has released a centralized repository consolidating the new cookbooks, instructions and documentation to enable a greater industry collaboration ecosystem. This open developer and operator community has a mailing list and an IRC channel and will continue to accelerate innovation in driving the future of OpenStack deployment.

"Having an automation framework such as Opscode Chef to complement OpenStack is a critical addition to the OpenStack community," said Billy Cox, Director of Cloud Software Strategy, Intel. "We're excited to help drive the next generation of collaboration and new thinking within the OpenStack community by offering a central location for current code documentation and shared best practices."

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