Mirantis Launches Latest OpenStack Cloud Distro

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By The VAR Guy

Mirantis rolled out the newest version of its OpenStack distribution this week. The release, Mirantis OpenStack 8, advances the vendor's strategy of providing an agnostic, "pure-play" open source cloud solution.

Mirantis OpenStack 8 is based on OpenStack Liberty, the current stable release of the open source cloud computing platform. Liberty debuted last fall.

In announcing its latest implementation of OpenStack, Mirantis emphasized features designed to enhance stability, particularly a new test suite. The company also says it is the "#1 bug fixer in Liberty, with over 1,100 bugs fixed and an additional 300 or so bugs fixed in Mirantis OpenStack 8.0."

Mirantis OpenStack 8.0 adds a variety of other cloud computing features, too. For the full list, you can refer to Mirantis's blog.

But features aren't really the biggest item of note in the newest Mirantis OpenStack distribution. What continues to distinguish Mirantis from most other OpenStack vendors is what it calls its "pure-play" approach to the open source cloud. That means shipping an OpenStack implementation that is not tied to any particular cloud ecosystem or software stack.

"Mirantis doesn’t ship SDN, storage or virtualization platforms with its distribution," the company said. "Instead, at the heart of Mirantis OpenStack is a highly available infrastructure controller that makes it possible to orchestrate a wide range of virtualization, storage, and networking platforms of the customer's choosing."

If you like choice, Mirantis's pure-play offering is a good thing. And in a market where other open source cloud platforms tend to be offered by vendors that tie OpenStack to other platforms -- usually to a particular GNU/Linux distribution and/or virtualization platform, which they use to host OpenStack -- Mirantis continues to stand out. 26,000 organizations -- which the company announced this week as the current size of its user base -- apparently agree.

This first ran at http://thevarguy.com/open-source-application-software-companies/mirantis-unveils-newest-openstack-offering-reaches-26000-